'Pearl Blast' Diary

Hi there!

I have been learning unity for about a year now. After reading and learning a lot about making games, programming and graphic design, I think I'm able to create games that people have fun playing.
The biggest problem I'm facing right now (maybe some of you know this one) is finishing projects/games.
I only managed to complete one tiny game 2 months ago and have been starting 3 different games since (all at about 60% done).
So to help myself to focus on one game at a time, I hope it's ok to use this thread as some sort of diary and hopefully finish the game before starting something else. ^^

The project I'm trying to release somewhere in december is called Pearl Blast, a casual game in which you have 60 seconds to destroy colored pearl-thingies, always three of the same color after another. It's not a classic match-3 game because you dont have to align them or anything, just be fast and blast as many as possible in the correct order. I'll try to make a video as soon as I finish the highscore-screen I'm working on right now.

EDIT:
YAY, GAME IS OUT NOW ON ANDROID, iOS COMING SOON!

Link to Google Play Store

 

Hi again!

Still a lot of small bugs and wrong animations, but already at this stage it's quite fun to play.

As promised, here is a little gameplay-video:

Any comments/ideas? =)

 

That looks legit. You should definitely stick with it as it has a lot of potential. I don't really have any suggestions as I usually don't play these kind of games. The graphics look neat though.

 

Hi Paparakas, thanks for your positive comment!
Yeah, I really want to complete this game, too. Will be drawing/programming some powerups in the next days and post a new video when those are done. =)

Feedback always very welcome!

 

Heyho, short update:

After letting friends play the game and gathering some feedback, one pretty important thing came up. One of my friends has problems differentiating between some colors (red and green, yellow and green eg). He was playing the game super-fast and accurate, but only as long as one of the mentioned color-combinations didn't appear.
As a result of that I'll try to change the facees of each colored pearl-dude so that color is not the only difference.

Question:
Does someone here also have problems differentiating between red and green and could help me with this once I'll have drawn some alternate faces for the pearls? Like, which ones are those colors that people have the biggest problems with?
I want to make this game enjoyable for everyone...

Powerups:
First new one done, two to go. Will post a video and/or screenshots when all are ready to use in-game.

Have a nice weekend!
Maui

 

I don't know
why would anyone have a problem distinguishing between red pearls and green pearls when they are in completely different colors
maybe you should try different faces or add some sort of graphical patterns to be recognized at a glance as long as it doesn't affect gaming aspect (I've noticed there are bad black ones that need to be tapped individually)

 

Because they have (partial) colour-blindness. A red-green impairment is quite common.

 

Hi!
Yes, I read a bit about it and it looks like around 9% of men have this partial color-blindness, only <1% of women though.

@proteinbeer:
Those bad black ones do indeed have a different face, but it was rather a bug than feature that didn't stop that "PEARL-POWER-MODE" on them ^^
But nice idea that there could be some pearls that break that power-mode!

 

Hi!

Wow, it's been more than a month since last posting here...
Nevertheless, a happy new year to everyone!

I've been working on my little game pretty much nonstop (reworked user interface, added powerups, facebook sdk, saving highscores to my own server and trying to get a "candy crush"-like "lives regeneration" to work....)

Does anyone know if there's a premade script for "syncing lives/time remaining until a new life is added" with a server? This is really frustrating... I've got it to work, but I'm not a good programmer so I think it's pretty bad and inefficient ^^

Added some screenshots to show you the new UI and two powerups (timebonus and lightning bolt, which destroys the surrounding pearls)



Have a nice weekend,
Maui

 

S of a B! A Unity game on these forums that actually works, looks great and could potentially become something more? I'll be keeping my eye on this.

 

Hi ANTMAN! thx a lot!
Very encouraging to get this sort of feedback; working alone on a project sometimes makes me doubt that anybody else will enjoy it ^^

I'm still trying to figure out that "candy crush live regeneration" stuff, after that version 1.0 will pretty much be good to go live on the app stores.

Have a good start into the week!
Maui

 

Hi! The game looks great! I really like the art style! It's nice to see some quality 2D games.

I know your game is a smaller project, but if you need any music made I'd be happy to do some work for ya! I'm just trying to get some experience in games after having worked in indie film for several years.

Keep up the great work!

 

simple but extremly charming, i like it alot and it makes me wanna make something small aswell, the one im doing now is killing me!!!!!!

Good job, ill prob grab this for my kid, she is a master at pounding tablets,

 

Hi again!
Thanks a lot for commenting DjangoJustin and Kelde!

@DjangoJustin:
Sounds very interesting! I'm not sure if I'm going to add music to this game since the sound effects are pretty important, but I'd really like to hear some of the songs you already composed! I'm making music as a hobby, but sadly have less and less time for it.

@Kelde:
Thank you very much! Just looked at your project and have to say, wow, I love your art! Will definitely download it when it comes out. Although my skills are in no way comparable to yours, I think we both have kind of the same idea of what a modern 2D-game should look like (Rayman Origins comes to mind).
Just one thing about game size: I'm trying to only start projects that can be finished within a maximum timeframe of two months, everything else would really kill me aswell. ^^

This game would have been finished by christmas if I hadn't insisted on implementing the facebook sdk a self-built social leaderboard without having a clue how to do those things at first

Have a nice weekend,
Maui

 

Oookay, after working nonstop throughout january to get to a stage where I can show the game to others, the time has come and I just released the first version of Aqua Pearl Blast (that's the new name of it) =)

The android version is out now, iOS will follow next week.

Although I would have liked to work over pretty much every aspect of the game once again, I just need a break from it for some days ^^
I'm really proud to be able to say "I finished a project all on my own" =)

If anyone is interested in playing it a little bit, maybe even leave some feedback (would love to read comments, no matter if good or bad):

LINK TO THE GOOGLE PLAY STORE

Thanks a lot, the feedback in this thread was one reason to continue working on that game =)

 

Wow, this is sweet! I love the simplicity of it, and the subtleties of the pearls wobble animations, and those pearl-pop particle effects are gorgeous too! I have the same problems with finishing games, even small ones, but this looked polished from post #1! By the way, great job on the sound effects, the rise in pitch makes gameplay much easier to follow

I shall be downloading as soon as the iOS version is out!

 

Thanks tweedie!
A friend of mine helped me build a little trailer vid, so here it is:

 

Nice trailer and good work on the game. Congrats on getting it up on the Play Store

 

Congrats on your game being available on the app stores! I would like to know if you would consider personal proposals for game projects. Stated in one of my previous posts, I myself see the potential for something more.

I ask this here on the Unity forums because 1) - you have an actual developer website but some people simply don't check certain emails, messages, etc. because of their habits AND 2) - I have to know if you would even respond to such an inquiry in the first place since some developers would never consider other people's ideas before their own or are too busy.

I would gladly contact you through your developer website with a proposal including mock-ups and information if this is possible. Please let me know either through a message under my account or with a reply here on the forums. Thanks.

 

Hi! Thank you AlwaysBeCoding and Antman!

Yes, Aqua Pearl Blast is finally available on the AppStore aswell!
So far the ratings and everything look pretty good, most of the people playing the game seem to like it. Awesome!
Those few persons giving it 1star ratings almost never give a description what they don't like about it, so I have no clue what to change/add/remove.

And yes, if only I wouldn't suck so terrible at marketing. I basically know what I should do to promote the game, there simply isn't enough time for only one person to do everything ^^

Edit: @Antman: Sent you a pm