Belka Games is a social and mobile game development company from Belarus, specializing in creating casual game applications with rich graphics. I recently had a chance to sit with Belka Games’ Head of Marketing, Zar Serebryannikov, to chat about game development and their recent successes. “Our mission is to bring joy and fun to millions of people throughout the world. Some may say that we create great, cool, funky, trendy, funny, groovy, enjoyable, fantastic or even the best games ever. All we know is that we love our jobs very much, and we’ll do everything for you to enjoy our games.”

And, enjoy their games, people do! One of their most popular titles, Clockmaker, is a match-3 game set in a mythical town under the curse of an evil (you guessed it) Clockmaker. As users solve puzzles, the town slowly transforms back to its original beauty.

When Clockmaker started gaining popularity in the United States, Belka Games knew that “releasing it on the Amazon Appstore was an obvious move.”

Driving adoption

Belka Games doubled down on their decision to publish on the Amazon Appstore, and it paid off. “We pay a lot of attention to supporting our Amazon version and try our best to use all the platform opportunities with maximum effectiveness,” says Zar. One opportunity that worked well for Belka Games is the Wakescreen promotion, available through Advertise Your App. The full-screen, colorful ad “exceeded our expectations.” During the Wakescreen promotion, Belka saw a significant bump in their daily average users (DAU) and doubled their install rate.

Engaging fans

With an increasing base of new fans, Belka Games is now planning to delight their users who pass all levels of Clockmaster by making game t-shirts with Merch by Amazon. They’re excited by the idea of engaging their players in a whole new way outside of the game. “It is a wonderful opportunity…that is absent in other games of the same genre.” The shirts will be available soon, and Zar is “sure that our players will like it.”

Advice for other developers

For the best user experience, Zar recommends testing the different services and opportunities available from the Amazon Appstore. Zar has developed an integrated approach to building their fanbase on Amazon. In addition to leveraging Advertise Your App and Merch, the team uses Amazon Mobile Ads to promote their offers and Live App Testing to find bugs in pre-release versions of their games.

Zar left me with these parting words: “You must always remember about re-engagement; your current players are your most important treasure.”

They certainly are! Thanks for sharing your story with us, Zar. If you have a great story you would like to share, send me a message on Twitter.