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Show HN: 6 months ago I quit my job to pursue indie dev. Here is our first game

playadrift.com

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Re: Show HN: 6 months ago I quit my job to pursue indie dev. Here is our first game

#141

Post by alberich »

VonGuard wrote: post #136
jrajav wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you have any money left, spend that cash on those awful, dark-alley fake review and promotion services. Take all of Ronyeh's advice, it's excellent, but you can't stop there. To succeed today in the app stores, you have to cheat, so go buy some reviews and downloads so you can raise your ranking in the store. It's a self-fulfilling cycle: higher rankings, more sales. > You have to game the app stores to succeed.…

Hey, this is not my advice. This was given to me by someone who charts successes and sales in app stores. It sucks, it's ugly, but it's fucking true and it works.

Hm, so why make a unique game after all? Just make a crap one and buy the reviews.

1. write crap game. 2. buy reviews. 3. profit.

Re: Show HN: 6 months ago I quit my job to pursue indie dev. Here is our first game

#142

Post by seanalltogether »

lkozma wrote: post #115
seanalltogether wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes in fact I've spent the past 6 months thinking about whether i could build a level generator that can verify and solve the levels too. The way I see it, with a simple 5x5x5 cube with 5 colors on it, the number of possible combinations to check is 75^5, which might take awhile to brute force, so there needs to be a intelligent way to map lines.

I think solving any of these can be reduced to a max-flow problem, and thus it is efficiently solvable.

Many of the levels have been designed so that if you follow the path of least resistance to solve them, you will always be left with one line that wont connect. Thats the true puzzle part of the game, and that's the aspect that makes me think it's difficult to solve without resorting to brute force.

Re: Show HN: 6 months ago I quit my job to pursue indie dev. Here is our first game

#143

Post by phil »

VonGuard wrote: post #130

Hey guys, thought I'd throw in my 2-cents as an Independent Games Festival judge, and as press. First of all, your presentation is terrific. Great art and sound. Top notch, feels like it came from a very talented team. With this game on your resume, you've got a great future ahead of yourselves. Now, the bad part: from a gameplay perspective, your game is not unique enough to win out on its own merits in any app stor…

This is disturbingly cynical advice. If you stand by it, why not attach your real name to it? If not, why put it in public?

And by the way, you're recommending buying fake reviews. Here's a better tactic (and one that's guaranteed not to get you kicked out of the app store): get your launch announcement to the top slot on a popular discussion site, and get the real people there to leave real reviews instead. Which, if you're reading this and want to help these guys, is probably the best thing you can do.

Re: Show HN: 6 months ago I quit my job to pursue indie dev. Here is our first game

#144

Post by seanalltogether »

quickpost wrote: post #60

Just FYI, google thinks your dev blog is / has spam: http://i.imgur.com/za2UXWh.png One a separate note - awesome game! I plan to buy it. On the web version, one thing I'd like would be able to toggle a miss clicked space back to "neutral" with a click. I'd also make the levels slightly harder before getting to level 5 - they all seemed too easy up to that point.

Yeah I can't figure out where thats coming from, I've poured over my site to find it and even resubmitted to google and they don't see that spam when i manually submit. Maybe I should just go with a hosted solution and stop trying to manage wordpress on my own.

Re: Show HN: 6 months ago I quit my job to pursue indie dev. Here is our first game

#145

Post by pbhjpbhj »

BoppreH wrote: post #85

The puzzle is identical to 3D Logic: http://www.kongregate.com/games/AlexMatveev/3d-logic-2-stron... Are you sure this won't be a problem? Edit: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5332485 Yeah, its a clone of an old shockwave game I played about 10 years ago and felt it would be perfect for touch interaction. If you played it 10 years ago, it seems like a reasonable idea to clone it, but the fact that the old devs…

That 3D Logic game worked how I expected this one too when I started.

>"it[']s a clone of an old shockwave game" //

Personally it doesn't look close enough to me to be a copyright infringement, game mechanics aren't copyrightable (but are patentable [depending on jurisdiction]). It wouldn't matter if the game had been released yesterday - in copyright terms - you can copy the concept of the game as long as you don't copy (or derive) your implementation.

IMO the 3D Logic version is vastly superior I'd just add a "hold button" to allow the cube to be held still whilst you draw.

Re: Show HN: 6 months ago I quit my job to pursue indie dev. Here is our first game

#147

Post by VonGuard »

alberich wrote: post #141
VonGuard wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey, this is not my advice. This was given to me by someone who charts successes and sales in app stores. It sucks, it's ugly, but it's fucking true and it works.

Hm, so why make a unique game after all? Just make a crap one and buy the reviews. 1. write crap game. 2. buy reviews. 3. profit.

Well, the way it works, you get an initial boom for your buck, and you get more eyes on your product during your launch week, which is your critical time to make an impression. If your game or app is shit and no one ever uses it again, that money spent on cheating is an immediate ROI, and drops off as soon as you stop promoting the app.

However, if your app is awesome, that initial burst of cheating allowed your game to push through the crowds of 50,000 other apps to get the eyeballs it needs. If it's a great app, those initial users who were suckered in by cheating the system, are now happy, satisfied customers telling their friends about your app. You don't need to game the system anymore: you've broken through the brick wall that is the first 10,000 or so sales. After that, you can rely on the quality of your game to win people over, but when you're naked, alone and review-less, the app store can be a terrifying and unfriendly place.

Re: Show HN: 6 months ago I quit my job to pursue indie dev. Here is our first game

#148

Post by tinco »

alberich wrote: post #141
VonGuard wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey, this is not my advice. This was given to me by someone who charts successes and sales in app stores. It sucks, it's ugly, but it's fucking true and it works.

Hm, so why make a unique game after all? Just make a crap one and buy the reviews. 1. write crap game. 2. buy reviews. 3. profit.

That wouldn't work at all. Did you even think about writing this comment?

A crap game doesn't get good reviews, so boosting the app rating by buying fake reviews is just throwing good money after bad.

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