I’ve been working on a mobile app for months now. It’s one of those apps that I know I’ll finish, but I wanted to take a break and try something different. So last weekend, I set a goal. I’ll give myself the weekend, from Friday to Sunday night, to make a micro game. A small game is something I can complete, and I did complete it. I also had a lot of fun in the process. I knew I was rushed, but I had a goal, and I could see the end.
The game is out, it’s up, and it’s free on the App Store. It’s not doing great as far as downloads go, but that’s ok. I’m totally feeling rewarded for my efforts. I’ve gotten some feedback from friends, and I really enjoy seeing their reactions when they play the game.
Now, I’m more charged and ready to finish my big app. I remember what it feels like again to put something out there, and I like it.
Just wanted to share,
Jon
Like I've seen people playing more and more games in the last five years. I wonder if the tides are changing.
I tend to give that as the reason I started teaching myself programming, and later I won't allow my children to waste days playing games. But let them do more productive activities on the pc such as video-editing, messing with photoshop, chatting with foreigners (the good old days on IRC..)
I agree that whenever I have kids, I'll be sure to teach them coding or editing. The way society and the future job market is evolving, it looks like those tools will be way more beneficial then learning Spanish or French in high school. A moot point, but somewhat realistic.
But I totally agree, I hope I don't let me kids play as much games as I did. I got lucky, but everyone is different.
One small piece of constructive criticism - the "leaderboard" link is right where I was tapping to restart and that got very annoying very quickly. Perhaps move it to a corner?
Generally I'm pretty bad at games. I never got past the 2nd pipe in Flappy Bird.
The opening animation shows a smooth hand gliding around, which would indicate some sort of dragging motion as the input mechanism, but it's not at all drag-based. Took me a good 3-4 minutes to figure that out, and it was frustrating. It's only because I was reading some stuff here of other people saying it was fun that kept me going.
Personally, I think it's too fast to start with. Add better instructions, slow things down a tad for the first few obstacles, and this would be 'hook' material for more players. As it stands, I think the 'game over in 1 second' factor will keep it from being recommended more.
But... great job on getting something out so quick!
I made it over the course of a few days, using libgdx as an engine. It was really fun to make.
[1] http://2dgameartforprogrammers.blogspot.com/2014/02/top-down...
The sounds were purchased from http://audiojungle.net/ The whole Envato network has great resources for developers.
Also, I don't like how you have to click twice to start playing again.
Some feedback - the game is unplayable on my iPhone 4s, I'm guessing because the screen isn't as long as on the iPhone 5, there's just not enough time to react to incoming obstacles.
I'm pretty good with Xamarin in c# development. I use that mainly for business apps, but nothing beats objective-c and the opensource projects out there to make iOS apps.
Thanks man
BTW Dash has Spritekit docset, IIRC.
