I am very sorry to hear some people's thoughts regarding f2p. Perhaps my original post was confusing. All I can say is that there are no features of this version that require players to pay nor watch ads at any time. There are no timers. No IAP walls. No special items locked off. To all intents and purposes, the title still is premium, with the added bonus of new missions and stories. The game plays in exactly the same way as it always has. All that has been added is giving players the option to speed things up or grant a retry. All of which can be ignored. I passionately believe in premium titles as I hope Rogue attests to, but the unfortunate conclusion in the current climate is that it does not work in most cases. Especially not for tiny self-published devs. If premium players feel that they would like an iap gift, I have a limited number of iap promo codes which I will happily pass on if you dm me on the Facebook page.
Yep, the game plays as before, I'm enjoying the old school Elitesque vibe and the in-jokes. It's a fine effort from a small dev team (if there is something large enough to be called a 'team'!) The progression to bigger ships seems fair, I'm happy and hope the shift to F2P brings more fans.
Ah, then my bad. I think I'm too used to "goes from premium to F2P, adds coin doubler, timers and endless grinding missions" that I spoke without checking in reality what had changed. I'll reinstall and play it again, and then I'll talk EDIT: Did so, and you're right, my mistake. F2P elements are watch a video to double the mission earnings, plus the possibility of buying in-game credits with real money. Nothing else seems changed. Thanks Captain Jim for the heads up. I'll edit my other post too.
I've been hooked again to this game and I must say this is not the usual F2P approach. It's very enjoyable and economy is ultra fair without spending a dime. I usually click the video to double the income of each travel, and I'd love to have a credits doubler, even keeping the watch a video to double income (which would make a 4x income with a credits doubler). Anyway, I hope the game is doing better with this approach.
Finally purchased the Orion spaceship again (new device, new game began ), and have access to the 7 planets again. I didn't remember how fun space battles were on this one. When I advance a bit more, I'll begin with piracy, attacking vessels I find and such
Yes, I had it premium and played a lot (I'm number 4 in the game ranking of top pilots), and now I've played a lot too after it went F2P. It's changed for the better. Everything is the same as before, but now you can watch a video to double your earnings after arriving to a planet or to rewind time if you are killed. You can also buy in-game credits with real money if you wish so. Those are the only changes towards F2P. I had to begin a new game because I changed my device, and I'm back to where I was before. My belief is that devs, instead of going the radical F2P, thought "hey, we're not making a dime with the game. Let's make it free, add the option of watching videos to earn things faster and give players the chance of purchasing in-game credits with real money". I've been watching all the videos to double income since then, I hope it helps devs, because this game is great. I really wish there was a second solar system to visit, or secret planets, bases, etc.
Damn, if you could add the stellar horizon openness, hyper drive, super drive, docking, ship energy management systems, science jobs, geology jobs, location coordinates input, market export infograph from nav screen view.. This game would be God of space sims on ios. Stellar Horizon thread has 110 pages of player interaction. I hope your game here gets the same. Its a wonderful game. But for my selfish reasons of enjoyment... I swear you and stellar horizon dev need to get together and create a space sim baby! You both have something I want from each others game and I only have time to put full effort into one!
Hey guys, thanks for the kind comments. VirtualBoyFreak, thanks for the write up. It's very much appreciated. Yes, I'm trying to make the game work financially so as to continue development. It's extremely tough in the current climate and very difficult to get enough visibility to attract players. Rogue was/still is, a premium title but going F2P currently is an attempt to attract more players. I've no publisher and little way to advertise the title. As you point out, I attempted to do something different with the F2P features and make them very unobtrusive and even positive. My options going forward are limited. Perhaps a two version route (paid=full features + F2P=Ads, less features) might be a better option, who knows. odi0n, I would love the opportunity to add those features and many many more. Some quite surprising ones in fact. I have 17 years worth of design notes to drawn upon with a level of idea ambition unmatched in my opinion, due to my background in the games industry. There are some wonderful crafting and creative directions Rogue was designed around. I simply didn't have the resources to tackle them from the start, given the level of polish I wanted. Tbh, I'm not sure if there is even an audience out there for this type of game on mobile? GOF is the only one that seems to have been able to gain traction. And that title had a huge amount of funding behind it to achieve that. If people want to hear about my plans or engage with me in ideas, I'm very happy to discuss them. Make your voice known, post here or on the FB page. Let me know what you'd like to see. Let me know what directions you'd like the game to take.
I really wish you the best of luck. As odi0n said, a combination of Rogue Star and Stellar Horizon would be one of the best space trading and exploration games to be seen in any device. Maybe you should have a look at the other game's thread and see how the two games could combine together. Sylvain, the developer of the other game, its very active there. If I had the money, I'd finance you both to see what could come out of you working together.
