Kickstarter Campaign
Here is the link to the Phuzzlings Kickstarter Project.
The Mission
Mission Statement
Phuzzlings wants to create a puzzle-sharing app to make sharing photos playful and fun. Think Instagram meets Painting By Numbers where every picture is a puzzle.
Mission Question
Instead of sending a photo to your family, friends, or partner, why not send a puzzle instead?
Origin Story
The team got the idea for Phuzzlings when we realized that the only in-app purchase we had made in several years was to unlock a feature to use our own photos in a painting by numbers app.
The Name
A photo that is a puzzle is a Phuzzle, and Phuzzlings is “photos that are puzzling”.
The Game
There are sample uses on the home page and more information in these pages.
Target Audience
The target audience is mainly women between the ages of 30-60. On average women spend 15% more time each day playing puzzles and sharing photos than men. Different surveys and reports show women make up 55-75% of social media users and puzzle players. Because the target audience is only slightly biased towards one demographic, the Phuzzlings app needs to have broad appeal to all groups.
Market Research
We reviewed over 30 puzzle and photo-sharing apps as part of our market research. Of all the photo-sharing apps, none of them have a puzzle element to them. Of all the puzzle apps, none of them have a sharing element to them. Well… there is one jigsaw app that allows an image to be shared, but that is not the purpose of the app, and it does not provide any advanced, challenging, or more playful features
Of all the game app categories, puzzle apps are the most used and generate the most revenue. 65% of people who play mobile games report playing puzzle games regularly.
Competitive Analysis
The painting-by-numbers and word-hunt games are popular puzzles and there are a number of apps for them already. However
- They don’t allow you to use your own photos (well only one does) to create puzzles
- They all have an annoying amount of ads
- They don’t allow you to send a puzzle to someone else
- They are simple casual apps without advanced features.
- They don’t allow a choice of difficulty level for each puzzle.
These apps are also not heavily marketed, unlike the Match-3 games like Royal Match and Candy Crush.
Revenue Model
Phuzzlings is an iOS and Android app that is free to install and supported by in-app ads (IAA) and in-app purchases (IAP). This is the most common and successful revenue model for puzzle apps.
In-App Purchases (IAP)
Users will be able to buy coins to use in Phuzzlings to help the solve puzzles. In line with most popular puzzle apps the IAP options will range from $0.99 to $99.99.
In-App Ads (IAA)
There are three kinds of ads in mobile apps:
- Banner Ads: These ads take up a small amount of the screen (usually the bottom) and are there all or most of the time. Phuzzlings will not have these.
- Interstitial Ads: These ads are the annoying ones that interrupt the game, take up the whole screen, and you have to figure out how to cancel them after 5-6 seconds. In many puzzle apps there is an interstitial ad before every puzzle. Phuzzlings will not have these.
- Rewarded Ads: These ads are optional ads that users choose to watch in return for a reward of coins or points within the game.
Phuzzlings will be free to play, and will only have rewarded ads and in-app purchases.
Marketing Strategy
Like a few apps ,Phuzzlings will be advertised as having “No Annoying Ads”. In some apps this means that there are no banner ads and fewer interstitial/interrupting ads. Phuzzlings will only have rewarded ads that are entirely optional and only shown on request.
Phuzzlings will use social media influencer marketing, in-app ads, and additional marketing channels to attract users to the app.
Rewards and Benefits for Backers
These are the benefits for Phuzzlings’s KickStarter backers. The different reward tiers include different sets of these benefits.
Have your name listed on our donor page at phuzzlings.com. The page listing the donor’s will be linked from one of the app screens.
Players use coins in Phuzzlings for tools that help to solve puzzles. This benefit provides a big boost to the donor’s coins balance.
As players progress and achieve higher levels more features become available to them. This includes some of the options for customizing Phuzzles that you are sending to friends and family. This benefit unlocks all the level-based features of Version 1.
Take part in our product management process by voting on the priorities of some of the Phuzzlings’ Version 1 features.
Stretch Goal Bonuses
As we hit funding goals above the initial target all donors will get additional in-game bonuses.