Being someone who has never learned to code, people are always asking me how I manage to create my mobile games. The game development landscape has changed significantly over the years with many development tools now offering node based visual scripting options for those who don’t want to get their hands dirty with code. However not all visual scripting solutions are equal and many still seems to have significant barriers for those like myself with absolute no background in programming.
More Downloads Without Spending a Dime
In the world of apps, download numbers are king. But if you’re a very small indie team how do you go about getting more downloads? You could try Apple Search Ads or place ads on Facebook but both will cost you money. What if I told you it’s possible to increase downloads without spending a dime? Want to know more? Then read on.
Capturing the Essence of the Arcade Experience
On a recent visit to the Four Quarters Arcade Bar in Elephant & Castle, London, I was fortunate enough to spend a considerable amount of time playing the incredible Outrun Deluxe hydraulic cabinet. I’m a huge fan of Outrun and owned the home conversion for my humble Commodore 64 when I was a kid.
Dungeons of Doom Out Now
Great news! Dungeons of Doom is now available on the Apple App Store for iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch.
Researching my Next Game
With my current project Dungeons of Doom having now gone gold my attention is starting to turn to my next project. Anyone who is a regular follower of this blog will no doubt have noticed that my games are heavily inspired by classic arcade games from the 1970’s, 80’s and 90’s.
Why I Chose Portrait Orientation
Before I officially started work on Dungeons of Doom, or even knew what kind of mobile game I was actually going to make, I wanted to think very carefully about what orientation it should use: landscape or portrait?
Developing for Apple Watch
Getting any kind of publicity for your game these days is hard. There are so many great indie games out there and sometimes it feels almost impossible to be heard above the noise. When we released our previous game, Dare the Monkey, we really struggled to get any exposure. Luckily by happy accident one thing did help gain some traction and even several years on still leads to frequent download spikes. What was it you may ask? Simple. I created an Apple Watch version of our game.
Good UI is Hard
When making a game there are many challenges along the way. But one of the biggest and often overlooked is the effort required to create a compelling user interface. Not only does it need to look good, the experience of actually using it needs to be intuitive too. That might sound easy, but the reality is somewhat different. It’s hard. Really hard!
Sometimes Less is More
I decided very early in production that Dungeons of Doom would have only one game mode. Why only one mode you may ask? Wouldn’t multiple game modes keep people playing longer, increase retention, and drive revenue? Well that was exactly the plan when building our previous game – Dare the Monkey – but in our case the analytics just didn’t support this.
Why I switched to Substance Painter
During the production of my previous game – Dare the Monkey – I leaned heavily on ZBrush for rendering my game assets. The reason for this was the simplicity and quality of ZBrush’s MatCap materials. The MatCaps really helped my characters and objects to pop out of the screen.
Dungeons of Doom on iOS and WatchOS
Dare the Monkey on iOS, watchOS, and tvOS
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