Should I return to mobile?

Exact same here BazookaTime! Five years, last three didn't make the (cheaper) licence fee, didn't feel like sticking with it, seen amazing games go under the radar and 1bit gameplay succeed.

Yeah I do want to try mobile again now, I don't have any money but I do have some time. If time runs out then the entire project will be ported to native iOS - developing on a slow MBP compared to a quicker PC.

Thing is I already left mobile to try desktop, it was great having all that power in fragment shaders etc. But as a solo I can hardly compete with next-gen stuff, and am more comfortable with GL2 days/style...which also suits mobile. Plus I enjoy the challenge of designing an interesting touch-control system after years of thinking about it. Desktop versions I always go with a mouse/wsad system. Now I plan to avoid virtual joysticks on mobile and default to something new.

I used to passionately care about how my games would do, it is a bad idea to worry too much and better to care about the overall feel of the app. Right now I'm loving the development process, I have a whiteboard with June-December (the 200 days). June worked out, July focuses on core gameplay. I would want to release a short while before the 200 days expire - enabling a first update and potentially generate enough to renew the other (more expensive) licence.

 

I've always tried to use Marmalade with mobile because it's native C/C++.

Inbetween licences I had a couple of tries with XCode's native iOS. Once all of the suspend/resume/rotate etc. was setup, I would use the .mm file format and just make stuff in domestic C and OpenGL (ES2). It just took longer because the MBP (2010) was a bit slow, but I did think how nice it would be if only XCode ran on PC! (it is currently very nice working in VS2015 Community)