MOCHIBITS

ORBB was selected to be Amazon’s Free App of the Day (FAOTD) for March 15, 2015.

Since it was released on Amazon December 1st, 2014, ORBB sold a grand total of 10 copies at $0.99. No reviews.

So we had nothing to lose. ORBB was already a financial flop, but maybe this time the gods of mobile would smile upon us!

(drum roll)

On Sunday March 15th, we received a total of 100018 free downloads.

We also got to the #1 Overall Free position right next to Crossy Road! One brief moment of glory!

After the free day, we did manage to get a few paid downloads.

Mon 3/16 — 67 downloads

Tue 3/16 — 136 downloads,  #63 Overall Paid

Wed 3/16 — 95 downloads

Thu 3/16 — 137 downloads,  #57 Overall Paid

Fri 3/16 — 126 downloads

Sat 3/16 — 77 downloads, #95 Overall Paid

Sun 3/16 — 46 downloads,  #130 Overall Paid

As of now, Monday 3/23, we’re at #151 Paid and falling.

What’s really sad is that you don’t need many paid downloads to get to the top 100 on Amazon. Crazy.

Here are the totals.

100018 free downloads.

684 paid downloads at $0.99

340 new reviews with a 4.4 star average

Here are a few really awesome reviews... (actually we got a quite a few of them)

This is probably my favorite review of all...

So at least we have some great reviews!

Unfortunately, even though we have a game that people love and a game that resonates perfectly with the Amazon Kindle demographic, it’s still doomed to fall off the face of the planet into oblivion.

We’re still happy we made a really fun game that people really enjoy, and also a game that new gamers and non-gamers enjoy!

ORBB started off as the result of a 4 hour game-jam in 2013. We had this idea to make a never-ending planet-jumping game inspired by the classic game, Mr. Ninja.

(Image from SlideToPlay)

The core gameplay was simple: Jump from planet to planet to capture coins to finish the level. No time limit. No death. Yes fun.

The other day, I learned that one of our games was copied. It was copied in spirit, gameplay, monetization, and even the help screens.

Since the actual layout is slighty different, and the content is different, we can’t really do anything about it. In fact, some people would say this isn’t a copy.

We know it was only a matter of time until this happened, so it didn’t surprise us. What surprised us was that we had some loose business associations with the other company. We were doing direct deals for them in Chartboost.

I had already spoken with the other company before regarding our direct deals, so I fired off an email. Just to see what they would say.

Hi, I noticed that you paused one of the direct deal campaigns, so we just decided to end the other one too. I also must say we are a bit disappointed with your <game>. It is very similar to our <game> in spirit, monetization, and even the help screens. We know we can’t prevent people from using our games as inspiration, but since we were loosely doing business together it was a bit of a let down. :( Cheers and happy holidays. -Kyle

He did respond by saying they had already been planning this game before our direct deals.

Ok.

I can respect that they copied a game that is doing fairly well. Business is business after all. We’ve actually borrowed a few ideas ourselves.

Corona Blitz! My first game jam!

Making cool icons is an artform unto itself.  Making an icon for a word game is even harder without it looking like every other word game icon out there. 

For Word Wall, we really wanted to NOT do the typial showing of 2 offset tiles or just the simple name of the game. Initially, we were thinking about contracting out the icon but decided that I would do it because we're cheap and wanted save a few bucks and be lean.

So starting out, here's the gameplay screen I had already finished.  I really wanted the icon to have the same feel.

I guess we have to use the name of the game. There really isn't any other way since our game doesn't really have fancy gameplay and graphics.

v1: Original idea. "Word wall" as bricks. I really wanted something that represented the gameplay. Not bad.

v2: Made the blue brighter. It just seemed washed out.

v3: Slightly changed the colors of the blue bricks to help give it some depth. Also added in some surrounding words since there was just a lot of white space.

v4. The white words look awful. Changed font color to grey.

v5. Experimented with lower case fonts. Made the surrounding words darker.

v6. Back to uppercase. Lowercase words just looked too "kiddy".

v7. Even darker font.

v8. Still looks washed out. Even darker font. Added blue border. Now this is something that looks somewhat presentable.

v9. Back to different color of blue bricks.

v10. The spacing of the blue tiles in relation to the whole icon looked a bit off, so I scaled the words and bricks down.  It still should be readable on a retina device. Made the blue the same color again. The blue isn't overpowering the icon anymore.

v11. Experimented with different font.

v12. Another font experiment

v13. Back to original font.  Decided to scale "WORD WALL" up slightly to help it pop off the icon.

v14. Its still looking flat, so I added an extruded border plus some drop shadowing. Looking good!

v15. Tweaked the drop shadow.

v16. Final tweak of the drop shadow. Darkened it slightly, and made it so that it looks like its lit from the top.

DONE!

And all the iterations as one image.

Hope that was useful! =)

If you want to check out Word Wall, it's available for free on iOS.

Although I’ve seen a few apps out there that seem to be innovative, most of the apps around easily fall under existing categories and are mostly improvements or recognizable twists of old reliable concepts.  Our own apps, for example, were inspired by games we enjoyed in the past.  We made a few changes to keep things original enough, but we also wanted to make sure that the game would remain mostly familiar to the market.  Too much originality borders on the artsy or on the unrecognizable.

We actually have a couple of games we want to release in the next six months.  With a very high goal of releasing at least one a week.  The target is meant to be high so that we work like crazy to meet it.  One of the challenges of being an indie developer is living up to a deadline as you are accountable to yourself for the most part.  But I digress, the point here is about checking out the competition when we design a game.

Here are some of the things we do once we have a concept:

1. We check what’s out there to see if there’s room for our app.  We pretty much have to know who we are going up against when we pitch a game design.  We have to know that we are sufficiently different that we’re not another me-too product, which is a matter of pride for us, and we have to know that a decent share of the guys who like these games will like ours, too.  If we think we can get a segment of the market with our concept, then we go to step two.

2. Knowing that we can go against some of the apps in that category means we have a good idea.  But, the idea itself is not even 50% of the app.  What matters is being able to see the idea realized in the world of the iOS device.  if we can’t get a good user interface in place, we pretty much kill the idea or put it in the back burner.  Coming up with an interface we love is what this is all about.  It has to be intuitive more than anything else.  And, again, checking the competition to see if we got this right is important.  We take time to check out the interface of the games out there.  We know which ones we love, which ones we respect, and which ones we hate.  More importantly, we know why we feel that way about them.  We get what works and make sure we avoid what doesn’t.  Almost always, the most intuitive interface wins.  And we always try to make it intuitive.  Of course we can’t expect everyone to agree with our tastes but we should at least be certain of its simplicity or else not do it at all.  It should require, if at all, a one time tutorial that no one will need to revisit.  Ever.  If you think for even a second that this isn’t true for your interface, we recommend that you revisit it.

3. Naming the game and making the icon.  Again, we have to look at the competition here.  I mentioned an app has to remain recognizable even when it is original.  You can’t have a cute face for an icon and then people open the app and find out the game has almost nothing to do with the cute face.  You can’t have a word tile and have an app that doesn’t use a word tile.  At the same time, you can’t have a mature and serious looking icon and inside you’ve got eye candy that nobody will guess you have.  The same goes for the name.  Your name has to let the potential buyer have an idea of what the game is all about.  Thankfully, because there are so many familiar big hits out there already, sometimes a game just needs to look like (in terms of the icon) or sound like (in terms of the name) a popular game.  I don’t mean an outright copy.  Let’s have some self-respect here.  But I am talking about the overall look and feel being familiar. If you’ve gone to a bookstore and seen the bestseller section or even the chick lit section or pay close attention to how movie posters are done, you’ll see that a lot of them look like the last one that was a big hit.  It’s so people will relate the good feeling they had with the last one with your new, untested product.  It works and you should respect that technique.  And it helps later on when someone sees your customer playing your game and they ask what the game is.  And it also helps for impulse purchases when someone sees your icon or reads your name.  You want a name that has great recall and says what it’s all about so it is both memorable, searchable, and identifiable when the time comes.  There are some games out there that says nothing about what the game is about.

Not everyone will agree to this approach.  There are games out there that we’ve seen hit the top ten that defy any logic we can think of.  But we feel this is the approach we want and we think this approach works when you don’t have the marketing budget that allows for the noise needed to give attention to your product.

As independent game developers, coming up with ideas is the most challenging step of the process.  We must take into consideration a variety of factors and constraints, otherwise bad things can happen.  The project could take forever to finish, the game may make no money, and maybe we’d get bored of working on it.

The basic factors and constraints we take into consideration when we pitch ideas to each other are:

Manpower Time-frame Budget Game Genre Market focus Programming Art and Sound Game data creation

As we narrow down the list of ideas, we compare the factors and constraints against each other to determine whether or not it’s actually feasible or worth our while.

Manpower vs. Time-frame Since we’re only 2 people, we have to choose projects based on how much work we think we can handle.  We’re both trying to do this full time so we have the time to invest, but since we want to be profitable, we need to invest our time wisely. This means choosing a project that is time-limited because we want the best return on our investment of time so we can continue to support ourselves. As we continue to add to our portfolio of games, we will develop more complicated longer-development games. One company we look up to is NimbleBit. They first released simpler casual games, and now they are releasing super-awesome games.

Budget vs. Programming, Art, Sound, and Asset Creation I know we’ll get some heat for this, but we are trying to do things without outsourcing any programming, art, sound or asset creation. This means we’re doing everything ourselves.  We are trying to cut down on costs when necessary by not outsourcing, to maximize our profits.  Part of our design decision factors in what games we can do without the need for outsourcing.

Game Genre vs. Market focus Choosing the genre of game is very critical.  Entering the app store with a copycat game or a clone could potentially pay off big, but the risk of falling into oblivion is much much higher.  We tend to focus on games that are niche and do not have competition in the app store.  SwipeTapTap is a good example of this.  There are not very many high quality gesture based reaction games out there.

Game Genre vs. Time-frame Depending on the genre of game, you also affect your development time.  Obviously a Tiny Wings, Spy Mouse, or DragonVale would be an awesome project to work on, but since we are limiting our development time and budget, we choose to stick to genres where we can do everything ourselves.  Puzzle games and Word games.

Programming, Art, Sound and Game Data Creation vs. Manpower This was mentioned briefly before in relation to budget, but I would also like to point out that we choose an idea over other ideas because of the speed of implementation, puzzle creation, graphical design, etc.  Out of our huge list of ideas, we choose the ones that we can do ourselves and can be done in 1-2 months.  We choose the games we can bring the quickest to market. This helps us maintain maximum efficiency as a company trying to make money, and also reduces the chance someone will implement the same idea.  In the last 6 months, 3 ideas we had on our to-do list reached #1 free overall US.  Doh.

Games vs. Utilities Another important point is that choosing to do a game over a utility is a double edged sword.  Yes, releasing a game in a market where the majority of downloads are games is good, but it’s also bad because you could be instantly lost if the game has any problems with crashing, the UI, the graphics, or just maybe it’s just not enjoyable.  A niche utility has the same potential to get to a large amount of people, but you need to come up with a solid idea.  In the end, we chose games, because we love doing games.

MochiBits released Swipetaptap (STT) earlier this year.  I think the game was a hit.  It was the first game MochiBits released and it was featured as a New and Noteworthy app about a week into its life.  STT climbed the charts and brought good money for two guys who were proud of their creation.

What was interesting was that although STT received great user reviews, averaging 4.5 stars, it didn’t stay in the US top 200 list for long.  Soon after the boost from the New and Noteworthy list passed, STT fell off the top 200 list and went for an almost immediate landing to a strip outside the top 1000 sales.  I couldn’t get why such a solid game didn’t keep.

A lot of things make more sense on hindsight and this is one of them.

STT was designed with the intention to put the hand-and-eye coordination gamers are known for to the test.  As one reviewer discovered, getting through the game was not a question of “if” a player will fail but “when”.  Although a player can complete a lot of stages, if not all of them (except the endurance mode), the player will feel that the game is just waiting for that one mistake that will spell the end of the stage.

And this was how it was meant to be.  My partner and I loved the challenge it gave.  We could barely finish all the stages, but we did after a lot of practice that we both loved putting into the game.  The user interface was smooth, the gameplay was fast, and it was every bit as enjoyable as we wanted it to be.

We released STT thinking gamers would feel the same way.  And, as our ratings show, they do.  But it wasn’t enough to let the app fly.  And, although it was a pleasure to have people rave about our game, it would have been great to see the game take off in a bigger way.

Now, here’s the thing, My wife told me the game was too fast-paced to play, too tough to enjoy, during the beta testing of STT.  It may have been hubris that made me say to her, “It’s because you aren’t a gamer.  Gamers would find the pace just right,” but it didn’t feel like it at the time as I had a couple of friends who were gamers who thought it was an exciting and cool game.  My partner and I even joked a bit about how some people will never get how fun the game is if they don’t give it the time needed to master it.

And this is the tough lesson:  Some games are great, but they are for a niche market.  If the gamer was the market in the past, the iPhone has changed their status into niche.  Given how millions of people who don’t really play games on any other device (mobile or otherwise) now play hours a day on an iPhone, the gamer is now the very small minority of the gaming industry.  STT is a fast-paced game for people with above average focus, reflexes, and coordination.  This means someone who doesn’t possess all three traits won’t appreciate the game. They’ll be frustrated.  They could spend the time to improve their skills so they can enjoy the game, but why should they?  There are thousands of games out there that let you feel good as you finish stages without asking you to master the game (and there are endless games that let you know it’s okay if you die or fail at any point in the game, just beat your best record if you want to, and people get that).

This is why I have some really good games in my iOS device that are not huge hits in the market or only had a momentary success at best.  The gamer doesn’t own the developer’s attention the same way they used to.  It’s the casual player who owns it now.  The guy who says that s/he doesn’t really play games but plays hours a day of this or that game is now the real market.

This is the guy who doesn’t want to spend hours mastering a game as gamers are often willing to do.  This is the guy who wants to know s/he can get it right practically the first time around.  This is why some games that at first glance shouldn’t be popular are.  Anyone can enjoy the game; the player doesn’t need better reflexes or better strategies.  It’s mostly just patience, luck, and, well, simple fun.  And I get that.  There are times when I do enjoy the casual game.  This is why I also have some  games in my device that are huge, long-running hits in the market, but aren’t jaw-dropping experiences.