Amazed again, 2 people tagged a code and left thanks. So logic says there are 8 codes left. Think again, Looks like the other 8 leeches have dementia. Give us guys in the UK a chance sometimes please, we seem to be forgotten here as most codes are released specifically at the US market!!
Alright! So after playing at least 15 games of this yesterday I'll say it's quite a sleeper hit. Being unfamiliar with Kris Burm (and being deeply interested yet uninformed about 2 player abstract board games), it's wonderful to experience his game design here. Lovely and deep game: I implore anyone interested to check it out, especially those who wanted a code. You won't be disappointed!
15 games in a day. Statistics-wise, we've seen that the first few days, people take longer per game (spend more time thinking), so games range from 5 to 7 minutes. Times 15... that's... well, mission accomplished, I guess. Thanks for the kind words Oh, and if you've got the time: writing a user review is really helps the game gain momentum.
I just saw this over at BoardGameGeeks. The trailer makes it look pretty interesting. So I headed over to here to see what people are saying. I was surprised to see several threads already created on it. Maybe some games get lost in the background noise at TA. Anyways I would love more feedback from people who own the game.
Some of the games are definitely longer than 7 minutes! Oh, wrote the review before I posted here. Mission is certainly accomplished, as I'll definitely be sticking with this one for some time to come. Thank you so much for making this awesome game, I love it! It's certainly stands out from the usual fair on the App Store, and I can't get enough games like this!
You should find plenty of feedback on this thread More importantly, let me fill you in on some of the details. The most important one being: we not gonna kick Early Adopters in the crotch by putting the game on sale when the press attention dies down. The game is worth 3$, an it'll stay there. There is however, a bare bones version in the works (called BlastBall GO), that only features the puzzle mechanic, with less turns per game (not enough to really go all-out), no power-ups, leaderboards or missions. AND there's ads, and a recurring reminder to go buy the MAX game. This is Monkube's answer to the F2P / Premium problem. Will it work? Well, time will tell. I hope what you read here convinces you. Knowing you're a boardgamegeek visitor... I'm pretty sure you'll like BlastBall MAX
No, not yet. I mostly read this thread for the interesting discussion about freemium vs premium. Your perspective of this (that successful freemium games need tons of user acquisition money and that it's really hard to build a big enough userbase for a successful freemium game) is too often ignored on TA. About the ads: I liked the short one. I did not like the long one because it didn't show enough gameplay for such a long (well, long for an ad) video and because I'm too skeptical about claims that playing abstract games increases cognitive performance. From how I understand it, playing abstract games makes you better at playing abstract games, but researchers are (sadly) not convinced that this transfers to cognitive performance in other tasks. But apparently other people love the long ad so it's good you have both options and give websites that want to feature the game a choice of how to present it.
sorry about the slack review on PG. I usually like their reviews but for the last week they made a few controversial ones because they clearly didn't go deep enough. Well, let's hope the other reviewers will spend more time with the game to see it differently.
Ah. I've been a games journalist myself. Not everyone likes every game. It would have been better for us if the review text also informed readers that there's Power-ups, a Mission structure, and lots of strategic options if you use the abilities in a smart way etc.. But the reality is that videogame press is under a lot of pressure budget-wise. With stuff like ad-blocker etc.., even the best websites out there have to work at a maniacal pace.. So if a reviewer gets a game that doesn't connect with him/her in the first minute, can you blame him for moving on after one short session?
Well, I can actually. Considering there's a bunch of people making reviews, the point is to pick up the game of reviewer's interest and give it a fair chance even in these hectic times. I'm not saying the game needs to be played for a week or so, but it feels like he spent a few minutes with it. And we all know how influenceable the reviews are for hesitant players. If it was my game I'd be... (what's the right word to keep it decent?)... "disappointed" even though there's nothing much to do about it. Let's hope there's more reviews in the near future reflecting the actual quality of this game as deserved. Fingers crossed.
I really LOVE the idea of asynchronous VS but I (like many others) no longer use either FB or twitter...
Well, usually I always recommend good apps to a group of gaming friends, so I'd be ok with that. Kris Burm is one of my all-time favorite game designers and I would happily do some PR for him if it helps
Some other TA visitors would dislike this kind of stuff. So we've changed our plan to being able to challenge a FB friend, send out a tweet, or challenge a Game Center friend, but NOT having to do so, in order to unlock the extra mode. If you're a Kris Burm fan, and are familiar with his work... what do you think about BlastBall MAX? Have you played it, and if so, how deep down the rabbit hole are you?
No indie dev should. But because the app store is in a perpetual state of price drops, and almost all players go from sale to sale. I can't blame them, we taught them to behave this way, by punishing them for buying on day 1 (because we dropped our price soon thereafter). We're just lucky BlastBall has a new puzzle mechanic which we can demo as a separate app in the BlastBall GO spin-off. Also, let's hope the bare-bones free version strategy works, and we can generate a small but stable stream of paid downloads, while also proving to our early adopters that you can buy a Monkube game on day one, and not get screwed over 4 weeks later.
I have merely skimmed the surface (tutorial and first level, 1720 points), as I only learned last night about the game and had only so much time on the train to play it. I like it very much, and, having played a lot of abstract board games, I feel right at home here. I am quite familiar with Kris' ludography (not only Gipf project, but also early designs like Oxford, InVers, Tashkent Domino etc.) and had the chance to meet Kris several times at the annual Essen Fair. Looking at BlastBall MAX, I see a lot of potential and a brilliant concept. Games like Gobang, Pentago come to mind, but also Burm's own Bi-Litaire. And thank you in advance for keeping the app pricing stable. Being a notorious early adopter regarding games, I am therefore prone to disappointments.
I think it's a bad system for consumers (gamers). We should make our decisions on is it a good game, am I interested in it, can I afford it? But instead we're thinking is the price going to drop tomorrow, will it be free next week. Right now it's easy to inexpensively build up a large library of games but they might not be titles a person truly enjoys playing. I would much rather have a small library of quality games then a huge library of garbage. Good luck with your strategy. I hope it pays off for you.
The old BlastBall website used to have a link to a big study (4 universities testing for several years) that proved it was true. I'll check with our web designer if he can put that back up on the new site as well. You clearly know Burm's stuff . If you've visited Essen, then I guess you live in Germany too? (in that case, good, as sales has yet to take of in Germany). The first of Kris' games I discovered was Inverse. From that point on, I jumped to the GIPF series. Especially Tzaar, which I think is amazing. Lots of his games have mechanics that advancements from your part lead to your opponent having new options as well. To finish off: I should award you for pointing out the game we used as base: Bi-Litaire. The moving board mechanic is genius and switching to two ball colours made it all fall into place gameplay-wise. As an update, we're eventually gonna ad a clean 1 on 1 play mode as well. Where each just plays one colour, and the goal is to be the first one to make a row of 5.
Update: I crawled up to 6000 points after playing further. Awesome game, I almost missed my station and got out of the train, when the doors were already closing Yes, Tzaar also and Yinsh are my favorites here. Isn't it incredible how he uses simple mechanisms to turn the game board upside down and make your head spin? It would be amazing to see some of his designs appear as iOS games. A two player mode for BlastBall would be most welcome. I wrote a five star review for the german appstore, hopefully it will be approved soon. And I will try to convince my two regular gaming partners to jump and not hesitate further
