Show HN: A game I've been working on for the last year is out today

[CyrusL]

Cool game! I just set http://www.asteroids.com to redirect to your app store page for the next couple weeks.

[guiambros]

While the gesture is noble, you may end up hurting him/her in the long run. If media start linking to your domain rather than to the appstore page, he'll have broken links and lost pagerank if/when you decide to do something else with the domain.

Having said that, what a great domain!

[digitalboss]

If there was Hacker News Gold, I would've give you some for that excellent gesture.

edit: typo

[primitivesuave]

What a noble gesture. On an unrelated note, I have some domains parked of my own, and I realized this is a great way to use them - help drive traffic to apps. And perhaps if he makes enough money from the app, he'll buy the domain to make a landing page for it. Plus it's really great to see a domain thats not parked with those stupid ads.

[staticfish]

What a domain! You're a cool guy, guy.

[emhart]

Hah, that's a great idea. I just redirected comebackwithawarrant.com to the EFF as I'm not really doing anything with it.

Also - congrats to OP on the launch and all the post-launch attention. Must feel good :)

[savethejets]

wow thanks!

[jheriko]

props for helping the guy out.

[bazzargh]

Hey just in case you've not noticed... apple is linking to http://www.codeherdstudios.com/AsteroidSmash/ from the game description, which is 404ing on your site (should be http://www.codeherdstudios.com/AsteroidSmash.html)

[savethejets]

Thanks for the heads up. I've added a redirect to the proper page!

[egypturnash]

Here's some critique of your presentation in the App Store:

- Why is there a pause symbol in the middle of every screenshot? - Terrible layout on the corner banners in the screenshot. Play head to head Against your friends!

[large top margin] Play with up [no leading between this line and the next] to 4 players on 1 ipad [no bottom margin]

- Random placement of text next to the circles in the 'How to Play' screen. Why aren't all of those lines of text centered above/below their circles? Be consistent.

And when I click the link to your website, hoping for maybe a video of the game in action, I get served nothing but "Cannot GET /AsteroidSmash/".

Wearing my "random browsing of app store hat" my reaction is "okay I'm moving on to another game".

----

After finding the webpage for it and watching the video: Wow this thing looks confusing. I have absolutely no idea what's going on from the video. Blue things moving around in front of a blue background with no contrast of any kind, and four fingers rapidly tapping. And a couple of blocks of text that're close enough to being centered that they look amateurishly off-center.

[rockdiesel]

EDIT: Nevermind. I just saw the second part of your comment where you said you watched the video.

-------

"Why is there a pause symbol in the middle of every screenshot?"

It looks like it is part of the gameplay. If you watch the video on his website, you can see the pause symbol right in the middle of the screen while gameplay is going on.

http://www.codeherdstudios.com/AsteroidSmash.html

[ketralnis]

I really wish Apple would enforce that the screenshots had to be actually screenshots. The markings like in this one make it worse, but it seems like more and more popular games are just putting marketing images there and not bothering to include any game play.

[hboon]

Tip:

If you haven't, every iOS/OS X developer should sign up as an iTunes affiliate http://www.apple.com/itunes/affiliates/ and use affiliate links. It is more or less transparent unlike other link wrappers. E.g. a link to the same app with my affiliate account will be https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/asteroid-smash/id730150968&a.... (no you don't have to click on it) There's just 2 additional values.

The key thing about this is you can use the campaign tag to track click throughs. It's not about the affiliate revenue.

[ronyeh]

Wow, this is truly a pro-tip. I had never considered it before. Thanks!

Plus, if someone buys something from iTunes/AppStore shortly after clicking your link, you end up getting 7% commission.

[benzor]

Fellow (mobile) game developer here, congrats on the launch! Can you tell us about the development cycle for this game? Were you alone, did it take a year full-time, etc? I'm curious.

[akg]

I would be curious as well. What is your marketing plan? I also released a game a month ago after working on it for about a year, but soon realized that it is very tough to break through the noise on the app store and get your game noticed.

What has your experience been with this? I see that you are doing pay-up-front model. I'd be curious to get your sense of why you went with that as opposed to the freemium + IAP model.

I also released as a paid app initially, it almost seems as if there is an expectation that games should be free to try and then either progress via upgrades or IAPs.

[antr]

On the App Store: I wished Apple allowed to upload demo videos of the apps, games could really benefit from such medium. Screenshots sometimes aren't the best way to communicate/sell software.

[euphemize]

This gives you a pretty good idea of how it looks (video on page) : http://www.codeherdstudios.com/AsteroidSmash.html

[taude]

I haven't used App Store in awhile and appreciate the ability to view videos on the apps in the Google Play store

[danpalmer]

Looks good. I'm wondering why you highlight "Only on iOS" as a specific thing on the screenshots?

[jheriko]

its not official but apple will dick you over on a number of things if you ship on other platforms. most specifically the highly valuable 'being featured early on the app store'. from what i've heard they have a secret internal policy of checking to see if you shipped on android before doing that...

one of their submission rules is not to mention other platforms in metadata - i'd also take that as a hint that "we like exclusives" - my interpretation of that is that you can't say "also available on Android" - for example.

this is not fresh news either, a quick google on the subject reveals a long history of people moaning about this particular problem... if you are shipping a game and do your homework then you will know this.

[Mithaldu]

At a guess:

Many iOS developers have a severe case of blinders on and don't communicate on their websites that their software is iOS only, ever. This does not only affect games, but also productivity software. The end result of that is that in the best case, a person gets to really like a product after having spent time on the marketing copy and when trying to figure out how to buy it for their platform find that they can't and end up despising the company. In the worst case the company uses some intermediary to sell the software, like humblebundle, which means the person can end up paying for the software, only to be told that they can only get an itunes version.

I don't know if that's the reason they do it, but in either case i applaud them for it.

[dpcan]

In the App Store, I've seen the "only on iOS" category, maybe he wants to get in there.

[CaveTech]

Because true iOS connoisseurs like to know that the developer didn't sell out and support those other platforms.

[ndemic]

Congrats - releasing is definitely something to be proud of!

Not sure if you want feedback but IMO - the text banners on screenshots feel a bit too low quality and detract from the actual screenshots. Always hard to get this perfect though!

[Mithrandir]

Main site (link in the description is not working): http://www.codeherdstudios.com/AsteroidSmash.html

[jmckib]

Just bought it and played a round by myself (wife promised to play a game with me later). Seems simple, but fun. I can immediately see it would be even more fun with 3 or 4 players rather than 2.

I haven't deeply explored the game yet, but having an AI and the possibility of unlocking additional weapons/upgrades would be exciting. Also, I'd love to have online multiplayer or team play (me and a friend could get online and play against another two-player team).

[ced83fra]

I love the fact that it's not a 'I am alone, let me play' game. Apps that encourages people play on the same device are a lot better than any others !!

[callmeed]

Haven't had a chance to play yet–BUT it looks great and I'm excited to try it later today. Multi-player, single-screen iPad apps are a favorite for me and the kids. For the record, our favorite such apps are: Stratosphere, King of Opera, Achtung, and Raiding Company.

I'll report back later tonight.

[adinb]

You need to post a thread on the Touch Arcade forums & also let Eli Hodapp and company know about it. Exposure on TA is a great way to get noticed and get good feedback.

Edit: found an existing thread for your game, though it would really help if you posted in the release thread to let everyone know your story and that you're actively soliciting feedback. http://forums.toucharcade.com/showthread.php?t=209686

[dlsym]

I really like your 8-Bit graphics approach! But I am a little bit disappointed, that you did not include Bootstrap somewhere.

[cocoflunchy]

Looks great! I'm also building a multiplayer-on-the-same-device iOS game, but I plan on adding a single player mode too. Are you not worried about being multiplayer only? I'd be afraid to cut a large portion of the impulse purchases this way (I won't buy it unless there is someone who can try it with me right now).

[hkmurakami]

Really cool game! One quick question before I enthusiastically throw you my money: It the music 8 bit too (like in the video)? :)

[savethejets]

Yup! Actually I also released the soundtrack for free/pay what you want here

http://codeherdstudios.bandcamp.com/album/asteroid-smash-ost

[sciguy77]

Looks great. Reminds me a bit of Space Team. I'm loving all these new collaborative games coming out.

[mion]

Nice, concise and direct description. Great choice of graphics and screenshots too! Really nice work

[lowglow]

Congratulations on the launch! Putting a product out there takes chutzpah. Cheers! :)

[akoumjian]

This is actually the first app for iPad that has actually made me want one.

[mgkimsal]

The music reminded me of Gyruss, one of my all time favorites... :)

[jheriko]

well done. finishing and shipping a game is no small achievement.

[alecsmart1]

It's not available for iPhone :( any reason for that?

[antonius]

Seeing how the game accepts up to 4 players total, I'm guessing the screen factor played a role.

[iSloth]

I would guess the screen size is too small for 4 people to play at once.

[QuasiAlon]

Good luck! Let us know when the android version is out :)

[banachtarski]

Do you not know how to take a screenshot on an ipad?

[jonny_eh]

This would make for a great port to the OUYA.

[shn]

would you report revenue. I always wonder how much people are making from these games. Of course if you don't mind.

[kirualex]

Kudos to you for completing your game !