I find this thread a very interesting discussion and I appreciate your insights. No silly flame wars happening. Agree on disagreeing. But yes, on other than our view on niche markets, we agree. I don't necessarily blame Apple or big software companies for what's happening though. It's their right to do so. I would probably have done the same thing. It's just something we indies suffer from. If a certain strategy doesn't work, we as a developer have to accept that and take another route. That's the free market and I'm happy it exists! Thanks again for your more than generous insights!
And I think that this thread has finally found it's answer.... Not all, but developers are starting to leave the App Store as bigger names start taking over the shelf space. Likewise. =) At this point, I think the shift needs to be made by Indies to produce Apps that are easily sold within 5 seconds (of somebody playing with it in a bar or at a party, for instance). Have artwork that is up-to-par with other big names (get a good Indie artist to help), as well as audio and music (get a good Indie musician to help). Offer services (e.g. online leaderboards) as standard features. Provide good pitch lines and actually go out and buy up ad space. Efforts need to be on horde tactics (release fast, release often), and don't recreate the wheel if you don't have to (rapid prototyping ftw). And finally, before you design anything, do your homework. See what the market wants to play. Find that niche and exploit it. Get hard data - don't rely on chance.
Johannes my critical thoughts on your game Iris is without playing it, it looks like another puzzle game. I didn't read the details of the description, I just looked at it. But with the sheer number of games on the APP store this is how many people make their buying decisions. I'll just say that puzzle games market is saturated so presentation is critical. You need to stand WAY above the rest. Right now my top puzzle games are puzzle quest and montezuma and so you'd need to be up there with those. I think there's room for a 3D puzzle game but the 3D needs to be dramatic otherwise it just looks like a 2D puzzle game minus the beautiful hand drawn artwork. by the way I dont want to sound too harsh. Iris might be a brilliant indie game for all I know I'm only talking in terms of first impressions which I feel are important for that mass market appeal
Alright, I'll comment on Johannes's iRis first, then jump over to the FABRIK's Lunarcy. Very first thing I noticed was that the name iRis is already taken on the US app store. The icon (i assume) on the left is quite nice and makes me interested in what the game could be. I'm not a fan of the first line, it's too vague and doesn't really mean anything. WHAT classic arcade moments? All of them? And there is a bad grammar error I think, or maybe the sentence just doesn't make sense. "Eliminate falling blocks, but instead of guiding them as they fall, you'll move the whole world..." Maybe you could take the "eliminate falling blocks " part and put it on the sentence before that so it reads "iRis is a unique, fast-paced, color-matching puzzle game _that is_ sure to keep your fingers busying by eliminating falling blocks. The screen shots range from not bad to bad. It's mainly the backgrounds they look boring and out of place. I don't know if they rotate around with you, they probably do, that's impossible to tell from screenshots, haha. Only the space theme seems like it could fit the others just look out of place. You need to have a cohesive theme throughout the game, this just looks random. The backgrounds don't help the blocks pop or really help. It kinda looks like if tetris had pictures of parks in the background. It just looks amateur and like a filler. The menu's look quite good and features sound great as well. I can see someone who is interested in these matching games giving it a try. But overall it does come off a bit too amateur to warrant anything more then .99 or 1.99. Something to consider would be putting a link to your site in your signature. Hope that helps a bit, looks cool overall but could still use some work to look more cohesive. Now the FABRIK. Right off the bat the visuals are not doing anything for me. The Icon is good enough to merit a look but the first screenshot would be an instant click away. I understand you are going for the "retro" look but I think you missed the point. I would point to things like Bit.trip.beat, Geometry Wars, and Lumines even. These games have that retro feel and look yet are fresh and still interesting in screenshots. The simple background and large buttons don't really make it look interesting. Overall there sin't much to say. The game may look great in motion but the screenshots are drab and it looks like there is a lot more that can be done style wise really make it look unique. 1.99 isn't too bad for it, but with's it's really simple look it still seems overpriced sadly. The content I am sure is there and great and 100% worth it, but it doesn't look like it too much if any effort to put together. It looks like it was done in a weekend or so as a test to see what you could do, as such, I wouldn't really expect to pay more then 99 cents compared to what else I can get for that cost. Also put the link to it or a website about it in your signature!!! Thanks for listening guys, hope some of this helps and is what you were looking for.
Please no! I couldn't be happier, honest criticism is so much better than worthless praise. You pointed out alot of problems and a website review I saw of the game mentioned several others. Issues that in hindsight could have so easily been avoided. As is the case with many indy developers creating these games is a hobby of mine. In fact I've handled everything including programming, game design, sound effects, 3D rendering, marketing, website design and even brewing the coffee, all after normal hours in my day job as a C# developer. I'd be the first to admit that I have a lot to learn but hopefully the total package will improve - which is why I am thankful for all pointers I can get to improve the games and marketing. Thankfully I develop on the mac for my love of gaming and programming, otherwise I'd probably starve. Now currently I have 3 full games in the appstore all written using the same game engine. The first one took 3 months to develop from design til submission, Art Thief took 6 weeks and my latest game took 2 weeks. I am now working on the 4th title which will be submitted in around 6-7 days. On the technical side things are ok I think, the game engine I developed is very strong and flexible now allowing a high turnover of games. The problem, as you pointed out accurately, is that when you are working solo on a project you often lack useful feedback and weaknesses, in my case design and marketing, become very visible. Now the last two games were meant as technical exercises. There are two games that will follow and I am certain that the main concept behind both games is very strong, delivering something gamers probably didn't expect on the iPhone. The problem is that without good enough marketing and fine tuned game design both games might possibly fail and disappear without a trace. So I am standing at a crossroad. Should I continue and plough ahead alone? Should I start a beta group of users for feedback? Should I talk to a large publisher? All comments and advice is more than welcome. PS. I would though like to clear up two misunderstandings in regards to Art Thief. The game advertises 30 frames per movement, not 30 frames per second but as you said correctly that is probably only of interest to my mother . The second point is the price. I believe that if you have an application that is for a niche group of users, in Art Thief's case those who play games and are into western art, then it should be priced higher. In fact I'm selling about the same amount of copies after a few days at 0.99 as I am now at 3.99. (Few copies sure but nevertheless about the same).
Hey Tesio, thanks for the review. It helps to hear out an honest critique. To answer a few things, yes, the backgrounds rotate/animate as you play. It can't be captured in just pictures though, and we're currently in the process of putting together a video as well as a lite version. The backgrounds actually add a nice touch when in play. Also, after looking again a second time, "iRis" does actually look taken (surprised Apple even let us submit if that be the case). Looks a tad easy to recover from though (we had backup plans in case this happened) considering the other one is just a networking tool. I have read plenty of game design books talk about unified themes, and we decided to be "different" and "risky" go a different route and have rotating themes. In the end we decided to not do this next go around, just on basis that it doesn't add enough extra value for the extra work involved. Plus, as you mention, you see this as a turn-off (I think this is your major gripe of your post). The marketing pitch on the first lines could be somewhat misspelled - we have both US and UK people (myself included) that helped formulate that. I think the above poster, 99c_gamer, is more on target that most people won't read it - they will go immediately to the pics and see how it compares on that. I can see what you mean by filler, but a lot of the elements have more to do with utilizing the underlying GLES system to produce some fancy 3D graphics that play out as you're going through the menu system. So, filler, yes, but from what we could tell it made it look better than just being a flat, plain BG. Flower theme was to appeal to a more female audience. In case you were wondering. As far as being "amatuer", eh, it's our first attempt. As long as you're not calling it amateur from a technical perspective (80,000 lines of code, everything ranging from an ogg vorbis stream decoder, multi-threaded task management system, full GLES exploitation (including pseudo vertex shader), blender exporter, XML asset decoder, custom GL/GUI widget kit (including font rendering), etc etc (basically things you can't sell on, but are there to facilitate the game, and take a LOT of work to code up)). Again thanks for the honest review.
I actually think Art Thief looks pretty awesome. I haven't watched the video yet but the screenshots are good enough to make me want to check it out in motion. reminds me of some old classic games like Rolling Thunder or Impossible Mission. I could be biased though since I'm a big fan of the action mystery genre.
It certainly is! We're working on a lot of improvements as a result of your and other's feedback. We very much appreciate it, even when it's criticism. We rather have good honest feedback than fluffy compliments.
It looks like you have a great grasp of everything but art maybe music I haven't tried the game). I would try partnering up with someone and see if that doesn't help your luck. Also releasing a lite version would be a BIG help because as it stands I am just afraid to take the rick to pop down 4 bucks. It's great to hear you are getting the same sales, I don't know how the market works and all from that perspective. Since it's niche it does makes sense you can put a bit of a premium on it though. Also sorry about the confusion I re-read it after I posted and noticed it was a mistake but too late as people had already commented on it. But yeah, I think the same rule applies . A video would be FANTASTIC and the life version would be EVEN BETTER! I agree a background adds a nice touch, I just think they could be better. I can kind of understand the miss-matched approach for some games, but I think those games have to look like a patchwork from the start. It is just a gripe I have honestly and I don't know if anyone else feels the same, but look at something like Zenbound. I think if they were to have random pictures of mountains and flowers and stars, it might become a bit much. Again, it's not a deal breaker just something that put me off. Maybe you could implement selectable themes? I can't say anything from a technical standpoint sadly. To me it looks like flat planes or boxes, not very complicated, but again thats just from the picture. I don't mean to insult, it sounds like you were able to achieve something truly special with your engine and it will definitely serve you well in the future. It's something to be extremely proud of. It has laid a great foundation for you and your upcoming projects. Congrats .
Working on it as we speak, and just updated all the artwork for name conflict resolution (we had a backup plan from the start on this). So the game is going to be named "iRis AG"... Don't ask me where "AG" comes from, it's in the concept artwork. Selectable themes is already implemented, as is color-blind mode. Tesio, I really am still having a problem with you calling it "amateur" though. I'm going to really open up, as a human being, and dig back on you on this point and tell you point blank that I've spent the better half of the last 8 years of my life doing nothing but computer science, in particular game development, not to mention the 45k student loan I still have to pay off for the B.S. & M.S.. The funding of iRis came from my girlfriend's father death's insurance money. Now, I admit, this is my first full I'm-in-charge project from A-to-Z, maybe it isn't as polished and rounded as other big name games out there (ngmoco, snappy touch, etc), maybe that means your expectations weren't entirely met with our efforts (my apologies), and absolutely I have a lot more still to learn about the business of making games (and I do thank you for your honest review - truly I do), but to call it amateur I think is just simply not fair. Of course, you're entitled to your opinion, agree to disagree yadda yadda, but we spent an amazing amount of extra work in polishing all the little things, the things that don't give you those annoying paper cuts (e.g. auto save, online leaderboard, listen to your own music, etc.), and from a physical perspective, it hurt. 12+ hours a day for 9 months straight physically hurts. I'm in the worst physical shape I've ever been in in my life. To go outside and be around people constitutes a good day in my book, as I basically have slaved over the keyboard for those 9 months, alone, in a little room, on the crap edge of town. For god's sake my 'L' key is no longer visible, nor is my 'Shift' or 'Enter' keys. So, with all due respect, and I really do mean all due respect to the best of my professional abilities and understanding that we're both human beings and imperfect (no sarcasm intended), you can take your "amateur" comment and shove it. (and if the mods want to ban me for violating their terms for saying that, I fully understand, and take no disrespect whatsoever). Okay, I feel a LOT better now.... At any rate... *sigh* Sadly, computer graphics is one of those things where people think a lot of simple things are going on, when in reality a lot of very... VERY... complicated things are going on to even make something small and simple show up. We've been spoiled with fancy in so many ways. So with that, my apologies if I have offended anybody, again Tesio thank you for the honest review.
Hey guys i am just a customer but i hate most of the 99 cents game i am in my 40s and I like the better made games and i do not mind paying for a good game with lots of animation. I want the good quailty games and i know it cost you guys alot too make them. I go by the video and the screenshots too but sometimes you get fooled on that too. I think there are too many kids on here and apple puts games though for them. My husband bought me the ipod because i have a hard time sleeping at night. It gives me something too do until i fall asleep. I wish you all luck. I will check out your games but i like the puzzle games not the bloody stuff. The music games. Will just too tell you i wrote apple too night and told them i hate the dollar games and ask for some good games. Better quailty games.
I can totally understand your frustration. Don't worry I don't take offense to anything you said and you have the total right to feel the way you do. I'm glad you were able to get that out of you, holding something like that back hurts a lot . I am not usually an angry person, so you don't have to worry about hurting my feelings, I am pretty laid back, haha. Please don't take what I am saying the wrong way though. I'm not saying your game design idea, the work you put into it, or your efforts are the "a word". I am saying simply from a screenshot point of view the production value does not look like it's there. It in no way reflects on any other portion of your game AT ALL. Heck, honestly I am going to get this game once it releases because I see your passion and I want to see how it actually works and where the love went into. The feature list on this one is truly stunning, you really did care and think about what you made, and it shows, it really does. I'm not sure how I can put this to explain it properly. Maybe you have played Mass Effect 1? Maybe you have see the stuff for Mass Effect 2? That is the EA touch of presentational polish. Same thing Gameloft, Chillingo, and ngmoco etc. have. It's not that your game isn't a finished game, it probably is! Hell it's probably more finished then the stuff Gameloft and others push out all the time, it just doesn't look like it's on the same level. If you want to play with the "big boys" you have to look like you can. And only the graphics, ONLY, look like they don't measure up right now. I don't mean to frustrate you, or "grind your gears", I just want to explain clearly what I might not have earlier. I'm sure it is very complicated, I'm not a coder, while you obviously are. By trade I am a 3d artist, so right there I can't understand where you are coming from, haha. Trust me, I try, that stuff 90% of the time flies over my head . I am curious though, why did you write the engine from scratch? I know there are things like torque, unity, and more that you might have to pay for (but i know there are some open source ones as well), but could have saved you probably 6 of those 9 months. I guess that's a little off topic, and I'm sure it's because what you created is something you just couldn't get otherwise, but I was curious. I love your passion and I'm sure I will love your game. The friggin' color blind mode just blows my mind. The fact you thought of that in my book is an instant purchase, even though I'm not colorblind. I love the heart and soul you poured into this project and I look forward to getting my hands on it.
Johannes dont take these things personally. Seriously maybe you should have solicited honest feedback earlier before the game was "finished" To be honest I see where Tetsio is coming from with "amateur" comment. The word I used was "indie" The problem is the non cohesive look. The buttons look like they where slapped together in about an hour. The backgrounds look like they came from a google image search... the last problem seems to be some kind of compression artifact with the screenshots themselves are not very crisp. I'd be surprised if the actual game looks like that. your game could be one of those that needs to be seen in motion to be appreciated. believe me I know what its like slaving away for other people's enjoyment not easy to take criticism after such hard work poored into it. Game making is a creative industry no matter how technically inclined you may be or how many books you may have read in the end I believe it comes down to having some natural talent and a creative spark. Like any creative industry long hours and hard work do not guarantee success. Im almost afraid to think how the critics will view my game...coming soon.
I'll work on getting some better screenshots over the weekend. I appreciate that sentiment. That means a lot. I'll talk to my artist and we'll see what we can do to improve this. Part of my master's thesis was based on game engine design. I went out and did a lot of research on engine design, in addition to quasi building my own. I had been working on a few new ideas that challenged certain conventions. In the end, building my own was work, yes, but it does a few things in a very different fashion than other engines, and those differences are going to make for faster turn around time in the future. Wasn't really a lot of extra work, we just made sure to use block colors that would be more visible to those with the different forms of colorblindness, so places like: http://colorschemedesigner.com/ helped a lot to determine what would be a poor choice. After that it was just an issue of maximizing usage of the histogram. I'm not sure how well it will work, not being colorblind myself, so, we'll see. It's in there though. I know, I know. We did. I'll be sure to tell the artist that. They did not. I agree. I need to go in and do manual resize instead of letting the webbrowser do it. It's been on my todo list anyways. That very well could be the case, and we're working on a video. It's hard though - have to borrow my friends 600$ HD video camera to get a "good enough" quality of shot. True.
Johannes, it's refreshing to see your openness to feedback about your project. When I mentioned the colorblind feature I ment it more as a compliment to the great amount of care and attention to detail that went into your game. You thought of just about everything and that's refreshing to see. I just wanted to let you know that stuff like that means something to me, it's quiet cool to see . Also I don't think 99c_gamer was saying the images were from google, just that they look like a normal picture someone could go out and take with a digital camera in a few minutes. But again that is probably just a part of the problem with not being able to see it in motion.
Hey by the way I dont want to sound too harsh. Your game looks good (much better than mine at the moment) The icon work is amazing. This is the developer forum so I'm hope my suggestions will help take your game from good to great.
I dont know if it's the coffee or lack of sleep but i just realized that Johannes's game Iris takes place inside an eyeball. I was thinking it was an average puzzle game with scenic backgrounds. This makes it like 10 thousand times cooler. I have to take back most of what I said. I actually wabnt to play the game now , LOL.
On your main web page, there isn't anything that really grabs me. The descriptions of both games don't really capture the imagination or excite me about the product. The description for iDecide is contradictory "Welcome to i.Decide, the best way to help you make trivial or hard decisions". What do these games do and why should I want them? Maybe try something like "Shark's Treasure: An underwater action puzzle. Can you survive the treacherous depths?" With iDecide, the focus of the game seems to be much more general and varied and as a result it's harder to create a tagline. Your Shark's Treasure game seems to have a lot of the aforementioned polish, which is a good thing. The bad thing is that it looks like some of the basic details may have been skipped while focusing on presentation. On the very first screenshot for this game on the website, there are several typos and mis-wordings on the instruction page in the game. As soon as I saw that I immediately thought "this is a game that was slapped together and not proofed". I know that isn't true, but if this is the first impression you're giving, it isn't a good one. Also, if possible I would have the website photos function similarly to the itunes one, where there is only one photo per page with a simple scroll at the top. The written description seems to have too much information or at least it is not presented in a format that makes that information relevant to me as a customer. Let's take a look at the "features" section: Features: - Fully utilizes the accelerometer and touch screen to provide a unique gameplay experience What does this mean to a consumer? Perhaps say something along the lines of "tilt your iphone/ipod touch to guide your submarine to treasure while avoiding the sharks". This explains to me, the user, how I will be using my hardware to interact with your game. - 4 difficulty settings: easy, normal, hard and crazy I would leave this at just "4 difficulty settings". What they're called isn't really relevant since every game is different. Instead, this leads to information overload and as a consumer it makes it more difficult to focus on your selling points. - 10 tutorial levels to help you become a pro in no time at all 10 tutorial levels? That sounds like a big learning curve to me. Maybe consider phrasing it differently such as "In depth tutorial to have you piloting like a sea captain in no time" - 110 challenging levels This is good, but I'd make it the same color as the rest of the text - Each level is replayable so you can get the highest score This isn't very clear. Can I select any level at any time? Am I trying to beat my own high score or set a score on a leaderboard? - variety of sharks, treasures and submarines. This to me seems like a given. If you can earn upgrades, then phrase it that way as it becomes a part of the gameplay. Otherwise I would expect a difference in enemies and envirornments as I progressed. - Special challenge mode with ranking system. I would elaborate a little more on this. Many games have challenge modes but they mean different things. Is this online ranking or just on my device? -Original soundtrack Always nice to see! -Crisp, eye-catching graphics Don't tell me what I either already know or will decide for myself, it creates a potential conflict. If you say they are crisp graphics, and I feel that they are fuzzy, then you've lost me as customer. You want to inform and excite your customer, not tell them what to think. The video you have posted seems like it was shot from too far away. I know the big thing these days is to show the game running in-hand on the device, but this really didn't give me a clear picture of the game. One of the complaints I noticed on your itunes reviews was that the graphics were small, this video seems to exacerbate that situation. With the iDecide page, you again have a lot of contracdictory information. "Welcome to iDecide, the best way to help you make trivial or hard decisions! when facing two attractive girls, which one should I date? When facing tempting job offers, which offer should I take? Going out for dinner with my girlfriend, which restaurant should I pick? Should I propose to her at dinner? Where should I buy a house? ... Yes, life is full of choices, How many times do you spend sitting around with a group of friends trying to decide what to do? Now you can leave the toughest part entirely to iDecide!" These scenarios don't really seem viable. Which restaurant to go to? There's already an app for that. Should I propose at dinner? You'd really leave that to a coin flip?! Then you follow that up with a rhetorical question, which is always poor marketing. You ask the question "how many times do you spend sitting around..." with the assumption that everyone does that. But it's very simple for me to say "never happens" and now you've lost me as a customer. Instead, be active, not passive in your marketing. Something like "We've all had times of indecision, but with iDecide, those are a thing of the past." Look at the "practical" uses of the app such as choosing who buys the next round (although there is already an app for that too that randomly starts with one person and then keeps track of who's bought), playing spin the bottle (already lots of apps for that), etc. I would recommend focusing on what your app does differently from your competition and then selling based on that. And sometimes it's just like everyone else and that's fine, but you've got an uphill battle at that point to gain market share. I hope that helps!
Do me! http://www.insurgentgames.com/skeleton-key/ itms://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=327122772&mt=8&s=143441
