The Game Dev
50
Quality Score
Solid
The Game Dev
Medium confidence
✍️ bumetric analysis
“
The Game Dev is an Android app from Shawn Macgillivray in the Simulation category, currently rated 3.7★ across 296 ratings. Initial signal reads as largely positive sentiment, users highlighting consistency and feature depth.
Quality Score is 50: Solid (established niche player). For a Simulation app, that means established niche player. The full BU Investment Matrix below scores 8 dimensions including monetisation, growth, and operational risk.
Track changes month-over-month in the Performance section below: live snapshot history and revenue forecast included.
💰 Monthly revenue · now vs forecast
● Right now
$500
per month
→
12-mo forecast
$437 – $1575
per month
→
24-mo forecast
$405 – $3644
per month
INDIE tier
💡 Grow this revenue
Free AI audit of this app’s store listing
- Title & subtitle keyword fit
- Description hook & conversion structure
- Screenshots, ratings, reviews strategy
Typical impact: +2-5× organic installs
📊 Performance Tracking LIVE
Loading…
Rating
—
Reviews
—
Forecast Revenue / mo
—
Snapshots tracked
0
since first record
ONE-TIME · BUILD
💰 Estimated build cost
$185K
↳ What it cost to build · not monthly revenue
Likely range $140K – $250K
$25K · MVP floor
$100K · indie scale
$500K+ · studio build
📈
Slow ROI — current MRR is well below build cost
Synthetic estimate. Inputs: category complexity, file size, screen count, monetization layer, platform reach, age × team-size proxy. Calibrated against 2024-2026 indie-agency rate surveys. Full math + source list on /methodology.
Where the money goes
| 🧱 MVP baseline (design + 1-store ship) | +$28K |
| 📱 5 unique screens × $4.5K | +$22K |
| 💎 In-app purchase plumbing | +$9K |
| ⚙ Simulation complexity ×2.00 | +$59K |
| 🌐 Cross-platform reach (iOS + Android) | +$65K |
Total estimate
$185K
👥 Estimated audience size
41K
Lifetime downloads (US-equivalent)
Monthly active
6.1K
Daily active
1.8K
Synthetic estimate from ratings × category benchmarks. Calibrated against 2024-2026 mobile-attribution retention + DAU/MAU reports. Numbers are US-storefront-equivalent — true global audience can be 5-10× larger for international apps. Full math + source list on /methodology.
How we sized it
| 📲 Simulation engagement | ~140 installs / rating |
| 🔁 Simulation D30 retention | 15% |
| 📍 DAU / MAU stickiness | 0.30 |
DAU / MAU
30% sticky
🛠 Estimated tech stack
🤖
Native Android (Kotlin)
Medium confidence · 55%
Also possible
Flutter
Heuristic guess from app bundle size, category, store description signals, and release-date stack era. Bumetric does not disassemble binaries — for binary-level certainty you would need an SDK intelligence tool or the manifest itself. Reasoning chain on the right. Full ruleset on /methodology.
Signals we read
| 🏷 Category context | Simulation |
| 📦 Tiny game bundle | → Native 2D engine |
🔬
How we forecast this revenue
LOW CONFIDENCEBaseline
$500/mo · ML-estimated from 234 triggers
Growth rate
+6.0% MoM · INDIE tier baseline (compound monthly)
6 months
$426 – $993
12 months
$437 – $1.6K
24 months
$405 – $3.6K
Compound growth at +6.0% MoM (tier baseline for INDIE). Range widens with horizon — typical noise band ±40% at 6mo.. Ranges widen with horizon — distant futures carry more uncertainty.
📊
BU Investment Matrix
Early-stage solo · 42/100INDIE TIERexpected for tierRevenue Strength
2.7
Product Quality
5.2
Market Position
0.0
Growth Velocity
5.0
Defensibility
5.9
Operational Safety
7.0
Founder Strength
3.4
Monetization Maturity
4.0
- 💰 Revenue: Marginal — $200 - $1250/mo · INDIE tier · medium confidence, trajectory unclear.
- ⭐ Quality: 3.73★ across 296 reviews — below category median.
- 📍 Market: Not yet charting in any of the 9 monitored markets.
- 📈 Growth: ⚠ last update 2044d ago — possibly dormant.
- ⚠️ Risk: Moderate — dormant (2044d since update).
🎯 For competitors: Mixed picture. Worth competing if you have a clear UX or pricing edge — otherwise crowded segment.
💵 For acquirers: Estimated asking range 18-32× monthly = $9K-$16K.
Composite of 8 dimensions computed deterministically from public signals — no LLM, every score traces back to a measurable input. Default weights shown; "compete" / "acquire" / "invest" lenses re-weight without re-fetching.
Range:
💰 Forecast Revenue / mo
MODELRevenue forecast computed from BU's 234 trigger model on each snapshot. Calibrated against ground-truth from 58 verified-revenue apps.
🔬Forecast Breakdown — Why This Estimate?Top 3 of 3 triggers
Our ML model uses 200+ signals from public data. These are the most influential for this app:
| Established app (5y old)METRIC | +$800 | |
| Ad-supported / freemiumMETRIC | +$600 | |
| Early-stage install base (296 ratings)METRIC | +$400 |
METRIC = structural app data · REVIEW = mined from user reviews · ✓ VERIFIED = Stripe-verified anchor (TrustMRR)
📈 Reviews Growth
LIVECumulative review count from first BU snapshot. Each point = a tracked update.
⭐ Rating Trend
LIVEAverage rating evolution. Updates with each new review batch.
Profile & Insights
Everything we know — and don't — about this app and its company.
Identification
- App name
- The Game Dev
- Developer
- Shawn Macgillivray
- Bundle ID
- com.DarknessDevelopment.TheDeveloper
- App Store URL
- Open in App Store
- Category
- Simulation
- Content rating
- Not found
- Languages
- Not found
Company
- Website
- Not found
- Tagline
- Not found
- Description
- Not found
- Founded
- Not found
- HQ / Address
- Not found
- Employees
- Not found
- Logo
- Not found
Revenue
- Verified revenue / mo
- Not found
- AI revenue estimate / mo
- Not found
- AI annual estimate
- Not found
- ML model estimate / mo
- $272/mo
- Top-grossing rank
- Not found
- All-time revenue
- Not found
- Pricing
- $2.49 per item
Founder
Founder data not yet collected for this app.
Funding
Funding data not yet collected for this app.
Press & Links
Press & Links data not yet collected for this app.
Contacts & Socials
Contacts & Socials data not yet collected for this app.
📈Ratings growth296 ratings+60% lifetimeShow 3-year history estimate ▾
Tracked (1 weeks) Pre-tracking estimate (37 weeks) · model-based, ±5% noise · anchored to release date and current value
Profile is built from iTunes Lookup + developer site scrape + ML revenue model. Empty fields show "Not found" — additional sources (Crunchbase, X, IndieHackers, Acquire.com) coming.
📝 About this app
Quit your day job and begin developing games!
From the humble beginnings of programming alone in the basement, build up your company by employing and training new workers, researching new technologies and dominating the market with hit games of your design.
History
Follow a roughly similar gaming history as the real world as famous companies release their gaming consoles, starting with the first generation 8bit consoles, play through 60 years of history and see all the technological advances, from 2D graphics all the way to augmented reality.
Game Creation… View full description on the official store →
From the humble beginnings of programming alone in the basement, build up your company by employing and training new workers, researching new technologies and dominating the market with hit games of your design.
History
Follow a roughly similar gaming history as the real world as famous companies release their gaming consoles, starting with the first generation 8bit consoles, play through 60 years of history and see all the technological advances, from 2D graphics all the way to augmented reality.
Game Creation… View full description on the official store →
App Specs
🔐 Own this app? Claim & verify MRR →🔖 v0.1🔄 updated 0d ago📂 Simulation💰 Free💎 IAP $2.49 per item
🔔
Track this app’s revenue
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📝 Description
95
BU Score · Transcendent
Full revenue analysis
Read the article-style breakdown for The Game Dev: category rank, percentile, growth signal, comparable apps, and how the forecast is calibrated against verified-MRR anchors in this niche.
About this analysis
Why medium confidence: 296 ratings · no founder-verified revenue (model estimate only).
❓ Frequently Asked Questions
4 answers · auto-generated from this app's public dataHow much does The Game Dev make per month?▴
Based on our ML-calibrated revenue forecast, The Game Dev earns approximately $271/mo. This is a US-storefront-equivalent estimate; global revenue can be several times larger for internationally-distributed apps. See the methodology page for the full formula and confidence bands.
What apps are like The Game Dev?▴
Browse the full Simulation category catalog to find similar apps with revenue, build cost, audience and tech stack data. Each /p/{slug} page also shows a Compare side-by-side widget with three peer apps from the same niche.
Who makes The Game Dev?▴
The Game Dev is published by Shawn Macgillivray on the Google Play Store. See the full publisher portfolio (other apps by the same developer) via the More by developer block on the product page above.
What is The Game Dev's BU Score?▴
The Game Dev has a BU Score of 50/100 (Solid). The score combines App Store rating, ratings count, monetization model and revenue signals calibrated against founder-verified MRR anchors. See the BU Score formula.