This game is brilliant! I love the game and my 8 year old loves it as well. One bit of feedback - I wish there was a way to share the game on twitter and Facebook - like "I got a score of xx in shoot the moon, how about you"
@bear-man Thanks! Hey I saw in another post of yours that you have an iPod touch 4. About halfway through developing Shoot The Moon I snagged one on ebay because although I was pretty sure it was going to run ok on one, I wanted to see for certain. It actually ran quite well without any tweaking needed, but in the end I made it slightly reduce the number of particles in some effects when running on certain devices (eg, ipod touch4, iphone 4) in order to more consistently maintain a solid 60fps framerate. You still might sometimes see a little frameskipping when lightning bolts go off while the background is scrolling quickly (such as when getting a Double Goal), but I figured that was bearable as you can't actually take a shot when the bolts are going off anyway. Anyway, feel free to let me know if you run into any issues or slowdown, as I can tweak things further if necessary. @dixie Well your husband is a good man. Hang onto him. @Andre I was tickled pink to see the trailer posted. The 30 odd views it had before that? All me. (Well, also my wife, who seemed transfixed by it, which was surprising considering how long she's had to put up with hearing bom-bom-bom... every. single. day) @Collin What can i say but, thank you!! Such feedback really makes my day. @triptych Thanks! And I totally agree re. sharing scores. I wanted to get that in before release, but time was dragging on and certain family members were starting to think I had lost the plot, so I thought I'd better get it out there and then get cracking on an update. So... I'd better get cracking!
oooh, so close. And keeping reasonably comfortably ahead of the rest of the top 5 too. Although Mr 740 pts is looking pretty determined. Meanwhile I got a small review on a Chinese site! Google translation almost raises more questions than it answers, but it seems the reviewer might have been a little troubled by the idea of shooting the moon. Had to smile at these google translated lines: "Why not make friends?" "also not clear what the heart, is it has a serious tendency S?" Pretty sure he's kidding... but still, maybe I should send him a google translated note explaining the english idiom "Shoot the Moon" and how it refers to taking greater risk for greater reward, and how it's all meant to be kind of a play on that idea, while also assuring him that I bear the moon no ill will whatsoever and have never shot a rocket at the moon in real life and most likely never will. Then three days later: "OK, so apparently I've triggered an international incident between Australia and China." edit: In the time wrote this post, Mr 740 pts became Mr 749 pts. He's going to need to take bigger steps than that.
Just got 626 closing in Heh Heh. This will be my game of the week that's for sure. Love the artwork and everything. It doesn't register my score I got 626 and it says 502 Huh.
Such a small pointless game. But ya know what. Its amazing! And my 5 year old loves it. Add more features
Oh man, I'm honored! Thank you so much. I think sometimes GC is just slow to update the leaderboard on the device, even though it has successfully reported the score to Apple. GC is a bit of a black box from the devs' perspective. It even handles submitting scores earned while offline now. I just checked the scores from within itunes connect, and your 626 score is there. Leaderboard position 9, or 8 if we ignore Mr Suspicious Score at the top. It should show up for you soon, I reckon. edit: Yeah I can see your 626 on the leaderboard on my ipad now too. Impressive score increase there! Hahah... thanks! Yet again I find myself sitting here grinning like a little kid myself. I have a couple of new features in mind for an update. Keen to get started this weekend if possible.
Just got 650! I really appreciate the thought put behind the game. I can tell a lot of work and dedication was put into it. It reminds me of other similar games, but very unique. I wish I had an iphone that wasn't black for this game because it's a little hard on my eyes. If TA were to review this I'd definitely say they'd give it a solid four!
Thanks unlimitedfury (Great username... aptly describes my reaction when I saw that the Australian app store included in the featured new games a Flappy Bird clone that simply reversed the gravity ). (edit: After checking again, I've realised I was wrong about the Flappy clone being on the featured new games list. Pretty sure I must have been looking at the What's Hot list instead.) I imagine seasoned developers would have chuckled to themselves if they read this thread and saw my obvious noobie excitement over having people actually play my game. But rest assured I have rapidly progressed to from bright-eyed noob to jaded disillusioned curmudgeon, cursing the industry (but loving the players). Actually, I'm still pretty excited. All feedback has been great so far, and I was happy to find that I have 38 ratings from players on the app store worldwide, with an average of just a whisker under 5 stars. Which is pretty good, considering I didn't include any "Please rate this game" nag screens (not a big fan of them), and didn't ask anyone I know to leave a rating, though I'm sure some did voluntarily. Anyway, I don't want to keep spamming this thread, but I just want to say thanks to the touch arcaders who have been playing it. I did some housekeeping on the leaderboard yesterday, btw. Will be checking it periodically. Catch you later, Shaun
@sink_or_swim Yeah, I've noticed some of my scores on other games have been taking a while to show lately. No idea if it's some back-end thing relating to the impending ios8 release or what. Your score shows up when I check on my devices though, and also in itunes connect, so rest assured it's there. http://i.imgur.com/b1JzkrQ.png Good score. That was quite a big jump wasn't it? I think last time I spotted your name you were low 400s or maybe 450. (Yes, in case you're wondering, playing for score and checking my board rankings is one of my favorite things about ios gaming, so I tend to treat it all as *serious business*)
I think somebody's been getting some double goals. Maybe it's you causing the GC delays. Overloading the server. I just realised that by confirming people's scores i'm totally setting myself up for a prank where someone pretends they got a new score but it isn't showing, and then i spend the next 3 hours periodically checking for it. Haha.
Game Impressions Gotta say this is really good. Haven't seen a game so tightly put-together since Zach Gage's Bit Pilot. Animation and art is charming and hilarious, the sound is great, and that gameplay mechanic is so finely-tuned. It's a simple concept but the addition of double scoring, angry red things, and milestones really elevate it. There's a purity to the gameplay, like Tetris or Drop 7 or Threes. Nothing needs to be added (like power-ups) or removed. @Shaun Would love to hear your design process, how you came up with and balanced all these elements during development. A game this polished surely had to have gone through numerous rounds of testing and feedback. Yeah anyway really great game. Hope more people pick it up.
