When Hogrocket co-founder Peter Collier spoke to us about the shift from console to mobile development – the studio's three man team having previously served at Bizarre Creations – he labelled it a 'risk'.

It's of little surprise, then, that the studio has been willing to take a few more since its first iOS release Tiny Invaders hit the App Store.

Indeed, speaking in a blog post detailing Hogrocket's experiences so far, fellow co-founder Ben Ward has lifted the lid on one of the risks taken by the studio – one that led to the game picking up 100,000 downloads in three days.

Semi-unusual

Initially, says Ward, Tiny Invaders was party to a "semi-unusual marketing strategy", in which Hogrocket revealed very little to press and PR in the build up to release.

The intention was to play on the impulse buy nature of the App Store, rather than attempt to garner interest in the build up to release.

"Effectively we said 'the first time people hear about Tiny Invaders, they'll be able to buy it immediately'," Ward writes in the post.

"The reason for this is because we believe the iOS market is impulsive; people rarely pre-order games, instead choosing to purchase games as and when they see them.

"Needless to say this strategy was at the expense of building pre-launch hype around the game, which is the normal plan in the AAA console world where we come from."

Risky business

Despite making an appearance on the Pocket Gamer podcast, however, the largest source of interest in Tiny Invaders came from its unexpected appearance at Apple's Let's Talk iPhone event – and that's when the studio took action.

After making an appearance in the keynote – Apple using Tiny Invaders to showcase iOS 5's new notification system – Hogrocket moved to offer the game for free as part of a three day long giveaway.

As a result, downloads soared.

"The promotion was an absolute success," adds Ward.

"The game was featured in many many outlets online, and we ended up with almost 100,000 downloads over the three days. Our App Store review count went up an awful lot, with the majority of the ratings at 4 or 5 stars."

Ward claims the resulting promotion could also have a positive impact on Hogrocket's future titles.

"Despite making absolutely no money from the offer at all, we're still pretty happy with how it turned out. Of course now that those users have the game, they'll hopefully be interested in our future work.

"At least some of them will become fans of Hogrocket, and that's really what matters at the end of the day."

[source: Hogrocket]