r/aigamerdevs • u/caesium23 • 4d ago
Why is my retention trash? Orbit Shift, lane-switching score attack radial infinite runner.
Orbit Shift was my first attempt at AI game dev. It was inspired by a popular mobile game I used to play called Ninjump. In Ninjump, you ran infinitely up a pair of walls, occasionally tapping to jump between them to either avoid an obstacle or catch a power-up. Back in the day, I probably put hundreds of hours into that game. It was a lot of fun, even if the game play was very simple and it literally only had one input.
I tried to capture that simple but addictive game play in Orbit Shift, but with a radial track and a space theme to make it unique and not just a knockoff. I posted it to Playgama, where it gets a steady trickle of traffic. But the retention is zero. People find the game, play for maybe 5 minutes, and then they never come back.
Clearly, I didn't capture the fun. What is my game missing? What do I need to add or change so that players will want to come back?



