Developing mobile games - the thorny path of the Padawan

The picture here is this only because “Star Warrior” is a fan of me, and the phone is still there

Good day. My name is Alexander, I am a front-end developer in a small company, but the article will focus on my hobby, if you can call it that, mobile game development. I want to tell the story of my acquaintance and further immersion in this area and share the experience with those who want to try themselves as an indie developer, but he doubts. It is also interesting to know the opinion of experienced developers about the ideas that I tried to implement. I will begin, perhaps, from afar.

Not so long ago, in a distant Siberian province

At the moment I live in the cultural capital of the vast country of our homeland, but in 2015, being in my native Siberian city of a distant region for another breathtaking winter vacation, I was at home and did not know what to do, since going outside in minus 30 degrees of desire was not particularly. I studied at a local institute, roughly speaking, a programmer, I liked this specialty since high school when my parents sent me to programming courses for additional education. I liked programming, study at the institute - no.

I was sitting at the computer, when suddenly an interesting thought came to my mind - why not try to make a simple mobile game? In general, the idea was not entirely unexpected, I was impressed by the overwhelming success of a game about a bird that flew between the pipes, and the fact that one person made it, periodically popped up in my head, but somehow there was not enough time to think and weigh Because, in addition to studying, I also worked part time. But here is a winter vacation, it was freezing outside, it wasn’t, I’ll try to do something simple and easy.
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Having started the conquest of this completely new world for me, I ended up making a game from the category “stupidly kill time without brain strain” using the cross-platform framework Corona SDK, but I could only crush and share it on the Google Play Market, since for the App Store needed a MacBook. Of course, it was possible to be confused and go detours, but the game was not worth the candle - it was too clumsy. But the fact that I took up this matter and brought it to the end pleased me, and I realized that for the worthwhile crafts I need to improve my knowledge and skills (I spent months on the game, but it’s worth considering that having had time to do it for the holidays, then I did everything on the weekend, because I didn’t have enough strength on weekdays).
In addition, I ran into one problem that still makes itself felt - how to promote my game, if you don’t have any money at all. Then I did not bother (the reason is the same - the game sucks), but now this bone in my throat prevents me from sleeping and drinking tea with cookies.

Attack of the Clones

What a nasty thing you can do if only the game is downloaded

Fortunately, I was not alone in the mobile development universe. A friend, inspired by my success, even though it was the first-line office, also hit the game development, but with one peculiarity - he did not make the original game, but decided to forget the clone of the famous game, arguing that in this case it would not have to be promoted - because the original the game is constantly downloaded, it is passed, and people want more, so they will sooner or later get to his clone. But the clone was not a dumb copy - he added one feature that changed the gameplay and made it a bit more difficult, but more interesting. Subsequently, as he and I think, this played a role - his game at one time held in second place in the Google Play Market, that is, immediately after the original game. At first I was skeptical about this idea. Although a friend told me that it was necessary to continue moving in this direction, after the failure, although expected, of my first game, I completely stopped doing it and went underground.

But in this life everything is cyclical. The success of the now playing games of a friend once again sparked my interest in mobile development and I followed in his footsteps - I started making a clone of the same game. The Unity framework has become a development tool, only because I knew C # quite well (I wrote a diploma on it), although the game was two-dimensional and it was illogical to use such a powerful piece to create a 2D game, but it didn’t really bother me. I did a clone of the game in the amount of three months, but between two and one months of work I moved into another city and looking for a job, because my clone appeared on the Google Play Market in the fall of 2016, more than a year after the last update of my first game (I worked until May 2015).

In addition, another friend of mine in her game (she was already in second place at the time) placed a link to mine, and until I still wondered what had affected my clone’s success — the same feature, or the flow of users from a friend’s game. . But the fact remains - for some time my game was held in third place, but, unfortunately, at the moment it is around 30th place, but it doesn’t touch me anymore - the clone is a clone - parasitism on the original game doesn’t particularly attract a developer who wants to make something of their own, cool and popular with people.

Actually, after the clone had fallen lower and lower down the steps of the market, I decided that it was time to get serious about the matter and finally make the game I wanted to do first, but I realized that I would not pull it and put it off until better times. The times have come - I got a good experience in the development process at work and there were two full-fledged games under my belt. But I still wanted to get into the apple monastery, because I gathered my strength, I got hungry, I walked like a peshochkom to work, I sold everything I could sell and bought myself a MacBook. True, I sat down to develop the game only half a year after buying it - what to do, such is the nature of a lazy programmer, until the muse of creativity and logic hits, you do not start frantically tapping the keys with your programmer fingers.

New Hope

It seems to me that the eyes during inspiration look exactly like this.

I will be honest - self-serving background also haunted me. And who does not want to earn extra money on their creations? So I wanted to, and even earned some money from my clone - ridiculous, but still money. Because the creation of the original game did not require delay. And so, in the summer of 2017, when I still deigned to start using MacBook for its intended purpose, I was not seriously thinking about what to use to create the game this time? 2D game, quite a lot of levels, there are features in the player’s movement - what to choose? And then my friend came to the rescue. “Write the native,” he told me. I thought and decided - and what the hell is not joking, I will try to use the full power of what Apple provides for developing mobile games. But it is worth making a reservation - if it were not for the Swift language, I would have abandoned this undertaking, because I don’t perceive Objective C, I don’t know, this is subjective. I immediately liked Swift, I spent a couple of evenings to get acquainted with its main features and started to take action. I realized that I was alone, and no one would help me, except perhaps for money, which is not. What flew in from the clone was put off and eventually spent on an iPhone to test the new game.

So, I can (at least, I believe in it) program, I don’t understand anything in design, in designing game levels, in promoting the game, and there is no money for the appropriate specialists. In such a rigid framework, you have to strain your brains and fantasy, and ultimately an adventurous idea was born.

Problems with the design? So I make a game in the style of minimalism - a circle of white color with a pattern in the middle as a player and rectangles as obstacles. You will need to control this circle by clicking on the left or right part of the phone screen so as not to encounter obstacles that descend from top to bottom at the same speed, but in different positions along the x axis (left, middle, right).

Great, a start has been made, but it is too primitive and quickly bored. Complicate - let with each level either the number of obstacles changes (for myself I called them walls), or their quality: let the walls either move from left to right and vice versa, or rotate against and clockwise, or slowly disappear, or various variations of the above.

But this will allow to dilute the game by another 15-20 levels, and I need more. By the way, how many levels will there be in the game? And then a thought occurred to me - what if my game contains just a number in the title, which means the number of levels, but this number will intersect with the famous game? I remembered the 94% puzzle. Having estimated that most people are lazy and they want to get to the game they are interested in quickly, typing “94” on the mobile phone keypad, they are unlikely to switch the layout in search of the cherished “%” sign, but simply click “Find” after entering two numbers. I checked in the App Store - indeed, typing “94”, the game “94%” will appear in the first place.

Remarkably, it means I am making a game in a minimalist style with the name 94. I assume in advance that the problems with the design and promotion have been solved. After all, as I assumed, the game with the exact coincidence of the name in the search line should be shown above all, or at least in the top ten (yeah, dreaming). But how to come up with level 94, moreover, interesting and diverse, so that after the first ten the user does not yawn completely and does not delete the game. Added new types of walls - triple (that is, three walls with two “holes”) and triple with a trick (only through one of the “holes” you can go through, I myself called triple walls with deception). But still not enough. Maybe something to do with the player (circle)?

Of course, everything is on the surface. Let the player begin to move differently with each new game block (I decided to level 94 into blocks, or episodes, 10 blocks of 9 levels and the last with 4 levels). That is, pressing the half of the phone screen is the same, and the reaction is different. So the following types of player movements appeared:

1. Tap left - move left, tap right - move right.
2. Movement with tapas to the left is slower than with tapes to the right, and vice versa.
3. When the player moves, he pulls to the left, you need to tap on the left side of the screen so that he pushes to the right, and vice versa (for these types of added double walls - something like a flappy bird vertically turned out - I did this analogy at the end of the development).
4. Tap to the left - movement to the right, tap to the right - movement to the left (further inversion).
5. Point 2 + inversion.
6. Point 3 + inversion (that is, the player pulls to the right, you need to tap on the left, so that he pulls himself to the left).
7. Accelerometer - tilt the phone left and right for the corresponding movement of the player.

So I scored 7 episodes of 9 levels. What's next? And then everything is simple - I start to combine all these movements. Let the beginning of the level will be a simple movement, then in the middle it will change to the inversion. A lot of variations, so I filled 90 levels. And the last 4 I specifically made apart from the rest - in these levels of movement they change randomly. I mean, there is a set of movements that can fall out, but the choice happens by chance. For example, a simple movement can change to a movement with a pull to the right or left.

So, having finished my offspring, I was in the following position - playing in a minimalist style with the name “94”, meaning only the number of different levels that need to be completed. I did not find such games - I concluded that it is original, which I wanted. On top of that, I decided that if there are no letters in the title, then they will not be in the game, I tried to make everything intuitive without words. Then it turned out, it gave me a good advantage - the game can be distributed in all countries, without bothering with the localization, which also costs money. Everything turned out as well as possible. Having added a reklamku and unpretentious obuchashku, I attacked the great and terrible App Store (hey, why is it so expensive? Is it only for a year ?!)

Empire temptation strikes back

I let this down for a long time, and here’s the result - again I was dumbfounded. The game did not take off, I barely found it somewhere around the 200th place where it is to this day (I laid it out in early November). I do not understand what is wrong - why some incomprehensible applications with radio stations (94.7 with some letters, I don’t remember) with games that do not have the number 94, but only either 9 or 4, higher than my game . Apparently I was mistaken in the sense that the search results are not lined up by coincidence in the name, but by the number of downloads, although this is nonsense, if I am looking for 94, it means I do not need “Guess the word” or “IQ test”. It's a shame, but I think that here you need to understand quite deeply the process of ranking games in stores, and there is not a lot of information about this (although maybe I was looking bad).

Say what you like, but apparently you can’t do without outside help in promoting. I’m wondering how many of the same programmers are faced with the problem of promotion with a minimum cash reserve? Lack of money kills the motivation to continue to do something further, no one will know about your product anyway. I have already rolled my lip, that after the game is shot on iOS, I will start cutting for Android, well, well.

Total

Although the fate of the indie developer is not easy, there is the bright side of this hobby. For two years of non-professional development of mobile games, I learned a lot of interesting things in the work of the Android and iOS operating systems, development features for each of them, features of working with digital signatures and uploading applications to the store (feeling after publishing your game in each of the stores is simply indescribable). One clone of the game was downloaded by 150 thousand people, the second one by 30 thousand people (yes, I made two clones, it is more pleasant to do bad deeds). I mastered, I hope, at least at a basic level, such languages ​​as Lua, C # and Swift, in the development process at the last studied many design patterns, a couple even used to solve the problems encountered. Although the code is far from being optimal, I myself feel that the development skill has risen, but there is much to develop. A nice bonus in the form of additional income (monetized only through advertising).

I think my failures are connected only with the lack of money, nothing more. I have enough ideas for development, but until I figure out the subtleties of advancement and find these notorious, not smelling pieces of paper, I see no reason to do something new.

Thank you for your attention, remember the most important thing - it is better to try, and regret than not try, and regret even more. Dare, everything is in your hands, if you wait for a sign to start doing something - then here it is, go ahead!