Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

playadrift.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 341 posts

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

#171

Post by jiggy2011 »

i_cannot_hack wrote: post #163
huhtenberg wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you stand by it, why not attach your real name to it? Seriously? You don't understand why not?

Since it is obvious he does not – and you give the impression of possessing some kind of explanation – why not directly explain your view of it to him instead of asking snarky questions that you already know the answer to? It is a much more meaningful way to advance the discussion.

If he gives his real name then he is basically publically admitting to astroturfing via fake reviews.

I'm assuming this is against the TOS of pretty much any app store and could get whatever apps he is associated with pulled.

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

#173

Post by VonGuard »

phil wrote: post #170
lotso wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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? Could you explain this logic?

This is toxic advice and putting it out there makes the ecosystem worse. Giving it anonymously but backing it by appealing to your authority as an IGF judge, etc is bullshit. (And that's true regardless of whether it's effective -- it clearly is, though I think mostly in the short term). Edit: Since I'm being fairly negative here, I want to add that VonGuard's comments on gameplay and adding unique elements seem well…

OK, fair enough. I am not giving the cheating advice as an IGF judge. The advice for improving gameplay, and my compliments on the quality were as an IGF judge.

My comments on the app store are strictly from the cynical perspective of seeing what works. It has to be said. If you go in not knowing the table stakes, yer at a disadvantage. This is just like search engine optimization: fluid, ever changing, highly competitive, extremely scummy, but EVERYONE does it.

The alternative from the perspective of say, EA or a GluMobile, is to play completely by the rules, but produce 500 games per year. As a smalltime developer, cheating is immeasurably helpful when competing with the giants that can launch 2 new games every week.

I can't help but feel your desire for me not to talk about it this loud amounts to you plugging your ears and saying "LALALALALALA NOT LISTENING!" This stuff happens every day. Ignoring it means losing to it.

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

#174

Post by buildnship »

kenshiro_o wrote: post #158

That's a great puzzle game. It's even more impressive as you guys made it in 6 months. I am always amazed, humbled and energized with posts and projects such as this one. Keep up the good work!

Yea, great job on the game!! I was past level 7 before I had to pull my self away.

The game is A LOT of fun ;) I definitely see myself and people I know playing it. Best of luck in the app-store. No doubt you all will do GREAT!!!

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

#175

Post by joeld42 »

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…

A less sleazy way to do this is to offer players something ("unlock the secret panda level") in return for giving you a five star review. You can't verify that they actually do, but if you give them the item and then send them to the app store, some of them will. Then, set this up as a timed promotion along with a push notification so you can get a bunch of players to hopefully respond at the same day. It's not as effective as buying rank, but it's less sleazy, and it can have some effect.

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

#176

Post by phil »

VonGuard wrote: post #153
phil wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, i…

Hey, look at the top ten apps on both app stores, then come back here and try not to be cynical about anyone's chanced of succeeding there. I've seen numbers on sales in the app stores. If yer not in the top 25, you might as well not even be in the app store, from a meaningful revenue perspective. There are very few exceptions, as far as I know. One possible one would be any app that's $20. Those probably make money,…

I have for years. Believe me, the idea that the app store is a positive feedback loop and you have to clear the inital hurdle to get anywhere is not news to me.

But the advice you're giving here is roughly equivalent to telling a young cyclist in their first pro race, "hey, listen buddy. If you want to succeed, you've got to dope. Everybody's doing it. There's no other way."

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

#177

Post by lkozma »

seanalltogether wrote: post #142
lkozma wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think you are right, it's harder than I thought.

The problem can in fact be modeled with a graph in which you need to find vertex-disjoint paths between pairs of vertices (s1,t1), (s2,t2), and so on, but this problem seems not to be reducible to max-flow, instead it is NP-hard.

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

#178

Post by archagon »

phil wrote: post #143
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, i…

I agree completely.

90% of the games that are currently on my iPhone were a) made by dev teams with 1-3 people, b) provide a unique and polished experience, and c) became known mainly based on community outreach. None of them are currently in the top rankings, but as far as I can tell they make enough money for the teams to get by. People keep talking about "hidden gems" on the App Store that failed to succeed despite having an excellent product, but so far, the only ones I've seen were either outright clones, failed to do any outreach at all, or had a poor business model. (Freemium with very little incentive to upgrade, for instance.)

Sure, if you're a hundred-person company, you might need to resort to shady means to be profitable. But I don't think that's at all necessary to make money on the App Store.

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

#179

Post by philh »

seanalltogether wrote: post #2

I wanted to share this with you guys because it's taken around 3 years of reading HN to really convince myself to quit my job and build my a business with my friends

Is it intended that any solution will have all squares coloured? I like that property, and I think most of the online levels have it, but I solved level eight with some blanks.

If I had an iDevice I would pay for this. Good luck.

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

#180

Post by prawks »

seanalltogether wrote: post #54
prawks wrote: post #31

Question: how essential do you think it was for you to quit your job to create this game? How much longer would it have taken you had you developed it on the side/weekends? I'm in no way trying to argue your decision, I'm genuinely curious how much work it was to create a game like this. Also, how much of the conceptual work for this game had you done prior to leaving your job?

I would say pretty essential, but that's really because of my personality. I've started and stopped more projects then I can count over the past ten years while holding a steady job. Without saving up money and leaving my job, I'd probably have a half finished game sitting in my projects folder right now.

Thanks! It's a very fun game; it really gets me hooked in terms of difficulty around level 12-14.
Post reply on HN