This comment, ladies and gentlemen, is why the admins and us mods try to keep the TouchArcade forums as squeaky clean as possible. A friendly atmosphere (free of unnecessary aggressive F2P rants, cussing, attacking developers in any way and all the little things some people have falsely accused us of doing as a means to take away your freedom of speech) brings developers to the site, and hopefully keeps them around for a long time....and that's what's best for business. Signed: The Authority
What he said! To be clear: there are ripoffs out there, as well as developers and publishers who are less-than-ethical. Folks should be warned about those. But when a developer puts an honest effort into their game, we should be careful about yelling DO NOT BUY when we run into a problem. Chances are that an honest dev will stand by their product, if given the chance.
Ok - and this is mostly based on the developer jumping in - I'm buying the game. I would love to see you vision fulfilled, and hope more people support you too. $13 (here in Australia) is worth that, and it seems you're wanting/doing things to make the game better.
Took the plunge after seeing the dev respond to several sites and bought it yesterday (probably the first dutch sale, left a 5 star review even ) Anyway: Graphics: Nice, with an indy feel to it. Performance is a bit slow sometimes on my ipad air but after playing around with the resolution its faster. Lets hope the unity metal improvements speed up the graphics a bit. Only issues i have with it are that loot boxes are sometimes too dark to spot and the standing/walking animation looks like a hunchback floating 1 cm above the floor. Combat is fluid and feels more realistic than walking though. Could use a bloom filter and some visual glow effects, but with the current performance its probably best not to. Gameplay: Fun. An old school rpg that just dumps you in a scenario and you have to figure out what to do by talking to people. Its a nice change from the current crop of f2p, turnbased or (the worst) "on rails" RPG's that i've seen on mobile devices. Worth: 9,99 is a bit steep, but after seeing the developer responses on various boards i decided to support him and take the plunge. In the end the app store will tell if the price is too high or just right. Tips for the dev: - Seriously.. get someone to build you a flashy website. Your current site doesn't 'sell' the game at all and it feels like a possible rip-off if you see the 9,99 price and then open the website. It exudes an "this is a fake app and meant to cash asap" aura. - Show some screenshots and movies of the game being played on an ipad. Film these with a camera pointed at the ipad and dont use screengrabs so people see the game is actually running on the ipad. - Type up some stuff about the development process, post screenshots and artwork.. build a story about your time with the game and the vision you had. - Put some time in the in game menu's and buttons. The overall graphics of the game are pretty good, but the menu's and static screens feel a bit like 'windows paint'. Improve those and the overall feeling of the game could jump a significant factor. Trust me.. this will pay off And most importantly: - Get someone to do some marketing for the game, or improve your own marketing skills. After working this long on a game it seems you focused on development and not in your go-to market process. Your *first* call of action would have been getting a version of your game to various mobile game review sites. Your game came out of the blue now and because it's unknown people don't trust it.. and trust is an important vector when paying 50% more than regular applications. - Did i mention 'build trust'?? You have a possible cash generator here, but only if enough people trust you enough to purchase the game. I did, after a few days of reading and searching.. "normal" people will not. Get... this.. FIXED! Please do something about the above points.. they're also in my own interest. If your game is successful you'll keep developing for it.. and i do love the fact that i have a real rpg to play with on my ipad now!
Same for me. My backlog is huge already, and growing by the day. But a dev like SFBay definitely deserves and gets all the support I can give. Buying
Oh.. and before i forget it: Make sure to remove the first screenshot in the app store (the water/ice??). If thats the first thing you see as a customer you have no idea what the game is.
There's so much support and great info about this release. I do support it, and when my wallet is actually able to, I'll get it. Yes, work on the fluidity of the GUI/Menus, animations, the 'feel' of everything makes a massive difference on how attractive a game is, and how comfortable someone is with sitting down and playing it for hours--which is the type of game you are developing, and what true RPG'ers want from it.
I'd LOVE to see a 1st person party based RPG from you! If it has as much attention to detail as this game, it will definitely be WELL worth the wait. Your new models look awesome, btw! Keep up the great work, and thank you for being so active in the formus. That's the sign of a truely great game developer if you ask me.
ON IT! Thanks for the info. I've signed up for thegrid.io and hopefully that'll be working soon -- emailed them today to ask if fhtey can fit me into a beta group, they said "maybe" Good tips, all around
Also, I should link to this on the website, but I've got everyplay in the game: https://everyplay.com/the-barbarian/videos The every play window comes up when you die, but there's also the slightly transparent grey button in the top middle of the screen. Pressing it anytime will let you upload a gameplay video directly from your device without leaving the game.
The Barbarian being played on iPad Here's a quick video I made today at the Apps World expo in the city, a guy playing the game for the first time. I would tell people not to spam the attack button ,but they almost always would. So pro tip: As you level up your weapon skill, your gain faster & multiple attacks, but only if you keep your finger down. The game is made so that the fighting has a bit of strategy involved intimating your attacks. Spamming the button won't do you any good https://youtu.be/vQiH1qGk91g
I too was on the fence, but your honest and passioned response has won me over. Game development is expensive business, and if a 20-hour console quality experience with no IAPs is on offer then it's well worth the investment. I'll also keep an eye on your company and any future games of yours as I like and respect your ethic. Well done!
Per your feedback, I'm adding entrance particle for the Town of Ironport. Will turn green if you've completed a quest but haven't yet returned for your reward.
Ok, just spent about 20 minutes with the game. I'll upload video soon (even though my first 20 minutes are not very exciting ). A few thoughts so far: I'm playing on my iPhone 5. It's certainly very playable, but I want to move over to my iPad Air 2 for what will likely be a much nicer experience. Is there iCloud sync? Because I would love to be able to switch back and forth so I can play at home on my iPad, but take the same game with me on my iPhone. I seem to be going in circles in Ironport, trying to find the mayor. Is there any way to expand the map to full-screen (or close to it) so I have a better idea of my surroundings? Also, I opened the booby-trapped chest and now I'm low on health. Health does not seem to replenish automatically, and I can't find any potions or food to heal me. Would like to find something before I die! I can definitely see the M&M6 inspiration. Even though it's third-person instead of first-person, it brings me back to those days. The NPCs that all say something like "salutations" when you talk to them -- love it! The game does feel rough around the edges, but I can see the love that was put into it. This doesn't feel like something rushed out just to get people's money. I definitely want to give this game some proper attention on my iPad and report back. But I need to figure out how to heal and find that mayor first. And I'll likely be afraid of chests forever now.
It runs on the 5! That's good. I guess that should be expected, since I did see it running on a 5c. but the loading screen takes forever huh. Currently, no I skipped out on a few things, like that, which (for me as a relatively newer developer) would have delayed things more. Thinking about it now, it may be possible to export a game w/ a (likely very long) code that holds all the data, which you can copy/paste into another device. That'd be cool for passing along your game to a friend or something (or for bug reports), too. I'll think about that more today -- if it's possible, it'd be a pretty easy fix. The mini map distance is locked because the further out you go, the slower the game gets -- it's a 2nd camera. There should be a pretty large arrow after you kill the first goblin leading you to the mayors house. In a future update there will be smaller arrows by all the doors you can update. (version 1.4.2, so likely ~12-14 days from now). His house is in the middle of the lower portion of the town, the one that has a stone fence around 3/4ths of it. There's also a sign board out front, similar to the one by the Training Hall. Yeah, I put some traps in there, right at the start. Some may kill you right off, but it won't be a huge issue to die so close to the start. "Salutations"
crash at start Keeps crashing on my ipad air running ios 8.1 after character creation. Two times i entered into the game but when i try to enter again with the same file it crashes. Most of the times, also, when i try to create a new file it crashes. I tried to reset the device and installing again with no luck
Yeah, the loading screens are a bit long, but they don't seem that frequent (not yet, at least). Currently playing a few games that are iPad-only and need some I can also take on the go so I'm not homebound. I'll see if I can transfer the data using iExplorer, but if you can manage to get iCloud in (or what you just mentioned), I would love you! Ok, so I must have missed the arrow and went to the upper part of town too soon, missing the mayor (you can see what I did in my video)? Not sure which part of town I'm in -- I went over the bridge and found a bunch of trainers and shops. Saw a big door that looked like it would lead to an important person like a mayor, but it was locked. I'll start exploring again. And what happens when you die?
The iPad Air is my go-to testing device (IE, one of the two I don't have to borrow from family), so it should be fine there. However, I'd suggest upgrading to the latest OS, 8.3. The game uses Apples Metal graphics thing. Unity (which I use to develop the game), has just recently implemented it. For a while it was full of bugs, but finally right before release it became stable (and spend up the game by about 30% on all devices, which was nice). So it's possible that there's still an issue with 8.1 and the Metal implementation.
