Luca Petrucci Rocks the App Store with his “Non trovo Le Parole” game
We recently interviewed Luca himself and asked him a few questions about his success in the app store and how he managed to publish his “Non trovo Le Parole” app.
Here’s what he has to say!
1) Can you say a little bit about who you are and your background, what you do, where you’re from?
My name is Luca, I live in Italy, in a small town near Rome. I studied communications at the University of Rome, where I graduated in 2010.
My passion has always been computers and video games since childhood.
I currently work for my own company (PH lab) and I deal with graphic design. I also regularly collaborate with a company that makes greeting cards.
I really started to publish apps in the apple store less than a year ago though.
2) Did you have any coding experience before?
I started programming when I was a child with the Commodore 64 in basic and I loved it. But since then, I have not programmed anything for more than 20 years.
With the release of the iPhone and the first apps, I thought to myself, why not try to create an app or small games.
That’s how I began studyiing the programming language Objective-C first, and then, started Swift last year.
3) How long have you been reskinning apps for?
My first app was published more than a year ago, but I started to reskin regular apps about 8 months ago.
I love reskinning apps because you can make an app in a small amount of time and you can learn how the code works.
4) What did you need to publish your game in the app store?
To publish apps, I have read many books and followed many tutorials, the most useful was a tutorial published on Udemy by Yohann Taieb: Earn Money Making Candy Crush. After that, publishing apps in the store has been quite simple.
5) What was the main goal of your app?
My first goal was simply to publish an app in the store.
After the first apps that have had a good result, my goal was to get to as many people as possible so as to have an app in ranking, and mostly to make my own studio to develop apps and games.
6) Tell us more about your successful game in the app store?
My most successful game is “Non Trovo le parole”.
This app was a reskin from: https://www.iosonlinecourses.com/ios-app-development-tutorial/create-word-search-puzzle-game-ios/
Since then, my app has been featured by Apple a few days after publication (end of March 2015) for category games> board and games> puzzle in the Italian app store.
From that day on, it has been stable in the rankings of its own categories.
7) How difficult was it for you to reskin your app before publishing it?
Reskinning the app was quite a simple process. My biggest problem was to understand how json files work, but the tutorial was still very easy to follow.
Then I had to choose the different categories and the various words to find.
8) Did you have a budget in mind prior to creating the app?
I had no budget in mind when I started to reskin an app.
Through my work, I have large amounts of graphic elements available. Sometimes I can buy just a few elements just to speed up the development.
9) Did you need any external help like a designer, programmers to build your app?
No, I’m doing almost everything by myself. But I have met many developers and designers in forums and social networks from all parts of the world.
I deal with them often and we always help each other.
10) Did you publish your game in the U.S or did you use localization?
I often use localization. I publish almost all apps in two languages, English and Italian.
For “Non trovo le parole” I made two different apps:
“Non trovo Le Parole” in italian and “I can’t find the words” in English.
I unfortunately didn’t have the same success in the U.S app store as in the italian one.
11) Are there any in-app purchases?
Yes you can buy some more puzzles, and coins to have some hints.
12) How many downloads you’ve had so far?
The “non trovo le parole” game had in recent months about 30,000 downloads only in Italy.
13) How many other apps do you have in the app store?
I currently have 27 apps in apple store and one in the Play store.
My iTunes portfolio here.
14) What other games you’d like to reskin?
I like to reskin all kind of games, but especially puzzles, casual and board games.
15) Do you want to keep focussing on educative game?
Yes, for now I’m focussing in educational, puzzle and casual games. Because I also like to play them.
But my dream is to make a really cool platform game.
16) How can people get in touch with you?
My website is www.phlab.org
My twitter account is : https://twitter.com/PhLabUniverse
Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/PhLab-1047299461966088/
https://www.facebook.com/nontrovoleparoleapp/
https://www.facebook.com/luca.petrucci
“Non trovo le parole” by Luca Petrucci – App Annie game statistic chart
Luca Petrucci “Non trovo Le Parole” in the Italian App Store – iPad version