Universal Forever Lost ( by Glitch Games )

I'll bite, and will help to promote. Not much of a fan with point and click, it based on reviews here and sites will support. Will dl tonight, headed off to work now, so no time to dl. Will post impressions later. Great price and universal, can't go wrong.

 

Have you considered a lite version? This is what I've noticed about reviews:

1. App Store reviews are worthless, unless en mass. That sounds a bit counter-intuitive, but generally if there are only a few reviews, if they are all positive they are probably from friends and if they are all negative then they are most likely from bitter players that had some weird issue and didn't bother asking the developer before ranting on iTunes. Call me jaded, but that's just how I feel.

2. People are lazy. Why is this significant? Because more often than not they will just skim through thoughtful reviews, hoping to catch 1 or 2 key words that will give them all the "insight" they need. Worse yet, too many readers probably focus solely on summaries and final scores and don't bother reading the fine points of the review. Now I'm not saying review sites are completely useless, because obviously that would mean there's no point in what I do, but sadly due to human nature they are not as useful as they could be.

3. iOS gamers are cheap. I say that knowing full well that I'm implicating myself, and I'm not about to deny it. Thanks to the ridiculous App Store economy we've been conditioned to believe that 99 cents is too much to pay for a game. I remember back in the 90s paying $30+ for a game that took me roughly half an hour to complete. Most modern gamers would go ballistic over something like that. The fact is, however, that good games like yours are worth far more than that, but there's sadly no way to prove it to the skeptics.

I know there are mixed emotions about free versions, but at least that will give users the chance to see what the game is all about. I know playing the beta version got me excited to the point where I wanted to buy it when it came out. Being able to taste the offering is the ultimate way for people to decide whether they want to take the plunge or not.

I'd love to hear any reasonable thoughts on this. If you just want to flame me do it in a PM. Let's keep this thread friendly

 

OK but don't complain about the criticism.

Do this ASAP - correct the description on the App Store - correct "cant" and "dont".

The whole description isn't written very well. Nor is your website. The writing on both doesn't look very professional, it has many punctuation issues. Get someone to rewrite them.

I like the use of quotes in the app description, keep those, and see if you can find a review that mentions how well the touchscreen is used/taken advantage of, because it really is amazingly well done.

 

That is a very good question. Obviously someone is okay with IAP, because some of these games that take your money and offer you nothing of real value rake in money hand over foot. However, it seems that most of the folks over at the adventure games thread, for example, are not big fans of IAP. As for what to offer in terms of the amount of game play, rather than dividing it up simply by "1 or 2 rooms", if possible I would consider taking what you deem the total amount of game play time and then maybe offering about 10% of that for the free version. I know that's probably really hard to quantify since the game isn't 100% linear, but it's a suggestion.

Thank you for the lack of nags. That kind of thing really annoys me. I see what your saying about the new versions, though, and I imagine it's probably hard to get people that reviewed an earlier version to re-review the update, especially if not much has changed. Another reason the App Store review system is flawed.

This is one I'm not real sure about. I suppose someone must be reading them, or developers wouldn't ask people like me to write reviews

And therein lies the rub. It's sad that you would even have to contemplate "going cheaper", but like you said there is nowhere to go except free. While my extensive library of software says that I clearly don't mind free games, as a developer and wannabe game maker myself it's almost depressing seeing where the App Store has taken the market for games. There might be some merit to the HD / SD thing. I guess it wouldn't hurt to try it. I still think the lite version is probably necessary as well, though.

 

Hey there Glitch,

First off, awesome game! I'm a huge adventure game fan, and was really engaged in this one from start to finish. Fascinating mixture of creepy ambience and subtle humor.

I also am a developer, and we had a similar situation with our first game (only game at the moment) The Way We Roll. Had some really good reception, but sales began suffering pretty quickly. In some ways, that's kind of an unavoidable reality of the app store, I think, unless you win the lottery.

But also, like you, I wanted to know what I could do better, and reached out to the TA community for any feedback. I'm really glad I did, too, because they gave me some really good advice, and I was able to improve vastly upon the overall packaging of the app to create something I believe is more appealing. Just updated today, so it's too early to tell what kind of difference it will make, but I believe I have a better product, nonetheless.

The reason I'm saying this is that some of the advice they gave me I think could apply to this game as well.

One is having a lite version, which it sounds like you're already planning on.

Another thing is that your icon is really not grabbing, nor telling of what kind of game it is. It should really set the tone and style of your game. In fact, I overlooked this game for the first week or so because I had no idea what it was. Thought maybe it was a jigsaw puzzle game or something? But when it seemed like you were getting a good number of comments on the thread, I checked it out. Lo and behold, an awesome looking adventure game!

You should find an image that helps set the atmosphere. I thought that maybe that image of

Spoiler

the boy's sillhouette in the glowing TV

might make a really good icon. Just a thought. Regardless of what is chosen, I don't think the "FL1" is necessary.

Another piece of advice that was given me is to not have your first screenshot (or really, any screenshot) be of your title screen. Neither yours, nor mine, seems really interesting enough to be used as a screenshot, especially not in first place. Not sure how this might affect sales, but maybe somewhat.

Anyway, those are some thoughts. Hope they might be helpful in some way. Wish you success, and I can't wait to play Episode 2!

 

Hobbsicle makes a couple of really good points. I used to think the icon wasn't very important, but a couple of years ago I started writing a review called "10 App Store Games To Watch" for a site that I can't list here because it always gets censored out. Anyway, my process for choosing the games that go into that list starts by literally scanning an entire week's worth of entries from AppShopper.com. Because there are so many games to go through each week, I had to start relying on a couple of things: the first few sentences of the iTunes description, which is all that AppShopper shows when paging through a list of items, and the game's icon. I've often completely ignored a game, sometimes to my detriment, simply because I didn't like the icon or it didn't give me a feel of what to expect from the game.

The screen shots are also really important. Definitely don't use the title screen for a screen shot, unless it's a rare instance like in The Last Driver where the title screen is really a nifty collage of many of the things you'll expect to encounter in the game. The other thing that bugs me (and this is just a general statement because you didn't do it) is when people make a screen shot out of a menu. If there is seriously so little visually to your game that you need to sell it with menus, screen shots aren't going to be of much use to you.

 

Oh, that's good then.
The appinfo box in the second post has no apostrophes at all, it must be some kind of bug, the description in the App Store looks much better.

 

Bought and will post impressions tomorrow.

 

I know I for one am looking forward to it. Of course I do still need to finish part one first, but I'm always one to look ahead

I'm not going to claim expert writing skills here or anything, but if you'd like some help trying to put together a new iTunes description let me know.