Make it rain launched a few weeks ago and climbed very quickly to the #1 position in the top free charts and as of today the #18 position in the top grossing. You can download and try it out. It’s a lot of fun.
Instant gratification as soon as you start playing
The first time you play the game you are facing a pack of dollars and swiping them upwards peels them from the pack. You are making the money rain. The counter of how much money you are making always show you how well you are doing and gives you instant gratification. Let’s see how fast you can swipe – the meter showing the speed of revenue accumulation helps you measure your pace.
Game economy – this game is all about the money
After you swiped enough dollars to make your finger hurt, you realize that this is not a scalable method for accumulating revenue and you discovered the game economy. Of course, this one was built on SOOMLA framework – we are very proud of it. Let’s see what makes the game economy unique.
Multiple ways of gaining coins
If you have been following our blog, you already know that one of the biggest tips I’m giving is to focus on earning. The more ways you give your users to gain in-game currency the better it is. Make it rain gives 3 ways to do that:
- Swiping dollars – this is the basic method, and it’s the highest yielding one but it requires users to work
- Financial earnings – this type of earning is initiated when making some investment and while the flow of dollars is a bit slower it happens as long as the game is open and doesn’t require hard work.
- Political earnings – this is money you are earning when the game is closed as well as long as you are checking in every few hours to empty your bucket
Use of time to increase engagement and retention
Any mechanics that tie time to ingame economy help in engaging users and increasing long-term retention. Make it rain is doing a really great job at this task.
First of all, the financial earnings require users to basically wait in front of the screen with the screen open and wait for the dollars to accumulate. The impact is that users try to apply real world behaviors for accommodating this need. Keeping the phone open while watching TV, or while working on their laptop. The problem is that the screen would turn off after 30 seconds or so which means users have to give the game brain cycles all the time. The second way, is “the bucket”. The political earnings are not poured directly into users virtual account, they first go into a bucket with a limited size. If users doesn’t check into the account every few hours to empty the bucket they are losing potential income.

Virtual goods as investments
The economy in this game is all about turning ingame currency into revenue streams. It’s basically an investment game. Once players have enough money they can buy goods in 3 categories:
- Financial investments – increase the rate of earning when the game is open
- Business investments – bigger bills allow swiping action to be more effective
- Political:
- Items that increase bucket size – how frequently do users have to check in and empty the bucket
- Goods that increase bucket rate – how quickly money flows into the bucket
Each category offers more and more upgrades at increasing prices and growing impact. Users are forced into making tough decisions about how they will spend their hard earned in-game economy to generate more revenue.
In-App Purchase items – bribe cards

[…] This game review is a rewrite of the one on SOOMLA’s blog. Check it out here. […]
[…] This game review is a rewrite of the one on SOOMLA’s blog. Check it out here. […]