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Warriors of Waterdeep App Store Spotlight
June 6th, 2019
by Anh Nguyen
COO & Co-Founder at Gummicube, Inc
Warriors of Waterdeep is a mobile game based off the “Dungeons & Dragons” tabletop RPG setting. In it, players collect and level up characters, explore dungeons and gather treasure. The next question is: is the game’s App Store Optimization leveled up, or is the App Store a dungeon with too high a challenge? For this week’s App Store Spotlight, we look at Warriors of Waterdeep and see if its ASO rolled a natural 20 or a critical fumble.
iOS
On the Apple App Store, Warriors of Waterdeep is the top-ranked app for its name, as well as low-volume terms like “glory of warriors” and “RPG hunter of legend.” It is worth noting that those are not competitor terms, but they are phrases that the App Store has indexed the app for. It’s the third highest app for “dungeons and dragons” and “warriors game,” but its rankings quickly fall after that. It ranks #14 for “dungeon run,” #32 for “dungeon game” and #43 for “RPG.”
Creatives: Warriors of Waterdeep begins with a video. It shows a few aspects of the game, primarily the combat, critical hit animations, treasure and bosses. This uses in-app footage of the cutscenes, accompanied by text describing the game, to showcase its most appealing aspects. It utilizes recognizable foes from the “Dungeons & Dragons” game, including a Mind Flayer and Red Dragon, to appeal to fans of the tabletop game.
The following screenshots show different aspects of the game, primarily the combat. Of the six screenshots, three of them show battle scenes, including general encounters, PvP and boss battles. The others show the variety of characters, one of the locations players can visit and the weapons they can collect. Each screenshot is accompanied by callout text that describes what the image is showcasing in four words or fewer, accompanied by an iconic character from the game or franchise. The text emphasizes keywords like “PvP” and “Battle” to encompass the main point in a single word.
While the screenshots are designed following the ASO best practices, there’s still room for four more. They could highlight other visually-engaging aspects of the game, such as the special animations for critical hits or the variety of locations players can visit. This can improve conversion by showing users more aspects of the game, and tying each one to a keyword in the callout text helps show users searching for those terms that the game has what they’re looking for. Utilizing every possible screenshot helps the app demonstrate as many features and selling points as possible.
Title & Subtitle: The app’s title, “Warriors of Waterdeep,” uses 21 of the 30 keywords Apple allows. It has extra space to add more details, such as “D&D RPG,” which could help it target additional keywords.
The subtitle, “A Dungeons & Dragons game,” uses 25 of the 30 keywords. While it has room for five more characters, the keywords it uses in the subtitle do help it index for a variety of terms, such as “dragon game” (#32), “Dungeons & Dragons” (#17) and “dungeon run” (#14). Using those five remaining characters to add in an additional keyword could help it target even more terms.
Description: The description has a strong introduction, calling out the plot of the game as a call to action for the players. The in-game threat is established, and the players are told what they can do. The introduction lines are short enough to be viewed with ease on a mobile device, so users won’t skip over it.
The description uses several names and locations familiar to players of the roleplaying game, such as the Forgotten Realms and character Laeral Silverhand, although it does not actually say “Dungeons & Dragons” anywhere. This is focused towards players who are already familiar with the D&D franchise and can recognize those names; that may make it harder to convert players interested in the genre or gameplay without the background knowledge.
Where the description starts to fall short is in its feature set. While it does utilize bullet points, it’s formed as one long list. If it were to use smaller feature sets, it could focus more on each aspect and provide more information while remaining readable.
Each feature line begins with a word in all capital letters to emphasize it, although they’re not necessary keywords. While words like “Battle” and “Collect” are good for grabbing attention, “Choose” and “Earn” are less engaging. It could be more engaging to use that capitalized visibility for feature sets, such as “Battle Monsters” and “Explore the Forgotten Realms.”
Google Play
On the Google Play Store, Warriors of Waterdeep ranks #6 in the Role Playing category. It’s the top app for its name and simply “Waterdeep,” but not for any other high-value terms. It’s the third-highest app for “Forgotten Realms” and second highest for “Sword Coast,” but it only ranks #30 for “Dungeons and Dragons.” Its rankings are also low for terms like “Dragons RPG” (#97), “Dungeon Crawl” (#211) and “Dungeon Quest” (#227).
Creatives: Warriors of Waterdeep on Google Play uses a similar video to its iOS counterpart, but there are some notable differences. While the iOS version has all the footage stand alone on its screen in portrait mode, the Google Play version alternates between landscape mode footage and displaying the game on a handset within the video itself. The specific footage is also different in some places, but it still uses the same callout text and basic structure as on iOS. The Apple App Store requires that the videos only utilize in-app footage, while Google Play has no such restrictions. That gives Google Play a little more leeway with the way the videos are presented.
The Google Play screenshots are identical to the iOS ones. They show various aspects of the game, with callout text that describes what it provides and iconic imagery. They effectively show users the many aspects of the game with a variety of imagery and keyword-focused callout text, as creative sets should.
Description & Metadata
The description is identical on iOS and Google Play, which would contribute to the app’s poor keyword rankings on the Play Store. Google Play’s algorithm scans descriptions for keywords, but Warriors of Waterdeep does not integrate them properly.
Lines in the description begin with phrases like “From your starting point in the famous Yawning Portal Inn” and “CHALLENGE your adventuring skills by reaching new dungeon depths.” These are not keyword-focused, so Google Play will not find relevant keywords to index the game for from them.
This is another instance where feature sets can help the app’s indexation significantly. Using feature headers and lists helps the app target important keywords within its description. For instance, the mobile game doesn’t say “Dungeons and Dragons” at all in its description, which would contribute to its low ranking. It could, for instance, make a “Dungeons & Dragons” feature set stating “The tabletop role playing game comes to your mobile device” and “Dungeon crawls set in the Forgotten Realms.” This would then not only appeal to players of D&D, but it would also help target the keywords “Dungeons and Dragons,” “Tabletop,” “Role Playing Game” and “Dungeon crawls.” Proper description formatting can make all the difference for keyword optimization on the Google Play Store.
Overall
Warriors of Waterdeep has videos and screenshots that effectively showcase the game’s features and strengths, both on the Apple App Store and Google Play Store. However, its descriptions can stand to be revised to engage with users, call out the various aspects of the game and – on Google Play – target valuable keywords. It’s also important to look into how keywords are performing for their demographics – the app could target tabletop gamers by focusing on relevant keywords and search terms related to that audience.
Just like how a balanced adventuring party needs a fighter, healer, mage and rogue, a solid App Store Optimization strategy also needs optimized creatives, metadata and descriptions.
Want more information regarding App Store Optimization? Contact Gummicube and we’ll help get your strategy started.
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