Sela the space pirate - indie mobile shmup

Hello guys, I'm new to this forum... I've released my first 100% one man made indie game and wanted to post it here.



Here is the trailer of the game I'm talking about :
[video=youtube_share;jjCbkfv8YIU]http://youtu.be/jjCbkfv8YIU

it was released on iOS and android.

I showed my final product to the french video game company "Game Atelier" and they loved it, so they helped me publish it.
You can try the free version of the game, and buy it if you like it...
Here's a link :
http://www.game-atelier.com/index.html

There is no IAP after you bought the game, as I wanted to keep a difficulty curve as smooth as possible.

I hope you'll enjoy it! =)

 

Downloaded the trial. Graphics are great, controls are solid. The bubble text that slides in when you get hit can lead to getting hit again because it obscures your vision but you may consider that even more reason not to get hit.

All in all a very solid effort. Congrats. I hope you do well with this.


edit**

Finished the trial. Very clever ending. Please let us know how you do.

 

Thank you for trying and reviewing!

The bubble texts should appear only the 4 firsts level in the trial, just for the mood, because there isn't much anything on screen yet...
If you've bought the game, a patch should be online this week because the bubble text used to appear through all the game.

As for how I do... to tell the truth very bad... I think I learned the hard way that except if you've got a solid fanbase, mobile games that sells are those that are free to download, hard/long to finish or unfinishable without buying IAP, or full of advertisings. Also the game design should be for casual gamers. Which is not my case. (the game gets really hot later on)
I don't really like the idea of making unfinishable games and put IAP everywhere... it kind of break the game learning curve and overall balance, and no ending feels kind of meaningless for me. But that's just my own opinion.

I not sure I'll be doing another mobile game, but I learned A LOT doing this game, and I'm already working on another project, this time pretty "nextgen" (you can see details here http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=117653), I'll keep on trying to make my own indie games until my wallet slap my face to stop my madness. I just wish someday I'll be able to live only with my games.

 

I had a chance to,download this and I really enjoyed the gameplay. It's a solid shump and a worth addition to my ipad library. I agree with you that the iTunes Store is a bloated storefront that's mostly now filled with spammy developers using flash tools to clone off hundreds if not thousands of shovel ware quality games. I think that unless you have a publisher, your going to have to expect a long slow return on investment to let people your app and maybe pick up some reviews. I also like that you took the time to produce 3d assets of the ships and animated them accordingly, and didn't make another top down sprite shooter, which dos not show off the benefits of unity at all.

I understand your dislike of IAP, I am the same way, even though I used them heavily in our game epic mech wars, but why not put ads in the demo? You're just leaving money on the table by not monetizing players who enjoy the demo and don't buy the full version.

There were a few decisions you made with the design of sela that I didn't care for. The use of constant pop ups with character dialogue was annoying to me as I just wanted to blow stuff up. If it was essential to the gameplay tutorial that would be one thing. But for the most part it was just character development, which I care little about in a shump. The liberal use of coins is cool, and I like that you can upgrade your magnets, but since the coins never die, they just clutter up the screen and make it more difficult to identify the enemy bullets. I don't like that some of the enemies fly behind you, but you don't offer me a way to shoot down( in the demo at least).

Good luck on your next gen work. I think with your interest in more hardcore games, you will enjoy making it more and more players will enjoy it.