I shall repeat: It is very very very hard.
We were featured on CNET, AllThingsD, Kotoku, 148Apps and even reviewed on TV.
Result: You get a nice bump in downloads for a couple of days then it drops back down.
The best thing I have learnt is your budget should be at LEAST 50/50 between marketing and development. If you spent 3 months making the game with 2 developers then your marketing budget should be in the tens of thousands if you really plan on getting anywhere.
Simply having and spending the money won't get you good results though. It needs to be spent really wisely with a lot of thought placed into metrics and analytics. You need to have them in the game. You need to test screenshots/icons/descriptions. Simple change of screenshots helped us get 25%+ more downloads a day.
There is a lot of info out there but it is a huge uphill battle right now. If you take a look at some app review web sites you'll notice every single day there are well over 20 very well polished games being released on iOS and Android. That is every single day. Most don't get anywhere.
I've had some modest success with my own iOS apps but I think that's mainly because they're targeted at a more specific niche (music making) and I've been able to do my own grassroots marketing on forums etc where I know the audience really well and there's far less competition overall.
Games are such a big, saturated market that I wouldn't even consider trying to tackle them as an indie unless I could find a similarly specialized sub-niche.
I believe the apps market, especially games, is and will become even more like the chart music industry. It will settle into major 'labels' who will pick games on criteria they think will make it a success, and then apply their big guns on promoting it using ever evolving methods. Sometimes an indie production will slip through but as the methods mature so will the independent successes be increasingly niche bound.
One quick question here - I notice that you don't mention that press in your app description or homepage?
As a marketing type, any time we get press my first instinct is to say "quick, stick their logo on the homepage! Social proof!". But I'm not a games guy - is there a reason that doesn't work in games?
The best thing I have learnt is your budget should be at LEAST 50/50 between marketing and development. If you spent 3 months making the game with 2 developers then your marketing budget should be in the tens of thousands if you really plan on getting anywhere.
Simply having and spending the money won't get you good results though. It needs to be spent really wisely with a lot of thought placed into metrics and analytics. You need to have them in the game. You need to test screenshots/icons/descriptions. Simple change of screenshots helped us get 25%+ more downloads a day. There is a lot of info out there but it is a huge uphill battle right now. If you take a look at some app review web sites you'll notice every single day there are well over 20 very well polished games being released on iOS and Android. That is every single day. Most don't get anywhere.