A close second would have to be my approach to marketing - which is to say, my non-approach.  I tried to keep threads on various forums active, and I got the best response from the Touch Arcade forums.  I quickly found that publishing material on my own sites, including this blog, amounted to me, alone in a room, talking to nobody.  So that’s always encouraging. 

Finally, I have to admit that the app itself just might not have been that appealing to a large number of players.  I certainly put full effort into all of it, but one of the consistent “meh” responses was on the fact that many perceived AstroSerf as just another line drawing game.  I anticipated that, and tried to differentiate it enough to make it interesting, and although it’s gotten a good response from the select few who have tried it, it doesn’t do much to sway the rest.  The other part of this is that, even though I tried to ensure every part of AstroSerf was top-notch, I do have my limits.  In particular, the lack of variety in the game has been the only really negative comment anyone has had.  I knew that might be a sticky point before I submitted it, but had planned on an initial run of sales to buoy myself to develop more levels and features.  I still want to do some of those features, as a ‘thank you’ to players who have been really supportive, but the fact of the matter is that if I had done those in the first place I would probably have put myself in a better position. 

So does that mean AstroSerf was a failure?  In some sense maybe.  I tend to be a little depressive by nature, so when I check the reviews and sales reports I really have to fight to stay positive about it, but at the end of the day I did make something that I’m proud of.  It was no small accomplishment for me to knuckle down and make a game, considering I’ve never done anything like it before.  This project just has so many ‘firsts’ involved for me that it’s kind of ridiculous that I just decided one day, almost arbitrarily, “Yeah, I could make a game”.  The issues above can largely be put down to this inexperience on my part, as they seem to be the bitter fruit of a few bad decisions made along the way. 

The thing is, I don’t feel like any of those decisions were legitimately bad ones, just miscalculated.  For example:

1. I anticipated people getting excited about the game and riding the wave, and that’s absolutely worked for most of the success stories in the App Store.  Trouble is, I don’t get to decide what people will get excited about, and I waited too long into development to try and put the word out. 

2. I figured a line drawing game would be a good first project, since it’s a pretty simple single-screen game, and it’s been proven in the market.  The problem?  Oh good god has it EVER been proven.  I had the idea and started development at probably the same time as about 50 other developers of varying sizes, and was beaten to market by MOST of them.  Maybe a line drawing game might be fresh again in six months, but right now, and when AstroSerf came out?  Yeah, I was screwed.

3. The lack of variety is the one that bugs me, because I could have held on to it for a few weeks longer and put the stuff in I had planned, and the complaint would have gone away.  In my mind I was thinking of developers like Bolt Creative, where they added content as they went along.  What I failed to account for was that this isn’t 2008, and that shit don’t fly any more.  There’s just too much awesome on the App Store RIGHT NOW for anyone to spend their money on the promise of future awesome. 

I’m not giving up on this whole thing just yet, though.  The main lessons that I’ve taken away are all pretty self evident, but damned if they don’t mean more when I’ve experienced it first-hand instead of just reading it on someone’s blog.  Yes, I suppose that is kind of meta.

And a special thanks to everyone who’s taken the time to leave a review in the App Store!  Keep ‘em coming, guys! 

For example, when the ships land on the planets, their timers start and then you just wait for them to finish.  I needed a sound that indicated something had happened, but the action the player needed to take in this case was just to go “Ok, that’s good, I can leave that alone for a bit”.  The sound of a car alarm activation fit the bill perfectly, because that’s exactly how it works when you set the alarm on your car in a parking lot.  Click -> beep beep -> Ok, I’m good.  I also figured it would be a laugh to have the space ships ‘parking’ on the planets, since for me the sound evokes an image of a mall parking lot or something similar, which was close enough to what I wanted to convey. 

I went through a similar thought process for all of the sounds in the game, trying to find a balance between sounds that were ‘meaningful’ in terms of the reaction they might provoke, whether from everyday life or movie/TV convention, and sounds that were maybe a little whimsical or light-hearted.  That’s why the ships make a little “blargh!” sound when they explode.  Where I couldn’t find a suitable sound I ended up mixing together other sounds or, in some cases, recording my own. 

In terms of the mixing, most of it was just cleaning up the sounds in Audacity and ensuring the volume levels were consistent, as nothing takes me out of a game more than one sound that’s just REALLY LOUD.  I also did a fair bit of pitch shifting on a few of them to ensure that they all harmonized, and that none of the sounds clashed unpleasantly, since I couldn’t predict all the combinations of sounds the player was likely to hear.  That’s something that occurred to me after I had picked most of the sounds, and had started working on the level music, so the sound effects ended up taking on a slightly musical quality. 

Now, I’m not really a musician - I still struggle with Chopsticks on the piano - but I know music theory decently well.  It is just math, after all!  So for the level music I picked a chord and composed a quick little song around it.  I picked an augmented C chord, because I like the mysterious quality that non-major chords give, but found a minor chord too dark and serious for the game.  Then I pitch shifted the sound effects as necessary to match one of the three notes in that chord.  I figured I had succeeded when I found I could listen to the game while not actually playing and not be annoyed by the blips and dings. 

All in all, working on the sound part of AstroSerf was a lot of fun, and a very different experience from the graphics and coding side of things.  I’m very happy to hear from players that they like this aspect of the game, but I’m not sure I wouldn’t be almost as happy to hand it off to a pro if I have the money for it in future projects! 

Even though I was starting small, though, I decided not to rush things and focus on realising the complete design as it had been finalised.  Now that I look at what else is out there on release, I’m glad I did.  As a 1.0 release, I think AstroSerf stands up quite well, and there’s still plenty of room to expand it.  Most importantly to me, it’s fun.  At least I think it’s fun, and I’ve been playing it for a few months now.  By all rights I should be sick of it by now! 

The response from the TouchArcade community has been very postive so far as well, which is very encouraging.  I don’t have any numbers yet, and I’m not sure when Apple’s sales trend reporting will kick in, but I’ll be sure to update on the numbers with some thoughts once I have them.  As it stands now I have three things on my plate for the coming month:

1. Get AstroSerf 1.1 finished and submitted as soon as possible.  I want to demonstrate to players that I’m committed to supporting this thing if they are.  1.1 will include OpenFeint support as the big feature, bug fixes if there are any that crop up from players (because I fixed all the ones I found), and a few other minor tweaks and new features.  The update to follow this one will be my pièce de résistance, wherein I finally get the ball rolling with the ‘story mode’ concept and different game modes. 

2. Finish another project I’m doing on contract for a company here in Dublin.  It must be done.  I need Christmas money. 

3. Finally, continue to lay the groundwork for my next game project.  Just saying that reminds me of Rocky & Bullwinkle.  “And now, watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat… this time for sure!”