Where to start. First off this post wont be as full of designs and analysis as most of my posts are. (Fair warning)
So 3 months ago I was laid off. In the month after the layoffs I worked to pull some of my fellow developers together and we tried to figure out a game we could make in the time we had left over between when we were let go and when we would inevitably get new jobs. About 2 months ago (and after a few meetings where we would rescope and refigure out what we want to do) we came upon a game concept, which we thought, could do well in the mobile space. So we went to work. Now we are less than a month from release and things are beginning to die down. (I know no crunch time? High five team for accurately scoping our project!) Hopefully as soon as Apple approves I can announce the project here.
We considered going with the freemium model but decided against it. Because while the idea of characters or power ups to help the player might be beneficial to us making money it would expand the game past our initial scope and delay release/didn’t quite fit. (3-month development cycle isn’t a whole lot of time, especially with such a small team). So we decided to just keep the gameplay simple, insert ads and see how that plays out. As of this writing, I think it will do well. Is it going to be the next Flappy Bird? Probably not. But this experience has allowed us to try something new and keep our skills sharp as we wait for response from potential employers.
If this game does okay then maybe next time we can scope a little larger and go freemium. But for this one it just didn’t fit. And I don’t think there is anything wrong with that. I think it will work out better than us trying to shoe horn something in.
I’ll outline more about the project here after it is announced.
Thank you,
Scott