So what is going on? It's been too long between updates. So what am I doing anyways and what is taking so long? Lots. Most recently I decided to rework the tutorial entirely (for the 4th time). Older iterations were just too long, both in duration and content. The rhyming tutorial, though fun and clever, does not keep the players attention and takes too long to get to the basic mechanics of gameplay and because it was incorporated into gameplay itself, it was very easy for players to become distracted with the other aspects of the game and miss steps in the tutorial entirely. Five days ago was 'back to the drawing board', scrap everything with the current tutorial and take an entirely new approach. Inspiration come for me in the waking hours and the ultra-simple solution hit me like a pickax between the eyes. Within a few hours the framework for the new tutorial was complete and within a few days, the steps were complete. The new tutorial is now so simple and uses almost no words. Each step is intuitive, fun and builds upon the previous step. There are 12 steps, with each step taking roughly a second or two to complete. Each step demonstrating a core gameplay mechanic (i.e., slide, break, swap, mine, match, unlock, chisel, pick). It passes the 2-year-old test (my littlest can get through the tutorial!). It's great, and I feel very confident that anyone can learn to play Gnomium in 20 seconds. Here is a breakdown of what is new and what is being fiercely worked on in the Pocket Edition of Gnomium. New Features: Timed Tile Pool. So each game starts with a fixed number of tiles (500). These tiles are used to fill the grid every time new tiles need to be added, so the tile-pool count will decrease. Also, the tile-pool decreases automatically 1 tile/second. This is a hybrid of the purely time and tile based play modes. Timed mode was too much pressure, and purely tiles based mode was too little. This mix of both feels good to me as the game can be played quickly or slowly because there are plenty of tiles which mean plenty of time. Once tiles are exhausted, a timer displays giving the player a limited amount of time to acquire more tiles or the game will end. Acquiring more tiles. There are a number of ways to acquire more tiles and this can be managed well if played skillfully. 1) The stone ore produced when using Picks and Chisels on stone tiles and word groups now produces new tiles. 2) Opening a treasure chest rewards 200+ new tiles. 3) Tapping a gem twice will cause the gem to spin and convert into new tiles. This last one is helpful in cases where tiles are low and gem I don't currently need can be exchanged for tiles. There is actually a lot of strategy involved here. Mushrooms multiply the value of word-groups they destroy. Blue does 2x, purple does 3x and orange does 4x. This can be strategically used. Lucky tiles. A lucky tile is a clover that attaches to an existing tile, turning it green. when a lucky tile is broken the player is rewarded a number of in-game gold (small coins that drop out of the tile) and the clover hovers and attaches itself to another tile. The player has the option to purchase a lucky tile before starting a game or can see them in use when wearing the Shamrock (Clover) hat. Recurring multiplier tile. This recurring 2x multiplier tile (with a star) behaves like the lucky tile in that the star re-attaches itself to a new tile whenever the tile it is currently attached to is destroyed. The player has the option to purchase this tile before playing a game. Wand. The wand can be used to fill empty cells in the grid. When it is tapped, if there are empty cells in the grid, they are automatically filled with new tiles with a high probability of special tiles. These tiles do not come from the game's tile-pool. Wand can be found only when the wizards hat is being worn Star wand. When the star wand is used, empty spaces are filled with copper coins. This can be a very powerful way to get high-level gems if used properly. This wand only has a single use and can only be purchased before a game begins, and it's expensive. Bucket-o-gold. This bucket converts certain amounts of ore that it collects into in-game gold coins (spits them out). It has a max capacity of 1000 ore. This can only be purchased by the user before a game. Bucket-o-tiles. This bucket converts precious ore (copper, silver, gold) into new tiles added to the players tile pool. 1000 ore capacity, only purchasable before the game. Copper, Silver and Gold mushrooms. These mushrooms serve as a proxy copper, silver or gold coin. They have 20 uses by default. These can be purchased before the game. New Gifts. Every 90 seconds or so, a gift will drop into the grid for 10 seconds, allowing the player to open it if they please. If they open it they are given the option to watch an Ad for the free gift. The gifts and their effects are listed below: Copper, Silver and Gold Chisels and Pickaxes. The Chisels have 5 uses and convert whatever tiles the chisel is used on into a copper, silver or gold coin respectively. The pickaxes have one use and convert the target stone word-group to all copper, silver or gold coins. The pickax can be a very powerful way to generate gems quickly if used properly. Shamrock (Clover) Hat. A 30 second hat that add a random number of lucky tiles to the grid. These lucky tiles disappear when the had expires. Wizards hat. A 30 second hat the adds a probability to get a wand whenever an ore-yielding word-group is broken. Miners hat. A 30 second hat the causes all ore-yielding word-groups to yield 4x the normal ore (the gnome just fly's every where, very funny). Also an increased chance to find chisels and pickaxes when word-groups are broken. Mushroom hat. A 30 second hat the causes a high probability for new tiles to be explosive tiles and also a higher probability for 2x multiplier tiles. The tile-pool is locked when this hat is being worn. Watch the game just play itself. Snail hat. A 30 second hat that causes a snail shell to come out of every broken ore-yielding word-group. Snail shells have a very short time-to-live (6 seconds). If 3 or more snail shells are matched in time, they will produce a copper mushroom. The tile-pool is locked when this hat is being worn. Crown. A 30 second hat that causes a 50% chance for new tiles to be multiplier tiles. Knight helm. A 30 second hat. When this hat is worn, tap any 2 identical unused letter tiles (A and A for example) and the two tiles will be converted to new coins. The higher the value of the tiles the better the coins (vowels yield copper coins for example, and q's and j's yield gold coins etc..) Issues: There is a weird texture issue with the photo display after the game. Though you may not see this because of the next issue. The cloud server Unity build is using a non-patched version of Unity which causes the end-game screen not to show after a game, but causes the title screen to appear instead, and a new game cannot be started, you have to restart the whole game. There is a Unity patch that fixes this, though it is not on the cloud build servers yet. Using the wand can cause the new tiles to look strange (no letters). There may be eye and mouth animation overlap pre/post game. If the gnome gets into a bored/sleepy mood or even an asleep mood, he does not snap out of it as easily as I'd like him to. Stone ore that moves up to the tile count in the upper left corner does not always trigger the collider when first entering. Names and descriptions for gifts are not displaying yet. Tile colors don't always revert properly when switching hats. Improvements/Implementations The opening of a chest is too underwhelming. Going to change this so that there is much more excitement and feels much more rewarding. Need to do more work on the Gnome's moods so that it all feels more natural. Implement the credit system. Better end-game screen, shows proper score, gold and number of chests opened. Enable Ads. Enable IAP, specifically the ability to have infinite credits and upgrade the grid size to 8x8. Enable photo sharing for the Gnome cam. Create the settings dialog and the features therein. Save the player data (gold, high scores etc..) Enable leader-boards. Music More SFX Performance improvements for mobile. Price out the cost of items that can be purchased with in-game gold. Roland is also reviewing all of the current artwork and if there should be any adjustments according to how Hats have been implemented (for example). Things are coming along quickly and we should see the game available for beta testing soon.
Close to Beta We're getting seriously close to beta. My list of TODOs and fixes is very short. Hang tight and I'll be posting more info within the next couple of days.
Crikey! Gotta love it when you spend a couple of hours filling out Apple's TestFlight beta submission form with all of the testing criteria, descriptions, features and carefully worded instructions only to have it disappear into oblivion as soon a I click 'next'. What happened? Not sure, but my submission is missing and the game submission progress has not changed. Oh well. Time to write it up again and re-submit. I should've learned from wiser council to never submit data from a web form with lengthy text fields without first copying the text elsewhere. Doh. Anyways, external beta is at the doors. I see people give away promo codes to jump into betas but haven't discovered where to do that yet in iTunes Connect. Do any of you other developers know if promo codes will be an option once a build gets accepted for 'external testing'? Seems like the simplest way to get people in and testing the app. Supposedly I can have up to 1000 external testers which I hope translates to 1000 promo codes that I can distribute to people so that they can download the app using TestFlight. Time to look up some FAQs.
From my limited test flight experience as a tester, usually you send out invites by email and then once you open it are given the option of installing. No codes were used, unless it was just for a free build of a finished game, but I am not a developer so I could be wrong. Very excited about this game man.
Thanks vectorarchitekt! Yes, it looks like I'll need to do something similar to what you're talking about. Have interested individuals send me their email and I'll add them to the list of external testers in iTunes Connect. It will then send them an email notification whenever there is a new build. Ok, awesome. I'll update the title of this thread and initial post when I know that the beta build has been approved by Apple and have people who are interested send me their info so that they can start testing. Woo!
Beta submitted for review Thanks TadipmanDJ8! Good news! Gnomium PE has officially been submitted for External Testing to Apple and currently has a 'waiting for beta app review' status. I should know the results within the next 24 hours and will post again here when the beta is available.
BETA is here! BETA Info (Nov. 2, 2015): Yes! We are finally in beta, now the real fun begins. If you are interested in playing, we'd love your feedback. The best way to get your email added to the TestFlight list is to send an email to me at [email protected]. What to test? This is the first public Beta release of Gnomium PE for iOS. It would be awesome if you could help test the following: Tutorial: - When you start Gnomium for the first time, you will be presented with a 13 step interactive tutorial that will take you through the basic actions you can perform while playing Gnomium. Test whether or not you are able to finish the tutorial. You will be shown the 'play' button when the tutorial finishes. - Were there are glitches in the tutorial that cause you to be unable to complete the tutorial? If so, which step(s)? - Were there any steps that were difficult to understand? If so, which and why? - What would you do to improve the tutorial (if anything)? Game Play: - Grid manipulation: Test all aspects of grid manipulation, i.e. slide rows/cols of tiles, slide words, left, right and up, swap tiles, break words. - Matching: match 3 or more of the same coins or gems. - Items: Use chisels and pickaxes on stone tiles/words. Blow up blue, purple and orange mushrooms for multiplier effects on affected words. Try purchasing and using boosts and try opening and using the items presented in the gift. - See how far you can get. I was able to open a Sapphire chest with the current build, but haven't spent a great deal of time doing extended testing. - What are the best aspects of gameplay and what could you suggest for improvement? Performance: - So far I have only been able to test Gnomium PE on an iPhone 6+ and an iPad 4. I would love to have the game tested for performace issues on a wider range of iOS devices. - Do you experience any noticeable frame-rate drops when playing the game and if so, when? - Were there any moments before or after the game in which the game appeared to freeze or lock up even if for a short moments? - Did the game crash on you at any point during gameplay? Known Issues: - Compression artifacts on the edges of images, especially on non-retina displays. This is an issue I am currently tracking down in Unity and may have something to do with the Sprite Packer. - Tapping the play button multiple tiles causes multiple treasure chests to drop into the grid. - Proper player gold count does not show up when going to the boosts screen after first loading the game. - Gnome eyes disappear when transitioning to/from a game sometimes. - Wearing a gifted hat when the game ends could cause some problems. - Matching a gem with a chest when the game timer is low does not reset the timer and the game could end prematurely. - Some strange grid pieces hanging in the air sometimes when the game ends. Features in the works: - Hook up in IAP - Additional SFX - Upgrade to Unity Pro, removal of 'Made with Unity' splash screen. - Hook up leaderboards - Hook up photo sharing. - Performance tuning.
Running smoothly on iOS 9.1, iPhone 6. I am still getting used to what I'm doing. So far lots of tapping and popping stuff.
Great to know! Thanks Vectorarchitekt. Yes it may take a few games to get the hang of it. As a general rule, if you're playing slowly you're thinking too hard I'm still adding a few tutorial-ish things to help explain a few things during the first game. Looking forward to more feedback!
I see what you're saying. though it is mainly a matching game that can go fast, it would be cool to have either a separate mode or one of those timed loot things that enable you to actually make words for points. I am not sure what you are planning for the "regular" addition (need to re-read the forum) but this version is great.
Yes, in a traditional sense, Gnomium is definitely more of a puzzle than word game, especially in the way it is played today. It is a puzzle game that uses words. However, it is not difficult to for me to tweak the gameplay mechanics in order to allow for additional kinds of play modes, and you are not the first to suggest a more straightforward traditional 'let me find the words' approach. The way I see it is thus (based on experience)-- most adults pick up the game and immediately see words and make a concentrated effort to find or create more words. This makes sense, and traditional word games have trained us that when I see a grid of letters, I should naturally try to find words. When the grid begins to find and link up words automatically, it comes as a surprise because this is not typical behavior for a word game. When children or teenagers play the game, they almost immediately see the game as a puzzle, and begin moving, breaking, swapping and re-arranging the words as puzzle pieces. It is soon discovered that when copper, silver or gold words are broken they produce coins which can be matched in order to achieve a specific goal (unlock the chest), and specific words don't really matter that much, especially to children. Granted, in many instances, trying to build upon or create words within a connected word-group in order to increase it's value is a viable strategy. I'll often do this when I know that adding a few more points to a word-group will push it to copper (20 or more points) or silver (55 points) or gold (120 points). Of course, I have to ask myself when I see my 4 year old or his friends play the game, when was the last time I saw a toddler play Scrabble, Boggle, Words with Friends, or any word game for that matter? Right. It dawned on me that Gnomium is a game that can be enjoyed by all ages. It is a puzzle game that 'uses' words and that if I tried to make it otherwise, it would loose it's charm to a wide demographic (children). Of course, as an adult, Gnomium is very enjoyable and can be very challenging. I'd like to hope that it's kind of ground-breaking in the genre. We will have to see.
You have hit upon an interesting mechanic for sure...it does mess with your brain the way you described, as most games like this are gems or blocks with different colors, so using words as a puzzle piece is definitely something different. I see what you're saying about it being enjoyed by various types of ages and people, without being locked into one genre. People who don't normally play "just a word game" or " just a match game" might like this. Really good idea man! The tutorial is nice and simple, a few games in and you get into the swing of it. I was thinking in terms of words...maybe a mode that is not timed necessarily so the player can slow down a little and pay more attention to the words so that they can play either way - take time to score points for large words while still matching the normal way? But honestly if you left the game as it is, it's great too. I did just start a new game and at one point no more letters appeared, and there was a ton of blank space with only a few random tiles. I couldn't move anything at all and had to quit it. Is that normal? The timer was at around 200 and just counted down while nothing else happened.
slewis7, either way is fine by me. vectorarchitekt, Thanks for your feedback, it is gold. I agree with your suggestion to have multiple play modes, especially an 'untimed mode' without pressure. I definitely have plans to expand this game with updates, including the introduction of new play modes based on feedback just like this. There is still a bug or two that can cause the grid to get into a strange unresponsive state like the one you mention. It's rare, but I'm actively tracking these down now. In the case where you encounter that problem again, press the settings (gear) icon and choose 'end this game' and you should be able to restart a new game without killing the app.
On the positive side, the graphics and frenetic feel of the game is great. There is a lot going on and it is exciting. On the negative side, The game play seems counter-intuitive (as discussed, the general expectation in word games is to make words) and after playing more then a dozen games, I still have little idea what I am doing. Frankly, while I want to love this, if I was not feeling an obligation as a tester, I would probably have quit playing after just a few games (particularly since the game is free to play) due to confusion. While the tutorial is clear and demonstrates the moves you can play, it fails to really explain how to play well. I am not sure how you could best accomplish this. Perhaps a less busy and simpler starting mode with tips could help (maybe make some of the bonus features unlock as you play since it can be overwhelming at first). I will continue to play and try to get a better handle on things so I can post more cogent suggestions.
Hi Chris, I played for quite a bit last night as well as this morning. First off, everything seems to be smooth on my iPhone 5S with 9.1. So I went through the tutorial and thought it was neat that you have it right in the main screen. However, as soon as I started playing, I was like, "wait a minute, what does the purple mushroom mean again?, etc." and I kind of felt like I wish the tutorial was on the main board so I could get better context of what was going on or maybe if there was a glossary of items? After playing for a bit, I admit that I had no idea what was going on. I was just tapping and swiping random stuff to get letters to disappear. Sometimes I would lose time and sometimes a bunch of red mushrooms would show up. After playing a few times and not quite understanding what I was doing, I went back to do the tutorial again, but all that shows up is a smiley face. Perhaps this is an error. So while it runs smoothly (no crashes yet), I am afraid I am bit lost. What should I be doing to get better scores? What should I not be doing? Is there a color of blocks that is worth more than others? I am going to keep at it! -Wicked
slewis. Thank you for the valuable feedback. All of this information is useful and I appreciate the honest and straightforward analysis. A few thoughts on the introduction. I've re-written/coded the tutorial several times and play-tested with friends and random strangers trying to focus on clearly defining the core mechanics without being too wordy or overly complicated or tiring. Coming up with an effective way to convey this all has been challenging, though I don't believe it should be, but there are likely several improvements that can be made. The real questions come down to 1. What is necessary for a player to know in order to get started? 2. What can be explained later (if necessary)? 3. What should be left to be discovered? For example. Here are the core concepts that I settled on that I felt were necessary in order for the player to get started (these are in the tutorial today, broken down into mechanics/actions and rules): - You can slide words/tiles. (mechanic) - You can swap any two unused tiles. (mechanic) - You can break words. (mechanic) - Breaking words with a value of 20 or more give you one or more coins. (rule) - You can slide coins (items) in the grid. (mechanic) - If you match 3 (or more) of the same coins in the grid, you will get a higher-level coin, i.e. copper->silver->gold (rule) - Matching 3 gold coins gives you a gem. (rule) - Matching 3 gems gives you higher tier gem. (rule) - Treasure chests can be opened when matched with the proper gem. (rule) - Treasure chests reward you with more tiles. (rule) - You can use a chisel to break stone tiles and earn more tiles. (mechanic/rule) - You can use a pickax to break stone words and earn more tiles. (mechanic/rule) - You can re-arrange tiles/items in grid by vertical and horizontal swiping. (mechanic) - You can double-tap any gem to exchange it for more tiles. (mechanic/rule) - There are 4 gem tiers, each containing 3 gems. Matching 3 of the same gem from one tier will yield a gem from the next tier. (rule) Non-specific but implied/derived rules in the tutorial: - Letter tiles have a value associated with them (in the lower right corner) - Words have a value reflecting the sum of the values of the tiles contained within the word Non-tutorial unspecified rules that can be deduced from gameplay - Words can run horizontally left-to-right or vertically up-to-down within the grid. - Words can bend right along the bottom edge and bend down along the right edge. - Any two perpendicular words that overlap will become connected and their total value will be the sum of their individiual values. - Word-groups that value 55 or more become silver. - Word-groups that value 125 or more become gold. Non-specific rules that should be discovered through gameplay - Mushrooms, their types, how they behave and how they can be used effectively. - Buckets. Actually, I have a lot more work to do on conveying what buckets do effectively. - Multi-matching mechanics - Wands. - Snail shells. The fact that you've played a dozen games and are still confused as to what you should be doing means that I have failed to convey the primary rules outlined in the tutorial above effectively. One thing I've learned for sure is that tutorials..the right tutorial for everyone is difficult to produce. Interactive tutorials appear to work best, but may be insufficient in conveying all of the rules. I am interested in know what is specifically confusing and would love to be able to help you play without confusion. I know from experience and those of many others that the game can be very rewarding and challenging for hours and has a very deep and strategic set of rules that can be used in a number of ways.
