🧙 Solo Dev Journey #3: From spending $1.5K to $11K a Day in 60 Days, SAME Payback

This is the game I talk about :

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.eyaegmoranm.onemagearmy&hl=en

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/one-mage-army-clone-merge/id6808660778

Download now!

Solo Dev Journey #3, and this one starts with your comments. Yes, soft launch is coming (the Soft Launch Bible already exists, and three new games are in the pipeline).

No, I’m not “Peter Sagan rich”: I planned to spend $40K last month and spent $150K, because I scaled like an idiot. I also show the honest version of the last nine months: Robot Breaker growing, the servers cooking, spend paused and restarted, valleys of death, organics gone and a lot of money lost. All of that is why One Mage Army is working now.

One Mage Army went from $1.5K to $11K a day in spend within 60 days with the same payback period, and revenue went from a few hundred dollars a day to $8–9K. Here’s how. A weekend roller coaster: raise budgets on Thursday, peak on Saturday, scale back on Sunday. Five channels (AppLovin, Facebook, Google, Mintegral, Unity), where a handful of new creative winners 4x’d Facebook spend and 2x’d AppLovin. On AppLovin, CPI campaigns now outspend CPM billing across four worldwide D28 blended ROAS campaigns, split between Android and iOS. Creatives last 1–2 weeks, so I ship new ones every week with Playable Maker, Layer and my Claude/ChatGPT plus MCP setup. On the product side I skipped Mixpanel and shipped a new hero and a Halloween offer instead, and IAP tripled. A grandma hero, born on Florian’s channel, is coming as a monthly event that isn’t pay-to-win. Retention on iOS: D1 56%, D7 24%, D30 ~5%, with no end-game yet.

⏱️ TIMESTAMPS

00:00 – Cold open: $1.5K to $11K a day, same payback

01:13 – Sponsor: Potensus

02:21 – Your comments: soft launch, the Soft Launch Bible and “Peter Sagan rich”

03:30 – $150K in a month, Robot Breaker’s valleys of death and cooked servers

05:30 – Skipping Mixpanel: a Halloween offer and new hero tripled IAP, plus the grandma event

08:00 – The weekend roller coaster: Thursday up, Saturday peak, Sunday down

09:30 – Channel mix and AppLovin: why CPI campaigns now beat CPM billing

11:00 – Creatives last 1–2 weeks: my AI creative stack, and D1 56% retention

📌 KEY TAKEAWAYS

— Scale only what pays back; the same payback at 7x spend is the real signal

— Push spend into the weekend, when players actually play

— Shipping content and offers can beat shipping analytics when you’re small

— Expect creatives to fatigue in 1–2 weeks, and ship new ones weekly

🎙️ HOST

Matej Lancaric – UA consultant, co-founder of Playable Maker, developer of One Mage Army and Robot Breaker

🙏 SPONSOR

Potensus – premium ad network with direct brand deals (Amazon, Apple, Coca-Cola, Vodafone) and Playable Maker-built formats: https://potensus.com

What do you want in Solo Dev Journey #4: soft launch, creatives, or live ops? Tell me in the comments.

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