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Indie Game Development Discussion Thread | Of Being Professionally Poor
- Thread starter chubigans
- Start date
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Edit: Wrong thread
Since i can't seem to delete my post, i might as well ask a question.
How do you typically set up your projects and what things do you take into account in the producition of it in terms of platforms? While i typically design for touch interfaces, i also make all my code work for keyboard & mouse and controller inputs. Do you just stick to one at a time or do you take precautions for the different type of interfaces in case you want to port it to another platform at a later state?
Since i can't seem to delete my post, i might as well ask a question.
How do you typically set up your projects and what things do you take into account in the producition of it in terms of platforms? While i typically design for touch interfaces, i also make all my code work for keyboard & mouse and controller inputs. Do you just stick to one at a time or do you take precautions for the different type of interfaces in case you want to port it to another platform at a later state?
So I spent the better part of last weekend "porting" Final Fantasy: All The Bravest to HTML 5 using Scirra's Construct 2. I learned a lot more about the program, and managed to max out the events to the 100 limit that the demo has in place.
Because of that 100 event limit, I wasn't able to implement many (any?) of the features I thought could make Square's system better, other than not having any type of IAP whatsoever.
I think my verdict is that while I like Construct 2, it seems to have a lot of finicky aspects that really grind my gears (...heh, the logo...) when trying to figure out how to do something. I want to use it in the future for other types of games though, and maybe one day I'll get the full version.
Because of that 100 event limit, I wasn't able to implement many (any?) of the features I thought could make Square's system better, other than not having any type of IAP whatsoever.
I think my verdict is that while I like Construct 2, it seems to have a lot of finicky aspects that really grind my gears (...heh, the logo...) when trying to figure out how to do something. I want to use it in the future for other types of games though, and maybe one day I'll get the full version.
So, I'm making a shoot them up game for ios/android, here's my spaceship... say hi spaceship:
Anyways, the game is completely 2D using vector graphics so I can easily output assets for different resolutions/dpi, thats not a problem.
What I don't know how to solve is working with different resolutions/aspect ratios on what is going to be the viewport of my game, being a shoot them up the enemy positions/spawn points/walls/obstacles depend a lot on how much playfield can I use for them and I would like the same experience to carry through different devices.
Mind you this is my first time tapping into that genre and I myself have played very little shoot them ups in my life so I might be missing something
I imagine that with a platformer I could simply show more of the level (for width or height) and it wouldn't matter as much but I feel that with this I have to treat it differently.
He doesn't want to, he's shy.
Anyways, the game is completely 2D using vector graphics so I can easily output assets for different resolutions/dpi, thats not a problem.
What I don't know how to solve is working with different resolutions/aspect ratios on what is going to be the viewport of my game, being a shoot them up the enemy positions/spawn points/walls/obstacles depend a lot on how much playfield can I use for them and I would like the same experience to carry through different devices.
Mind you this is my first time tapping into that genre and I myself have played very little shoot them ups in my life so I might be missing something
I imagine that with a platformer I could simply show more of the level (for width or height) and it wouldn't matter as much but I feel that with this I have to treat it differently.Ah, never looked into EasyPak, now I wish I had. I don't have that many more lines than you, it probably would have saved me some massive headaches during crunch.
Teknopathetic
Member
Spent so much time trying to get Ouya inputs working on my non-Ouya device that I don't have anything worth presenting by time the Create deadline rolls around in a few minutes. I suppose it was educational, at least.
Nomad_Games_Carl
Neo Member
I've got a game in Greenlight - Talisman, based on the Games Workshop board game.
You don't need to add Steam features to your game to submit to Greenlight. You can add them once you've been 'lit'. There can be a big gap between being greenlit and releasing your game, so plenty of time to add achievements/leaderboards, etc.
Good luck with Chopper Mike!
You don't need to add Steam features to your game to submit to Greenlight. You can add them once you've been 'lit'. There can be a big gap between being greenlit and releasing your game, so plenty of time to add achievements/leaderboards, etc.
Good luck with Chopper Mike!
Thanks! And good luck with Talisman! Looks cool, and VAMflax just voted for it
Animated gifs, cool! I'll be able to do a Chopper Mike Logo with him flying round it like in the game!!!
I made one!
Well, that simplifies things somewhat
Cheers!
Nomad_Games_Carl
Neo Member
Cheers for the vote!
Being in Greenlight is quite a stressful experience and every single vote helps.
Being in Greenlight is quite a stressful experience and every single vote helps.
Mike must be very dumb circling around his name without end. xDI made one!
But who cares? Looks good.
Bingo, and this is something I kind of wish would change since I thought Steamworks was advertised as freely available or whatnot. Specifically, I think it would be nice if it was made available to Greenlight developers in the top 100, since otherwise after they are greenlit they still have to wait for the API, implement their Steamworks integration features, test everything, and THEN release.
Do you have to put Steam features in? I'm guessing they have another bunch of leaderboards/acheevs, etc...?? I need to read up I think!
I don't think anyone has to, it's just a set of nice features. If you don't include achievements, some people will also be like eww, no Steam achievements.
One of the nicest thing about Steam stuff is if it's a multiplayer game with invites and game joins. I think Steamworks got added to RUSE after the fact, and I was able to get a multiplayer game going with a friend with no hassle, inviting using the chat window.
A few games don't even have the Steam DRM on their executables. I don't know if Valve approves/disapproves of that. Skyrim used to be launchable without Steam running, but they patched it to require Steam, for example. I -think- FTL may be launchable without Steam running.
Hey guys, my DCPU-16 graphics engine now features a lighting model! Pretty
oldskool, isn't it? Well, since I live on a monochrome 1 bit framebuffer, I
need to simulate the shades via halftone techniques. So I implemented a
halftone shader that, depending on the lighting computation, assigns the
computed intensity to a given halftone pattern. The process is similar to
rendering with color palettes (EGA, VGA, anyone?). If you ever tried to shade
a 3d polygon with a fixed color palette, you have essentially computed an
index into the color table to select the given shade for a color. The process
I use is kinda similar. But instead of selecting a color's shade from a color
palette, the index here points into a pattern palette selecting a pattern to
be used for rendering to simulate the required shade (the halftone) on the
screen -> in your head. tl;dr: Give me 1 bit and I paint you the world!
Well, for a game I have in mind, I need the player to loose orientation to a
certain degree, while (s)he tries not to loose, of course. To amplify this
situation I need some light. Hence, the halftone shader. This is all cool
stuff in itself, esp. if you start mixing with colors. Keep on coding!
Neat. What are your target platforms? PC, Android, iOS...
Hey guys, my DCPU-16 graphics engine now features a lighting model! Pretty
oldskool, isn't it? Well, since I live on a monochrome 1 bit framebuffer, I
need to simulate the shades via halftone techniques. So I implemented a
halftone shader that, depending on the lighting computation, assigns the
computed intensity to a given halftone pattern. The process is similar to
rendering with color palettes (EGA, VGA, anyone?). If you ever tried to shade
a 3d polygon with a fixed color palette, you have essentially computed an
index into the color table to select the given shade for a color. The process
I use is kinda similar. But instead of selecting a color's shade from a color
palette, the index here points into a pattern palette selecting a pattern to
be used for rendering to simulate the required shade (the halftone) on the
screen -> in your head. tl;dr: Give me 1 bit and I paint you the world!
Well, for a game I have in mind, I need the player to loose orientation to a
certain degree, while (s)he tries not to loose, of course. To amplify this
situation I need some light. Hence, the halftone shader. This is all cool
stuff in itself, esp. if you start mixing with colors. Keep on coding!
TI-82
Looks really cool. Love your emblem, btw.
I think he's targeting Notch's 0x10c game when it comes out (or presumably DCPU emulators). I wonder if people will do clock speed unlock mods to run crazy applications.Neat. What are your target platforms? PC, Android, iOS...TI-82
Looks really cool. Love your emblem, btw.
I don't think anyone has to, it's just a set of nice features. If you don't include achievements, some people will also be like eww, no Steam achievements.
One of the nicest thing about Steam stuff is if it's a multiplayer game with invites and game joins. I think Steamworks got added to RUSE after the fact, and I was able to get a multiplayer game going with a friend with no hassle, inviting using the chat window.
A few games don't even have the Steam DRM on their executables. I don't know if Valve approves/disapproves of that. Skyrim used to be launchable without Steam running, but they patched it to require Steam, for example. I -think- FTL may be launchable without Steam running.
Ah, cool. I'd like to put in some simple cheevs, like beating each difficulty mode, getting a total game time of under X seconds... I'll worry about that if it ever gets 'lit'!
Hey guys, my DCPU-16 graphics engine now features a lighting model! Pretty
oldskool, isn't it? Well, since I live on a monochrome 1 bit framebuffer, I
need to simulate the shades via halftone techniques. So I implemented a
halftone shader that, depending on the lighting computation, assigns the
computed intensity to a given halftone pattern. The process is similar to
rendering with color palettes (EGA, VGA, anyone?). If you ever tried to shade
a 3d polygon with a fixed color palette, you have essentially computed an
index into the color table to select the given shade for a color. The process
I use is kinda similar. But instead of selecting a color's shade from a color
palette, the index here points into a pattern palette selecting a pattern to
be used for rendering to simulate the required shade (the halftone) on the
screen -> in your head. tl;dr: Give me 1 bit and I paint you the world!
Well, for a game I have in mind, I need the player to loose orientation to a
certain degree, while (s)he tries not to loose, of course. To amplify this
situation I need some light. Hence, the halftone shader. This is all cool
stuff in itself, esp. if you start mixing with colors. Keep on coding!
Wicked. We're both doing 'minimal' in separate spaces of the gaming universe. I should send you a Chopper to render out!
Cairn keeps on trucking! The RTS balancing is about to begin. Mechanics are almost finished. Art is about half way done.
We are wrapping up most of the units for our Greco-Roman Steampunk faction called the Thermocrats. This is our most technically advanced faction in the game and they use Alchemical fire and Aether to create nasty weapons of war.
The finished Praetorian and Tinker:
Here are some of the WIP sprites for the faction(Dark Scorcher, Devout, and Legionnaire)
We also got our ground texture tiles into the game which really adds a lot to our basic demo level. It's just dirt and grass, but it looks really great. The artist half of our team made a huge post about the process he used to create them.
http://embalmit.com/2013/01/20/tiles-and-textures-update/
We also have our first few Landmark buildings in the game. Landmarks are like a cross between a typical rts building and a tower from a TD game. You can recruit troops, upgrade the landmarks defenses, or research tech.
We are wrapping up most of the units for our Greco-Roman Steampunk faction called the Thermocrats. This is our most technically advanced faction in the game and they use Alchemical fire and Aether to create nasty weapons of war.
The finished Praetorian and Tinker:
Here are some of the WIP sprites for the faction(Dark Scorcher, Devout, and Legionnaire)
We also got our ground texture tiles into the game which really adds a lot to our basic demo level. It's just dirt and grass, but it looks really great. The artist half of our team made a huge post about the process he used to create them.
http://embalmit.com/2013/01/20/tiles-and-textures-update/
We also have our first few Landmark buildings in the game. Landmarks are like a cross between a typical rts building and a tower from a TD game. You can recruit troops, upgrade the landmarks defenses, or research tech.
Hey guys, my DCPU-16 graphics engine now features a lighting model! Pretty
oldskool, isn't it? Well, since I live on a monochrome 1 bit framebuffer, I
need to simulate the shades via halftone techniques. So I implemented a
halftone shader that, depending on the lighting computation, assigns the
computed intensity to a given halftone pattern. The process is similar to
rendering with color palettes (EGA, VGA, anyone?). If you ever tried to shade
a 3d polygon with a fixed color palette, you have essentially computed an
index into the color table to select the given shade for a color. The process
I use is kinda similar. But instead of selecting a color's shade from a color
palette, the index here points into a pattern palette selecting a pattern to
be used for rendering to simulate the required shade (the halftone) on the
screen -> in your head. tl;dr: Give me 1 bit and I paint you the world!
Well, for a game I have in mind, I need the player to loose orientation to a
certain degree, while (s)he tries not to loose, of course. To amplify this
situation I need some light. Hence, the halftone shader. This is all cool
stuff in itself, esp. if you start mixing with colors. Keep on coding!
I've missed your updates. Do you have a site?
If you don't want to implement the Steamworks API yourself, I think the devs behind Bob Came in Pieces are selling a Steamworks wrapper on the Unity Asset Store for $300, if I'm not mistaken. I'd love to know if it's possible implement Steamworks using Unity free rather than requiring the pro license, but there's little to no information available on the matter; I don't think its as simple as a bunch of web calls, but who knows... I worked on a small J2ME app for Fotolog that logged you in, displayed pictures and allowed you to upload stuff from your cellphone's internal storage (through a very long POST message); I'd be delighted if Steamworks happens to work somewhat like this.
This looks awesome! While I mostly use commercial engines for my games for simplicity's sake, I've always liked custom engines and lower-level stuff as well. Heavily restrictive stuff (such as your miniature, 1-color display) I find the most interesting.
A what?
First draft at an app icon, using Unity and a mock scene to generate it. Run it at 1080p, wait half a second for the particles to spawn, pause time... printscreen at my leisure!
Tweeted it and people have pointed out potential improvements already! Awesome!!
You should test this out on device.
At a glance, it looks like the detail will be too small when on a phone or in amongst the App Store listings in iTunes. I'd suggest having the chopper fill up most of the icon frame - its a strong enough design to carry the icon on its own and is intuitively suggestive of what the game is about (maybe put the gem right in the corner).
Bomber Bob
Banned
he means he's sitting on his butt all day long playing videogames
I lack the skills currently but can someone, ANYONE get these game on Steam via Greenlight? I won't even charge you for the concept:
Bomberman x Four Swords x Diablo: A competitive multiplayer affair that starts up to 4 players in different regions of the map. It wouldn't be single screen like bomberman but maybe a few screens as to give you room to run away for the diablo-esque abilities that you level up as you play. There would be pathways blocked off by rocks that you need to blow up via bombs or other objects that you could pick up and throw out of the way (or at opposing players). The game of course would be top down 2d like bomberman or zelda. It would feature a cast of balanced characters that would have a basic ability unlock system.
Wild Guns x Point Blank:
Take this:
and mix it with this:
it would be the most awesome mash up of side scrolling shooter + light gun game + shooting gallery game ever.
Thank me later!
Bomberman x Four Swords x Diablo: A competitive multiplayer affair that starts up to 4 players in different regions of the map. It wouldn't be single screen like bomberman but maybe a few screens as to give you room to run away for the diablo-esque abilities that you level up as you play. There would be pathways blocked off by rocks that you need to blow up via bombs or other objects that you could pick up and throw out of the way (or at opposing players). The game of course would be top down 2d like bomberman or zelda. It would feature a cast of balanced characters that would have a basic ability unlock system.
Wild Guns x Point Blank:
Take this:
and mix it with this:
it would be the most awesome mash up of side scrolling shooter + light gun game + shooting gallery game ever.
Thank me later!
Errr...not to sound rude, but I don't think you really appreciate how much work goes into these sorts of games. "Make my game idea, you're welcome!" is a little off-putting.
Our Ichi Post mortem:
Early 2011, everyone at Stolen Couch Games was still in school developing our exam year project Kids vs Goblins. Jay van Hutten, a fellow year mate, was developing a game of his own called Ichi. It was a elegant puzzle game that utilized a one-button mechanic in a way that didnt feel gimmicky. The goal of the game was to guide a ball past a number of rings on the screen. By touching the screen you rotate bumpers, which caused the ball to change in direction. You could also hold your finger down to draw a line, once the ball hit the line it would travel back in the direction it came from.
About a half year later we spoke to Jay at a congress were he was demoing his game. I (Eric) shared my interesting in redeveloping Ichi for multiple platforms and making it a really great commercial product. Jay loved the idea and the day we finished Kids vs Goblins we were working together to make a bigger and better version of Ichi.
No developers were harmed during the making of this game
Redeveloping a game is nothing new to us. Stolen Couch Games actually started in 2010 when we got an assignment from Zoë Mode to create a multiplayer version of their hit game Chime. The multiplayer demo we made eventually led Zoë Mode to develop Chime Super Deluxe, which featured some nice multiplayer modes. While the programmers were re-creating Ichi in Unity, Jay and I were designing new features to add to the game. Because the core of Ichi was so sound, it wasnt hard to come up with dozens of new puzzle ideas to make the game better. The final product had teleporters, splitters to create multiple balls, objects that could disappear and a few more things. Nothing too fancy, but it all worked great. The best thing we added was the level editor that allowed players to create their own levels and share them online. Since then, 11,000 levels have been shared, quite a bit more than the 50 levels we originally included with the game. Ichi launched in June, after 3 months of development, which went mostly smoothly. The actual problems started right after we launched the game.
Getting featured
We knew that many people would consider Ichi as just another puzzle game, so we had to let people know how special the game really is. We spent about a week contacting the press about our game and we got a nice amount of coverage. But press alone wont make your game a hit. If you read any guide on marketing for mobile games you always get to the point were the importance of getting a feature by Apple/Amazon/Google is expressed. We already got a feature on the Mac app store for our first game, but our published arranged that. We didnt have a direct contact within Apple, so we had to come up with a way to contact them.
Luckily we had a few device IDs that belonged to Apple employees on our Testflight account. So we found out the matching email addresses and we send separate emails to every one of them. 2 of them, responsible for the iOS AppStore, loved the game and showed the game to the rest of the team. Our contact from the Mac AppStore was in love with the game. We Skyped for a few hours and everything was set.
Ichi was Apples Editors Choice for a week on the Mac AppStore and on iOS we were bumped to the new and noteworthy category and we got a small banner in the games section.
Weve seen developers doing no marketing at all for their games because they believe theyre games will sell themselves. This is mentality is wrong. Just look at the top grossing games on iOS. Almost all of them spend enormous amount of time and money on marketing. Only by spending time and money, will you actually earn money.
Mayday, mayday!
The launch of Ichi went great. We were selling thousands of units a day and those numbers were actually increasing the days after the launch. But than something went wrong. Suddenly the game would crash once it has launched. This had never happened in any of our tests before. Why did the game crash all of a sudden? It turned out that the firewall at our server provider, which hosted the user created levels, was malfunctioning. Since we had never encountered this before we werent prepared for this. As you can imagine we were pissed off, but the gamers were even more pissed off. The 1-star ratings were poring in, so we had to work quickly. Within a day we made a quick patch that made the game run again. We submitted it and Apple was kind enough to approve it in record time. But the harm was done. The sales momentum the game had was gone. Sales plummeted because of the bad reviews. Instead of getting thousands of sales at $4.99 a piece we were down to hundreds.
The lessons we learned from this is that you should be prepared for something you cant predict or test. We expected our server to send just numbers to the game, instead it was sending lines of random code. For our next games were making sure that the game handles these rare cases the correct way. One day of extra development time is better than losing thousands of dollars in revenue.
Monetizing
We wanted to use in-app purchases in the game to earn some extra revenue post-launch. We were thinking of putting an in-app purchase on the level editor. So if you wanted to make your own levels you had to pay a dollar extra. But we opted against this because the editor would generate content for the game. Content is important so we couldnt make the overall package weaker to earn some money. Instead we asked for an in-app purchase when the player played more than 10 user-created levels. We guessed that only 5% of the players might create a level and 70% would play user created levels. More people means more revenue. Unfortunately this tactic didnt work.
We launched the game with 50 built-in levels and player could play 10 user created levels for free. At the end of 2012 only 300 people out of 400.000 bought the in app purchase, an insanely low percentage. Why did almost no-one buy the in app purchase? We think its because people were done with Ichi after playing 50 build in levels. Nobody is going to play 10.000 user created levels, let alone 100. Ichis retention wasnt high enough.
Getting a lot of players, quickly
A few months after the release of Ichi sales were basically dead. We were making about $15 a day, which didnt get us one step closer to world domination anytime soon. So we had to do something. Instead of letting our game die we looked at free app of the day deals. The first free app of the day deal we did was Free App A Day (FAAD). In one day Ichi was downloaded 130.000 times. We were blown away by this number. After this we contacted Amazon USA if they could feature us. They loved Ichi and featured it as their free app of the day. After that, Amazon Europe featured Ichi as well. AppEvent did the same, resulting in another 30.000 downloads from mostly the Netherlands
Ichi featured in the Amazon AppStore
Free app of the day promotions are great. Unfortunately it is unlikely that your app will become super popular once the promotion is over. We earned only $80 from the days after the FAAD promotion. But still it is better than nothing. One good tactic might be to get a lot of downloads using these promotions and then switch to a freemium model. You will have hundreds of thousands of players who will generate revenue though ads and/or in app purchases.
Critically, Ichi is a great success. Weve gotten wonderful reviews and players seem to love the game. But commercially the game hasnt done that well. We barely broke even on the development costs. Most of the revenue came from the Mac version, mainly due to the feature by Apple. iOS came in second, revenue-wise. The Android, PC and Linux versions didnt make more than a few hundred dollars. Despite all of this we feel that Ichi was worth our time, it was great developing it and we delivered something were proud of.
Early 2011, everyone at Stolen Couch Games was still in school developing our exam year project Kids vs Goblins. Jay van Hutten, a fellow year mate, was developing a game of his own called Ichi. It was a elegant puzzle game that utilized a one-button mechanic in a way that didnt feel gimmicky. The goal of the game was to guide a ball past a number of rings on the screen. By touching the screen you rotate bumpers, which caused the ball to change in direction. You could also hold your finger down to draw a line, once the ball hit the line it would travel back in the direction it came from.
About a half year later we spoke to Jay at a congress were he was demoing his game. I (Eric) shared my interesting in redeveloping Ichi for multiple platforms and making it a really great commercial product. Jay loved the idea and the day we finished Kids vs Goblins we were working together to make a bigger and better version of Ichi.
No developers were harmed during the making of this game
Redeveloping a game is nothing new to us. Stolen Couch Games actually started in 2010 when we got an assignment from Zoë Mode to create a multiplayer version of their hit game Chime. The multiplayer demo we made eventually led Zoë Mode to develop Chime Super Deluxe, which featured some nice multiplayer modes. While the programmers were re-creating Ichi in Unity, Jay and I were designing new features to add to the game. Because the core of Ichi was so sound, it wasnt hard to come up with dozens of new puzzle ideas to make the game better. The final product had teleporters, splitters to create multiple balls, objects that could disappear and a few more things. Nothing too fancy, but it all worked great. The best thing we added was the level editor that allowed players to create their own levels and share them online. Since then, 11,000 levels have been shared, quite a bit more than the 50 levels we originally included with the game. Ichi launched in June, after 3 months of development, which went mostly smoothly. The actual problems started right after we launched the game.
Getting featured
We knew that many people would consider Ichi as just another puzzle game, so we had to let people know how special the game really is. We spent about a week contacting the press about our game and we got a nice amount of coverage. But press alone wont make your game a hit. If you read any guide on marketing for mobile games you always get to the point were the importance of getting a feature by Apple/Amazon/Google is expressed. We already got a feature on the Mac app store for our first game, but our published arranged that. We didnt have a direct contact within Apple, so we had to come up with a way to contact them.
Luckily we had a few device IDs that belonged to Apple employees on our Testflight account. So we found out the matching email addresses and we send separate emails to every one of them. 2 of them, responsible for the iOS AppStore, loved the game and showed the game to the rest of the team. Our contact from the Mac AppStore was in love with the game. We Skyped for a few hours and everything was set.
Ichi was Apples Editors Choice for a week on the Mac AppStore and on iOS we were bumped to the new and noteworthy category and we got a small banner in the games section.
Weve seen developers doing no marketing at all for their games because they believe theyre games will sell themselves. This is mentality is wrong. Just look at the top grossing games on iOS. Almost all of them spend enormous amount of time and money on marketing. Only by spending time and money, will you actually earn money.
Mayday, mayday!
The launch of Ichi went great. We were selling thousands of units a day and those numbers were actually increasing the days after the launch. But than something went wrong. Suddenly the game would crash once it has launched. This had never happened in any of our tests before. Why did the game crash all of a sudden? It turned out that the firewall at our server provider, which hosted the user created levels, was malfunctioning. Since we had never encountered this before we werent prepared for this. As you can imagine we were pissed off, but the gamers were even more pissed off. The 1-star ratings were poring in, so we had to work quickly. Within a day we made a quick patch that made the game run again. We submitted it and Apple was kind enough to approve it in record time. But the harm was done. The sales momentum the game had was gone. Sales plummeted because of the bad reviews. Instead of getting thousands of sales at $4.99 a piece we were down to hundreds.
The lessons we learned from this is that you should be prepared for something you cant predict or test. We expected our server to send just numbers to the game, instead it was sending lines of random code. For our next games were making sure that the game handles these rare cases the correct way. One day of extra development time is better than losing thousands of dollars in revenue.
Monetizing
We wanted to use in-app purchases in the game to earn some extra revenue post-launch. We were thinking of putting an in-app purchase on the level editor. So if you wanted to make your own levels you had to pay a dollar extra. But we opted against this because the editor would generate content for the game. Content is important so we couldnt make the overall package weaker to earn some money. Instead we asked for an in-app purchase when the player played more than 10 user-created levels. We guessed that only 5% of the players might create a level and 70% would play user created levels. More people means more revenue. Unfortunately this tactic didnt work.
We launched the game with 50 built-in levels and player could play 10 user created levels for free. At the end of 2012 only 300 people out of 400.000 bought the in app purchase, an insanely low percentage. Why did almost no-one buy the in app purchase? We think its because people were done with Ichi after playing 50 build in levels. Nobody is going to play 10.000 user created levels, let alone 100. Ichis retention wasnt high enough.
Getting a lot of players, quickly
A few months after the release of Ichi sales were basically dead. We were making about $15 a day, which didnt get us one step closer to world domination anytime soon. So we had to do something. Instead of letting our game die we looked at free app of the day deals. The first free app of the day deal we did was Free App A Day (FAAD). In one day Ichi was downloaded 130.000 times. We were blown away by this number. After this we contacted Amazon USA if they could feature us. They loved Ichi and featured it as their free app of the day. After that, Amazon Europe featured Ichi as well. AppEvent did the same, resulting in another 30.000 downloads from mostly the Netherlands
Ichi featured in the Amazon AppStore
Free app of the day promotions are great. Unfortunately it is unlikely that your app will become super popular once the promotion is over. We earned only $80 from the days after the FAAD promotion. But still it is better than nothing. One good tactic might be to get a lot of downloads using these promotions and then switch to a freemium model. You will have hundreds of thousands of players who will generate revenue though ads and/or in app purchases.
Critically, Ichi is a great success. Weve gotten wonderful reviews and players seem to love the game. But commercially the game hasnt done that well. We barely broke even on the development costs. Most of the revenue came from the Mac version, mainly due to the feature by Apple. iOS came in second, revenue-wise. The Android, PC and Linux versions didnt make more than a few hundred dollars. Despite all of this we feel that Ichi was worth our time, it was great developing it and we delivered something were proud of.
A good postmortem...great job going the extra mile to get yourself featured!
It's a little shocking that you didn't make a ton of profit, considering the apparent 270,000 copies sold, but percentages and all that.
Thanks for the feedback!! Yeah, that's what my Twitter bros said... I have updated!
It now has the rotor and skid overlapping and that looks rad! I also boosted the saturation by 60% for eye-dribbling effect.
I tested on iPad and my Galaxy S2. I manually did all the resolutions in Photoshop, so they all have nice anti-aliasing...
Tested on device, (ignore jpeg fuzz, not present IRL)...
And here's my Greenlight branding image...
So many assets to make! And I've started a "metadata" document, with one-line descriptions, one-paragraph, company history/story... So much to do!!
Dynamite Shikoku
Congratulations, you really deserve it!
I lack the skills currently but can someone, ANYONE get these game on Steam via Greenlight? I won't even charge you for the concept:
Bomberman x Four Swords x Diablo: A competitive multiplayer affair that starts up to 4 players in different regions of the map. It wouldn't be single screen like bomberman but maybe a few screens as to give you room to run away for the diablo-esque abilities that you level up as you play. There would be pathways blocked off by rocks that you need to blow up via bombs or other objects that you could pick up and throw out of the way (or at opposing players). The game of course would be top down 2d like bomberman or zelda. It would feature a cast of balanced characters that would have a basic ability unlock system.
Wild Guns x Point Blank:
Take this:
and mix it with this:
it would be the most awesome mash up of side scrolling shooter + light gun game + shooting gallery game ever.
Thank me later!
Sure, I've got a few minutes on my lunch break.
Are you, like, for real?
A very interesting read, thank you for writing that. Too bad the game didn't meet your sales expectations :c
Seems a bit too bright/oversaturated for my tastes. Also, the horrible, horrible JPEG compression is very apparent.
Sorry... I have the deepest amount of respect for indie devs and support as many as I am financially able. I'm just currently overly caffeinated and feeling nostalgic for some of my favorite games.
Won't happen again
Our Ichi Post mortem:
Early 2011, everyone at Stolen Couch Games was still in school developing our exam year project Kids vs Goblins. Jay van Hutten, a fellow year mate, was developing a game of his own called Ichi. It was a elegant puzzle game that utilized a one-button mechanic in a way that didnt feel gimmicky. The goal of the game was to guide a ball past a number of rings on the screen. By touching the screen you rotate bumpers, which caused the ball to change in direction. You could also hold your finger down to draw a line, once the ball hit the line it would travel back in the direction it came from.
About a half year later we spoke to Jay at a congress were he was demoing his game. I (Eric) shared my interesting in redeveloping Ichi for multiple platforms and making it a really great commercial product. Jay loved the idea and the day we finished Kids vs Goblins we were working together to make a bigger and better version of Ichi.
No developers were harmed during the making of this game
Redeveloping a game is nothing new to us. Stolen Couch Games actually started in 2010 when we got an assignment from Zoë Mode to create a multiplayer version of their hit game Chime. The multiplayer demo we made eventually led Zoë Mode to develop Chime Super Deluxe, which featured some nice multiplayer modes. While the programmers were re-creating Ichi in Unity, Jay and I were designing new features to add to the game. Because the core of Ichi was so sound, it wasnt hard to come up with dozens of new puzzle ideas to make the game better. The final product had teleporters, splitters to create multiple balls, objects that could disappear and a few more things. Nothing too fancy, but it all worked great. The best thing we added was the level editor that allowed players to create their own levels and share them online. Since then, 11,000 levels have been shared, quite a bit more than the 50 levels we originally included with the game. Ichi launched in June, after 3 months of development, which went mostly smoothly. The actual problems started right after we launched the game.
Getting featured
We knew that many people would consider Ichi as just another puzzle game, so we had to let people know how special the game really is. We spent about a week contacting the press about our game and we got a nice amount of coverage. But press alone wont make your game a hit. If you read any guide on marketing for mobile games you always get to the point were the importance of getting a feature by Apple/Amazon/Google is expressed. We already got a feature on the Mac app store for our first game, but our published arranged that. We didnt have a direct contact within Apple, so we had to come up with a way to contact them.
Luckily we had a few device IDs that belonged to Apple employees on our Testflight account. So we found out the matching email addresses and we send separate emails to every one of them. 2 of them, responsible for the iOS AppStore, loved the game and showed the game to the rest of the team. Our contact from the Mac AppStore was in love with the game. We Skyped for a few hours and everything was set.
Ichi was Apples Editors Choice for a week on the Mac AppStore and on iOS we were bumped to the new and noteworthy category and we got a small banner in the games section.
Weve seen developers doing no marketing at all for their games because they believe theyre games will sell themselves. This is mentality is wrong. Just look at the top grossing games on iOS. Almost all of them spend enormous amount of time and money on marketing. Only by spending time and money, will you actually earn money.
Mayday, mayday!
The launch of Ichi went great. We were selling thousands of units a day and those numbers were actually increasing the days after the launch. But than something went wrong. Suddenly the game would crash once it has launched. This had never happened in any of our tests before. Why did the game crash all of a sudden? It turned out that the firewall at our server provider, which hosted the user created levels, was malfunctioning. Since we had never encountered this before we werent prepared for this. As you can imagine we were pissed off, but the gamers were even more pissed off. The 1-star ratings were poring in, so we had to work quickly. Within a day we made a quick patch that made the game run again. We submitted it and Apple was kind enough to approve it in record time. But the harm was done. The sales momentum the game had was gone. Sales plummeted because of the bad reviews. Instead of getting thousands of sales at $4.99 a piece we were down to hundreds.
The lessons we learned from this is that you should be prepared for something you cant predict or test. We expected our server to send just numbers to the game, instead it was sending lines of random code. For our next games were making sure that the game handles these rare cases the correct way. One day of extra development time is better than losing thousands of dollars in revenue.
Monetizing
We wanted to use in-app purchases in the game to earn some extra revenue post-launch. We were thinking of putting an in-app purchase on the level editor. So if you wanted to make your own levels you had to pay a dollar extra. But we opted against this because the editor would generate content for the game. Content is important so we couldnt make the overall package weaker to earn some money. Instead we asked for an in-app purchase when the player played more than 10 user-created levels. We guessed that only 5% of the players might create a level and 70% would play user created levels. More people means more revenue. Unfortunately this tactic didnt work.
We launched the game with 50 built-in levels and player could play 10 user created levels for free. At the end of 2012 only 300 people out of 400.000 bought the in app purchase, an insanely low percentage. Why did almost no-one buy the in app purchase? We think its because people were done with Ichi after playing 50 build in levels. Nobody is going to play 10.000 user created levels, let alone 100. Ichis retention wasnt high enough.
Getting a lot of players, quickly
A few months after the release of Ichi sales were basically dead. We were making about $15 a day, which didnt get us one step closer to world domination anytime soon. So we had to do something. Instead of letting our game die we looked at free app of the day deals. The first free app of the day deal we did was Free App A Day (FAAD). In one day Ichi was downloaded 130.000 times. We were blown away by this number. After this we contacted Amazon USA if they could feature us. They loved Ichi and featured it as their free app of the day. After that, Amazon Europe featured Ichi as well. AppEvent did the same, resulting in another 30.000 downloads from mostly the Netherlands
Ichi featured in the Amazon AppStore
Free app of the day promotions are great. Unfortunately it is unlikely that your app will become super popular once the promotion is over. We earned only $80 from the days after the FAAD promotion. But still it is better than nothing. One good tactic might be to get a lot of downloads using these promotions and then switch to a freemium model. You will have hundreds of thousands of players who will generate revenue though ads and/or in app purchases.
Critically, Ichi is a great success. Weve gotten wonderful reviews and players seem to love the game. But commercially the game hasnt done that well. We barely broke even on the development costs. Most of the revenue came from the Mac version, mainly due to the feature by Apple. iOS came in second, revenue-wise. The Android, PC and Linux versions didnt make more than a few hundred dollars. Despite all of this we feel that Ichi was worth our time, it was great developing it and we delivered something were proud of.
400,000 is no small number for an indie puzzle game. How do you sell that many copies of a game and barely break even? I'm aware not every copy was at the full retail of $4.99, but 400,000+ and still barely breaking even seems amazing to me.
It looks like someone out there wants to help Indie developers get more attention..
http://www.double11.co.uk/blog/all
(Double Eleven made Little Big Planet Vita..)
http://www.double11.co.uk/blog/all
(Double Eleven made Little Big Planet Vita..)
It's okay; I don't think you meant anything by it.Sorry... I have the deepest amount of respect for indie devs and support as many as I am financially able. I'm just currently overly caffeinated and feeling nostalgic for some of my favorite games.
Won't happen again
For the record, I'd totally play the Diablo/Bomberman one. = D
Yeah, that's just in the version on Imgur I used to share it here. The source file is a PNG with no compression.
We "sell" A LOT of units when we're free for a day. It's pretty insane. If we turn our app to free we get 30.000 to 130.000 downloads within 24 hours. When the game is $1 we get 20 downloads a day.
People seem to really like Ichi, but the game just doesn't sell that well.
Have you tried charging more to see if that makes a difference? If not, then that's more money!
We change our price from time to time. Not much effect on overall revenue.Have you tried charging more to see if that makes a difference? If not, then that's more money!
So, I've been reading a lot of good stuff about Construct 2 and as it happens, it's just been added to Steam today with a 15% discount...
Do you guys think an 8-bit Mega Man style is doable in Construct? Or should I just stick with GameMaker Studio, which was my original pick?
Do you guys think an 8-bit Mega Man style is doable in Construct? Or should I just stick with GameMaker Studio, which was my original pick?
This is quite close to what I'm doing, except it's more Binding of Isaac than Diablo. It's going slowly, but I won't drop it, so I'll let you know when I release it, probably 2017 or so lol
You should have no problem doing it in either.
Construct IIRC is very similar to clickteam's stuff (GamesFactory, Multimedia Fusion, etc)
it was practically made for games like Mega Man.
When it was first released andrex did a quick protype with platforms using a megaman sprite in like a few hours or something. I played around with it and its really easy to to 2d stuff in.
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