It’s only a couple of days since LuckyWheel was approved for sale on the App Store.
The first few sites that linked to the store where clearly automatic robots. iTunes gets its information in XML plist format and a couple of sites came into existence that do nothing but parse this information
I don’t know what effect those will have on sales. They might just be a modern form of spam blogs.
But what really made my day was finding a review on FingerGaming. LuckyWheel went public on the same day as “Wheel of Fortune” by Sony which aims to mimic the mechanics of the TV show by the same name. In contrast we did not try to copy something, but create a unique approach. Make a game that uses the strength of the touch interface and fill it up to the brim with proverbs in English, German, Spanish, French, Italian and Dutch.
They say:
“LuckyWheel additionally boasts a feature that Wheel of Fortune doesn’t include in any capacity — a fully fledged German-language option, complete with a localized puzzle selection full of German proverbs.”
“[…] LuckyWheel offers gameplay variety that Wheel of Fortune could never dream of.”
“LuckyWheel is a good protest purchase if you want to voice your disappointment in Wheel of Fortune[…]”
Next up in mostly positive feedback was iPhone App Reviews.net. This was the only site that actually also allowed for giving away a couple of free promo codes to their mostly US-based readers.
They say:
[…] LuckyWheel can really be pretty fun when you’re with a friend or two and having a little pass-n-play competition.
[…] Drobnik is committed to developing LuckyWheel to be as good as (or better than?) Sony’s game
Everyone who likes this kind of word puzzle but isn’t married to the TV format, get LuckyWheel. Despite its shortcomings, LuckyWheel is decent for $1.99 and hopefully it’ll grow into something that can really compete with an established franchise.
Just as welcome as professional reviews are comments by the users themselves
Chris: “I like the game. I have also tried Wheel of Fortune from Sony and have more fun playing LuckyWheel. Not because it is now free. I hope that there are more people who think the same.”
Peter: “I have also tested both games and have come to the result that LuckyWheel is the better one. Surely the graphics are not as beautiful, but why spend $4.99. So why not support LuckyWheel. Maybe a spin button would be nice, but I like spinning the wheel rather.”
We still have some promo codes available, valid on the US app store which we’ll happily provide to anyone who would like to write a review about any of our applications.
Also note that the next version has already been submitted to Apple and increases the guessing fun to all of these languages: English, German, Italian, Spanish, French and Dutch.
