Way back in April we checked out the trailer and a call for beta testers for an upcoming multiplayer competitive platforming game called Planet Runners. Beta testing had been ongoing for most of the time after that, but developer Happy Doze did take a brief hiatus and in that time released the extremely cool side project Bit Quake ($2.99) back in September. Now it’s once again full steam ahead with Planet Runners, and the latest turn of events is that the game has officially soft-launched in various App Stores around the world.
If you are physically in or you just have an iTunes account in Australia, Canada, Germany, New Zealand, Philippines, Sweden, or the United Kingdom then you too can be a proud downloader of Planet Runners by clicking this link right here. If you’re not in any of those territories then don’t worry, it sounds like this will be a pretty brief soft launch period and Happy Doze expects the worldwide launch to happen “in the upcoming weeks" so you won’t have too long to wait. If you do check out the soft launch of Planet Runners, be sure to stop by the discussion thread in our forums and leave your thoughts about it.
Hi all! This is Burç from Happy Doze. We’re currently experiencing a unique problem with App Store indexing and Apple has been trying to resolve the issue for the past two days. The problem is: if you search for “Planet Runners” on the App Store with a device running iOS 12.0 or newer, it does not come up in the search results. What you can do is to go here: https://itunes.apple.com/us... or just search for our previously released title “BIT QUAKE” and you’ll be able to find Planet Runners by clicking on “Burc Tuncer (Developer)” to list all of our releases.
This is of course practically a nightmare for us since it’s an error completely on Apple’s side and it basically ruined our soft-launch. As of last month, Apple announced that at least 63% of the iOS 12 compatible devices are in fact running iOS 12. What this means is, at least 63% of our (already very tiny) marketing budget for the currently running ad campaigns, analytical data and priceless press coverage is being wasted. This is the worst launch imaginable and can easily ruin a whole career. Especially if you’re an indie developer and do not have the funds and/or power of a AAA development company. In other words, if you have only one bullet left to shoot.
Thanks for your patience and keep following us for the updates.