Tag: indydev

Minigames Universe post release

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The Good:

I like the gameplay diversity and use of vibration and accelerometers. I think most games don’t utilize those things nearly enough. Using the accelerometers add a lot to the gameplay, it allows much more variety to the usual swipe and poke.

Though subtle, I think the vibration adds a little to the game.  I actually can’t think of any mobile games that use vibration. Consoles use it and it can add a lot. The only reason I can think of to keep it out is users might think it a notification and not know it is part of the game. Some cheap tablets don’t even have vibration.

Each “minigame” is different from the next and has different gameplay mechanics. With that said, I could of made a separate game with almost each minigame. Every game required compartmentalized gameplay and graphics.

I did everything myself and didn’t buy anything or reuse someones assets  with very rare exceptions. I think  that makes the game much more unique.

The bad:
I  got a digital tablet about half way through and I already wasn’t a very good artist before. So some of the artwork isn’t very consistent. At  times there is  low quality pixel art and other times it’s higher quality stuff I did by hand.

It took about a year to get it to the form it’s in now. While it’s not completely terrible I feel if I were to start making the same game now it would be much better and done in less time. Of course over that year I gathered all the skills it took to make it.

I had to take a bunch of stuff out because it wouldn’t work with some devices. Some cheap/old tablets would have the sensors reversed or they wouldn’t work at all.

The ugly

Got suspended from adMob

I lost my keystore file and had to make a new game listing. it wasn’t a total travesty because it was only in beta, but it was still a bummer.The game wasn’t ready and I accidentally pushed it live from beta It turned out to be a good thing because it had me scrambling to get it fixed. Who knows how long I would of taken trying to get it “perfect”.

The game doesn’t show up at all on the play store unless you search for it exactly, and what’s the point of that? I paid for a service from Fiverr that researches keywords and writes/rewrites your description for the play store to boost the ranking. The service itself was $25 and it takes up to 5 days for the service and up to another 8 weeks for results to show. So who knows if it will actually work.

Amazon android store

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I uploaded the game to the Amazon Android store.

I uploaded it in the afternoon and by the time I woke up it had already been “reviewed” and went live. From what I can tell it gets virtually tested on a number of different devices and all the Amazon devices.

A few fire tv devices got excluded, I think that’s because they don’t have motion sensors. Which is good because I don’t want to get reviews saying the game doesn’t work.

I’m still improving the game and trying to get more people to play. I’ve learned a lot already though for my next game.

Day 2

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So I’m one day out from the accidental release. The problem I’m having is visibility. The only way to get the page seen seems to  be by linking the game directly to people or typing the exact name in. I think if I would have done more advertising and I was established this wouldn’t be as much of a problem. As it stands the game doesn’t show up at all in the play store search. No one can play it if they don’t know about it. My ultimate goal is to have it be the top result when searched. Being on the front page would be huge. I’m learning SEO and marketing on the fly and I’m throwing out tags left and right.

I’m trying to get people playing it to get reviews in. Even bad reviews would be nice so I could get feedback. I got one of my friends to play it so I’m going to go over with pen and paper to take notes.

The screen recording app I used left stuttering in the video which looks terrible in the trailer. It makes it look like the game isn’t optimized well. My phone is “old” so maybe if i record in 720p it will perform better.

Play here now

Minigames Universe released!

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So I released my first game today(on accident). I’m both excited and nervous. After 8 months It’s finally out to for the world to see. I’m hopeful but I don’t expect too much because everyone always says that the your first game is never successful.

It took about 8 months to start and release but a couple months of that I was just sitting on it and making tiny changes and working on the company itself. I had a game before this one that took about a year to make and I didn’t even finish. It’s just collecting dust. I’m thinking I can drastically reduce the time it takes to pump out games, maybe bring it down to a month or 2.

I didn’t even plan on releasing Minigames Universe now but I accidentally took it out of beta and put it into production.(whoops)

Some things I’ve learned are:

1.Start the game with barebones features and add them in later. If you get bored down the line and don’t want to work on it anymore it’s easier to release it with a couple features than it is to try and mush together a bunch of unfinished features.

2.Start advertising right away.  Tweet everything, make gameplay videos. Do anything to get your game/brand out. My mistake was waiting until the very last minute.

3. Backup EVERYTHING. I had everything backed up and I reinstalled my OS. Lo and behold I missed one thing.. the keystore file. Without the keystore It’s impossible to update the app on the playstore so I had to create a new playstore listing and delete the old one. Luckily It was only in beta so I didn’t lose too much.

4. If you have a good idea, prototype it first. It’s much easier spend a little time protyping  to see if an idea sucks than it is to spend months working on it just to find out you wasted all those manhours

5.Pre-plan ad placement. Instead of making the game first then putting ads in at the end, plan to make ads part of the game so their not thrown in to make them feel more natural and organic

 

Get it here!

Starting a Game Company

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So you want to start a game company and you think you have what it takes?  Great! I will be going over just some of the skills involved.

Assuming you are starting from scratch(like me) and you are planning on being a one person dev team, here are some many jobs that go into making just one game:

  • Programmer
  • Graphical artist
  • Audio engineer
  • Game design
  • Level design
  • Producer

And that’s just to name a few. That’s a LOT of work to put in for just one person and one game. There are also other things involved many might not consider:

  • Social media
  • Accounting
  • Advertising
  • Web design, web hosting, SEO,ETC.
  • Setting company up/legal info

Every one of these categories one could spend hours upon hours upon hours in a rabbit of of research and work. For example, to set up this website I had to buy a domain, pay for web hosting, learn how to set all of it up, learn WordPress and set it up. Just the website alone could be a full time job by itself, but It’s just one small aspect of the company for me right now. Once I start bringing in money I can probably afford to pay other people to do the work for me(if I choose). As of right most of my skills aren’t where I want them to be(this site included) but they are already much better than they were even a year ago.  I believe it’s a “jack of all trades, master of none” deal, But I honestly believe will make me a valuable asset now/in the future.

One good thing about all the work involved is that if i get burned out one one aspect of the company, I can switch gears and work on something else. There are a lot of things involved that I can obsess over. For example, if I get tired of trying to perfect the UI, I can get on the website and try  and figure out how to get more than -7 people a day to view it. I like the freedom involved knowing I can work on what I choose. So far the extra work seems worth it.

I’m not trying to discourage anyone to try their hand at game making, just trying to give a realistic view. That being said, this is a great time to be in the “game” (heh). Most things you will have to learn already have established communities meaning there are plenty of people wanting to help you through your problems.  I am always amazed that how weird or obscure my problem seems to be, I can almost always find a solution by making a quick google search. And if I can’t find what I need, asking a question in my community of choice will land me a quick solution.

While I currently feel pretty burdened with everything involved in creating a company I think it will get much easier because one only has to start a company once and overcome the hurdles involved once. After that, it’s just using the knowledge already gained.