Oh! Yes I have noticed that if I uninstall the original, it will allow me to upload the new version. This is not ideal however, because I wanted to release my story-based game in chapters - but this means the player has to start from the beginning each time. Although, maybe this isn't so bad.
I'll look into what you mean about the versionCode. I increment the attribute called "version", but have always ignored "versionCode", I assumed that was for apps distributed by Google Play.
The “versionCode” is for anything android related (not just Play Store). The “version” value is a human-readable string, which is for you and potentially for users to understand what version is currently installed. “versionCode” is simply an integer to help the operating system track versioning of the build (as it can’t understand the “version” string).
If you simply increment the “versionCode” every time you make a release of your game, users downloading that build will get the option to upgrade the app, which will keep all saved data of your app, so users won’t have to start over with each release.
Thanks so much for your reply. I haven't tried this yet but it makes a lot of sense.
I can see that you only have 1 android game listed on your profile, but it's free. Do you think you'll ever charge for this game through itch.io? I'm hoping to make this project profitable, & wondered if you'd looked into this being viable? I know not everyone has an Android device, but I can't see a way to make money from it being a free web/browser game.
You can absolutely profit from android games. Just remember that you need to have a game people are willing to pay for.
I assume you are talking about my game called “Blemish”. That was always meant to be a simple game, and an experiment to see how small can a game be for android (the result apk is ~150kb). Unfortunately when I made it (a good few years ago) I was living in a country where I couldn’t monetize it easily (for law reasons), so I decided to make it available for free.
I’m not sure what are the download numbers of android games on Itch, but you can publish on both Itch and other Android marketplaces, to increase the number of potential users.
