50 US States v. 1.1

50 US States was my the most successful app so far and has changed the focus of my app-making efforts from chemistry to geography. Now it gets the first update and there are three important improvements.

1. There is a new mode “Find the state on the US map”. It is somewhat similar to the previous mode with state borders outlines but it shows where exactly the state is situated on the US map. Most people will find this info quite important. For smaller states of the Northeast, I use the zoomed map. Still Rhode Island is a tiny red spot.

2. There are now 14 rather than 12 letters on the player’s “keyboard”. And the answer boxes are scaled down accordingly if the name is too long. So if the answer has 14 letters or less, you can spell it completely. If it has more than 14 letters, you can place first 14 and then there are additional letters printed with a large blue font. This is a very important improvement and now I wonder why I didn’t do it for my very first quiz of this type.

3. Despite high downloads and ad revenues for 50 States, nobody purchased an IAP “Remove Ads”. It is very surprising for me, because even in a very nerdy and unlocalized app about Heterocyclic Compounds, there was one ads-removing purchase. It seems that ads are fine for most of users. At the same time European Countries quiz has shown that people are willing to pay for an additional content. So in the new mode, I made only the first half of questions free. Then the player sees the “Buy screen” and is offered an opportunity to support the developer (i.e. me), get the rest of the questions and remove all ads: the banner and interstitials.

And as usual, there are tons of small fixes in design, localization and keywords. The new mode and main menu prompted me to change two of five app screenshots. This update is a huge step forward for this game and all my quizzes. Enjoy!