Topping the Gaming Charts: How Cross the Ages Reached #1 on the App Store with Zealy
Cross the Ages grew a community of thousands of gamers from scratch in less than a month and constantly kept them engaged even after their launch - all thanks to Zealy.
Cross the Ages is a mobile-first card game app that bridges sci-fi and fantasy. It was launched in March 2023, and, now, it has over 300,000 downloads and 100,000 active players. How did it get to this scale?
Key Issue
New games often find it hard to stand out when they first launch. Even if they have a big budget for advertising, it's more effective to have organic growth in the App Store. However, achieving this organic visibility in the App Store can be extremely challenging.
Once they succeed they struggle to keep these users active. The stickiness of a mobile game varies a lot - it can go from 4% to 37%.1 Even the average performance varies significantly depending on the type of game we’re talking about.
Our Objective
Gain awareness for Cross the Ages among a new audience of gamers and convert current gamers into long-time fans.
At Zealy, we create excitement and enable companies to engage with users through gamification. Our strategy was to consistently reward user interactions and bring the world of Cross the Ages to life - even outside of the game.
Strategy Implementation
Zealy Community Launched for Special Competition
One month after the official launch, Cross the Ages created its Zealy community. The community was immediately tasked to join an Easter Event, a special sprint where members can win big in-game rewards in exchange for doing quests. The first sprint was met with immediate success - over 2,000 players joined and completed double-digit quests.
Zealy Community Re-engaged for Monthly Competition with High Stakes
From the success of their first sprint, Cross the Ages decided to launch a monthly sprint with Zealy. They increased the stakes by adding more in-game assets. On some special sprints where they announced special features, they also added a monetary prize.
Everyone’s a Winner: Extensive Rewards Distribution
They created a raffle system where everyone has a chance to win - not just those who are at the top of the leaderboard, which kept the entire community engaged.
Social Media Amplification
On their X account and Medium blog, Cross the Ages regularly talked about their Zealy campaign. Every month, they would post at least three different tweets -
- A call for participants announcing their rewards
- A reminder to join their Zealy community mid-sprint
- A final winner announcement giving recognition to winners
These posts would garner an average of 12,500 views each.
The Results
Every month, thousands of gamers joined the Cross the Ages competition on Zealy. On average, each user would complete nearly 15 quests. As compared to traditional marketing campaigns, Cross the Ages significantly spent less to drive consistent action from their fanbase.
Finally, the Zealy questboard urged concrete and meaningful action. After all our efforts, Cross the Ages became #1 on the App Store.
Tips & Tricks
How can you achieve the same results for your game? Here are our key takeaways.
- Have monthly competitions hosted on Zealy with exciting rewards and mechanics. Cross the Ages used in-game assets, exclusive content, and, occasionally, monetary prizes. They also had varied mechanics, such as a raffle system, so that fans always had a reason to come back and try the questboard.
- Integrate Zealy into your social media announcements. Use social media as a way to grow your Zealy community with regular invitations to join and reminders of the amazing prizes to be won. Ideally, post on social media at least three times to talk about the competition to drive recall among your followers.
- Pro-tip 💡 You can also create an “invite friends” quest, which you can find when you “Browse Templates” on your questboard. This way, community members can be rewarded for bringing in their friends to play on the questboard.
- Create dynamic quests. You can create several types of quests, such as:
- Quests that broadcast new features in your game.
- Quests that highlight achievements as a community. Make people feel part of a larger community when you announce how big your community has grown.
- Quests that motivate people to do a certain action inside your game.
If you’re a game creator looking to re-ignite your community, then Zealy is the perfect platform to keep them engaged instantly and for the long haul. 🤝
To try Zealy for your project, get started by clicking here
