All of the ingredients are here for a good game, but this one is done in by a couple of infuriatingly terrible design choices: 1. When an enemy runs into me, they should die and/or I should have a period of invulnerability. In this game, it's not uncommon to lose multiple hearts in the cheapest way by the same enemy. 2. Spawning dark characters randomly into a dark background and/or having enemies that blend in with the billion coins on the ground aften causes damage from enemies you never see. 3. Spawning cards in the corner of the screen where fast moving enemies also spawn often pins you on the ground with your worthless sword. 4. The sword is about two pixels too short which means you often can't reach an enemy...especially those cheap ass hornets. I understand when games are bad because of lack of resources or design experience, but I have no tolerance for games that are bad because of sadistic design choices. As it stands, this game is basically a less fun version of Muffin Knight.
Yeah, there is no real incentive of being an early adopter anymore. Nowadays, generally making it a policy to buy games 2 months after release, cause most game companies are going temporary free after one month, even big name companies like Chillingo. So nowadays, it's nice being on the other side of the fence wnd not being an early adopter and getting a lot of free programs even if they are freemium conversions. At least this game didn't convert into an inapp lite version.
At the very least, I think this is a more thoughtful way of going F2P than just blaming it on piracy.
Noticed the same when updating this morning. The game I bought a few months ago is now free, with IAP, and ads. It's becoming quite annoying to see that kind of trend: Release the game, early adopters will buy it, especially if the game is good and gathered some hype Then make it free/reduced one day per month to pop on the news sites and the top apps in the appstore When it is starting to lose steam, make an update with a new map and a transition to "forever free!" with ads and/or IAP, to gather a revenue from your existing base. I understand that this is probably the way to maximize revenues. It's still very unpleasant for early adopters. And it pushes me, more and more, to do the following. When TA is excited about a new game, I put it on AppShopper. And sure enough, in the next 2 months it will be free or at least reduced. The worst is that we are talking mere dollars here, but it still feels annoying to see this. To be honest, transition to IAP is not such an issue for me if it's just adding cosmetic things over the existing, initial game. I'm much more annoyed by ads. Games with ads drain battery even faster, and it's just annoying to missclick on an ad from time to time.
You missed a couple of steps, next, convert it to an essentially lite version with inapps to play all levels. Then really screw everyone over by making them pay for levels they used to be able to play before. Then the final one is permanently pull the game from the store making the game unredownloadable, then change your company name, then come out with the same game. Both if these scenarios have happened to a couple of games I bought, and have to say both of these scenarios are much worse than temporary frees, freemium conversions, or adding ads. So sad...
