As a college kid, I'd say the things that draw my attention to new games are:
1) Anything social media related (Facebook, Instagram mostly)
2) Seeing games in the appstore that fall into categories of 'Popular Games' or 'Best New Updates' on those main pages.
The advertisements through social media are usually these low-quality, money-hungry games -- and too often the designers will post an advertisement of gameplay from a different game to lure in new customers (i.e., lots of pokemon rip-offs). I would say for the average trained eye, it isn't too difficult to determine which are authentic and which are not. Obviously STS has always been honest and authentic (your game is unique in and of itself), so that wouldn't be an issue. I'm not sure how companies go about advertising their games on social media websites and how costly it can be. But if it's viable, there's definitely room for opportunity with a colorful advertisement that really pops. All it takes for me to check out a new game is the first 3-5 seconds of an ad.
Addressing the second point, I'm not sure if there's a way in which you can simultaneously launch a big update and have it come to the top of the app store under the category 'Huge Updates' or whatever.
I realize this is nothing you don't already know, so I apologize if this was totally inconvenient... but things to at least consider I suppose.
Edit: I do recall when I first downloaded PL years ago, all because I had searched 'MMORPG' in the app store. Definitely utilizing as many tags and keywords in the app description could help.
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