Our best week yet
Post:
My co-founder and I run Altworld, a browser game where the world remembers you. NPCs hold grudges. Type anything and it becomes history.
Last week was the best week we've ever had:
1,293 runs (up 30% from the week before)
186 new players (up 32%)
$51 MRR
Still tiny by startup standards. But it's the first time the curve looks like a curve instead of a flat line.
Three things moved it:
We shipped a redesign on September 2nd. The old UI was panels on panels, honestly a mess on phones. The new version is one screen. The share of players who make it past turn five went from 12.3% to 20.7% in a week. That's not a marketing win, it's a "stop making the game annoying" win.
Search. 58% of our signups come from Google and AI answers. We wrote honest guides about AI games (alternatives to AI Dungeon, games like Crusader Kings) and they compound. We just published 60 more. No idea which ones will rank.
We stopped posting marketing fluff on X and started posting the actual numbers. "This week 1,227 new lives were started on Altworld." Nobody cares about features. They care that something is alive.
What still sucks: 44% of players who open the game never make a single turn. Our social accounts have maybe 5 followers between them. And the streak feature that should fix retention is sitting in our backlog.
