my first phone game :)

[joker454]

So I just put out my first mobile game called Adventure, it's for Windows Phone. Link is here:

Adventure game

Anyone want to give it a shot and give me their honest opinion of it? It has a free trial so anyone can try it, assuming you have a Windows Phone of course. I'm looking for feedback on the game like is it too easy, too hard, too short, too boring, etc, anything that will let me improve future games. It's basically an old school point and click type adventure game so if you don't like that genre then odds are you will not like this game, but give it a try anyways

 

[I.S.T.]

Adventure is not a trademarked name?

 

[zed]

nice - I see the icons from that atari 2600 game, IIRC that was also called adventure ? possibly not
nice entry, like a steve jackson book. So who wrote the story?
good to see, mate Im not to sure of the market for such things nowadays but is so, email me my gf's a writer of childrens fantasy, perhaps shecan selfpublish something (since all the book publishers dont want her tales so far)

 

[Silent_Buddha]

That looks awesome. I love the nod to the Atari 2600 game even if it isn't a recreation of that game.

From the screens this looks like a Choose Your Own Adventure type of game? But I'm guessing with more involved than just choosing a path until the story ends.

Regards,
SB

 

[joker454]

Adventure is not a trademarked name?

Don't think so, at least not in reference to games.

nice - I see the icons from that atari 2600 game, IIRC that was also called adventure ? possibly not
nice entry, like a steve jackson book. So who wrote the story?
good to see, mate Im not to sure of the market for such things nowadays but is so, email me my gf's a writer of childrens fantasy, perhaps shecan selfpublish something (since all the book publishers dont want her tales so far)

Yeah it is the dragon from Atari 2600 Adventure, I always thought he was so goofy looking hence I wanted to get him in a game somehow. He makes a cameo appearance in the game as well I wrote the story myself, mostly on airplane rides. Writing the story was actually extremely fun to do! True I have no idea what the market is for these types of games, but this is more a labor of love than anything else really, I don't expect to make big bucks off it. I do hope to put out many such adventure games though because they are fun to make, ideally I want to have 5 ready by the time Win8 tablets come out, and I'll port them all to Win8 tablets in time for launch. With luck eventually I'll have a proper adventure game engine that I can use to make more elaborate games. It's interesting that you mention childrens fantasy , because longer term I do want to dabble in that as well. Mostly because I want to create games that my niece can play. I think for that though tablets would be better to get a better impact from the visuals that kids would appreciate. I figure 3 adventure games in mideval time period, 2 scifi, and after that try a kids adventure game. But we'll see

That looks awesome. I love the nod to the Atari 2600 game even if it isn't a recreation of that game.

From the screens this looks like a Choose Your Own Adventure type of game? But I'm guessing with more involved than just choosing a path until the story ends.

Regards,
SB

It's actually a very simple game, my first dabble in adventure games. It was designed around the phone, so that it can be played with one finger and in 10 second segments if needbe, like if you are waiting in line at the grocery store you can pull the game out, play for a few seconds and put it away. The basic idea is very simple, try to make it to the end with as much gold as possible, and there are multiple paths to the end. There are many ways to die of course, and many crazy locations and creatures to meet along the way. Truth be told I haven't worked on games in years and I miss it...so I had to get back into it somehow, mobile seemed like the best way to do it

 

[Simon F]

Adventure is not a trademarked name?

"You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike"

 

[Silent_Buddha]

You'll have to remind me about this stuff when you port them to Win8. I'll check out some of it then. Don't plan on ever buying a smartphone so unlikely I'll get a chance to check it out until then.

I loved CYOA adventure books when I was younger. Some even had RPG elements and character creation and battle, although those came when I was older . So they were a guilty pleasure when I got older, but it was fun to be able to have RPG-like experience without a group of people or on a computer.

Regards,
SB

 

[Grall]

Anyone want to give it a shot and give me their honest opinion of it?

You port it to iOS and I will!
*cracks knuckles in preparation for 13,000 word review...*

 

[joker454]

You port it to iOS and I will!
*cracks knuckles in preparation for 13,000 word review...*

Well I tried for a bit...but for whatever reason Xcode on my mac air laptop locks up. Then I tried using the Marmalade sdk on pc and got to where it's now always crashing the iPhone simulator I'll revisit iOS at some point probably with Marmalade so I could make a Kindle Fire version as well, just need to sort out that crash.

 

[joker454]

Ah found the crash source, the Marmalade sdk defaults to a very small stack size that wasn't enough for my app, just had to bump that up.

 

[RudeCurve]

Ah found the crash source, the Marmalade sdk defaults to a very small stack size that wasn't enough for my app, just had to bump that up.

Cool...I too am waiting for iOS version of your game to try out. I've got over 100 games on my iPhone and don't plan on stopping adding more to the library..

 

[joker454]

Cool...I too am waiting for iOS version of your game to try out. I've got over 100 games on my iPhone and don't plan on stopping adding more to the library..

Wll truth be told I'm not 100% sure I'll have time to make an iOS version. I'm dabbling in it right now, but time is tight There will be Win8 tablet and 360 versions for sure since that's just a recompile, nice and easy. iOS requires a re-write (different language, tools, etc) which maybe I'll have time for, or maybe not, not sure yet. Or maybe I'll just pay someone to port it all to iOS, that's an option as well.

 

[Grall]

If you don't have the time to port it, how did you have time to write it in the first place?

(As an added incentive perhaps, may I add that iOS users are far more willing to pay for apps than Android users. See it as Apple Tax syndrome or Steve indoctrination if you will, but apparantly it's true...)

 

[joker454]

If you don't have the time to port it, how did you have time to write it in the first place?

Well it's more of a time budget thing. I'd like to have 5 games ready for Win8 tablet launch, all of which will also be on Windows phone and some on the 360 Indie, so that's quite a few sku's. My websites take most of my time now so regarding games if I start to include other platforms like iOS then I most lilely will not be able to make 5 games. Just not enough time to go around Not sure which way to go just yet.

 

[Grall]

I'm sorry, I have no real right to question the choices you make in your own life (I'm just some weirdo on the web after all), but I must admit I am somewhat baffled by your priorities; why are you focusing all of your resources on the smallest of the mobile platforms?

Windows for tablets have precisely zero install base right now (in the wild anyway, which is for all intents zero overall.) Windows phone is doing fucking horrible TBH compared to both Android and iOS. 360 indie is niche to say the least, and seems generally disliked and poorly treated by Microsoft, from whom I get the impression they'd rather see the whole indie game thing to just go away, since there's little money in it for them.

After all, you just don't make billions of dollars on games like Meatboy and bit.trip runner and such.

Meanwhile, there's what, 200 million iOS units out there, and surely way more Android stuff by now.

 

[AlphaWolf]

Big install base doesn't mean big sales. In fact he might sell much more on a new platform because it won't be buried behind many similar titles.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Besides the whole buried until tons of crapware/shovelware that would be the case on iOS, launching with Win8 tablets doesn't mean it's limited to Win8 tablets. They're also still perfectly useable on a Win8 desktop. Now whether desktop users will be interested in it is a good question, but iOS games ported to PC have enjoyed some good sales when the game itself is good.

Additionally, without basically learning multiple languages he can target Win8 tablets, Win8 desktops, Windows Phone, and X360 users. With iOS you'd be able to target iPhone and iPad. Perhaps a larger buying install base, but as mentioned harder to get get noticed under the huge pile of crapware/shovelware.

Besides, assuming Microsoft executes well, I wouldn't be surprised if MS regains the dominant tablet position again in the future. Apple hugely missed out on an opportunity to cut off MS by making iOS an extension of OSX. Where mobile (tablets) and desktops are seperate entities for Apple, they will be basically the same for Windows. What you use on your tablets you can use on your desktop. And if you go for an x86 tablet, then everything you use on the desktop you can use on your tablet.

Win8 is already going to address the 2 biggest shortcomings of Windows on tablets. Applications designed for a touch interface (enforced Metro) and better battery life. And all while maintaining the advantages it has over iPad.

So, IMO, getting in on the ground floor and building a name for your company without having to try to get noticed under the deluge of shovelware on iOS is a good idea. It's a bit of a gamble obviously, but all good businesses succeed by taking those gambles.

Regards,
SB

 

[joker454]

I'm sorry, I have no real right to question the choices you make in your own life (I'm just some weirdo on the web after all), but I must admit I am somewhat baffled by your priorities; why are you focusing all of your resources on the smallest of the mobile platforms?

Windows for tablets have precisely zero install base right now (in the wild anyway, which is for all intents zero overall.) Windows phone is doing fucking horrible TBH compared to both Android and iOS. 360 indie is niche to say the least, and seems generally disliked and poorly treated by Microsoft, from whom I get the impression they'd rather see the whole indie game thing to just go away, since there's little money in it for them.

After all, you just don't make billions of dollars on games like Meatboy and bit.trip runner and such.

Meanwhile, there's what, 200 million iOS units out there, and surely way more Android stuff by now.

That's a very good question actually, and it's a three part answer:

1) I'm doing this on the side for fun, so I wanted it to be easy. I'm used to Microsoft's tools and they just make things so easy for developers. It took literally just a few days to code all of Adventure, start to finish, and I had never coded a Windows Phone app before. Time spent was about 10% on coding and 90% on writing the story which is how I wanted it to be, I just wanted to make the game and not spend time on the tech details. I've tried XCode on Mac many times before and try as I might I just can't adapt to it Marmalade on pc lets me use Visual Studio which is nice, but it's never as straight forward. There's always some gotchas like it doesn't support loading jpg images natively, etc. Yeah you can google around and find solutions but I just didn't want to muck with all that.

2) Going off what Alphawolf said, getting noticed now on Apple app store is extremely difficult. Now is the prime time to get on Windows Phone because you can get noticed far easier. Websites are more likely to talk about your app, review your app, ad space is cheaper on winphone websites, etc. I know of many people that have tried iPhone apps with little to no success because it's so hard to be seen there. I'm only selling 3 apps per day right now (been out about 7 days) but as sad as that sounds it's actually higher than what others are doing on iPhone apps! I'd be curious to hear of others iPhone app experiences as well. Plus Windows Phone supports trials which the other phones don't, that helps a lot with conversions to paid. I don't realistically have enough data to make any conclusions, but I'm at around a 17% conversion to paid app right now which I'm told is very good.

3) I'm bullish on Microsoft in many ways. I think they will have all the pieces together in a year or so and after that their fortures will turn bigtime. I want to be part of that, hence why I want to build a stable of apps starting from now that will work on many of their devices. Heck I bought a pile of their stock at $24, so I'm definitely bullish on Microsoft I like what Donut Games has done for example, a game portal with lots of iPhone games on it. I'd like to do the same, but for Windows Phone. Ultimately though as long as my expenses are paid I'm happy since writing these adventures is fun

 

[Arwin]

I agree with you 100% Joker454. XCode is hard to get into in my experience too, though, having said that, XCode 4 (which only recently came out), is a big step forwards in user-friendliness. But it's still quite difficult, just from the alien notation style that has been used in most documentation alone, but also with all the reference counting and different UI design paradigms.

Of course, fair's fair, those different UI paradigms are good paradigms, but that doesn't make them easy to get into. I've been immersing myself into WPF over the last few weeks, and although it's not always easy or behaving quite like I want, I've been making huge strides at much better speed then I ever managed to do in XCode. It's obviously partly a matter of what you're used to, as I know patsu had no problems getting into it, but I think he was always familiar with the Mac environment anyway, and that was a strategy I decided to take as well - just code some Mac OS/X stuff first because easier to experiment with, and then go back from there.

I've installed the Windows Phone SDK on my laptop, and it seems very friendly to use as well. When I'm happy with my WPF progress, I'll definitely go back to it to see how closely the two are linked in terms of layouting - I expect pretty closely - and I look forward to making some good steps forward on WPF.

Ideally, I would like to be able to code on all three platforms (Android, iOS, Windows Phone), just to get my understanding of stuff to a higher level, much like I've always felt studying several foreign languages have offered a better understanding of language on a meta-level, but obviously it's much more interesting to focus on what you have yourself. I'm glad they're all around right now though, and I hope they keep competing for a long time, just like I'm happy that Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo are all out there in the console space.

What helps a lot as well, is that WPF matches the way I've been designing UI for Windows Forms 2.0 for a long time now. Sometimes I think I'm completely wasting my talent at the small-time business development work I do, because so many technologies I've developed when they were avant-garde turned out to become commonplace and integrated into some big framework or other 5 years later, but obviously they become part of these frameworks precisely because a lot of people agree that's the sensible thing to do.

Anyway, definitely a good idea to focus on the new platform right now, as I agree that will give you much better exposure, and while there's no harm in having some of your stuff ported obviously to test the reception on different platforms, I think it's very good to also have some exclusive content, even on purpose.

 

[Miksu]

1) I'm doing this on the side for fun, so I wanted it to be easy. I'm used to Microsoft's tools and they just make things so easy for developers. It took literally just a few days to code all of Adventure, start to finish, and I had never coded a Windows Phone app before. Time spent was about 10% on coding and 90% on writing the story which is how I wanted it to be, I just wanted to make the game and not spend time on the tech details. I've tried XCode on Mac many times before and try as I might I just can't adapt to it Marmalade on pc lets me use Visual Studio which is nice, but it's never as straight forward. There's always some gotchas like it doesn't support loading jpg images natively, etc. Yeah you can google around and find solutions but I just didn't want to muck with all that.

I recommend you try out the Monotouch. It surprised me how good that product is and we were able to port one of our Windows Phone -apps to iOS easily. Though it wasn't a game.

With Monotouch your main IDE is Mono Develop, and it's OK, though nothing like VS + Resharper. But it's good enough. The UI design happens through XCode. Imagine using Visual Studio for coding and Blend for doing the UI, the experience is similar when doing stuff with Monotouch.