When I sat down to work through a sample tear down for Crazy Taxi, I was thinking 'this is Sega' so there must be some great learnings from this product. And, In short there is.
As a minimum viable product it works as a clicker / accumulator style game. The on-boarding teaches the user every aspect of the game loop and monetization features within the first 5 minutes of play - it's text book. On the whole it is an engaging product with 'minimal' content that was strangely addictive. All the monetization hooks were there and despite it having next to no social hooks we'd expect to see these in coming updates.
However the main take away from this tear down is that I suspect this product is a victim of it's own brand. People expected to play Crazy Taxi on their phone not a shift in genre to a clicker style game. The reviews seem to be also backing this up.
So therefore my focus for this product was clouded with the main issue which as I suspect will reduce the products' chances - Positioning and lack of resonance with it's audience.
If the Issu embed at the top isn't your thing you can get the PDF here
There are a lot of things to take away from this product and in this sample tear down I've only scratched the surface. It is after all designed to give you a few insights which you can take into your own project and if you need more detail or would like to talk about how I could work with your product then please contact me by filling out the contact me section on the home page or simply email me at:
adam@indiehutchdigital.com