The last 24h have been quite a ride. First, Castle Warriors got approved last night... after reading about the delays and rejections other developers were experiencing, we were thrilled and positively surprised with the 10 days no hassle approval process. We were also excited that the game would (for once) come out at the top of the 'new release' list and get some decent exposure on its first day. We quickly finished all our website assets and PR text, and looked forward to a hectic morning to announce our latest game to the world.
This morning, armed with fresh fruit juice and granola sharpened teeth, we jumped on our computers ready to announce our joy to the world, when we saw... nothing. Our game was not visible in the App Store yet and the iTunes link was not working. Bummer. We impatiently waited for a few more hours and suddenly felt the shadow of a giant wave lurking over our shoulders. Paddle!
Well, we noticed that no other new games were showing up in the new release section and then caught Arnold Kim's twitter saying "another one of those massive release nights for app store. ton of games games just came out.". Uh oh....
So there we are, paddling out trying to catch the wave rather than being crushed and drowned by a deluge of great new games, refreshing iTunes and checking the app link every few minutes until it finally worked and we could tell everybody that "hey, our new game is out, too". It was a fun ride, actually, really appreciated the re-twitters, and making the front page of TouchArcade with our promo video was definitely a glorious moment.
Now, tomorrow is going to be interesting as no new apps have made their way to the 'new games' section yet, and Castle Warriors will undoubtedly be buried on page 3 when they do. But tomorrow is another day, and we'll try to catch another wave. And if there aren't any waves, we'll just go fishing. Ah, life at the GameResort...
EDIT: Here is an interesting graph, showing Friday's peak (courtesy of appshopper.com)