Would like to add in a couple of my thoughts as well. When I first saw the game, I thought it would be a piece of cake. The screenshots scream 'scrabble + solitaire' and being a rather experienced player of both Scrabble and Solitaire, I thought I would be up for an easy fix. Went into my first game with some decent points and was edging close to my opponent's score. I thought it wasn't that bad for my first game but when I 'finished' the game, my opponent logged almost twice my score. That's when I thought I'm missing something important and true to that, I'm missing THE BaliFied. As per my usual routine, I scan through every game's tutorial and I did the same thing with this (wasn't a good idea). Turns out it isn't as simple as Scrabble + Solitaire. It is much more than that, and it takes some clever planning and strategy to break the leaderboard. Having a deck full of words when you finish the game MULTIPLIES your eventual score. And it isn't easy to do so. You have to start saving words at the right time, you have to make sure that the words aren't capable of being stolen , and you have to be aware of the possible benefits that the power-ups can offer to you. These are what makes the game interesting, and much more absorbing. Two of my mostly used power-ups are the Eye of God and the Call of God, both of which are essential in ensuring a full deck finish. Using the Eye of God to to check for remaining words in order to plan for upcoming moves, and the Call of God to help you in times of dire need when you're missing out on THAT special word for a complete BaliFied. Combination of which makes the game much more unpredictable and engaging. Addition of different power-ups can be interesting, and perhaps even a timed mode where a game has to be completed within a time limit would be cool (though it may become quite a mess!). All in all, I'd say it is by far one of the better word games out in the AppStore and a quick go-to fix between free times! ++ Oh and Happy belated birthday to your daughter!
This is one of the best and challenging word game I've ever played. Very cute design, nice animations and great tutorial. The game has very unique gameplay where you should think one step further if you want to win the game and multiply all your points. You should not only build the longest word but also try to stole words from your opponent and build a new one. And it's really hard to do. That's why the game is really addictive. I'm pretty sure after official launch the game will be a huge success. Great work, guys!
DrPixel , KoOne23, creeps: Thank you so much for being part of our beta test team and for the very detailed reviews! To hear you guys enjoy our game this much really makes us all extremely happy and super proud! Thanks again, hopefully the global launch will go just as well as the soft-launch or even better And thanks for the birthday wishes KoOne23, she was a very happy 3 year old with her Peppa Pig party
Fun fact of the day: All backgrounds in the game are based on real places that you can find around the island of Bali. This one for example is one of the many absolutely stunning rice field terraces that Bali has to offer:
Forgot to reply to your suggestion earlier and we 100% agree that a single player mode would be nice! We are working on it and will add it in the future. At the moment we just submitted version 1.2 that contains bug fixes, improvements and new features that players from the soft launch wanted, but single player mode will take a bit longer since it's a huge thing. Originally we wanted to have a fast mode as well as a normal mode. The fast mode would be 2 minutes max for each move, but unfortunately we could not get it to work in a proper way, so we decided to postpone it for now. But we still very much would like to add a fast mode in the future, since there is nothing more fun than playing back and forward in a fast pace! We also are thinking about removing the "Shield of God" power up since it's not very useful, and hardly ever used by players. When we do so we will replace it with a new one. So if any of you beta testers have an idea of what a cool power up would be, please go ahead and share your ideas here!! Thanks again everyone
Actually, one power up I would love is the chance to start a word with an opponent's letter. Either by swapping cards with your opponent, or being able to put one of theirs in one of your spaces.
Fantastic idea!! Thanks a lot for sharing, we really appreciate it # Your idea is awesome and might just make it into the game Another power up we were brainstorming about yesterday is one we at the moment call "Super Charge". Player would only be able to use this power up once in a match. When they use it one of their 7 starting letters would randomly be "supercharged" and be worth 6-7 points. This could only be used on letters that still are available, not on ones that already are saved in a word. Since player don't know exactly which card it would be used on its s bit risky to use it when they still have 7 loose letters, but rewards would be huge if they also have a Bali card showing at the same time... Thanks again for the feedback, really appreciate it! Keep the brainstorming going
That's not a bad idea, the risk factor would make it interesting. What about the ability to unlock a bunch of different ones and you get to choose 3 to take with you into a game? You could do "card game" themes like Ace letters that are worth more, or a power up that places suits on the letter cards and you can make a word combined with a poker hand for more points.
Awesome ideas!!! Thank you so much for the help brainstorming New version is available in TestFlight again, so let's get another game going
One other suggestion, not sure how hard this is to implement, but is it possible to have the cards glow for submission only when it is a real word? It would be nice to know right away that what you are trying to make isn't valid. Just a thought, but not a big deal.
Funny thing, we actually had a feature like this in the beginning of the development process! We had it so that the 'submit' button would only appear if it was a valid word. But as the game grew, the animations started to lag a bit since it have to check the dictionary for every single letter to see if it's a valid word. So we decided to scrap it.... And to be honest I like it better like it is now, it's too easy if it shows exactly which words that are valid byt just placing them
Fantastic news! BaliFied just got featured on the best positions in Word game and Card game category, for both iPhone & iPad in the Dutch and Swedish App Stores
Ok everyone, last week of the competition has now begun! http://forums.toucharcade.com/showthread.php?t=288599 We have already given away $525 worth of prizes the first 3 weeks of June, but there still is $175 up for grabs this final week! Give it a go, it actually is very good odds for you to win since there aren't a whole lot of competitors... Good luck and hope to see some new players
The monkey mascot of the game is called ULU, and got his name from a beautiful place in Bali called ULUWATU. My wife who I run Dragon Game Studio with and I got got married there in 2011.
First I like playing scrabbles but not on electronics. I tried a few apps but couldn't enjoy it much. A friend told me about BaliFied and about the competition so I thought why not give it a try. In the first game I terrible sucked I didn't know that it wasn't the typical scrabbles. Thanks to the chat Jonas told me about the details and it became quite fun. First I liked the idea that you can use and even steal other people's cards. And I really like the idea that the person can play whenever he wants. You'll get s notification and you can play it. I though have some suggestion. The tutorial wasn't very good for me. It maybe wrong on my side but I think I didn't know about using other people's cards so I think it could be improved. Right now I'm really enjoying it. Also glad I could help you with the bug.
Thanks a lot for your kind words and input about the game, really appreciate it good to hear you like it even though it indeed does take some getting used to since it's such a big difference compared to the "other" word games And thanks for the heads up about not knowing that you could use opponents cards. In the playable tutorial we now show how to use opponents cards once, but maybe we should change it to a bit more
Happy Friday everyone! If you are interested in watching the full tutorial, you can see a video recording of it here: Subscribe to the TouchArcade YouTube channel
