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Sneaky peaks ahoy

A long time ago I announced that I wanted to do a remake of a classic Atari ST game “Robotz” in Flash. Fast forward to today, and I still haven’t got around to it. However James Monkman (Heavy Stylus of RGCD) wasn’t as lazy as me, and set about creating this awesome re-imaging of the original.

Although it’s for Windows PCs only (as it was created in Game Maker it’s a mighty fine game indeed! A lot of the limitations of the original have been removed, and the gameplay is faster, more frantic and basically more fun as a result. Check out this cool video to see what I mean:

The graphics are lovely, a faithful blend of rips from the ST original and some new pixel art. 505, Crazy_Q and Damo provide the stomping soundtrack.

If you remember the original, you’ve got to try this version of it.

Hell, if you just enjoy quality games – you’ve got to try Robotz DX

Loads more info and the download here: http://www.rgcd.co.uk/robotzdx/

After what feels like an age, Ilija and I are pleased to announce that our game Quartet is finally released to the wild, ready for you to play!

Although development of the game was very rapid (we had the whole concept, art and core game up and running inside of 24 hours) the sponsorship process on this one was anything but. As with most of our games we listed it on FlashGameLicense.com. The process started well, and a mini bidding-war broke out between Gimme5games and MiniJeugos. In the end we selected a bid from MiniJeugos, as although Gimme5 had bid higher, they gave us the ability to run our own ads. So we happily selected them as the winning bid, sent them a friendly message and waited…

… and waited, and waited. After a week we sent them another message on FGL. Nothing. A few days later we tried again, but still they refused to get back to us. Eventually after 2.5 weeks with not so much as a peep from them, we had had enough. Every single message we sent them was civil and polite, but what was so annoying is that we knew they were logging into FGL every day, because we could see their “last logged in” dates. Which basically meant they were choosing to ignore us, which is incredibly unprofessional. We asked FGL to step-in and take action, but they failed to respond to us either.

In the end I contacted the other bidder on the game, Gimme5, explained what had happened and offered them the game instead. They replied the same day, thankfully still wanted it and we took it from there. Our dealings with Gimme5 were fast, professional and courteous. They were quite precise about certain integration features, but it was all to do with their branding placement (they weren’t cheeky enough to start asking us for gameplay changes, which an amazing amount of sponsors do!). So there was a bit of to-ing and fro-ing, but no worse than I’ve experienced with any other sponsor, and the game is live on their site today.

While we were integrating the Gimme5 API/branding, FGL did get back to us. They weren’t able to offer any explanation as to what had happened with MiniJeugos, but we were at least able to cancel our agreement and transfer it to Gimme5. To this day MiniJeugos haven’t so much as offered a single message to us, not even an apology, which is quite incredible. So there we have it… I personally know a number of devs who have dealt successfully with them, but they totally failed for us  – so if you are accepting a bid from them on FGL you may want to fire them a PM first, just to check they really mean it. Otherwise it could mean weeks of delay and wasted time trying to sort it out.

Ok so maybe we’re sleeping with the devil somewhat in releasing our game Quartet for an Apple device But it’s fun, free and TGC have done a good job converting it.

Downoad it free from iTunes

They added a nice feature where you can import a photo from your camera allowing you to use your own faces. Which actually makes the game quite fun (and harder if the faces all look similar!)

We aren’t totally happy with the way the graphics scaled, but we just didn’t have time to modify them (if you look at the Credits screen you’ll see we fixed that one, but got no further). So the lovely pixel graphics look very blurry. But, it’s free, has cool Open Feint integration and I feel is good for killing a few minutes.

The full Flash version will be out very shortly, as we’ve signed an agreement with Gimme5Games to sponsor it.

I had a desire to see if it was possible to create a simplistic “Virtua Fighter” or Tekken style game in Flash 10. The biggest initial hurdle was getting a convincing model displayed and animating it. And then seeing if the frame rate shot through the floor like a dead weight, or was actually playable.

After a lot of messing around with Milkshape, md2.qc custom files and the Away3D MD2 parser doing some really weird shit, I finally managed to assemble this tech test (click the picture to launch, FP10 required):

Ok so it’s not going to set the world on fire, but I was genuinely surprised at the speed, even when running a full animation sequence. And the model could be optimised significantly too.

More tests will follow as time permits, but this is very encouraging at least.

This one slipped under the radar a bit, but I released a new game “Garden Box“  a few months ago. It was a “casual friendly” update of my game Dark Cubes. With the hardcore techno and demoscene vibe replaced with flowers, birds and gardening paraphenalia

Anyway the game went live on BigFishGames today, so hop on over and have a play if you feel like a cerebral 3D challenge!

It has been a while since I posted (other than about bitmap fonts in flixel). A brand new baby daughter and a wildly increased work load in the office has cut my coding time down dramatically. But tonight I updated and released our new game Quartet. Quartet is a graphically retro-inspired puzzle game. You attempt to assemble faces as quickly as possible, with more “complete” faces scoring much bigger points. As the timer decreases things get frantic and it’s as much as you can do to survive, let alone put that final piece of robot chin into the slot you need to secure a “full face” bonus

The game is now in active bidding on FlashGameLicense, and we’ve had favourable feedback and play testing from a lot of people. Those who “get it” seem to really love it, and ferocious high score challenges have occurred on the beta test. We took a lot of player feedback on-board and produced the final build this weekend, which is up on FGL.

Right now I cannot tell how the bidding will go. It’s started ok, with a healthy first bid, but the weekend has meant its failed to progress from there. I think the quirky retro style may put some sponsors off (as opposed to the game itself) but personally I love what Ilija’s done with the graphics and music. It has a charm all of its own. And while part of my brain wonders what would have happened had we shoe-horned it into a contrived Aztec / Egyptian setting, or one with cute Safari animals, I’m glad we didn’t.

I’m also glad that Quartet is finished, and that we completed it in such a short time scale. There is nothing quite like the feeling of finally releasing a game! It’s quite a buzz. A good kick-start, because we have much bigger, more impressive titles looming sharply on the horizon, and some big changes for this blog. So stay tuned folks oh and if you can view the game on FGL, be sure to check out the Credits!

After the blissful chaos of preparing for the Droplet 2 launch party, I finally had time to take stock and catch-up. The party was an absolute success. Both the game iLKe and I made, and the Twitter wall I coded for Gav went down a treat. The Twitter wall featured this awesome video that was projected, Bat symbol like, across Bristol’s Park Street onto an adjacent building. People in the queue (and there were a lot of them!) could send their tweets to the wall and see them displayed in near real-time. Here’s a video taken from someone there. And here’s the actual SWF that was projected (give it time to download, there’s a 3MB FLV streaming in)

Before I discuss the game – can I just say you MUST check out this montage picture of the incredible custom Droplets. They were all featured in the gallery, and the level of talent displayed in some of them is nothing short of breath-taking. There’s a whole Flickr group dedicated to the Droplets.

The game was released onto the Droplet web site the day before the party. It was also mentioned on Twitter (lots!), Facebook (lots!) and best of all could be seen running on TVs in both the store and the gallery. The footage was from an earlier build, but it still looked great, and I got plenty of compliments

So what’s happened since then? Well there were a couple of bugs in the game, as is to be expected with the last-minute rush we endured. Most notable of which was that the scores didn’t reset when the game was completed! So people could work their way up the highscore board a little too easily Thankfully Katie spotted this one and I promptly zapped it.

There was also a display issue with the background sky scroller, that absolutely no-one noticed except me – but it bugged me every time I played it. iLKe also tweaked the level layout quite a lot, refining a few areas and making others cleaner. He also saw fit to redraw my Pause screen a little. Damn pixel gurus I also updated the Droplet page here on my web site, to include the missing Development details.

Anyway the new build is up on the Droplet micro site. And yes I wiped all the highscores to keep things “fair”. Enjoy!

This game was created to celebrate the launch of Series 2 of the awesome little Droplet vinyl toys. iLKke and I took the Droplet characters back into an 8-bit NES style era, complete with platforming action, colourful scenery and a truly micro bipbop vibe.

Read more about the game, and of course play it on the Droplet page

I’ve talked before about the kids virtual world called WebbliWorld that myself and the Aardman Digital team built. Well it’s been an extremely busy 4th quarter for us as we’ve been releasing hundreds of in-world updates, as well as producing a really excellent racing game called WebbliRacers:

The game has a dual purpose, and two versions exist. One to be released “into the wild” to entice new visitors to the world. And a full version that lives within WebbliWorld which has all 4 tracks and a comprehensive (and fun!) achievement system built into it. Do well and you’ll unlock special items of clothing to wear. Do very well and you can unlock items to decorate your pod (house) with. Do really well and you’ll get awarded special trophies to show-off to your peers

The game was developed by Julian Scott (of Drift Runners fame) with art and animation by the Aardman Digital team. It’s a really beautiful game, and takes the unique and wakky style of WebbliWorld and uses it to full effect as these screen shots show:

Track 1 – The cute little traffic cones blink and change colour when hit

Track 2 – Take the hidden routes for extra coins

Track 3 – Oh I do like to be beside the sea side!

Track 4 – Looks so yummy be careful not to lick your monitor!

I urge you to try it You’ll need an account on WebbliWorld, but that’s a 30 second process and is 100% free. Once you are in-world click the map icon on the menu and look for the arcade machine on the left-hand side. There you’ll find the “WebbliWhizzers” zone, which is the in-world leaderboard and place to play WebbliRacers.

The game has so many nice little touches, from the skid marks, puffs of smoke, jumps, extreme driving bonuses and excellent animation. Lots of what looks like 3D animation (spinning coins, rotating traffic cones) were in fact all hand-animated by the ever talented Robin Davey directly in Flash.

The 4th track is my personal favourite. Originally it was going to be a volcano level, with lava and tikki statues and the like. But it was rightly decided this was a little too dull for WebbliWorld, so the idea of a “chocolate mountain” was born. So the whole track winds around caramel, marshamllow, chocolate and sticky oozing syrup volcanoes. When you drive through the goo you leave a beautiful messy trail behind:

Click here to visit WebbliWorld – I look forward to seeing you on the leaderboard and if you see “WebbliMunro” in world, come over and say hi!

Developing games in your spare time is always troublesome when the real-life workload ramps up. And it’s no exception for me right now. But in between insane schedules and family commitments I am ploughing all of my free time into a new arcade action game.

The gorgeous pixel artwork is by Ilija Melentijevic, and we’ve got big plans for a series of games featuring our feathered game hero “Burd Reynolds”. This first outing see’s him rescuing cute green blobs from alien critters. We’re not actually sure why yet, but it’s fun to play all the same

Here’s a sneak peak of the game, grabbed from the version I’ve just committed to svn:

The Burd is coming… during 2009 hopefully, but I should know better than to ever quote dates in a public place

If you enjoyed playing Kyobi on the web, then why not download the complete iPhone version totally free of charge!

Kyobi on the iPhone is called “Touch & Go”, but it’s the same physics match-3 fun, with lots of added bells and whistles.

This is a fun and innovative “match 3” casual game that uses the touch input of your device to the max. The rules are simple, drag the blocks and throw them together. When three or more of the same color collide they all explode. Just don’t let the blocks pile-up too high. If they stack to the top then your game is over.

Smashing four or more blocks in one go will release one of three special power-ups – a time freeze, a stick of dynamite that blows up half the blocks on screen and a bomb that wipes out all the blocks.

Combo bonus points are awarded if you manage to smash blocks together in quick succession and multiplier points are awarded for four and five block hits. Each level has a set target of blocks to explode and when this is reached all remaining blocks will count against your level end bonus.

As the levels progress the action speeds up and more blocks will fall. From level five small blockers are introduced making the sorting of blocks trickier. From a gentle mind soothing experience the game will develop into a fast paced sorting crisis!

As the game plays you can organize the blocks by tilting the phone to move all the blocks to the left or the right.

See how many levels you can complete!

• Great Casual Gaming fun
• Total touch game play
• Tilt the phone to move all blocks
• Easy to play
• Great time filler
• Cool music track
• High score table
• Score combo bonuses

Touch & Go! is perfectly suited to the iPhone, a truly new touch game experience!

Overall, Touch & Go! is well designed and responsive. For a new take on the standard match and clear block game, the current sale price of just $.99 makes Touch & Go! a worthwhile purchase.

8/10 Appcraver

Placing a block is simple. All you do is catch a block out of mid-air, you then have full control of where you place it – and I mean full control. This is what sets Touch & Go! apart from it’s competitors.

www.148apps.com

Baldy Dash is a game myself and the talented crew at Aardman Digital built. It’s to promote the new Shaun the Sheep Nintendo DS game “Off His Head” published by D3.

It marks my second game released this month, and my 5th involving sheep, farmers and lots of grass

The concept is similar to Star Fish – drive around, collect the wigs and avoid everything else. The sheep amble around the farmyard, trying their best to get in your way, slow you down and end your game.

If you play this game on the official Shaun the Sheep web site (and are logged-in) it will enter you into a competition to win a Nintendo DS and copy of the game. Just make sure you have the highest score on the Competition leaderboard by the end of November.

Click here to play Baldy Dash and read more about the development process.

Away3D is an awesome 3D library for Flash. Flod is an awesome library for replaying tracker music in Flash. Throw those two things together with my inner-geek upbringing of the 80s and you get DarkCubes. I grew up drip-fed on ST/Amiga demo effects, and this random little 3D game is what I banged out during a couple of lunch breaks and some hours last night.

I actually wrote DarkCubes back in 2000 on the PC/Windows using DarkBASIC (hence the title of the game). So I had the code and figured it would make a good first experiment for Away3D. A bit of messing around, a bit of swearing, and lots of fiddling later and this tiny puzzler was born.

The logo is from the original PC game and was made by Yann ‘Kohai‘ Parmentier. The music is by Adam Sikorski (DSX of TRSI), 505 of Checkpoint and Toodeloo of the Dead Hackers Society. The rest by yours truly.

Lots of keys do stuff in-game, so have a fiddle! (1-5 changes the music for example, D turns on Debug info, 7-9 change texture, etc. Read the scroller for the full list).

I make no apologies for this beating shitty spec  Netbooks / PCs over the head with a giant CPU grinding axe. Deal with it. It’s hardly the end of the world.

Click here to play (sorry no pre-loader, but it’s only 1MB in size)

Enjoy

I’m pleased to say that my latest game Star Fish is released and ready to play. Enjoy some underwater aquatic antics in this mouse avoider / collect-em-up. Although the whole game was started and finished in a day, I’m still happy with the presentation and playability. If I had wanted to spend more time I would have introduced moving baddies and more levels. Even so, there are 25 to complete, which is probably 20 more than most people will ever see

The game uses artwork by the same artist that did the cute insects in my game Bug Box. I think the “cute factor” really played against me when the game was up for bidding on FlashGameLicense. Chris/FGL admitted to me that they don’t have too many “kid friendly” portals on there, which made the game a hard sell. Still, my thanks to RobotJamGames and BigFishGames for taking it on

I’m very pleased to have created another game this year. I reckon I’ve still got a few left in me, but the months are closing in, and I sense the proximity of 2010.

I’m pleased to say that my little “game in a day” creation Bug Box is now released and out in the wild! You can play it over on its games page. Or if you feel like giving it some rating love it’s also on Newgrounds and Kongregate. Quite why I uploaded a game featuring nature sounds, cute little bugs and pure cerebral gameplay to those two sites is utterly beyond me. Hopefully my sanity will have returned by the morning On the plus side it’ll appear on BigFishGames by the end of the month.

A week ago while chatting on a forum RobotJam inspired me by something he said: About how everyone should try and create a “one day game” at least once in their developer lives. As in a proper game, that you then go and and try to sell. And he gave some successful examples of his own.

I thought this was a nice idea. So now, a week later, mine is finished

It’s a simple puzzle game: Just get the butterfly out of the box. There are only 3 levels, easy, medium and hard. It is based on an old Japanese game played with wooden blocks called Hakoiri Shogi.

The core game was done in 3 hours, as you’ll see when you play it (it’s hardly cutting edge technology). Having done that I then set about on the graphics, which took me a lot longer. I bought some of the images from iStockPhoto and then built the scene-up the way I wanted it. The music is from SoundRangers.com mixed with some nature effects by myself. Also big thanks to Eric at Cavalcade Games for doing the great “Level Win” animation sequence for me.

Originally I only wanted the one puzzle (“Easy”). That’s all I had in place and I was pleased I had managed to create a nice little logic game so fast. But then I let my wife play it and she completed it instantly, so I figured it needed more! I added in two new puzzles, the leafy reveal sequence, the in-game buttons, etc. I just guess I couldn’t leave it alone, so I polished it until I felt it shined enough.

Having said that it’s still my absolute fastest game build ever: from concept to FGL in 5 days, working evenings only. Yes I am going to put it up for sponsorship, but I’m realistic and really don’t expect much. My hope is that I could make a few little sales that add-up. As long as I cover my $60 media costs I’m happy.

For now you can play the game only on FGL. My FGL “Friends” can see it right away, as can other devs of a certain level. At the time of writing it’s still pending approval for sponsor viewing. Obviously once it has been sold everyone can play it

On May 9th I posted the second part of my report on how my game Kyobi was doing. This is the final part of the report, nearly 2 months on.

Kongregate Summary

The Kongregate referral payments have now finished. When I sold Kyobi Kongregate were my Primary sponsor. They offered me $200 upfront on referral payments (basically any time someone clicks one of the Kong logos in my game, I got paid for it). The last time I wrote they had just paid me my first months worth of clicks (just under $800). Since then I received 2 more payments, one for the month of May at $1548 and June at $382. I know that if GameJacket hadn’t died then the June payment would have been a lot higher. That is now the end of the agreement I had with Kongregate, and it certainly was an unexpected bonus to the games earnings.

GameJacket RIP

Of course as we all know by now, GameJacket have gone bust. This means I never got paid the $1000 they owed me, so I have to deduct that from the previous total Kyobi had made.

iPhone Sales

Kyobi on the iPhone has enjoyed moderate success, and there is still a constant trickle of sales coming in. Between launch in late March and the end of May it has sold 5802 copies (an average of 77 copies per day). Because of the way Apple report sales I cannot give figures for June yet. But I do know that they are much lower than April and May. Summer time, plus now being an “old” game don’t help. It was fascinating to see how the sales changed. Some days it would shift nearly 300 copies, and then drop down to 100 the next day. Chart position played a really important role, as you can imagine. Right now it still enjoys a healthy ranking in European countries and, strangely enough, Japan. Bear in mind that I only get a percentage of sales (the lions share going to the publisher) but it still equated to $1563 to the end of May.

More small sponsor versions

I sold two more sponsor branded copies of Kyobi since the last report. Both were very small scale and only netted me $200 in total, but it’s still all helpful. Incredibly off the back of these sales I also sold two copies of one of my first ever Flash games, Abombinaball, so the knock-on effect was pleasant to say the least It also gave me two more portal contacts that I can approach when my new games are ready.

Final Summary

So how does it all stack-up now? Well taking the figures from the last report into account ($10,105). Deducting the $1000 GameJacket will never give me ($9105). Add in the new iPhone sales, sponsorships and Kongregate payments. And the total from my little game stands at $12,798. At the current exchange rate that’s £7833. Of course you then need to deduct the UK tax I have to pay from this.

In “real life” terms after tax that equals what I get paid from my day job over the course of a couple of months. So does this mean I could quit my job and do this full-time? Well, no. For a start I wouldn’t actually want to. While extremely demanding my job is also very satisfying. I work with a great team of talented people in one of the most creative places in the UK. That alone has value to me. The other important factor is that this money came in dribs and drabbs over a period of 12 weeks. That is not helpful when you have fixed mortgage payments, food to buy, etc. I know a lot of people who can and do work like this, and are very successful at it, but I just don’t really have the self discipline needed to stay on-top of all the paperwork. I admire greatly those that do.

And it’s a risk because not every game I make will be this successful. Perhaps I’ll never get this level of success ever again. Of course I’m optimistic that the game I’m working on at the moment is original and fun enough to do well. But that’s like saying I’m optimistic that my lottery numbers will come in next week. Granted it’s not a gamble on the same level, I mean you can’t sit back and look at your lottery numbers and go “damn, that’s a fine piece of work there”. But there’s an element of risk in all game releases, and logic or fairness doesn’t always win. You never know who you are up against that month. Or what the overall feeling of the gaming world will be. And you never will.

So to conclude I just want to say that whatever you do, keep on coding, and keep on making great games. Because there is definitely a market for them. Many people far greater than I ever will be demonstrate every day that there is a life to be made in building beautiful Flash games. And living from those proceeds. If you are one of those people, I tip my hat to you. If you aspire to be one, you have my best wishes for your success.

Despite an incredibly busy time at work I have managed to progress my chameleons game by quite a considerable amount. It’s an action / puzzle platformer and I’m using Box2D for all of the platform elements. It just feels lovely bouncing off the blocks, gliding, sliding and slinking about the levels. As a side effect of this I have learnt loads about the b2PolyDef, sensors and custom contact listeners. It’s all good stuff though – you can never stop learning

Fruiti Winnings

Since release Fruiti Blox has been going down well. Loads of plays, decent enough NG and Kong scores and it even won the Mochiland “Flash Game Friday” award (and $100 in the process), winning this is a first for me so I was really pleased about it Here is the review:

This puzzle game has you matching four corners of the same color and eliminating all blocks within that space. The gameplay idea isn’t new, but the execution is definitely top notch! I like how clicking on the color highlights the selected and dims the others (makes for finding corners faster). The bubbly graphics and smooth interface make it even more fun! You can’t just buy this kind of polish in a store, folks. With leaderboards and achievements rounding out the game, it’s definitely a great experience.

I’ve had some player feedback come through that I am going to implement in a new build that I’ll release to Candystand and BigFishGames next week.

The 8-bit Interview

I also finally managed to complete an interview with Jeff over at 8-bit Rocket. He sent it through to me around the start of May, and I only just got it back to him, which is incredibly slack of me. Hopefully it won’t take him as long to edit out my weirdness and get it live as it took me to finish it.

GameJacket

Those of you who follow me on Twitter will know how disgruntled I was with GameJacket. Their recent collapse into bankruptcy has left a lot of developers out of pocket, myself included. I’m not going to dwell on this any further, a number of good people have lost their jobs there and a really well built system is now in tatters. I understand why it happened, what I will never forgive them is offering me the $1000 advance in the first place even though they knew full-well they could never afford to pay it to me. That just stinks. I’m even more annoyed by the fact that Kyobi was all set to actually make back that advance, and then some, had it had a chance. It had already earned nearly 60% back by the time they went under. With GameJackets collapse the game dropped out of hundreds of web sites across the world, which of course also effects the amount of referrals it can send to Kongregate (my primary sponsor), so I’m almost certainly going to loose money as a result of this too.

Still, life goes on. There’s no point even giving this any more thought. I recognised the “dying” signs of GameJacket a good month in advance of their death, and released Kyobi onto Mochi as a precaution and now I’m glad I did. Otherwise it’d be fighting for distribution against the rest of the wave of GameJacket orphans now hitting the service.

AS3 Atari ST YM Player

Christian Corti, the mastermind behind the AS3 Mod Player library Flod, has been working on a YM Replay library and it is sounding incredible! The YM format is a direct register dump from the YM soundchip found in computers like the Atari ST or the MSX. There are hundreds of YM tunes available (converted from classic games and demos). Although SNDH is the format of choice for chip-tune replay on real Atari hardware, getting that to replay within Flash means emulating an entire 68000 CPU, which is quite a tall order. YM replay at least means it’s “just”  having to emulate the YM chip itself.

How useful is YM replay in Flash games today? Virtually none unless you were doing a retro remake and wanted an authentic sound (without using megs worth of mp3 files, YM tunes are typically around 4k in size).

But how cool is the fact that FP10 is powerful enough to do this at all? Loads

Well it has been a long time coming, but I was pleased to be told that Kyobi was finally released by Oberon Media today, and is now sat pretty on the homepage of MySpace Games. Oberon have been hard at work updating their game delivery system to support AS3 and MySpace is one of their first sites to carry AS3 games, of which Kyobi is their flagship title.

Anyway they’ve done a great job with the attract sequence, so I hope some of those 18,000+ current players give it a click

I finished my game Fruiti Blox back in December 2008 and sold it to Candystand.com. A few months went by and they still hadn’t released it. I asked them what the problem was and basically they were flat-out designing and releasing their new site. So Fruiti Blox got side-lined in the process. They are re-doing the graphics and branding for the game entirely so I can understand the delay.

However part of the original agreement was that after 3 months I could release a viral version with ads. Obviously the game still hasn’t seen the light of day on their own site, so “3 months” was looking a long way off. I was always very happy with this game. The love and attention I poured into it paid off, so I was a bit upset that until now no-one got to experience that.

Thankfully they agreed this situation was a bit pants, sent me an animation to use and said I can release now providing it appeared at start-up. I took a couple of hours, packaged it all up and now it has finally entered the wild!

So you can now play Fruiti Blox on NewGrounds and Kongregate (ratings welcome on both!). It will start seeding fully over the coming weeks as it’s on Mochi Distribution and FGD.

I’ve no idea how well it’ll go down on NG and Kong, but releasing it there is like one of those developer “rights of passage” tasks you have to put your fledgling games through. Some get flamed into hell and back, some limp out with mediocre ratings and a feeling of averageness, while on those rare occassions you may actually get some comments beyond “meh” and ratings beyond “1/5 – No zombies”.

I’m guessing due to the fact you really do have to read the tutorial in Fruiti Blox (otherwise it just doesn’t “make sense”) that it’ll get slammed until it hits the more casual portals. Time will tell.

After the frenetic workload that went into my last game Kyobi, I needed a break from development. Add to this an insane pile of “real life” coding work and I was finding it really hard to motivate myself to get on with something new. Working until 3am in the morning day after day does that to me.

So my own personal game projects bit the dust. I tried mocking-up an overhead tank shooter, but that didn’t get so far because I didn’t have a firm vision of where the game should go. I even tried doing a co-op breakout style game and failed to even finish this yet. But I’m not posting here to bitch about my lack of motivation. I’m posting to say what I’m doing about it

The answer can be summed-up in the picture below:

Here are four very different games. Top left is Robotz – a tactical / puzzle style shooter based on an Atari ST classic. Destroy the generators, this lets you destroy the robots (which are constantly chasing shooting at you). Destroy all the robots and the exit appears. It’s very simple, but actually really fun. The graphics are currently being pixelled for this, and I should have some level mock-ups to show next week. I’ve already done the level designer, mapped out 30 levels and have the soldier running around happily shooting at generators.

Bottom left is Shark Hunter. This was an awesome 8-bit MSX game. You had to mend your fishing nets, while fighting off the sharks and try to survive a whole year. Another nice simple game mechanic, but it has stood the test of time well, and I feel it’ll convert into Flash with ease. And hey, who doesn’t like spearing sharks? Concept graphics work for this is under-way, although no code has been written yet.

Top right is a cup cake. I have a really nice and innovative idea for a time-management game, that I have not seen done before. So I can’t give out too many details at this stage. But I think it could be a real success. I’ve got some awesome graphics through, and I’m actually toying with the idea of doing several games using the same assets – the time management one being the core, and then some simple spin-offs like a “spot the difference” style game, or a “cup cake dress-up”. Hey, you never know

Finally bottom right is a wonderful game that I loved on the ST. It was called Color Clash and was a PD game by Animal Soft. I doubt I’ll keep the same name as I don’t feel it does the game justice. You play the role of a chameleon who (as you’d expect) can change colour. Different colours have different actions. The yellow one can jump. The green one has a tail that he can flick to smash blocks / baddies. The red one inflates and floats and the blue one has a tongue that shoots out and can slide blocks around. I’m taking this core mechanic which works so well and tarting it up big-time.

40 levels have been designed already, and I’ve got the chameleon charging around the levels happily. Jumping, falling, sliding. Still need to do the baddie logic and colour changes. I want to do the original justice, but it also needs bringing up to date, so I’ll be refining and tweaking as I go. Still trying to track down the original author for his blessing on this project. Wish me luck.

I am working on Color Clash and Robotz at the same time. I quite like having the two projects to swap between. The other night I was stuck in getting my chameleon to jump-slide properly, and rather than admit defeat (for the night) and fire-up Left 4 Dead, I hit Robotz instead and got the shooting rebounds working smoothly. I’m also finding as they’re both similar 2D styled games, that I can share quite a bit of the code between them. Always a bonus.

So which will come out of the gates first? Honestly not sure. Right now Color Clash is the most complete, but has a lot of graphics work to be done to it. So Robotz may head it off at the final strait. Time will tell …

I was digging through some boxes in our attic when I came across an old folder. It contained computer magazines and comics I had made back in the mid 1980s, aged around 10 years old. I used to sit there and literally draw my own magazines. I’d draw the covers, the layout, even screen shots for the games I was reviewing. One such magazine I called Arcade & Software. Very much inspired by Computer + Video Games (C+VG) of the mid 80s:

Here is the cover of issue 1. I only ever made 2 issues. The two games I’ve drawn on the cover are Knight Tyme (on the left) and Alien 8 on the right. Not that the robot looks a thing like the robot in Alien 8 mind you.

While flicking through Arcade & Software what caught my eye however was the inclusion of the Turbo Stripe Sofware Catalogue. This catalogue contained a list of games that as a 10 year old I really wanted to be making myself, complete with box cover artwork, short descriptions and even prices and ordering instructions.

These games never existed, I didn’t actually code them back then. I simply wasn’t capable of doing so at that age. It would be a couple more years before I started programming for myself. Reading through this fictitious catalogue there was something captivating about knowing that several decades ago this is what I really wanted to be doing. And these were the sorts of games a 10 year old me wanted to making.

So you know what? It’s time to fulfil a small part of that childhood dream and actually make one of those games. But which one? To decide let’s push embarrassment aside for a moment and dive right in …

… I present to you, in all its time-warped yellow-sellotaped glory the Turbo Stripe Software Catalogue (1987). Please excuse the horrendous spelling. And I claim no responsibility for copyright infringement re: the game ideas shown.

So here’s the front cover. The first thing to explain is that as a child I owned a Toshiba MSX 8-bit computer. In hindsight this was an incredible machine. It had a built-in cartridge port for which you could get some amazing games from the likes of Capcom and Konami. Games such as Nemesis (Gradius), Road Fighter, Sky Jaguar and Castlevania. It also had a tape recorder for the cheap tape-based games from Mastertronic, Ocean, Gremlin and other software houses of the day.

It was a great computer, even if virtually no-one else owned one (which made acquiring games in the school playgroup extremely difficult).

Obviously the kid playing on the MSX on this front cover is doing so with some kind of advanced invisible Wiimote. Turning the page …

And here we have the first two games. I’ll give you no clues as to what Hoppin Harry was going to be a clone of. As you can see collecting the “lady frog” would net you “bounes points” [sic]. I think the 00010 number is the ordering code. Obviously leaving room for another 99,000 or so titles of similar quality.

Turbo Driver was my version of the bastard child of Spy Hunter and Super Sprint. Needless to say this would have incredible graphics too (at least I managed to spell that correctly this time). I’m not entirely sure how this game would play or look, I think it’s just filling space to be honest

Ahh the classic Lock In Man. No, it has nothing to do with after-hours at a pub/bar. Instead you are trapped in a maze with “pellets” to eat and ghosts to avoid. I’m not sure why I didn’t just call it Pacman and be done with it. The one thing I remember most about my plans for this game, and which is alluded to in the description, is that it would ship with a level editor. I always got bored of the single level layout of Pacman and figured it’d be fun to create your own. I still think there is a shred of inspiration in that idea. Perhaps the maze could literally change around you as you play? So it becomes not so much about reflex based survival as it does puzzle solving.

The final game in the catalogue is Chalic. That’s my 10 year olds spelling of chalice (i.e. a cup/goblet). This was going to be a hybrid Gauntlet / Rogue game with more fantasy RPG overtones. As you can read in the description you’d be trapped in an ever-changing maze, and are trying to rescue a chalice before the Wizards monster does. I’ve no idea on earth why a chalice would need “rescuing”. I mean it’s just a bloody cup. But obviously it was in danger. Maybe if the Wizard drank from it, the world would be forever enslaved and “Prince Hugh” would wither and die? Who knows. I wrote the damned thing and even my mind is still reeling.

It’s worth noting that “Chalic” was only going to have “good” graphics rather than “excellent”. I find it interesting that I wrote it would have a “good title page”. Obviously game title pages were very important to me at the time. And the more I reflect on that I realise that actually they still are important to me today. I will often spend a disproportionate amount of time on the title pages for my games.

Coming soon was SOS North Sea and Ship-T11. SOS North Sea was a blatant rip of Chop Lifter. Ship-T11 was just going to be a shmup, the T11 part being the name of my calculate I had at the time. I’m not including these two games as being eligible for creation.

Which of these four gems do I feel is worth of being converted to Flash? It’s a tough choice.. personally I’m favouring “Chalic”, but I’ll open this up to the couple of you insane enough to have read this far. Which would you like to play?

This is the story of the little game that just keeps on traveling. Since writing about my experience selling Kyobi a couple of weeks ago I just wanted to update you on what had happened since…

Part 1 – Kyobi won 3rd place in the Whirled Single-Player Game Competition

This was both unexpected and great news! I’ve blogged about Whirled before, the anarchic but beautifully freeform Flash virtual world. They run a quarterly developers competition where games are split into two categorys: multi-player and singer-player. Obviously Kyboi is about as far from a multi-player game as you can get, so that category was out of bounds for me (which is a shame as it has significantly bigger prizes!). But I spent some time making Kyobi Whirled compatible, uploaded it and hoped for the best.

And it paid off (thanks Chris/Adam!!) It paid off to the tune of $1000 in fact. You can see all the winning games here.

What I find interesting about Whirled is that my game is for sale in the shop there. I get in-world credits from these sales, but I also get my share from the developers bling pool too. The terminology might be a bit “what the hell?” but once you get over the pimp-my-ride lingo it starts to make sense. In short: for as long as your game is on Whirled, and brings people to Whirled, you get a cut of that. This translates into real money. If your game brings people to Whirled and they sign-up, you get 30% of whatever they spend for life. That could add-up significantly, so don’t ignore this fact.

You can also sell “furniture”, “backdrops”, “toys” and “avatars” in the Whirled shop. So I pulled apart the graphics from Kyobi, put them into the shop and now they are on sale. Every day people are buying these items. I took the background from my game, changed it a little and now it’s a room background to buy. And people do buy it!

Here is a picture of my room, decked out with most of the Kyobi game items available on sale:

I believe this is an easy avenue for income, both real and virtual. Given that you made the assets for your game already, it’s a no-brainer and I’ll certainly be doing it again.

Part 2 – Do people REALLY click those sponsor logos?

This question gets asked a lot, most recently here on the FlashGameLicense forums. Honestly, I was quite skeptical about it at first. When Kongregate made me a Primary offer for sponsoring Kyobi, the money was paid as an advance on the income these referral links would make.

To be brutally honest I took the offer and ran, never expecting to hear anything again. I’m glad to say I completely misjudged this part of the deal and my first months payment was just shy of $800. I will get paid another 2 months worth of referrals before the deal ends. While $800 doesn’t sound like a huge sum of money (and on its own it isn’t) you have to remember Kongregate sponsored the GameJacket version of Kyobi – so not only do I get money from someone clicking “More games” for example, but also from the pre-roll ad at the start. Combine these together and with a really popular game that travels well it can add-up significantly. I consider the total plays Kyobi is getting across all versions to be really good, but there are lots of games that do significantly larger numbers of plays – and if they are being paid per click there is some very serious income potential here too.

My advice? Don’t under-estimate these kinds of offers from sponsors. And never under-estimate just how valuable those “more games” links are to your sponsor. People really do click them, in their thousands. So sell your game for a decent price accordingly!

Part 3 – Skill Gaming – A great new revenue stream for Flash Developers?

On the most basic level Skill Gaming sites are sites that offer payments based on how well you play the game. It’s a form of gambling really, with payouts being based on who else is playing the game, how well they are doing, etc. King.com is an example of a site that makes a seriously large amount of money from this market. But there are many others, and I believe this is a growing sector in more ways that one.

At the moment King are sponsoring games left right and center, because they drive large numbers of people to their site – lots of whom then go on to spend real money. Most (if not all?) of the King sponsorship deals are just standard Primary ones though, they pay for branding and your game is a magnet for players to their site.

However this is changing – new sites such as SkillAddiction.com are starting that take your game, convert it to be more “skill game” focused and then you can get a percentage of revenue it generates on that site.

I have been contacted by two different companies, both of whom want versions of Kyobi for their sites on this basis.

There are some factors to consider when it comes to skill gaming – first of all it doesn’t suit all types of game. They have to be quite specific in nature, often they have to be completed within 4-5 minutes, and you have to be able to know the sorts of scores that are possible. For example I’ve had to change Kyobi to make it a lot harder at the start, and to make the play just get progressivly faster until it finally beats you – the current game doesn’t work like this, I inject “breather” levels into the game ever few rounds to give the player a break. But obviously you can’t do this when they are trying to win money.

Lots of current skill gaming sites buy-up Flash games just to pad out their sites and draw people in, then they hope those visitors will explore the “other” side of their site. But as I said this is changing, new skill gaming sites are appearing that will use your game directly with the players, offering pay-outs when playing it. And if they offer you a percentage of this then there is massive potential here. Contact the guys at SkilAddiction.com to see if your game would suit their site, it could benefit you.

I’ll report back to let you know how Kyobi fares in this market soon. I still need to finish my SkillAddiction version of it for release (an insane workload during crunch time for an MMO delivery has prevented this so far sadly)

Part 4 – Oberon Media version finally passes QA!

After what seems like an eternity Kyobi finally passed Oberon Media’s QA process. Their API is pretty complex to work with, and you have to build your game running under a JavaScript test harness that simulates calls and events to/from your game. Certainly quite far removed from the simplicity of most sponsors APIs. It’s not massively challenging, but definitely more time consuming.

They also required a huge load of paperwork to be signed, and contrary to all the other big sponsors (Shockwave, BigFishGames, etc) you have to actually print and post the paperwork to them. Sending via UPS cost me nearly $80. Why they don’t accept it via email like the rest I don’t know. On the plus side once you have sent them one contract you don’t need to post them another in future, should they buy a new game from you.

Their payment terms are also extremely poor compared to every other sponsor out there. You are looking at a wait of around 60 days from the date the game goes live across their network. 60 days is an incredibly long time even for standard companies, let alone an indie developer. On the upside of course I don’t rely on this money for anything essential like the mortgage or feeding my family. But if you do then bear this in mind if ever dealing with them. It’s not a deal breaker at all, I’m just saying be aware of it. I also don’t believe the payment should be from the date they release the game. It should be from the date they approve the QA of it, but that’s another story.

So why go through all this hassle? because it will place the game across a number of sites with extremely significant visitor figures. They run MySpace games for example. I’d wager that the volume of plays my game gets when it hits the sites they licensed it for will be significant. I’ll report back later in the year to see if my thoughts confirm this.

Sadly Oberon don’t offer advertising royalty payments on Flash games (they do for ActiveX/C/Shockwave games). Originally when I first started talking to them it looked like this could be a deal, but things changed internally and it fell away. Had they been able to offer me an ad cut then I actually would have sold the game exclusively to them.

Part 5 – Shockwave.com version finished. Now devoid of Nazi imagery!

It surprises me that sponsors are still licensing Kyobi. I don’t know why it surprises me,  I mean it’s still a fun little game – I guess it’s just the “Flash mindset” where you assume your game is only popular and of interest to sponsors for a month or so, and then is swallowed up in the ever changing tide of new releases. I’m quickly realising this assumption is wrong, and there is actually a bit of a long-tail for game sales, just as in every other medium.

The most recent sales was to Shockwave.com, who contacted me via FlashGameLicense (that site is worth every single 10% they ask for!). Their offer was a good one, and the requests were simple. Logo here, few button changes there, basic API for highscores.

Then they asked if I could change the title page. Apparently the girl didn’t sit well with their demographic.  When I commision work from artists I always insist that they create it over as many layers as is possible within Photoshop, so it’s easily changed. This meant I was able to open the title page, hide the girl layer, shunt the logo around and create a new more “subtle” version. All-in about 10 minutes work. I was happy, they were happy. Job done. Or maybe not …

Then the “Nazi” issue hit. Yes, you read that correctly. If you’ve played Kyobi you’ll know it involves throwing coloured blocks around. Apparently there was an issue with my pink block. The problem was that it featured a triangle. A pink triangle.

Highly confused by this being an issue they explained that a pink triangle was what Nazi’s used to brand homosexuals with while in concentration camps. I had always assumed the pink triangle was the gay pride symbol. A little Wikipedia reading later and it confirms both are true. It’s origins are one of the horrific brands used by the Nazi’s, but these days it is more commonly associated with the paramount opposite of this.

Also the actual symbol is an inversed triangle. The triangle in my game is the other way up.

Anyway, not wanting to be seen to promote Nazi’s in any way at all (even if it feels more like it would be promoting gay pride if anything) I agreed and modified the block, turning it a brown colour instead.

So there you have it – the Shockwave version should be released on May 12th and will be 100% cute girl and Nazi-branding free! If you’re going to sell a game to Shockwave be prepared for artistic change requests, and whatever you do avoid any of these shape/colour combinations!

Part 6 – (the penultimate part, honest) – iPhone game sales update

I reported last time that the iPhone version of Kyobi was enjoying success thanks to a promotion on the hit game iDare. I wondered if this might just be a flash in the pan, or if the sales rate would be sustained. Thankfully it’s still going strong and shifting 3 digits worth of copies per day. The amount varies a lot, but averages at around 250 sales a day, with the usual peaks and troughs you’d expect. I don’t know for how much longer this will last of course, but it does mean I’ll see at least one months worth of decent royalty payments from it. And of course it won’t ever stop selling, it’ll just reduce back to a much lower rate – but even this will ensure a nice small payment coming in each month.

Part 7 – Summary

Wow, I had no idea this would turn out to be such a long piece when I started. I could probably have broken it into 6 different blog posts. But if you got this far (and actually read up to here rather than scrolled) then thanks and I hope you found it interesting and some of it useful.

Factoring in new sponsored versions of Kyobi, the unexpected Kongregate payment, the Whirled prize money and money I know I’ll receive from iPhone sales so far, I can report that this one little game has now netted me $10,105. I know there will be more iPhone and Kongregate payments to come over the next two months (although I expect them to be lower). And maybe another portal may even buy it, who knows?

I’ve learnt an awful lot from this one game. Things I will take into my next game for certain. The Whirled link-ups, the possibility of skill gaming revenue share, not to under-estimate referal payment offers and the long-tail of sales.

My match-3 physics game Kyobi went live onto BigFishGames today, and is currently sitting proud as the #1 game in the Online charts. At the time of writing it has a staggering 40,000 people currently playing it. I mean, whoa. That’s pretty incredible. That’s like the entire population of my home town all playing my game at the same time. I’m not sure how often the player count is updated, but it seems to be every minute.

Adding those stats into the mix the game has reached 1 million plays since release just under a month ago, and it’s not even out on the really big sites I’ve sold it to.

I’m well aware the reason it is currently #1 is because it’s the “New Game of the Day” – but so what, I still took a screen grab and will cherish it as my first ever BFG title

“How did you get so many sponsors?”

I’ve been asked this question quite a lot recently (along with “How is the iPhone game doing?” which I answer below)

When I put Kyobi onto FlashGameLicense.com (FGL) the interest was immediate and rapid. As well as having it on FGL I also spent time emailing sponsors directly. Most of them didn’t bother to reply, but 2 did and both bought licenses, so it was worth my time just for this. One of companies who contacted me was GameJacket, who offered a $1000 advertising advance on the basis that all other versions of the game I sold were site locked (which they of course are), and no-one else got the game before them.

I liked the sound of this offer. I was low risk to me, so I accepted it. This automatically meant that none of the other sponsors could have exclusive rights to the game. So I told them this and most of them re-adjusted their bids accordingly, understanding that they would get the game on the day of release, but on a non-exclusive basis. In effect, everyone got it at the same time.

So I persisted with this offer to the various sponsors and they all agreeded. I built custom versions for them all, with API work in some cases, custom logos and pre-loaders in others. All versions were packaged up and ready for launch day.

I also created a Media Pack they could download. This pack included a range of high resolution screen shots, game artwork, logo, description and thumbnails for them to use on their sites if they wished (and a number of them did).

To date I have sold Kyobi to 9 different sponsors. 5 of those had the game on day of release, 2 others contacted me directly as a result of having seen it on NewGrounds (where it got a Daily 5th Place Award) and asked for custom builds. The other 2 bought it via the FGL game shop service. Updated: 26th April (5 days after original article written) – Kyobi won 3rd place in the Whirled single player game contest, adding $1000. It has also been picked up by another 2 sponsors adding $600 to the figure below.

Combined I received $5,155 $6,755 (updated 26th April) from these deals. By making a lot of “smaller” sales I managed to effectively double what I would have got from the best “single sponsor” offer had I gone down that route. And of course the game is still on sale.

You can see some of the custom builds of Kyobi on Andkon Arcade, Hubits, Juegos Juegos, Whirled and even a dating site called Connecting Singles! A tie-in with GameJacket means a special version will also go across the Spil Group of sites shortly too.

2 very high profile sponsors are yet to release their versions, despite having had them for some weeks now. I’ll update when they do because I expect them both to deliver serious play figures.

Of course the GameJacket version carries adverts, and the daily income rate from those has been quite encouraging (at least compared to my experience with Mochi). It won’t set my financial world on fire, but it should earn back the $1000 advance relatively painlessly. And then the money from that point on goes directly to me. As I have a full-time job that I love, that pays all the bills money made by Kyobi is surplus income. After tax it helped pay towards a new kitchen and parts for me to build a top of the line Quad Core PC. Could I “live off” the income from this game? No, of course not. That is what Flash game dev contract work is for, but that’s another post for another day.

… and what about the iPhone version?

Kyobi was converted to the iPhone by my good friends at The Game Creators. The iPhone version is enhanced in several ways. It has a nice use of the accelerometer, more complex level patterns, blockers, bonuses and power-ups which improve the gameplay significantly.

In short it’s a really nice game, and my agreement with TGC meant I’d get a decent percentage from sales.

On the downside they renamed it from Kyobi to “Touch & Go”. In retrospect this was a horrendous move. Not only did it disjoint the brand, if you try searching for it on AppStore you’ll get about a million results back thanks to the generic title (have a guess how many AppStore games have the word “touch” somewhere in them! yeah, it’s a lot). Even direct searching for the exact title barely reveals the game.

It was quite literally impossible to find. The GameJacket release carried an advert for the iPhone game at the end, which helped lead to some small sales figures, but quite frankly nothing I could ever retire on. It was far removed from the “iPhone $$$ dream” the media hypes, to say the least. A “Lite” version was also released to help shift things along, but it of course suffered the same “invisible to search” problem.

So I pretty much wrote it off as a bad experience and forgot about it. That was until iDare hit the scene.

He who iDares, wins!

iDare is a free game TGC created over the course of 3 days. If you are old enough to remember the classic sci-fi film Aliens, you’ll remember the scene where the android Bishop holds down Hudsons hand on the dinner table, and spreads his fingers out and proceeds to stab a knife between his fingers as quickly as possible.

School kids worldwide at the time re-created this using everything from pencils to protractors! iDare is basically an iPhone version of this crazy game. It’s good fun, it’s original and it is free. Since release it has gone absolutely ballistic. Currently #1 in the UK charts and #2 in the Canadian charts and#4 in the US charts and still climbing – that is out of ALL free downloadable apps on AppStore. The net result of this is over 600,000 downloads since release and increasing every day. Edit Update: As of today (April 26th) iDare now has over 1.2 million downloads.

What does this have to do with Kyobi? Very simple: iDare was created with the express purpose of advertising the other games TGC had made, including mine.

I cannot give any specific sales data, but suffice to say that Touch & Go has gone from being flat-lined at a few sales per week, to selling 3 digits worth of copies per day (and the first digit is > 1). And of course the more it sells, the higher it climbs up the charts. And the higher up the charts it goes, the more it sells. It’s currently #19 in Strategy titles and edging ever closer to the magic Top #100 games. If it manages to hit that mark TGC and I will be very happy indeed.

At the moment direct income from the Flash version is greater than that of the iPhone one – but at current projections this could be reversed shortly. I’ll keep you all updated.

So in my very limited experience with the Flash to iPhone market here are a few bullet points to take away with you:

1. Don’t screw your brand up! Keep the same game name where possible
2. Ensure your game title and description is AppStore SEO friendly! Avoid this part at your peril.
3. Don’t assume that just by existing on AppStore you’ll make any money at all. You need a method of promotion. Find what works for you.
4. “Lite” versions are mandatory now. Create one. But again, the “free” app space there is flooded, so don’t assume just because you have one that “Full” version sales will increase dramatically. They won’t, but it will help.
5. Promote, promote, promote! Find a way to pimp your game as best you can. If you don’t it will sink without trace, no matter how excellent it may be. If you have no promotion strategy then don’t invest a dime into your iPhone game.
6. Just having a Flash version of the game doesn’t mean you’ll dramatically increase iPhone sales – yes the sales do cross over, but the conversion rate was pretty tiny for this game. Hopefully yours will fare better.
7. Talk about what you are doing! Blog about your game, tweet about it, Facebook wall it, YouTube it, put screen shots on Flickr, write about it in forums. Do the whole social works. If you do this well enough it’s possible to build up a good “following” before the game is released, leading to an initial flux of sales that will give it a little kick-start up the App charts.
8. Cross promote. If you know another iPhone game doing well, and know the developer, ask if they’d be willing to sell you some “ad space”. It could pay dividends.
9. Be realistic. Even with a #1 AppStore download promoting your game, Apple still won’t be sending trucks full of gold bullion your way. That moment is gone. Live with it and set realistic goals, you’re in hell of a competitive market place.
10. Please keep making games, no matter what happens