The first experience in game development. Errors and conclusions

After reading one of the articles on Habré, I decided to start developing games for mobile platforms. It was decided to make a game for android, since I don’t like the Window Store, a registration in the Appstore costs $ 100.

After 10 minutes, I came up with a mechanic that I have never seen in any game. As planned, the camera was located on top (Top-down), on the character from different sides there were enemies, he automatically shot at them. The player was only required to move the character around the screen so that enemies would not touch him. The essence of the game is to score as many points as possible.

Zombies were chosen for the role of enemies, the Mexican in a sombrero became the main character, and all the action took place in the desert. I decided to make graphics and sounds in 8-bit style.

Unity3D was chosen as the engine, because it is multiplatform and I have already worked with it quite a lot.
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Development took a week. For advertising, I used AdMob. For drawing photoshop.

He called the game Macho Muchacho and put it on Google Play.





I wrote about the game in various forums. Participated in GameJam2014. Renamed the game Macho: Birds in Danger, so that the game can be found on the query "Birds". To do this, previously added to the game birds. Improved graphics. Added a system of buying weapons and improvements that fell out of dead zombies and bosses. But all my efforts were in vain. For 4 months the game was downloaded 26 times and I earned $ 1.39 on it.

The few who played at her liked the game. Most likely the problem is in the graphics.
However, it was a very rewarding experience.

Poland can into space!

I decided to make the next game using a fairly popular Internet meme.

In it, Poland Poland (PolandBall) flies on a rocket, collects fuel canisters (fuel, by the way, is made from Polish apples) and dodges space stations, earns points.

The main mechanic was taken from the game Flappy Bird. From myself added fuel that ends. If you do not pick up the cans, then the rocket falls to the Earth, and also when you receive a certain number of points, some Countryball opens. The bet was made on the fact that this meme and the game will be picked up by the fans. I also promised that as soon as this game has reached 10,000 installations, I will add more pages.

For drawing this time I decided to use Gimp.

I made the game in a couple of days. I wrote about it on the android forums (Xda, Android Pit, androidforums.com etc) and in several thematic groups on Facebook.

In principle, it turned out as I intended, the number of installations is steadily growing, albeit slowly.


325 total 115 active

Ad (inter-page AdMob ad) is shown with a 50% chance of losing.
The average income of $ 1, the maximum was $ 5. For three months that the game is there, it was downloaded 325 times and it brought me $ 50.

Lollipop Castle Defense

I decided to make the third game with good cute graphics and some kind of cute character. I thought for a long time whom to choose and finally decided to choose a lollipop. He came up with a simple mechanic. Candy monsters move from top to bottom in three rows. Below the protective wall, there are three cannons and, when pressed, they shoot at monsters with multi-colored candies. If a player misses three times, then the guns stop shooting. As the game progresses the speed of the monsters increases. After three blows against the wall, monsters break through, eat guns and run into the waffle lock. It all looks very good.
In this game, the bet was made on the "grace" and "nyashnost."


To captivate the player a little longer in the game, I made a shop where you can buy hats, glasses and other things.

He drew all this in CorelDraw. It is very convenient, I will probably continue to draw in it.

A couple of weeks the game was ready. I called it Lollipop Castle Defense and put it on GooglePlay. And I decided to try to prepare additional materials: a pair of obek and a card, which was then often used on various resources.


As usual, I wrote about the game in all the forums that I could reach + reddit / androidapps.

For the week that the game is on GooglePlay, it is pretty well scattered on the Internet, I have already seen three years of play on YouTube (for the previous two I have not found one). It was also placed on a much larger number of resources than the previous "ugly" games.

It's too early to talk about income. But by the number of impressions and clicks on advertising, it already exceeds the previous game. Including the pace of installations. And it keeps the player longer. The average session is about 5 minutes, versus 3 minutes for the last game. So I have more plans for this game, in the future I will complement it with caps and other things.

findings

1. Before you start making the game, you need to find a good artist (if you can not draw);
2. With music and sounds, everything is also not as simple as it seems (you can search for free sounds on freesound.org, for example);
3. Before the release of the game, it must be shown to as many people as possible, sometimes the tips help a lot;
4. From the forums that have brought at least some tangible benefits, it's w3bsit3-dns.com and XDA;
5. The cost of advertising per click varies greatly. I had from $ 0.01 to $ 0.44 (these are inter-page ads from AdMob);
6. Description of the game must be translated into all major languages;
7. For Twitter, the most useful tags are #gamedev #indiedev #screenshotsaturday. A tweet with these tags immediately picks up a few robots and the tweet shows up in popular ones.

References:

AdMob plugin (shows banners and interstitial ads): forum.unity3d.com/threads/admob-unity-plug-in-use-google-play-services-support-interstitial.236156

Google Analytics Plugin (the link immediately has a video instruction how to install it): www.formation-facile.fr/unity-analytics-integration.php