Hi guys,
I don't know 'bout you, but any game I've ever played seemed to be interesting at first and kept me playing it until I completed the storyline (or beat 'some' of the levels of an arcade) and then I gradually lost my interest in it.
So far the best (for me) was LFS and TC:Elite (your opinion may vary, of course), they kept me going for years. I was wondering what was the reason of that and I came to the conclusion it must have been because of the true multiplayer nature.
Furthermore, back in the old days (Amiga, C64) the simplest games gave the most fun.
I was looking for something similar on Android. Drag racing is very good, Air Control is great. But are simple and addictive, but none of them really offered 'true' multiplayer. By this I mean playing with (or against) someone sitting next to you. I also tried the 'high budget pro games' like Asphalt from Gameloft, but i played it for like 15 minutes and never touched it again. Somehow it failed to attract me.
I wanted something that is simple, something I can play with my friends, that won't become boring after some hours of play just because I can beat the 'bots and something, that remains to be challenging.
Driven by this 'selfish' need, let me introduce the game I've been working on the past couple of months. By now you can guess it's gonna be very simple, but multiplayer game. It's called Curve Mania.
https://market.android.com/details?id=com.ratcash.games.curvemania
In this game you have to prove you're the smartest 'droid' by surviving all the other players in a limited arena. Develop your driving skills, apply tactics, join forces! Whoever is 'The last man standing', wins!
There are, unfortunately, some drawbacks having a multiplayer-only game:
1. you can't play this game alone. There are no bots. Two players is the minimum, three is recommended for fun and 7 is the ultimate challenge, where you can create alliances against against the current leader, etc.
2. you need a working WIFI network. Because of latency restrictions, local network multiplayer is the only option. Will see later if 3G is possible.
Most important thing last. The game is free for up to 3 players, and you'll have to spend some cents if you'll willing to play with 4+ players. I opted for this mainly because:
1. I wanted to develop it, mainly for myself, but then again, did not want to keep it only for myself.
2. Three players should be enough to try/play/experience the game and cause you lots of fun.
3. I did not want to ruin the game with ads (to at least get a small return on my time and efforts)... So if you think this game caused you fun and is worth some cents, you can buy one of the advanced features. This will show me your 'gratitude' and allow you to have even more fun. I hope this is a fair deal.
If you feel like this game is worth (at least) trying, please head over to Android Market. I'd appreciate your honest ratings and posting your impressions either here, or directly on the market. Bugs reports (if any), contributions and feature requests rather here or to the support email address so we can communicate.
Happy gaming!
A new bugfixed version is uploaded.
Hello,
I have been developing a small game as a hobby and it's first version is now ready. I did not have any budget for this thus the graphics are not very professional, but I think they are still suitable for this game. I focused on the gameplay and once you learn it, it is quite easy get a few dozen of points, even on the hardest level. This is not designed to be an easy game, but it will be fun if you practice a little.
Main idea is that the car accelerates automatically and the speed is quite high. Player needs to go through the obstacles on an endless track.
Here it is:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.tmakalainen.carslalom
Any feedback is welcome. Thank you!
Any comments?
I managed to compile this also for Windows Phone, but it needed a few hours of tweaking.
If anyone is interested: windowsphone.com/s?appid=cd67a2df-89b5-4ea3-8adf-469ad3ba4036
Hello everyone,
A couple of days ago I published my first Android project - a game called Color Chains. It's somewhat similar to "Match 3" games, but you have to make "chains" of cells in which each 2 consequent cells have a different color. The longer the chain, the more points you will earn.
The game is on the Google PlayStore, however due to a low number of posts I cannot post the full URL, and I apologise for that. I've also attached the APK.
h**ps://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.frozenraindrop.colorchains
The gameplay is pretty simple - tap, hold, and drag to select, release to validate your selection and earn points. You will compete against time, but every 100 points you will earn additional time. Every 250 points you will get the ability to randomize the whole board, which can be useful if you have big clusters of same-colored cells. Every 60 seconds the game will advance in level, which means that you will earn more points (5% multiplier per level), but earn less bonus time (-1sec per level). After 10 minutes of gameplay you will reach level 10, complete the challenge, have your score recorded, and then you can continue playing.
The game was developed in Unity 4.6 and Unity 5.0 (which are to blame for the huge APK size) and is ad-supported.
I welcome any comments, suggestions, ideas, etc. Thank you in advance
The game is pretty simple, but it works well and it's fun to play. It's a nice difference to the multitude of match-3 games available. Good work.
SolarRiftStudios said:
The game is pretty simple, but it works well and it's fun to play. It's a nice difference to the multitude of match-3 games available. Good work.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thank you. It is indeed simple. As a matter of fact I think that if anything, there might be a bit of a feature creep. The "leveling" feels a bit artificial and I'm considering removing it.
Btw, I'd appreciate it if anyone can test the game and confirm that it's working as intended on a Galaxy S3. It stops working after a while on my girlfriend's S3 (running stock Samsung 4.3 ROM), but it's a weird bug and I cannot reproduce it on another device. I've tested it on two Nexus 5s and a Nexus 7 (2012), both running Lollipop, as well as a LG G2 running 4.x, and it seems to run fine on those.
Hi everyone! I’d like to tell you the story about the creation and release of our first game. I will tell you a little about our company’s background and the difficulties that we encountered during the development. I hope our story might be useful to you too.
It all started a few years ago when my brother built up a team of like-minded people who were eager to create, and this was then expressed in the creation of animation and computer graphics for various projects. The team eventually grew, as well as the number of orders from clients. Then there was a point when we decided to create our own game project. Thus, we began a long preparation process. Unfortunately, our existing knowledge base was not enough to start the project. New volunteers joined the team, the learning process started, and the project began to acquire its first outlines. The result was a prototype of Crocks Hunter, a 2D platformer.
The plot of the game was as follows: Crocodile-aliens arrive on Earth to steal the Moon from earthmen. The main characters of the game (a boy or a girl, depending on player’s choice) must go through six different locations (desert, jungle, lava, water world, ice jungle, and fairy forest), and catch — not kill, the game is absolutely violence-free and child-friendly — all the Crocodiles into boxes which are used sometimes for some puzzles, and then defeat the final boss. One of the graphics features of the game is that 3D character models were rendered into 2D to make more complex, natural and fancy animations and to keep the high quality of the overall picture, along with a light-weight installation file.
Initially, the project was planned to be released for mobile platforms, but as the development progressed, it was decided to release it for PC, and then for Nintendo Switch. This was due to several reasons. Firstly, mobile game publishers are into the free2play game model, for which platform games are not quite suitable, although we figured out how to monetize the game, and to draw the player’s interest to micro-transactions. Secondly, in order to enhance the visuals of the game with various effects, we would have to sacrifice the performance. Therefore, it was more interesting to release the game on PC and consoles but at a set price. One of the publishers suggested that we release an update with six levels and two bosses once a month. Thus, it would be possible to retain the player for a long time, but so far we have not tried this model. Although, who knows, maybe you will?
We temporarily froze the Crocks Hunter project but did not abandon it. We are writing new documentation, and designing new levels. We are open to cooperation with investors and publishers to make a global bestseller together.
Currently, we are working without an office, so the whole team works remotely. In order to complete the project and make it at a high level, we would need to gather all the team members in one place, and this requires funding. So we started looking for investors. Many publishers appreciated the great potential of the game but would invest in the project after it being fully fledged and ready for release. As it turned out, Russian investors are afraid of the gaming industry, and they are completely unready to invest in it. Perhaps, this is due to their not understanding the potential and the specifics of the industry. Many foreign investors simply don’t work with Russia. At some point in our search for investors, we were stumped. The team could no longer work on pure enthusiasm. Some team members quit. Some began to slow down the main process, saying that they’d prefer to take orders as before than “work for the fairies and unicorns”. But some determined team members still believed in the project and continued to create it. So this is how the PUSHINGAMES company was created.
Unfortunately, there is no “book for dummies” on how to achieve success from the beginning to end in video games industry. The information you may find on the Internet is very superficial. Therefore, look for according courses, literature, or even better, find some competent mentor who will guide you. Our mentor was a game designer Konstantin Savochkin
One evening, when we were discussing some details, we decided to create a little something to distract ourselves, and came up with the “Quick Week” project. The main goal of which was to create and release one mini-game within a week. It took a couple of days to write game design documents and calculate P & L. Meanwhile, our artists already made the first sketches and prototypes.
We really like the examples of the Nintendo and Marvel universes when the story of one character is woven into the story of another, thereby creating fascinating endless worlds. Maintaining the heritage of the “Crocks Hunter”, we chose the main character to be a crocodile. The result was Jumping Crock: Jellyfish Attack, an arcade retro jumper for mobile platforms, designed in the style of space comic books of the 80’s .
Download link on GooglePlay: Jumping Crock Jellyfish Attack
In total, we spent around $600 to create the game, excluding licenses and developer accounts. We spent most of the budget on localizing the game and its description in 12 languages, including Russian.
To do the translation job, we chose a small but very responsible team — Locnloader a pool of freelance video game translators with 8 years of experience and voice over actors collected in one place. They specialize in indie-games and such small teams as ours, and that affects the price in a good way. For a reasonable price, they did us translations within 2 days. Moreover, they helped us with the ASO description text and edited it to sound a little more adequate, which is sometimes hard when it comes to repeating many same keywords in one small text. What I personally liked is that their team manager had some understanding in game design (and even took a course in it), and a little in ASO. That’s what I call speaking the same language!
We are very proud of the music in our arcade in particular. We love rock! There is 8-bit Space Rock music in the game. It was written by a wonderful musician, composer, and our cousin Yevgeny Protopopov. The music takes you back to the past, especially if you played Battle Toads and Tanks as a child.
Since we created the project with our own money, the payment to our specialists for the work done was extremely symbolic and incommensurable with the level of their professionalism. Therefore we are immensely grateful to our team and believe that without them we wouldn’t succeed.
In order for the project to be successful, it is very important for the team to have a Team Lead, who could drive this train, per aspera ad astra. In our team, that would be my brother Nikita.
Many companies could have achieved well-deserved success, but they never reached it, stopping halfway through. The history of the company with the fruit on the logo is the lodestar for us on how to do things.
Of course, you always want to do something unique and ambitious like Crash Bandicoot. You might want to make the game more complex by adding many different features and mechanics, but it’s better not to do so. Make it easy! The process of creativity absorbs you. You always want to add something else, when almost everything is ready. It’s best to concentrate on the main idea and actually bring it to life, and after the release, just make an update. By making game updates after the release, you maintain players’ interest and make your app appear at the top of the search results in application stores. In the long-term development of your project, it’s very important to take a detached view. Do beta and alpha testing. Of course, this is a bit like parent-teacher nights at school, when they scold your beloved child, and it can be painful, but it will be good for you.
We made our game free-to-play. We were looking for ads SDK for a long time, and we stopped at the companies:
● Appodeal
● AdMod
As the saying goes, “Creativity is great, but sometimes hunger takes over”. The most important thing is to remember who we are doing this for. We believe that a player should stay immersed in the game as long as possible, without being disturbed by ads in the heat of the moment. And of course, you can’t go without them at all. Use all available services of GooglePlay and AppStore, in-app ads, Achievements, and Leaderboards.
After we published our game in stores, the hardest part began — promotion. Promoting the project itself is also very important. You can create a masterpiece, but in order for it to become a bestseller, you got to try your best. How can you do it when there is no budget? To accumulate link mass, you can write articles in the media and various forums. But as practice has shown, there is nothing better than word of mouth. Bloggers, YouTube and streamers are such goodwill ambassadors. Each of them makes game reviews in their particular style. Find the one you like and persuade them to do a review for free. However, you are unlikely to have luck on this one (we haven’t). Russian bloggers ask for two to three times more money than their foreign counterparts, by the way.
Before releasing your game, create your info channels and use cross-references between them. It works! We use:
● Facebook
● Twitter
● Youtube
● Instagram
● Yunoia
● Bridget Loker
● Telegram channels and chats.
Now let’s get to the final part — working with app stores and how we published our game.
Google — everything is quick and easy. The main thing is to make an agreement with your conscience and not to sign Coppa.
AppStore —an application is being checked for a long time. It feels like an eternity. But in fact, it takes a week for them to check it, despite them saying 24 to 48 hours.
Amazon — quick and easy.
AppScater — as soon as you publish on the main stores, you can start invading Greater China. Appscater is there to help you.
So it goes.
P.S.
Once again I want to say thank you to my team. And please, don’t forget to try and play our game
The author of this article and chief marketing officer, one of the brothers, Artem Pushin.
Love your journey from starting to till today. Thanks for your post. :good:
Сongratulations on the release! I would like to read about promotion steps, if you did any, except social networks cross-references..
Love it!
So I’ve developed an android app now and I’m really curious about your feedback! The app is completely free to play.
Here’s the link:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=callandha.app
As I already mentioned in the headline, this is an interactive text adventure story app, so you can make your own choices to alter the course of the story.
I’ve orientated myself on certain other text adventure games and specifically added a lot of graphics and illustration, because that’s what I’m always missing when reading good text adventure story games and I believe it pulls the reader even deeper into the story and makes the characters more realistic.
Short overview of the story:
The story is about five girls, who discover supernatural abilities like a special bond to one of the four elements. Laurel, the protagonist, also is repeatingly dreaming about a certain boy, but every time she encounters him in the dreamworld, his face looks unfocused. One day, a shady figure appears in her dreams as well, watching her from the shadows and threatening her. Laurel also encounters four other girls in the real world, who seem to have supernatural abilities just like her, though some of her friends seem closer to the darkness than Laurel might have thought at first gaze. The following days, the five girls meet up regularly and eventually find the way to a hidden school that teaches magic. But not all is as well as it seems. Laurel keeps getting into bad accidents and someday, one of her friends suddenly disappears without a trace. Is this related to the creepy shadows, that lurk around the school? Are they somehow connected to the mysterious school director? The shadows are coming… Can you keep your friends safe from them?
The whole book is parted into six parts and I’ve just released the first part and I’m already working on the second part now. A second book is planned as well. Please leave a review on Google Play Store if you like the app.
You can follow me on Twitter and Instagram to keep track of every new story release!
Twitter: https://twitter.com/callandhastudio
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/callandha_studio/
Greetings, Callandha