Trixel Rocket - Launched Today!! -#38 In App Store Right Now

Discussion in 'Game Showcase' started by jerry, Sep 18, 2018.

  1. Jollydo

    Jollydo Boxer

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    So you published the game yourself and not contacted publishers? So you asked Apple to check your game for a feature?
    Congrats with the game, awesome job!

    Martijn
     
  2. jerry

    jerry Avid Boxer

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    Thanks @Jollydo . Nope haven't reached out to publishers but I have had a few reach out to me. I talked with GreenPanda last week and then in the conversation I had mentioned my game being a buildbox game and then they didn't want to do anything with the game. Unfortunate.

    Game is starting to lose some traction in daily installs. Going to start making some major changes to the game and then hopefully maybe start reaching out to publishers and see if there are any that will want to work with me. We shall see. If not then I'll try to start pushing the marketing of the game myself. Not sure how but have a few ideas.

    As for downloads, currently there are a little over 40k downloads (according to my Game Analytics SDK and the Apple numbers are way more - don't understand that one). I've made some major mistakes and have lost a huge chunk of users with the game being too hard(?)!. I guess maybe I got too close to the game and most of my testers were other developers and so they kind of understood the game. I should have employed a different approach to testing!

    So where do I go from here? Well, I am going to keep at it. Again, I am working on a major update/game change.

    Then, I am also going to start working on turning my Game Jam game into a full game (as a Trixel Rocket 2 - or Trixel Defender - or ???)

    I have to say that this past week has been a rush of excitement, staring at numbers, disappointments with IAP and Leaderboard not working, depression with reading a few REALLY bad reviews, ups with downloads and app store features. NO sleep, working on the game to get things working, I'm also a full time teacher, and also have design client projects too (pretty much 3 full time jobs).

    It's all been an incredible learning experience for a first time mobile game dev. and a first game.

    For all of you other game devs who are working on games now... follow your heart! Make the game that YOU want to make and NOT the game that other people tell you to make. The work that goes into every game you make needs to be a part of you! If you aren't passionate about it, then what's the point?

    Ok, enough of my rambling. Time for me to get back to work and see if I can earn some of those initial download players back!!
     
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  3. Jollydo

    Jollydo Boxer

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    @jerry Thanks for the long reply. Great to read some insights :)
    I have a similar experience. A game 2 popular publishers like. But as soon as i mentioned the word Buildbox the deal was off.

    For example. Appsolute Games just switched to a different Ad SDK mediation. This now only works with Unity. So Appsolute cannot use BB games anymore, sadly.

    I'm now serious about starting in Unity.

    Good luck with your game and the path you follow. I will follow my heart too :)

    Cheers.
    Martijn
     
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  4. wayne_martell

    wayne_martell Avid Boxer

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    Wow this sounds like a major problem for BB2 I hope this gets addressed in BB3 and they find out why publisher are starting to reject BB.
     
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  5. Jollydo

    Jollydo Boxer

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    Its is even worse then i thought. Looks like all publishers are bloking BB games now: https://www.buildbox.com/forum/index.php?threads/no-love-from-voodoo.14007/

    We have 2 options:
    1. wait until then end of december, at least, when BB3 official releases. Trey says it then has the same capabilities as Unity. But at the moment we are paying for BB2, but cannot get games published by the famous names, and we are paying to wait, and test a Beta version, in the hope BB3 will be asome and usable strait away.
    2. Move over to Unity. Publishers want Unity. And it strikes me that BB is always compared to Unity. We know for a fact that Unity is hard to learn, but Unity has the potential to make the game exactly like i have it in my head. With BB there are a lot of limitation and I can only make games that BB allow me to do.

    So as i am writing this, i think i'm going for option 2. Sounds way more future proof.

    Martijn
     
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  6. JustBraden

    JustBraden Boxer

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    I hope they fix that ^ in BuildBox 2 as well, because there’s still a lot of people who lean towards making 2D games rather than 3D ones.

    I had an interview with a publisher and they stopped communicating with me once they suspected it was a BuildBox game.

    Yeah, it’s awesome to see constant features being added, but at the end of the day it comes down to making money if you want to continue making games, and it’s hard for a lot of people to do that when there’s a limitation put on it. Not saying you can’t make money – I’ve made a couple thousand from my first self-published game – but it’s just harder for the general public.
     
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  7. jerry

    jerry Avid Boxer

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    One of the things that I think Buildboxers (us folks who are using Buildbox) need to make sure that the games we put out are "POLISHED"!! You can't just reskin a game, put something out in a day, a week, and call it done. When you do that your game will be terrible and a lot of the games that are getting pushed out from build boxers are in that vane which lowers the expectations and quality of all of our games because we use Buildbox. The buildbox team definitely needs to up their "game" in the engine, but we as developers/designers need to also really care and polish every bit of the game before pushing it out.
     
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  8. Lobsters

    Lobsters Boxer

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    man, im still playing your game, love the sound, graphics and gameplay... but its still waaaay too hard! my highscore is just over 30k which is quite high according to your leaderboard, but there's still some levels that i just cant get though, mainly the ones where enemies fly from the sides really fast.
     
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  9. jerry

    jerry Avid Boxer

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    Thanks @Lobsters!! I'm still working on a major update. Things will be drastically different in the difficulty level. Building out 4 tiers of levels. So you will pass 3 super easy levels, then 4 a little harder, then 5 a little harder, and then the current 30 levels that I have in the game as the "hard" levels and these will just play infinite. I have all the UI and logic in place. It's just a matter of going in and going through the different tiers to make sure the levels are in the right ease of level.

    So really taking the main set of 30 and slowing things down, stripping out a lot of stuff, etc...

    Also have created some new ships, more rewards, etc...

    It will be a major update!
     
  10. particles

    particles Avid Boxer

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    @jerry It's a nice game.

    @Jollydo with Buildbox 3, we can add any advertisement framework with custom option (available in BB3). I have integrated & published Heyzap and AdMob externally for both ios and android. Same is possible to integrate any external frameworks.

    Hopefully, this will available in BB2.
     

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