That article was really sad news to hear inepdeed, that a great game goes by so unnoticed and that very few people actually pay any money for it, Here's the article for anyone interested. http://gamasutra.com/blogs/PaulJohnson/20140111/208448/Combat_Monsters_A_postmortem.php
Great article - very well written too. I bought the tripler the day it came out but just didn't have time to spend with the game. Personally, I felt the name was far too generic (i thought the same with foursaken's monster adventures) and the whole free to play/offer of the week/day thing just makes it all feel a bit cheap to me. I'll spend some time with it when I get through my backlog.
Just a suggestion to rubicon: it would be good if in the collection booklet, all the monsters that we don't yet own that are blacked out, could still show the hitpoint and ability summary on the thumbnail just like the owned ones do. It's just better for identifying monsters and generally browsing for something we might want. Although currently we can't buy monsters directly can we? Still would be good to be able to see thumbnail stats rather than having to tap on everything to bring up the detail view. The thumbnail stats wouldn't even need to be coloured like the owned ones, perhaps just black and white, to keep with the blacked out theme.
Awesome. Card forge sounds great. You guys really are setting new benchmarks for the "genre", it's just a shame to read that article someone posted about how the financial reward from this one has been a little lacking (I mean c'mon, this is a job for you and you should be remunerated accordingly). On another note, hope maybe you're still considering giving the GBWG characters a surprise appearance as cards.
Great interview. Brutally honest! I am a huge X-Com/Jagged Alliance/Heroes of Might And Magic fan, I played your games and ended up deleting them after first couple of stages. I love and appreciate the effort an indie group puts into their work, I completely understand how hard it is to make a splash with limited resources, but I think you need to make your games way more casual friendly / addictive to have a chance. Problems With All Three Games: 1) The graphics are in all honesty, too bland. If you don't have the budget for 3D, don't go with 3D. Three mobile games cracked billion dollar revenue (Candy Crush, Clash of Clans, Puzzles And Dragons), they are all 2D but have way more charm than your games in artwork. Those didn't start with big studios either. Artwork make or break your game and I believe not only you will have better luck doing cute characters in 2D, you also reduce system requirement and allow more devices to play your games. It is time for you to abandon the current art style if you want to have any chance of being super profitable. 2) Turn based strategy as we know it is dead. Even X-Com Enemy Unknown had zero chance against any of the top grossing games. It made top grossing for a week or so before fading completely. They would have lost their shirt if they actually built that game for mobile from scratch. Top freemium games make that kind of money in two weeks. If you look at Brave Frontier, it is getting a lot of momentum because it dumbed down final fantasy style combat into super casual format and tossed puzzles and dragons's deck building engine on top of it. You have a VERY easy play here if you mix great big/little war games with a card building game like Brave Frontier, with great artwork and quick small stages. You did try to add a deck builder in here, but you added the wrong deck builder! When I played combat monster the UI and the cards themselves were atrocious. If your name is not Blizzard don't bother with TCG style card combat! Puzzles & Dragons / Rage of Bahamut style card builder is way more accessible for the masses. Heck look at Fantastica! Go with the one active skill, one leader skill, power up / evolve formula, mix in with good looking 2D artwork, quick fast paced turn based play. It will be your biggest hit ever. Or, base building clash of clan style with quick turn based play work too. Or you can mix all three! Imagine heroes of might and magic with clash of clans style base building/timers, turn based quick battles and puzzles and dragons style deck builder. We can all blame lack of marketing budget, but the reality is your content is too niche and your artwork is too bland to ever have commercial success. When I played combat monster I deleted it after first stage because it took forever to kill anyone! Pace pace pace pace pace! Save the long battles deep into the game. Don't listen to gamers who are desperate to hold onto the past, in fact the advice of most people on this forum are detrimental to actually making money. There is nothing wrong with IAP, you built the wrong product. But don't ever give up! Many of the elite mobile publishers failed many times before they landed their game wining shot! You can do it!
Hahaha at least he's honest with his opinion I suppose Personally I don't mind the graphics, but the gameplay I love, it's this type of turn based stuff that we need and I'm glad you as the devs know this and don't pay attention to what people like them think. this is when you can tell a game was made because you enjoy doing it or want to do it rather than doing it only for the money. I've said this before but I didn't get into either of the war games but combat monsters I love, maybe it's my love for card games but I really like it. The only thing I could see to make it more user friendly (I struggled in my first few games back after not playing for a while) would be some preset decks or something so you can just jump in a play without having to worry about balance.
Yes, preset decks you can either buy cheap or make yourself would be handy I guess. I'll add that to the pot, thanks.
His team of super talented developers worked on this full time and made less money than equivalent hours in McDonalds. It is not because they are indie, it is not because they are weak, it is because their genre is obsolete. I really hate to see development teams lose because they cling on to dead ideas. This is why you never see top grossing developers on touch arcade. Listen to this community is the guaranteed way to go broke. Yeah sell a game that took a year to make for 2.99 and no Iap. Make sure it is a genre no one care about today! Look at ports from big names like square and rockstar. Even they make peanuts compare to top grossing iap games. It is 2014 and you have to make 2014 games. This community laughed at the hedge fund manager who said Nintendo should make freemium Mario and charge 99 cents to make Mario jump a little higher. Choice is simple. Listen to them go broke, or listen to people who are successful, do what you must to be super successful.
Got to say everything hitmantb said in the previous assessment is pretty much bang on. Probably hurts to read it but that's just the way the market is now. TA is but a microcosm of die-hard gamers. I am a member too so I'm not disrespecting anyone's wishes and ideals here at all, it would be amazing if there was enough people purchasing games with the same mindset as "us" but there simply isn't. So from a business point of view you gotta realise that most people that don't read TA are stupid and will spend equally stupid money on shiny things even if there is little to no true gameplay, if it looks popular they will follow so you get "snowball" apps at the top and a huge yawning chasm to everything else unless devs can afford to spend ridiculous sums of cash on user acquisition on a product that can eventually get that spend "per user" back, which is rare, thus very risky. I would really suggest changing the icon for this game tho, it really looks 'cheap' to me and honestly put me off keeping it on my device. Would be a simple thing to change to give a much better first impression (just my opinion).
I'm just glad that not all devs make games to make money and that there's still some out there who make ages because they want to make games, that way we will always have unique games. They might not make tons of money but they sure make so e people happy.
I'm not denying that but if it's a full time occupation, and you want to fund making further games because you love doing it, then you need to make a profit as well. Doesn't have to be millions or even tens of thousands a day like the top grossing make of course, but it's an expensive endeavour to put resources in for months or years before having something to sell - surely you want some sort of rewards for it above minimum wage you could get in a shop or whatever, so you can make BIGGER and BETTER games the way you want in future. Everyone wins.
So mysterious! Maybe Combat Monsters is actually making great profits? Hard to tell for the user how successful the game is aside from Apple rankings
