Welcome to the App Store! I'm very impressed with what you guys have done in 6 months; it took me much longer to ship my first app.
Here's a little bit of feedback:
+ The graphics are super polished. Great work!
+ The touch interaction could use some work. Sometimes, I drag and I feel it colors squares that I don't want to color. Or it colors squares that I've successfully colored already, and it's not clear how I can backtrack. Take a look at path drawing games like Scramble with Friends to see how they handle backtracking.
+ I understand that advertisements are ugly and you want to keep your game very slick and polished, but... you are leaving a lot of money on the table. I would make your app a Universal Binary (add iPad support) and then throw an iAds/AdMob banner ad at the bottom of the screen. Then, make it very clear that if the user buys an IAP, that you'll remove ads forever. You can keep your iPhone version ad-free.
+ Why isn't your app just called "Adrift"? Was it taken already? "Adrift by Tack" looks a little clumsy, or err... tacky.
+ From appstorerankings.net, it looks like your keywords are "3d cube connect center adrift by tack". Center comes from Game Center, and Adrift by Tack comes from your title. So it looks like you don't use many keywords. As a new app on the store, I'd add more keywords like: puzzle, flow, board, etc. And try to find more unique ones where you might rank highly.
+ Good luck working the press! You've already done a great job with HN. :-)
Email me at {my_user_name}@gmail if you want to chat.
Additionally: Since you already have a web-playable version of the game, you should have a feature where a user can share a puzzle with a friend.
Once they complete a challenging puzzle, say something like "Congrats. You demolished that puzzle! Want to share this with a friend?" Then when they hit the FB/TW share icon, you can share the same exact puzzle (http://playadrift.com/?puzzle=3653) as a link. This will improve your virality.
Also, what toolkit did you use to write the iOS game? cocos2d? Or is there some magical toolkit that allows you to render out an HTML version of your app too???!!
I wanted to share this with you guys because it's taken around 3 years of reading HN to really convince myself to quit my job and build my a business with my friends
Very nice! I beat the ten demo levels too quickly, and found myself wanting more. Two things:
* An iPad version is needed. The graphics seem to be high res enough to make an iPad version feasible, and if this is on the iPad I'd buy it for sure. I don't really like the idea of trying to trace out the paths on the tiny iPhone screen.
* Charge money for it. I'd definitely be willing to pay personally.
Congrats on doing that. Please keep us posted on the progress of the commercial part. Now that the game is out and since it's a good game, i'd be really curious to know how you plan to get people to buy it, and if it succeeded.
Is it intended that any solution will have all squares coloured? I like that property, and I think most of the online levels have it, but I solved level eight with some blanks.
If I had an iDevice I would pay for this. Good luck.
I love this game!! Once I got past the second level, I really got the hang of it and loved the mental challenge of solving levels.
One thought: I'd consider making the first few levels much easier. This article on Yoyodyne's trivia games is along those lines:
"As Yoyodyne got busier, we had less and less time to write each game's questions. Finally, one day, we launched a game that had very little effort put into the questions - a rush job, as I recall. The questions were factually correct, but there was no witty writing, no twist, and the questions were really easy to answer.
When the game ran, we were surprised to see that the response rate, instead of hovering around 30%, actually exceeded 60%. We had put less work into crafting the experience, and there were more players who wanted to participate. ... [u]sers wanted two things from their e-mail game experience:
1. POSITIVE REINFORCEMENT: Users wanted to be told that they got the answer right, and that they were winning.
2. NO INVESTMENT: Users did not want to pay for that positive reinforcement in any way. They didn't want to think, work, get up from their chair, or otherwise make any effort to get the reward."
I realized this when I played the currently popular 4 pics 1 word game. I was expecting clever lateral thinking using homonyms. Instead I got 4 blue pictures and the word is blue. But it pops up a U DID IT screen and gives you fake money, with the option to purchase more fake money from the app developer.
People ultimately want just enough veneer on their games that they can pretend it isn't just a big you win button that showers them in confetti.
Great work. The fact you can play it straight away on the website is great, I'm not really a games player but I quickly got hooked.
Out of interest, do you make the levels by hand, or do you have a script to generate them? Would be interesting to know the rules for a valid level against an impossible level.
We made the levels by hand, writing a script to generate and validate levels is still an interesting math problem I would love to tackle if i had the time, its just very difficult from the limited attempt I made.
Yeah, its a clone of an old shockwave game I played
about 10 years ago and felt it would be perfect for
touch interaction.
If you played it 10 years ago, it seems like a reasonable idea to clone it, but the fact that the old devs have been active may prove itself to be an issue.
The game I was referring to is hyperframe and has been available at least since 2002. http://www.shockwave.com/gamelanding/hyperframe.jsp, I don't know which one came first, but I can't imagine it will be a problem since we built our own unique levels.
That 3D Logic game worked how I expected this one too when I started.
>"it[']s a clone of an old shockwave game" //
Personally it doesn't look close enough to me to be a copyright infringement, game mechanics aren't copyrightable (but are patentable [depending on jurisdiction]). It wouldn't matter if the game had been released yesterday - in copyright terms - you can copy the concept of the game as long as you don't copy (or derive) your implementation.
IMO the 3D Logic version is vastly superior I'd just add a "hold button" to allow the cube to be held still whilst you draw.
Hey guys, thought I'd throw in my 2-cents as an Independent Games Festival judge, and as press.
First of all, your presentation is terrific. Great art and sound. Top notch, feels like it came from a very talented team. With this game on your resume, you've got a great future ahead of yourselves.
Now, the bad part: from a gameplay perspective, your game is not unique enough to win out on its own merits in any app store. If you have any money left, spend that cash on those awful, dark-alley fake review and promotion services. Take all of Ronyeh's advice, it's excellent, but you can't stop there. To succeed today in the app stores, you have to cheat, so go buy some reviews and downloads so you can raise your ranking in the store. It's a self-fulfilling cycle: higher rankings, more sales.
There is an awful lot to be said for this being a complete game with a pleasing experience, but there are already a dozen games with similar gameplay in the AppStore. though yours may be the most polished, sales of games in AppStores are less about quality and more about cheating to get more sales, or having a juggernaut that's already on top, like Angry Birds.
That being said, this is a perfect game to hang such cheating tactics around: it looks the part and sounds the part of a successful game, and it doesn't go the easy route of copying Angry Birds in every single interface window. Compare that to, say, Hill Climb Racing, a top ten app store game that looks awful and is infested with spyware.
But I think the best advice I can give you is to add some sort of meta-layer to your game. The fundamental gameplay is interesting and often challenging in the right ways, but there's no uniqueness factor. Perhaps adding some type of incremental reward for the puzzles. Completing a puzzle without reset gets you some form of currency, which can then be spent on customizing your hot air balloon, or on some form on in-game assistance. Think Dungeon Raid. Most mobile game companies just implement the puzzle and are done with it. The real stand out games take those simple puzzle interfaces and layer complex game elements triggered by successes and failures in the puzzle game.
Keep up the good work. You're obviously talented. You'll make money at this, but you can't rely solely on the press and the quality of your game. You have to game the app stores to succeed.
Oh, and when it comes to press, I really don't have any good advice. Try to find some small outlets to work with because the big guys will ignore you, and do so in a mean and churlish way. It's sad to say, but the gaming press these days are mostly retarded monkeys with no idea what it actually takes to make a game. Yer not going to get to the front page of IGN, so don't waste time trying. Find some small app store review sites no one has ever heard of and be nice to them. They'll give you a bigger bang for your buck.
I'm not sure cheating helps as much as it used to, and even so is a poor tactic and will possibly get you banned.
That said, Apple's App Store is an absurdly tough market in the U.S. When your game goes live, it needs to be at its best, and even large gaming companies have trouble getting games out there that do well, even with significant legitimate ad spend.
Here are some ideas, based loosely off of the experience I have had:
- Start contacting other indie-devs with relatively high dau numbers and arrange for X-promo via notifications and features.
- Stage your ad-spend when your metrics are known. Ie, if you beta test your app in some country like Brazil or New Zealand and improve your metrics so you have a known LTV, you can spend accordingly when you launch in a big market like Canada or US.
- Start with Android first because it is an easier ecosystem to iterate upon and attain an niche audience.
- There is a growing body of proof that burst spending on launch day is not the best strategy. There are games that launch early and are unknown but gradually improve their grossing metrics and buy audience in batches over time. I believe Rage of Bahamut was one such game [1]
This is disturbingly cynical advice. If you stand by it, why not attach your real name to it? If not, why put it in public?
And by the way, you're recommending buying fake reviews. Here's a better tactic (and one that's guaranteed not to get you kicked out of the app store): get your launch announcement to the top slot on a popular discussion site, and get the real people there to leave real reviews instead. Which, if you're reading this and want to help these guys, is probably the best thing you can do.
> If you have any money left, spend that cash on those awful, dark-alley fake review and promotion services. Take all of Ronyeh's advice, it's excellent, but you can't stop there. To succeed today in the app stores, you have to cheat, so go buy some reviews and downloads so you can raise your ranking in the store. It's a self-fulfilling cycle: higher rankings, more sales.
> You have to game the app stores to succeed.
What the hell?
Edit: As antoko points out, this doesn't really add anything to the discussion, which I was aware of. I just felt the need to express disgust at what I feel to be blatant and inexcusable dishonesty. Never mind the risk of getting caught or some other backlash, what if you value honesty and pride in your work as much as the money?
I don't quite agree with your phrasing, but as an indie iOS dev on the app store since 2010, I sadly have to agree 100% with what you said. It is what it is. Some people might find it easier to swallow if instead of "cheating" you simply called it CPI though.
I hate to admit it, but VonGuard is right -- without a novel game your best bet is to "cheat" the system - you can hack it in "honest" ways though. It is no different from SEO. That said, even doing so will by no means guarantee you success. Your real best bet is to make a good, novel game. This game is highly polished, but the mechanics were just not interesting enough for me to recommend it to anyone.
If you are "going indie" you have to think about your real motivations -- are you building games to make a profit, or are you building games that you want to play but do not exist? The most successful games seem to fall in the latter category (successful indie games, that is). I do not say this to be snide or critical, just my honest, well-intentioned advice.
I just wanted to say I appreciate your perspective and advice here, we've been spending some time in the office talking about your post and the discussion that has emerged from it.
I think this is good advice and an accurate view of how to get ahead (as much as I hate to admit how much of an advantage everyone with deep pockets has). It's definitely hard as a little guy to get started but there are ways to get some attention if you can afford to invest in buying installs.
A less sleazy way to do this is to offer players something ("unlock the secret panda level") in return for giving you a five star review. You can't verify that they actually do, but if you give them the item and then send them to the app store, some of them will. Then, set this up as a timed promotion along with a push notification so you can get a bunch of players to hopefully respond at the same day. It's not as effective as buying rank, but it's less sleazy, and it can have some effect.
Reading this made me a little sad. My remedy was to immediately go give it an honest 5-star rating and real review. I need to go do this for a lot more apps I love.
Do you have a source about Hill Climb Racing having spyware? I've seen my friends play it and was unaware of any spyware problems reported with it. Google isn't showing anything using relevant search queries; I'd love to read a source!
> Oh, and when it comes to press, I really don't have any good advice. Try to find some small outlets to work with because the big guys will ignore you, and do so in a mean and churlish way.
With nearly 600 upvotes, 250+ comments, and the front page of Hacker News, he shouldn't have trouble finding press coverage.
It looks very nice! Here is some initial feedback:
- Even though it's bouncing, I didn't see the "play now" arrow, and went directly for the video button. You might also want a "Play now" button in the main button list.
- In the video, I had to watch quite a bit of it to even know what the game was actually about. I would have liked if you showed me actual gameplay earlier in the video.
Thanks for the feedback, I think accurately portraying game mechanics is a challenge we keep try to solve. Any thought on a way to better convey how the game works?
Question: how essential do you think it was for you to quit your job to create this game? How much longer would it have taken you had you developed it on the side/weekends?
I'm in no way trying to argue your decision, I'm genuinely curious how much work it was to create a game like this. Also, how much of the conceptual work for this game had you done prior to leaving your job?
I would say pretty essential, but that's really because of my personality. I've started and stopped more projects then I can count over the past ten years while holding a steady job. Without saving up money and leaving my job, I'd probably have a half finished game sitting in my projects folder right now.
Incidentally, it would be nice if you could backtrack to remove colored path blocks if you make a mistake like accidentally dragging across a small corner. I've only tried the webapp version, so not sure if that works in the iOS one.
Pretty great work with all the little touches. How were you able to write both the web version as well as the iOS versions? Did you have two different code bases, or did you use something like Phonegap or trigger.io?
Were you in game dev before you quit to do this?
And would there be a possibility of rotating the cube?
Your website could use a tweak or two. I would change some of the text to reflect the fact that adrift is just a demo online and the iOS version is much longer.
+ the website javascript to load the next level or refresh the current level doesn't work on my computer(aurora firefox on osx)
+ the video doesn't work that well. (volume controls don't work, the play button doesn't work, got the video to play by clicking the video background)
overall it looks like a fun game but I am curious how you are going to make some money with this if it's free.
I loved the demo! The 10th level had me stuck for a few. How many levels does the normal game have? It may be cool to include some text that describes that. Maybe like "Features 100+ levels. Try the first 10 below" or something like that.
Just finished my first play-through through the 10 web levels. Comments: an "erase" functionality might be nice, besides the "reset puzzle". By the end, I figured out a pattern to solving them (identify color with the least path choices, choose one and recursively solve from there) - but then again, I don't like Sudoku either.
Congrats on the release, and best of luck with the game!
I only played a few levels so far, but I really enjoyed it. Excellent concept. I would probably buy it if it was available on Play.
Some feedback from my experience playing the HTML5 version on a computer with a mouse (Firefox 19) and on an android smartphone (Chrome 18):
- On both platforms the "LOADING" message does not go away after hitting "close" on the little instruction cloud, and the level does not load. Only after hitting the reset button (with the circular-arrow symbol) does the level load.
- On my smartphone, my finger tracing can easily outpace the tile coloring, and this leads to some tiles being skipped. The animation is also choppy. Probably not an issue on the native version.
- I think you should prevent diagonal tile markings since they do not work to connect the star tiles anyway.
- If there was a way to stop accidental over-writing other colors due to clumsy mouse usage, that would be nice. This seems like less of a problem on a touch screen.
Nice game. Please post any monetary results, once you have some data. I thought making serious money from a game in the app store today is very difficult.
For the web based version, I might save the last color they clicked on and then use that when they click on a white square because I've found the game a little harder to play with that feature missing on a laptop with a trackpad.
Definitely well-conceived and fun! As others have said, very well done on the web-based version. It's too bad it's not on the Play store, though, any plans for an Android version?
[edit: Asked and answered below. As an Android user (and obviously this is anecdotal but it's all I've got), I spend more money on in-game purchases -- reasonable ones, not FarmCityWhatever insanity -- than I do purchasing them outright. For something like this, level packs seem like a good IAP.]
[+] [-] ronyeh|13 years ago|reply
Here's a little bit of feedback:
+ The graphics are super polished. Great work!
+ The touch interaction could use some work. Sometimes, I drag and I feel it colors squares that I don't want to color. Or it colors squares that I've successfully colored already, and it's not clear how I can backtrack. Take a look at path drawing games like Scramble with Friends to see how they handle backtracking.
+ I understand that advertisements are ugly and you want to keep your game very slick and polished, but... you are leaving a lot of money on the table. I would make your app a Universal Binary (add iPad support) and then throw an iAds/AdMob banner ad at the bottom of the screen. Then, make it very clear that if the user buys an IAP, that you'll remove ads forever. You can keep your iPhone version ad-free.
+ Why isn't your app just called "Adrift"? Was it taken already? "Adrift by Tack" looks a little clumsy, or err... tacky.
+ From appstorerankings.net, it looks like your keywords are "3d cube connect center adrift by tack". Center comes from Game Center, and Adrift by Tack comes from your title. So it looks like you don't use many keywords. As a new app on the store, I'd add more keywords like: puzzle, flow, board, etc. And try to find more unique ones where you might rank highly.
+ Good luck working the press! You've already done a great job with HN. :-)
Email me at {my_user_name}@gmail if you want to chat.
[+] [-] ronyeh|13 years ago|reply
Once they complete a challenging puzzle, say something like "Congrats. You demolished that puzzle! Want to share this with a friend?" Then when they hit the FB/TW share icon, you can share the same exact puzzle (http://playadrift.com/?puzzle=3653) as a link. This will improve your virality.
Also, what toolkit did you use to write the iOS game? cocos2d? Or is there some magical toolkit that allows you to render out an HTML version of your app too???!!
[+] [-] seanalltogether|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] damoncali|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mtrn|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nicksergeant|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] NathanKP|13 years ago|reply
* An iPad version is needed. The graphics seem to be high res enough to make an iPad version feasible, and if this is on the iPad I'd buy it for sure. I don't really like the idea of trying to trace out the paths on the tiny iPhone screen.
* Charge money for it. I'd definitely be willing to pay personally.
[+] [-] CodeMage|13 years ago|reply
[1]: http://www.kongregate.com/games/AlexMatveev/3d-logic
[+] [-] bsaul|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] philh|13 years ago|reply
If I had an iDevice I would pay for this. Good luck.
[+] [-] MicahWedemeyer|13 years ago|reply
I'm not sure how making a game for free is a business, but still, best of luck!
[+] [-] kanamekun|13 years ago|reply
One thought: I'd consider making the first few levels much easier. This article on Yoyodyne's trivia games is along those lines:
"As Yoyodyne got busier, we had less and less time to write each game's questions. Finally, one day, we launched a game that had very little effort put into the questions - a rush job, as I recall. The questions were factually correct, but there was no witty writing, no twist, and the questions were really easy to answer.
When the game ran, we were surprised to see that the response rate, instead of hovering around 30%, actually exceeded 60%. We had put less work into crafting the experience, and there were more players who wanted to participate. ... [u]sers wanted two things from their e-mail game experience:
1. POSITIVE REINFORCEMENT: Users wanted to be told that they got the answer right, and that they were winning.
2. NO INVESTMENT: Users did not want to pay for that positive reinforcement in any way. They didn't want to think, work, get up from their chair, or otherwise make any effort to get the reward."
http://www.goodexperience.com/columns/04/0513.slots.html
[+] [-] nazgulnarsil|13 years ago|reply
People ultimately want just enough veneer on their games that they can pretend it isn't just a big you win button that showers them in confetti.
[+] [-] HyprMusic|13 years ago|reply
Out of interest, do you make the levels by hand, or do you have a script to generate them? Would be interesting to know the rules for a valid level against an impossible level.
[+] [-] seanalltogether|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] BoppreH|13 years ago|reply
Are you sure this won't be a problem?
Edit:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5332485
If you played it 10 years ago, it seems like a reasonable idea to clone it, but the fact that the old devs have been active may prove itself to be an issue.[+] [-] seanalltogether|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pbhjpbhj|13 years ago|reply
>"it[']s a clone of an old shockwave game" //
Personally it doesn't look close enough to me to be a copyright infringement, game mechanics aren't copyrightable (but are patentable [depending on jurisdiction]). It wouldn't matter if the game had been released yesterday - in copyright terms - you can copy the concept of the game as long as you don't copy (or derive) your implementation.
IMO the 3D Logic version is vastly superior I'd just add a "hold button" to allow the cube to be held still whilst you draw.
[+] [-] VonGuard|13 years ago|reply
First of all, your presentation is terrific. Great art and sound. Top notch, feels like it came from a very talented team. With this game on your resume, you've got a great future ahead of yourselves.
Now, the bad part: from a gameplay perspective, your game is not unique enough to win out on its own merits in any app store. If you have any money left, spend that cash on those awful, dark-alley fake review and promotion services. Take all of Ronyeh's advice, it's excellent, but you can't stop there. To succeed today in the app stores, you have to cheat, so go buy some reviews and downloads so you can raise your ranking in the store. It's a self-fulfilling cycle: higher rankings, more sales.
There is an awful lot to be said for this being a complete game with a pleasing experience, but there are already a dozen games with similar gameplay in the AppStore. though yours may be the most polished, sales of games in AppStores are less about quality and more about cheating to get more sales, or having a juggernaut that's already on top, like Angry Birds.
That being said, this is a perfect game to hang such cheating tactics around: it looks the part and sounds the part of a successful game, and it doesn't go the easy route of copying Angry Birds in every single interface window. Compare that to, say, Hill Climb Racing, a top ten app store game that looks awful and is infested with spyware.
But I think the best advice I can give you is to add some sort of meta-layer to your game. The fundamental gameplay is interesting and often challenging in the right ways, but there's no uniqueness factor. Perhaps adding some type of incremental reward for the puzzles. Completing a puzzle without reset gets you some form of currency, which can then be spent on customizing your hot air balloon, or on some form on in-game assistance. Think Dungeon Raid. Most mobile game companies just implement the puzzle and are done with it. The real stand out games take those simple puzzle interfaces and layer complex game elements triggered by successes and failures in the puzzle game.
Keep up the good work. You're obviously talented. You'll make money at this, but you can't rely solely on the press and the quality of your game. You have to game the app stores to succeed.
Oh, and when it comes to press, I really don't have any good advice. Try to find some small outlets to work with because the big guys will ignore you, and do so in a mean and churlish way. It's sad to say, but the gaming press these days are mostly retarded monkeys with no idea what it actually takes to make a game. Yer not going to get to the front page of IGN, so don't waste time trying. Find some small app store review sites no one has ever heard of and be nice to them. They'll give you a bigger bang for your buck.
[+] [-] physcab|13 years ago|reply
That said, Apple's App Store is an absurdly tough market in the U.S. When your game goes live, it needs to be at its best, and even large gaming companies have trouble getting games out there that do well, even with significant legitimate ad spend.
Here are some ideas, based loosely off of the experience I have had:
- Start contacting other indie-devs with relatively high dau numbers and arrange for X-promo via notifications and features.
- Stage your ad-spend when your metrics are known. Ie, if you beta test your app in some country like Brazil or New Zealand and improve your metrics so you have a known LTV, you can spend accordingly when you launch in a big market like Canada or US.
- Start with Android first because it is an easier ecosystem to iterate upon and attain an niche audience.
- There is a growing body of proof that burst spending on launch day is not the best strategy. There are games that launch early and are unknown but gradually improve their grossing metrics and buy audience in batches over time. I believe Rage of Bahamut was one such game [1]
[1]. http://www.appannie.com/app/ios/rage-of-bahamut/ranking/hist...
[+] [-] phil|13 years ago|reply
And by the way, you're recommending buying fake reviews. Here's a better tactic (and one that's guaranteed not to get you kicked out of the app store): get your launch announcement to the top slot on a popular discussion site, and get the real people there to leave real reviews instead. Which, if you're reading this and want to help these guys, is probably the best thing you can do.
[+] [-] jrajav|13 years ago|reply
> You have to game the app stores to succeed.
What the hell?
Edit: As antoko points out, this doesn't really add anything to the discussion, which I was aware of. I just felt the need to express disgust at what I feel to be blatant and inexcusable dishonesty. Never mind the risk of getting caught or some other backlash, what if you value honesty and pride in your work as much as the money?
[+] [-] lmirosevic|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gavanwoolery|13 years ago|reply
If you are "going indie" you have to think about your real motivations -- are you building games to make a profit, or are you building games that you want to play but do not exist? The most successful games seem to fall in the latter category (successful indie games, that is). I do not say this to be snide or critical, just my honest, well-intentioned advice.
[+] [-] seanalltogether|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] becauseracecar|13 years ago|reply
There's of course Facebook mobile app installs, but a lot of other ways to get installs also that might be more cost effective. Some others: http://www.appoday.com/#developers http://www.curios.me/
Best of luck!
[+] [-] joeld42|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] loumf|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] artimaeis|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pdog|13 years ago|reply
With nearly 600 upvotes, 250+ comments, and the front page of Hacker News, he shouldn't have trouble finding press coverage.
[+] [-] dylanz|13 years ago|reply
- Even though it's bouncing, I didn't see the "play now" arrow, and went directly for the video button. You might also want a "Play now" button in the main button list.
- In the video, I had to watch quite a bit of it to even know what the game was actually about. I would have liked if you showed me actual gameplay earlier in the video.
Keep it up!
[+] [-] justjimmy|13 years ago|reply
But It's a beautiful looking game and when the light bulb went off of how the game is played, I will be downloading it.
Perhaps edit the video so it shows more of the core gameplay (like the part in the last 10s in the video).
[+] [-] seanalltogether|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] prawks|13 years ago|reply
I'm in no way trying to argue your decision, I'm genuinely curious how much work it was to create a game like this. Also, how much of the conceptual work for this game had you done prior to leaving your job?
[+] [-] seanalltogether|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] flixic|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mihn|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] snarfman|13 years ago|reply
Incidentally, it would be nice if you could backtrack to remove colored path blocks if you make a mistake like accidentally dragging across a small corner. I've only tried the webapp version, so not sure if that works in the iOS one.
[+] [-] iamwil|13 years ago|reply
Were you in game dev before you quit to do this?
And would there be a possibility of rotating the cube?
[+] [-] kayoone|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] weaksauce|13 years ago|reply
+ the website javascript to load the next level or refresh the current level doesn't work on my computer(aurora firefox on osx)
+ the video doesn't work that well. (volume controls don't work, the play button doesn't work, got the video to play by clicking the video background)
overall it looks like a fun game but I am curious how you are going to make some money with this if it's free.
[+] [-] bluetidepro|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Scene_Cast2|13 years ago|reply
Congrats on the release, and best of luck with the game!
[+] [-] pm90|13 years ago|reply
One minor feedback: when the tile color is yellow, the star should be colored different (because when highlighted, it is also yellow)
[+] [-] oftenwrong|13 years ago|reply
Some feedback from my experience playing the HTML5 version on a computer with a mouse (Firefox 19) and on an android smartphone (Chrome 18):
- On both platforms the "LOADING" message does not go away after hitting "close" on the little instruction cloud, and the level does not load. Only after hitting the reset button (with the circular-arrow symbol) does the level load.
- On my smartphone, my finger tracing can easily outpace the tile coloring, and this leads to some tiles being skipped. The animation is also choppy. Probably not an issue on the native version.
- I think you should prevent diagonal tile markings since they do not work to connect the star tiles anyway.
- If there was a way to stop accidental over-writing other colors due to clumsy mouse usage, that would be nice. This seems like less of a problem on a touch screen.
[+] [-] seanalltogether|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] whileonebegin|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lost_name|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] arasmussen|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] obviouslygreen|13 years ago|reply
[edit: Asked and answered below. As an Android user (and obviously this is anecdotal but it's all I've got), I spend more money on in-game purchases -- reasonable ones, not FarmCityWhatever insanity -- than I do purchasing them outright. For something like this, level packs seem like a good IAP.]