Live data from Hacker News

Show HN: Tired of mobile games with IAP and ads, I made No-Bullshit Games

nobsgames.stavros.io

171–180 of 269 posts

Re: Show HN: Tired of mobile games with IAP and ads, I made No-Bullshit Games

#171
post #148
post #109

I would like to build an app that's a series of games, that are all related. I want to use the freemium model, with a one-time payment. No ads, no subscriptions; once you pay, you own the entire game. What's a better model for this? A single app with a one-time IAP; or two apps, where one is free with no ads or IAPs, but there's a link to a separate paid app with no IAPs? It seems there's no way to distinguish easily…

I hate the one-time premium IAP option, because I lost it in some app after reinstall, and it's not compatible with Android's family library. I'll ignore anything that is shown to have any IAP.

At least the way it works on iOS, iOS is supposed to keep track of whether you purchased that purchase or not (that type of purchase at least not the 'buy x items' consumables), and require apps to have a 'Restore Purchases' option you can click to load which items have been bought and restore the state of your app.

At least in theory, maybe there's been a few cases where it hasn't worked. I'm not aware of any, though.

I don't know how that works on Android. That might not be supported.

Re: Show HN: Tired of mobile games with IAP and ads, I made No-Bullshit Games

#172
post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Too bad it's not targeted towards gamers :)

What do you mean?

Different gaming hardware engenders different games. Strategy games for PC like Stellaris or StarCraft would work like garbage on the Switch, and games like Hyper Light Drifter are horrible to control with a keyboard/mouse.

Phone games are generally played to fill dead time, rather than someone spending hours strategizing like Civilization, by and large, so in these cases shallowness is a virtue. At the computer I like CKII, but Reigns is good if I'm waiting on lunch.

Re: Show HN: Tired of mobile games with IAP and ads, I made No-Bullshit Games

#173
post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow throwback, loved that game.

Yeah... Searching for that game led me back to Chip's Challenge, ended up buying the game ($2), grabbing the level file out of it, and throwing that into TileWorld (cross platform CC engine) to play on my mac. Nostalgia overload.

Good lord, Chip's Challenge? I haven't heard that name in 25 years. It was installed on the first home PC my family had. Windows 3.11. Played the hell out of it back in the day.

Re: Show HN: Tired of mobile games with IAP and ads, I made No-Bullshit Games

#174
post #50

I echo the others here, Thanks! I have young kids and we let them use tablets on long trips, vacations, airplane rides. Finding games for them is impossible. They are too young to understand when characters, levels, items are locked. It seems like every 2 minutes they get stuck on some ad screen with a hidden X. I just want a game that when I pay $4, I get the full game. It doesn't even have to be a big, intensive ga…

Buy them a Nintendo Switch, or even an old gameboy system. Durable, offline, and tons of kid friendly games out there.

Re: Show HN: Tired of mobile games with IAP and ads, I made No-Bullshit Games

#175
post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love to see games that have one-time payments to permanently remove ads. This lets the creators provide a free-ish demo, but also may provide some residual income. It also allows players with less money support the creators.

They are in the list, marked with "One-time purchase".

Can you put that one time purchase price in the price column? So it's not just listed as "free"

Re: Show HN: Tired of mobile games with IAP and ads, I made No-Bullshit Games

#176
post #86

I built a site that’s adjacent to this idea (www.darkpattern.games). It catalogs the dark patterns found in mobile games. Premium currency and ads are two of them but there are many more. The idea is that you could educate yourself so the dark patterns have less power over you and also you can browse the site to find good games that don’t have dark patterns.

That's a pretty well done site, thanks for taking the time to make it.

I don't think that all 'dark patterns' are necessarily always bad, especially after seeing everything that made your list, as you have "Complete the Collection" as an example.

While I think that it can definitely be abused and does belong on the list, I do think collecting things can be part of the fun of games for people, and that's been in games pretty much since games moved from the arcades into the home consoles.

Like platform games are often 'Collectathons', and one of my favorite games of all time, Yoshi's Island on Super Nintendo, has 5 collectible flowers and 20 red coins (and you have to do it with full health at the end of the level) to get up to 100 points for every single level. One of the things I love to do in that game is try to get the full 100 points in as many levels as possible.

Another one is Badges, which is similar to Collections, but you're collecting the completion of goals instead. Personally I loved when Xbox 360 introduced Achievements, and I still wish the Switch offered them. When done right, it can leave a lasting demonstration of how much I enjoyed the game. Of course there's some stupid, grindy, super time consuming garbage that borderlines on player abuse for them, so I agree they qualify as a dark pattern, but I don't think they're inherently or always a bad thing and something game developers should always avoid if they want to make a game that wouldn't make the bad side of your list.

A lot of these dark patterns I do think are probably always annoying and a bad experience, though, like "Wait to Play".

Re: Show HN: Tired of mobile games with IAP and ads, I made No-Bullshit Games

#177
post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This style of gameplay goes all the way back to Qix from 1981: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qix

Wow, never heard of this game (unsurprising as it came out a decade before I was born). I was able to play it here [0]. Arrows to move, spacebar to be able to leave the edge. Very cool! [0] https://playclassic.games/games/action-dos-games-online/play...

That link is to an emulation of an MS-DOS port of the original arcade. You can play the emulated original stand-up arcade game here:

https://archive.org/details/arcade_qix

Press F3 to choose language, then use 5 to insert coins, 1 to start 1 player game. Use cursor keys to move along existing lines, use Ctrl+cursor keys to draw fast, use Alt+cursor keys to draw slowly.

Re: Show HN: Tired of mobile games with IAP and ads, I made No-Bullshit Games

#179
Measuring popularity is potentially an issue here, since:

- Every game’s popularity measure is competing against all other games in stores, which definitely includes all the “bullshit” games (and there are probably way more of those).

- One form of “bullshit” is gaming the review system itself, e.g. finding ways to generate thousands of “reviews”.

- It is very difficult to get users to submit reviews.

Re: Show HN: Tired of mobile games with IAP and ads, I made No-Bullshit Games

#180
post #56

Here is my contribution (a webapp, a.k.a. a website) http://lalo.li/lsd/ coded it years ago mostly drunk on an island in Thailand, I now like to play it again on my iPad with iPencil. Github: https://github.com/franzenzenhofer/lsd (Warning: a single, dependency less CoffeeScript source file)

How is it in any way relevant to OP's project being shown?

Presumably because it's a mobile game with no IAP or ads.
Post reply on HN