The Pocket Cyclone

I’ve been busy finishing up my 360iDev Game Jam title “Solar Spirals” over the last few weeks. Three playable levels, polished controls and no memory leaks while staying in close range of the three week timeframe I gave myself for that.

So except the final graphical overhaul by an artist I’m done, but the game is not ready for release. This idevblogaday.com post is about determining the final feature set as well as implementing certain “marketing” components.

Changing the name to protect the innocent

What happened to “World Destroyer”, my working title for this project? You played an angry god throwing Earth into the Sun because you saw Fox News. Making the orbit as long as possible to let them suffer. Good, simple story matching the game concept.

All certainly ok for a Game Jam project, but deciding to release it as a game this idea suddenly came with a price tag: It is indicating mild, comic violence. And that makes for a +9 age rating.

Now I’m not opposed to violent games, not at all. My next game will be a Zombie game and there will be plenty of comical violence in that one and I’m aware and happy with the rating consequences. But there is a difference between a violent game concept and a background story making a game violent. For this one, there is no real reason for this at all.

So I changed the picture of Earth with a picture of an asteroid. And the story line. You are now one of God’s Arch Angels and a little behind with your clean-up schedule for the solar system.

Here is a typical in-game Screenshot of “Solar Spirals”, with an ok-attempt to draw the perfect orbit. I guess it is easy to see what inspired the name.

Free vs. Paid vs. Freemium vs. Ad-based vs. Whatever

For any app you need to have an idea what pricing concept you will be releasing with. And I think for most apps, especially for games, it definitely makes sense to revisit that concept when you see your first playtesting results.

Generally these days I lean towards Free with Ads and IAP. There were just too many sessions I saw at 360iDev also supporting this including the speakers saying they wish they could kill their paid versions. And for Mini-Projects like Solar Spirals I lean towards just releasing them for free with Ads and throw in an IAP to make it Ad-Free. Such Mini-Projects are then mainly marketing vehicles, making a little money, broadening the customer base, allowing to experiment and not to forget: providing a nice change of pace for the dev after working on a big project.

Now through playtesting I saw that Solar Spirals has a strong attraction for some people. I measured testers in a non-pressured environment playing for 30 minutes plus to beat their scores. The game has a strong element of the player just seeing how the perfect solution looks like and it’s only their skills that prevent them from getting there. While on the levels that add some additional factors like a Meteorite, it’s all about finding the right timing strategy.

Leveling up

So how about a level pack, clearly a more serious monetization strategy for a strong(er) game? Now this is more tricky than it looks like.

The easiest path forward obviously is to split up the three existing levels, making one free and selling the other two as level pack or the other way round.

I think both would be wrong. Selling level packs via IAP means that you BOTH have to convince your players that the game is excellent and more levels will be more fun AND you have to provide great perceived value for whatever price you are going to charge.

Unfortunately, this is all about perceived value and that is strongly tied to sheer numbers. The more the better. But, to be fair, it is also a wonderful acid test to your game. Is the concept strong enough? Can you add more levels, vary the fun factor and make it more fun by doing that?

For Solar Spirals, I found that is a rather natural path and I can come up with exciting twists to make 10-12 unique levels without stretching the concept. There is a large group of games, like my own Space Master, but also Flight Control, Doodle Jump, etc. where it would be quite a stretch to go to 10+ unique levels. So finding this goes well with Solar Spirals was definitely a door opener for a level pack IAP.

What 10 levels do for me, I can offer five as free and a pack of additional five levels, meeting the criteria of giving a lot for free while providing clear value for $$.

Going that route I will probably start off with 4+4 and then add a rather quick update hiking both the free and the paid content up with another level, to maximise exposure and release a bit earlier.

Other factors

Another factor influencing the release choice is the implementation time. I’ve been using a very generic approach to the game implementation and I figure the total additional time to take it from 3 levels to 12 will be between 1-2 weeks, as I can use a lot of code from another project. Big plus.

So the strength of the game, attractiveness of a larger level structure and implementation time are the factors leading to my final pricing/release feature set decision. And again, I think it is fair and the right thing to do at this stage to step a step back and evaluate the best release scenario. There is a fine line between this and “feature creep”, so I wanted to illustrate in detail what drove the decision in this case. Also, this does not apply for all type of games, if you make a game with consumables you will very likely stay on track to finish it that way.

Marketing Gadgets

I have a Framework that I use for all my games and it is still mainly third party source I contracted out this summer, not multi-tasking enabled. So this will need some massaging. Overall I am aiming for a release by end of January, also knowing that I need some time for my other game prototype so I can keep the artist going.

This framework describes nicely what I think games should release with:

• a newsline feature as described in my other post “The perfect newsline“
• Ad integration through an Ad network mediation layer. I am also looking at ads for the interim screens which means I have to mix UIViews and Cocos2D screens which can be tricky at times
• IAP as described: Level pack including a “no Ads” feature
• a subscreen with
  • a newsletter subscription form!!
  • a feedback form
  • a please rate this app button that deeplinks into the appstore (incl. linkshare!)
  • a “more games” webview
• games these days need to support multitasking and Game Center if applicable

Summary

So lot’s to do before a game is a game. As indicated, I keep the latter framework generic, as I basically need it for all my games.

While the release feature set is a very unique decision for each game. I hope this provides some useful pointers for those who wonder what is involved making a mobile game and some cross-checks for the Pro’s. Let me hear if you do things differently or if I missed something.