I'm cool with whatever. I understand the bad feelings about the ad removal IAP. It should probably be renamed Tip Jar or something. I will be very interested to see what happens in the first update. I'm sitting at #10 right now. I need to get my score up higher. Continues and shields are for suckers!
Editor's Choice and truly deserved . I played it for about 3 hours and I'm level 11 now, high score only 18k. I'm absolutely terrible
Current thoughts are: - premium mode with each (restorable) purchase (e.g. ad removal and/or coin doubler or both merged) - no continue popup (or a retry button instead) - separate leaderboards for freemium and premium modes - more color themes as suggested - optional opt-in ads for coins ? one free continue per run ? something else we'll know from your suggestions
I would love to see a completely pure leaderboard, no continues of any kind, this includes not using shields.
1. I would say merge them. Up the price to maybe $3? 2. Retry button, IMO (I never use continues anyway) 3. A MUST, for sure 4. Fantastic! Those should be odd level unlocks or coin purchases 5. Seems fair; wouldn't hurt for a little extra revenue. I'd turn down how many coins you get for a video (maybe in half), then also double that for premium folks a? I guess freemium could be pay to win, and premium could be no continues? I would love that, personally. Maybe there could be an option for premium players to play either mode (see Hodappy Bird) b? Like my Zen mode from a couple pages back (hint hint) Sounds great!
A few words on that. We're a full-time indie team of passionate gamers that left their daytime jobs and joined into a kind of startup venture to make games we like being inspired by games we played through our lives. Full-time means that we need money to keep going. We used to work on bigger projects that take ages to develop and one day we realized that sometimes we need to breathe a fresh air and make a small game aside from big projects - that's how all those small games started. The thing with most of premium and indie games that are loved by hardcore and old time gamers like us is that they usually do not bring enough unless you have a signigicant fan base or unless you get help from Apple that may help you with featuring and promoting your games. And they do really a lot to support indie devs - for example, the fabulous Monument Valley won't be it without Apples' help and I'm sure we'll see more cool stuff from the dev of Alto's Adventure in the future. Otherwise, without their help you won't see many games from many devs. And this, although not guaranteed, helps to keep making games. Yet amount of money you get even being lucky to get a feature is also not that huge. As most of premium indie games do not return money spent on ads you only get a kind of one time revenue that is usually enough to make another game or two and to pay some taxes. You can find info about "post mortems" of other games to see the numbers. So a help is a help and a dev has to find his place and way in this world if he wants to keep doing polished and quality games. So that's what we do now - we are finding our way So, we use smaller games to see what works and test different things to keep a balance between paid and premium. But as you can see we listen to users and trying to provide great experience. Sometimes we make errors, of course, but we usually fix them. And opinions of users we can directly communicate with like here on the forum is what we greatly appreciate. You can see that we have learned a lot and that with our latest games we already use very soft IAP and moved to opt-in ads. Hopefully with your and other players help we'll finally find the needed balance that will make all players happy - ones that prefer premium and ones that aren't ready to spend money. We've now completed all smaller projects we wanted to make and now returned to bigger projects, but probably after some time you can expect a few more smaller games from us when we'll again get tired and wating a gulp of a freash air feeling an inevitable itch to make a simple game In the meanwhile Joan Mad Run is finally under a completion now. And I hope you will like it regardless what player are you hardcore/premium or softcore/freemium. As Joan is also a runner we'll use in it most of the things we've learned from smaller games.
This game... Def has that... One more attempt vibe. Then posting your best times replays to their website is pretty slick. Rain1dog I had a high of 7,200 and Lord just topped me with a 10k score
Game is the definition of beauty. I paid the 99 cents almost immediately and only after did I realize I hadn't seen any pop-up ads to begin with. I suppose it won't be an issue since a lot of people won't pay to opt out of something they didn't notice, though it does seem misleading. That said, it was well worth a buck. 500 coins for watching an ad is A LOT. This is especially conflicting with the wheel spinner, from which you are likely to lose money and at most could win 350 coins in profit. I also agree that being able to continue kills the hi score aspect. As an alternative for those of us who spent the buck, how about a coin doubler? Or a special mask with unique effect?
No continue either. Guys take a look at that run on Everyplay. It was freaken awesome! I got TWO side bonus coin room runs as well as a coin and magnet power ups. All in one run. I really really really love this game. Also as far as everyone regarding the premium discussion. Don't be so harsh. We all know Happy Magenta. They are good people. I don't feel they are being malicious. Give them a chance to update the game and incorporate feedback and make the game premium. To Happybyte, you know what my vote is. I want a coin doubler and I think the no ads purchase should be made into a free continue. And definitely there needs to be a leaderboard if you don't continue. A pure run leaderboard. Billy
Depends on the country, but the game has a huge banner on most European app stores. When you open iTunes and click the flag on the bottom right, you can check it out yourself
Too bad I can't rate the game. That's the downside of getting an early code. I'd love to leave a nice write up and rating. I see Noen is there lol. #HashtagNoen Hehehe Billy
Thanx for reply. This seems like an acceptable and sound solution. You have my support, disabled non ads and purchased coins first day that I had it on early adoption. Thanx again, Happybyte!
I don't think there should be any option to continue. I know that is important for driving ad views but it contradicts the appeal of the game. Technically, the shield is a form of continue and the only one you really need. I would also reduce the time it takes to begin another run (the aforementioned retry button). Ok, so I feel like the arrow-shooting blocks shoot a little too quickly. That is usually what kills me. It isn't too terrible with the option to continue, but assuming that option will be removed (and I think it should), I would suggest slowing down how often those blocks fire. You could ramp up the rate of fire as the player progresses, but it should be a bit slower in the early parts. I would also make those blocks a little easier to identify.
As a counter point, one of the things I like about this game is that I don't have to play a while in the easy area before I get to the challenging part. I do feel like the game ramps up (monkeys, then snakes, and maybe something else later? I rarely make it past snakes because I forget about them), but it doesn't increase in difficulty that much overall. It's like going from an 8 to a 10 versus a 1 to a 10. I really like that. I like that the speed of things is consistent, because I don't have to readjust my brain each game.
Wow! The game made it to the main page top large banner on the AppStore! Right before the Tinder banner hahahahaha Billy
I'm in agreement. I think the level of progression is fantastic. The only thing they need to do is change the colors of the obstacles. When I first started playing I even posted a video thinking there was no way for me to progress. But in reality it was two different obstacles that have the same coloring. Once they change that I'll be a happy camper. Billy
