I am indeed from the Netherlands! Great decision to go premium, takes a lot of guts and pride to do that. I really like the game, it has great depth and a lot of variety with all the boosts etc. Game Center is not working for me unfortunately. It does not register my scores and also my achievements have not registered. I pressed the game center button several times quit the app (?also in the background) but still do not see myself in gamecenter
Love this, this is definitely a company I want to get behind. I hope everyone will support you and download this game. We need more devs with this attitude on the AppStore. Good gameplay is what it is all about and it's not worth hurting that using a F2P model.
You need to be able to sum up the basic idea of the game in a few words. Don't expect people to click on a video to find out what it is about. The reality is that at a 2.99 price point, I think you are above the impulse buy threshold for most people. And it may absolutely be worth every penny or more, but you have to convince them to try it. When most people pick up a book, they are attracted by the cover or the spine. Then they flip over to the back, and if that looks good, they will usually open it up. Your cover is the app icon. Your App Store description is the back cover. The video is the inside in this analogy. The store description doesn't describe the gameplay at all. That's like a back cover saying a book is amazing without telling me what genre it is. Telling me a puzzle mechanic is new isn't helpful to me as a consumer because I don't know what the mechanic is. Likewise, telling me what the game isn't is not an incentive to buy.
Some good points. Although these days, getting people to read anything longer than 5-6 words is a challenge. But we need to cater better towards the video watchers and the readers, that's certainly true. I changed the first paragraph into this: BlastBall MAX is the ultimate challenge for puzzle fans, bringing you an ALL NEW puzzle mechanic. BlastBall's basic goal is making 5-in-a-row, but master the moving board and two specials abilities a blasted row spawns, and you'll uncover a puzzle game with gameplay depth unlike you've played before. New, better iTunes gameplay video's (with some text) are being created too. Even with the added text in the iTunes info, we know we've got a long way to go in getting people's attention. As at a glance, any 8x8 grid game is the same. And years of basic 'Match 3' or 'Connect one colour' gameplay made people forget that the same grid can be used for mechanics with far more gameplay. We know that we're only gonna get the small percentage of players that goes for stuff they don't know at first. The hopeful thing is, tests showed that most of those dedicated players keep playing BlastBall for a long time. And even value the game more, as they get deeper and deeper into it. Let's hope that group is big enough to make the the next block in the domino fall over
Since I have no idea what the game play entails, I'm gonna have to pass on this one. Kind of intrigued, but....pass.
Aaargh.. Where were the codes! Us old boys in the UK don't get many bites of the cherry! Looks well good anyway. Will an old 58 year old understand it?
It's not that difficult to understand. It's a match puzzle game but with the addition of sliding tile mechanics (think Threes!) and special balls that let you change the color or rotate the tiles. You can match yellow or purple balls in five or more groups in rows, columns, diagonals. You are given a new power up each day To help you slowly build up different strategies until you unlock them all for unlimited use. The fun of this game is figuring the gameplay out for yourself.
The over-use of the Free 2 Play model isn't the only thing that's bothering me What bothers me even more is that as a developer community, the fear of dropping out of the charts, never to re-surface, has put us in a state of perpetual 'sales'. Lots of new premium games that launched at 3$ or more, get some short lasting exposure and once it starts dropping in the chart, the developer panics and switches it to a 99 cent of FREE sale. By doing so (Monkube is guilty of it too, by the way, as we did exactly that with 6th Planet), we've kicked all early adopters in the crotch and practically taught them to stay on the fence until we put our apps on sale. And every dev who dropped to 99cent, made it harder for all new 3$ games that are just released. And we made the situation a lot worse. Well, Monkube is not planning to play that game any longer. BlastBall MAX will NEVER drop in price. I can't talk about the fix we have, but we've found a solution that works for us. Instead of being tempted by the Sales-monster, we're contemplating a rise in price, every time we do a big content update. So not only is it pointless to wait for a sale, early adopters get an actual break for once. People who stay on the fence too long, either don't get to play, or will have to pay more.
Rocketcat Games tried this with Wayward Souls, where the price was raised by a dollar with each content update. I think it's been successful for them; the game did get glowing notices everywhere and is obviously in a different genre than Blastball, though. Best of luck with the game. I'll be downloading it soon.
Maybe this helps: Subscribe to the TouchArcade YouTube channel If I'd have to pitch it to you, I'd go with this: you can divide the puzzle genre up into groups. There's the Tetris family, the Match 3 family, the Puzzle Bobble family and so on. The only memorable new addition in recent years, was Threes! Just like the Threes! guys put years into inventing and polishing a new gameplay concept, we did too. Ours is not as simple, but the few extra mechanics you get, do result in gameplay that's far deeper. So take a chance in life, and just try something you've never experienced before. The worst that can happen is losing 3 bucks, the best is spending 3 to 4 weeks unraveling a puzzle mechanic that's quite genius.
'Take a chance in life,' 'worst tht can happen is u lose 3 bucks.' Lol, ya man...no. The worst tht I cld do is throw 3 bucks away and straight into ur pocket. Poor approach to drum up interest if I were to be asked. But hey it's just 3 bucks, what's everyone waiting for. If it were free to try a couple levels then $3 to unlock full game, I'd b in. But tht whole, we wanted to go full premium and not the freemium route is convenient. Free with one option to unlock the entire game is entirely different than a game fraut with paywalls and intrusive IAPs. Shlda wnt the route of 'Impulse,' now tht game did it rite.
Let me just say that this is awesome. Just plain ****ing awesome. I haven't quite grasped the entire concept and my score just blows compared to JCman, but man...serious "can't put this down" material. Great job. Couldn't be more happy to drop $3 on something this week.
Ya, JCman, it's starkly obvious what the game entails. Thanx for the insite. $3 to not even take a puzzler for a spin isn't for most, but u just keep playing Blastball advocate. Almost like u have some personal stake in it. Haven't seen u around hats much??? Hmm, left wondering...
Even better. Games like BlastBall MAX, where every turn has 20+ different possible moves,, which lead to 20+ new unique moves, enhance your cognitive performance. (proven scientific fact, by the way). So playing a game like this a lot, keeps your brain healthy. Fun fact: in ancient Asia, abstract games (1vs1, stuff like go) where part of children's education. As they teach to to think ahead, analyse your opponent, learn from him if he's better than you and respect him if you've beaten him. Above all, it's the pureness found in those 1 on 1 games, that we've tried to bring to the 1 player mobile space.
In that vein, it would be good for my 7 yo grandson (birthday next week, 2nd hand iPad mini surprise).
Anyone else having gamecenter problems? It won't register my scores and achievements are also not registered
Glad to hear you're having fun. That's the whole reason we're doing this. Again, you could lose 3$. But you could also like it very much, like Metalcasket In all seriousness, the FREE + an IAP business model just doesn't work (don't ask me why, I think it's a great idea too). If it would, we'd probably use it. If we indies want to make the games we like, without their gameplay being bent by monetisation requirements, we're gonna have to push the Premium model back towards the top of the hill. And yes, we'll be yelled at, and in the short term we could maybe make more money otherwise. But it'll be worth it in the end. JCman started playing BlastBall MAX two weeks ago, when we ran a beta test here on the TA forum. Looking at his score, he's at the 3rd layer of gameplay (which has a 'wow, I didn't expect that' thing). So maybe that's why he's pretty exited? (JC: don't get tempted into telling what it is) Correct. And I want to state this clearly: Kris Burm, the abstract boardgame designer who co-created this, should get almost all of the credit. All of his games are so pure that young, old, eastern, western, boy, girl... or even releasing this now, or in 50 years. It doesn't matter. his work is timeless. His boardgames are too. This All time top 100 list at Boardgamegeek proves it: https://boardgamegeek.com/abstracts/browse/boardgame 1, 2, 3, 6 and 15 are his. The guy beat GO, which is 4000 years, old 3 times.
Mine work, but that doesn't mean much. I've asked around among my friends, and one of our devs is looking into it as well. We do notice that it sometimes takes a while before the Game Center server refreshed and the uploaden scores are visible. I'll let you know if we find anything. Anyone else experiencing this?
Just giving my honest thoughts on the game. I've been a TA member since 09 and always support games that I find are worth playing. And $3 is nothing to spend on this glorious game. Everyone on TA always complains about F2P yet when a game that's awesome costs a few bucks people are hesitant to play it. I don't get it. But hopefully through feedback from me and others it will convince people to give it a try.
