"Piano Tiles" downloads: 23,907,154 (only one count per user, even with multiple downloads)
After a full night of hype, the game's download count had finally hit a ceiling. Right now, it was only getting around 100 downloads per minute. This probably had something to do with its growing reputation.
Even if it was free and advertised as a "learning app," the flood of negative reviews was enough to make most people think twice before downloading.
Now, both leaderboards had new top scores: 17.3 coins/second and 3 minutes 26 seconds.
The gap on the speed board had narrowed to just one decimal point, with only a 0.1 coin/s difference between first and second place.
And the 3 minutes 26 seconds was the full length of "Für Elise." So far, 43 people had successfully finished it, unlocking a new leaderboard: "Moonlight Sonata."
These two pieces weren't that hard. That was intentional. The gaming industry in this world was still pretty behind, and most players were still beginners. If the difficulty was too high right away, players might quit too soon, which would hurt their interest in new games.
But for players who could complete the first two songs, the third one would be a surprise. And if anyone managed to beat all three, William had a special mystery gift waiting for them.
"What does this star mean?"
William noticed something odd in the progress chart—a golden five-pointed star had appeared right in the middle at the top.
[Milestone unlock progress. Gold indicates Stage 4.]
"Already unlocked stage four?"
William tried clicking the golden star, and to his surprise, a new list appeared, tightly attached to the right side of the chart.
\[Milestones]
Stage 1: Over 100,000 downloads
Reward: "Piano (Beginner)"
Stage 2: Over 1,000,000 downloads
Reward: "Piano (Intermediate)"
Stage 3: Over 5,000,000 downloads
Reward: "Piano (Advanced)"
Stage 4: Over 10,000,000 downloads
Reward: "Piano (Master)"
Stage 5: ???
The requirement and reward for Stage 5 hadn't been revealed yet, but unlocking master-level piano skills at Stage 4 already explained why William was playing so smoothly today. He thought he was still a beginner, but overnight, he had become a pro.
There wasn't a Stage 6 listed, and it probably wouldn't exist either. Reaching ten million downloads for Stage 4 was already a huge milestone. If the pattern continued, Stage 5 might need fifty million, and if there were a Stage 6, it would probably start at one hundred million.
Even for a free app, one hundred million downloads was almost impossible.
He wondered what the reward for Stage 5 might be—"Piano (Legend)"?
That name kind of ruined the vibe. Hopefully the system won't be that lazy.
With his previous experience, William clicked the chart, and just as he expected, it expanded to show more detailed data.
Overall rating: 2.8
Media score: Not available
There were over 800,000 reviews of Piano Tiles online, and the number kept going up. Most of the bad reviews were just like the ones William saw in his phone's app store. A few were just people leaving negative reviews for the sake of it.
Even among the few positive ones, many users said they were tricked despite giving high scores.
"This app is great, but the problem is that now when I play piano, only my two thumbs are moving. I keep seeing black tiles falling in front of my eyes. I'm now standing outside a hospital. Please help—should I go to the eye clinic or neurology?"
"This is amazing! I haven't touched the piano in three hours, but I can still confidently tell my parents that I'm practicing! And!!! After they heard the BGM from the app, they actually thought I composed a piano piece myself. They said they're taking me out for a big meal tonight as a reward! I love this game so much!!!"
"This is a terrible learning app, but a truly amazing game.
Let me break it down.
Let's take the three key features of a learning app and see how this one holds up:
Mentor ✘
Tutorials ✘
Paid lessons ✘
Now let's try applying the three key elements of a game to it…
Interaction √
Challenge √
Fun √
Clearly, this app beats every game out there. So yes, it's a great game but a poor learning tool.
I think the reason it's labeled as a learning app instead of a game is because the game market is in a slump right now. Even high-quality games struggle to get attention. That's a market issue—we shouldn't just blame the developers for trying to stand out.
In fact, I think this game might be the turning point that brings mobile games back into the spotlight. We might even be heading into a new golden age for games.
But I still want to say this to students—don't get addicted to games. Let us adults carry that burden for you!"
"Banger track!"
"Just a heads-up—the first song is Für Elise, and the second one is Moonlight Sonata…"
...
William was most impressed by players who liked and replied to the top-ranked comments, wrote in-depth reviews, and figured out the name of the second song.
The first group boldly predicted where the market was heading, while the latter was the first skilled player to complete the full version of Moonlight Sonata.
William even went to the server's backend to check the rankings and confirmed that someone really had completed the Moonlight Sonata challenge—without cracking the game code. But when he looked at the player's activity, he found that after clearing Moonlight Sonata, the player never played the game again.
There was also an interesting stat: most of the players who ranked on the speed leaderboard didn't appear on the time leaderboard. Their average play session was just a few dozen seconds, meaning they had found the best window to spam speed runs. Beating the game clearly wasn't their goal.
William logged into the developer account and gave himself the name "Earth Games." The company name he submitted also used the same name.
He liked one of the long comments and left a message under the spoiler post: "Here's a little secret… the third song is called 'Wild...'"
After that, William went to check the comments under the music clips he had uploaded before. Compared to the game, the response here was totally different—people were loving it.
Most comments were asking for the full version, and quite a few had recognized the clips as coming from Piano Tiles. The buzz was exactly what William had hoped for.
Just wait.
He closed all the tabs and began preparing for the development of his next game.
There was no rush to update Piano Tiles. The current content hadn't been fully explored by players yet. And since it was already a polished, complete game, William didn't need to worry about planning future updates. Just stick to the plan and take it one step at a time.
Right now, the key was reputation points. Digging deeper into this game clearly wasn't going to earn any, especially since the system hadn't issued any new tasks. So the only option was to make a new game and hope that would trigger a task for reputation points.