"The Barbarian" finally released on iOS! :D Pretty Big Game. Like 20+ hours aRPG.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/the-barbarian/id893490349

"The Barbarian" is finally out! I started working on this in earnest around September 2013. I first had the idea for it around GDC 2013, so March.

It's been a long time, and I hope it does well enough so I can keep making games

I'll update this more tomorrow -- I need to go to sleep now!

 

EPIC work dude

 

Looks like a really sick game
The only thing I'm concerned about is the $10 price tag. Other 3d mobile games, like Infinity Blade (That seems to be the same audience your trying to reach), have an average price point of about $3.
Of course, Im not much of a marketing person (I only have 2 small games on google play), but from a consumer perspective not much people would be willing to pay $10 for an iphone game. Im sure this game would sell great on steam though

 

The price is always the big thing to talk about. I decided it's a long game, 20 hours if you play it through once (I'ma assuming, I don't actually know yet, but it takes me 12-15 hours and I know all the secrets). And it's set to be replayable, so someone into this type of game should get many hours of play out of it.

I think Infinity blade is about a 4-6 hour game? And it's very repetitive. It's actually a completely different type of game. The Barbarian is more like old-school games from the SNES. It doesn't have any fancy touch controls (Which I always find gimmicky), and the emphasis was put on gameplay vs. graphics and all that. (partly because I don't have access to the graphics yet!)

I don't think I'll ever know for sure -- but would I get 3.5x the sales if I sold it for $3 instead of $10? idk.

I do know that there seems to be a push among more established indie companies (the ones that are, to me, not "indie-indie" because they're making gobs of money) to increase the price. That players ever say "That game is only worth $3, I won't pay $4 for it!" is silly, right? It's $1.

I have no doubt I won't be affecting that debate either way, but I figure it's worth the $10. Hopefully players agree! If not, maybe I can lower it eventually. It'd be much harder to raise it later.

 

The price conversation is a good one to have.... This is always a difficult decision!

 

Do you have any footage of gameplay?

 

www.TheBarbarianGame.com

 

I'd be quite interested in this (it's certainly my preferred genre, as a fan of Diablo, Battleheart Legacy, Dungeon Hunter 2, Dream Quest etc). However, the problem you will have at this price is that people will be reluctant to take the plunge until you have attained several positive reviews. £8 is a lot to gamble with no reviews on the interwebnet or Apple store.

I'll give it an objective review for a discount purchase price if you like

 

There's 3 reviews so far, two are quite positive and one is hesitantly positive. None are showing on the store yet, however.

It's true that it's not as cheap as many iOS games. but it's also not as short as many iOS games, nor as repetitive. It should take at least 20 hours of play to finish, perhaps longer, and is designed so that you can play it again with different skills/spells and have a different experience.

 

Just heard from the Unity Analytics team -- I was seeing about 2.5x the number of "New iOS Users" in the Unity Analytics as I was sales from Apple. Turns out that 70% of those playing my game are doing so on jail broken devices.

I get that most wouldn't have paid for it anyways. But still.

 

Congrats on your success (if it's pirated, you MUST be making money hand over fist!). You know 'cause all those that say piracy doesn't effect you (us).

Seriously though, good luck on the store and pump out an update that has something "special" in it for all your non-paying customers.

 

I'm hoping apple has a way of knowing if a device is jail broken or not. Something I can write into it.

 

unlikely I suspect, otherwise there wouldnt be jb'd phones I assume.

not sure ppl who use jb'd phones get their stuff from ios store... not sure how that dark side of apple works.

If it makes you feel better, ppl still pirate my free game (how you ask?) well, there's a level limit unless purchased (and its only like $1!!). ug.

 

haha -- yeah, I kind of just want to be able to put ads in a non-legit version! They can play it, but they'll have to deal with ads every few minutes [ps, don't tell the unity ads, since I'm figuring those would be the lowest-quality ad viewers!!]

I'm thinking of maybe making a free version that lets people play the first dungeon, about 60-90 minutes of game play. The entire game is 20+ hours long. Then they'd have to pay the $10 if they want to unlock the whole game.

Do you guys think that would be a good idea? I'm getting a 1:140 purchase ratio... I figure maybe it'd be higher if people played the game a bit first.

 

Yeah I'm sure they (Apple) do but they don't share it with us

IMO: skip the IAP stuff, make a free (w/ads) version for players to try and add a purchase button linking to your full version. Hopefully you'll increase players.

While the casual (iOS) player seems to have accepted IAP as the defacto-standard, there are still millions of players/users that dislike them. It depends on if your target market is serious gamers or the casual 10-20 minute bus/train/taxi riding folk.

YMMV

 

Join the Club bro!!

 

I would encourage a free version with IAP to unlock the full experience.

how are the downloads going. Interested to hear as it has a high price point. Would think that the downloads were already trailing off, but seeing as it looks like an impressive game might be doing better than usual.

 

I think ~170 as of last night.

 

That is pretty good with that price point and no big advertising campaign. More than I expected.

 

"Turns out that 70% of those playing my game are doing so on jail broken devices."

Mobile game development is the best (no, it's not)!

 

Best of luck with the release.

(PS: don't even waste time thinking about pirate versions - it's just a fact of life)

 

thats 170 legit purchases?

thats really good! nice job

 

Thanks -- I think touch arcade helped a lot, there's a vibrant thread going on there, and someone told me about it last night so I was able to reply to lots of ppl and tell them all about me and the game etc.

The big hung before I got there was "this game looks like my type of game but $10 is a lot and the dev is a no-name. Can anyone tell us if it's good?"

After my long replies there were a lot of "getting this now" and "dev is here, awesome, buying now" etc.

So hopefully today's bumbers will actually increase.

 

You might want to check your screenshots. Opening up the store page on my phone, all I see is the preview video (works fine) and a second screenshot that just looks like water.

 

Yeah that's the 5/5s. Will be fixed as Soon as Apple approves the latest build. I really wish it didn't take 8 days for them to do so

 

Honestly I think having a free try version with a few levels should be the default for every game.
Because no one is going to pay 10$ without knowing what it is.

 

A good number of people are doing just that. I'm not yet advertising, but it made it's way to touch arcade forums, and the initial feedback was "I want to play this but $10 is a lot for a dev I've never heard about". After I started posting, people started buying and reporting their (overall) good thoughts about it, and others started buying.

They won't buy it without knowing what it is, true, but they can get enough info to have confidence by hearing about it from trusted sources. The big hurdle is that there is a lot of crappy games that look great on the app store, and no one wants to be burned.

 

Do you mean the games that have a good looking character (drawn in photoshop) on the front page but then in game its all like 8bit?

 

Yep, and the games that sell themselves as epic RPGs but end up being a simple rpg fight game, just one fight after another and nothing else.

And, really, many of the games that could be cool but instead use tap to move and tap to attack features that many ppl like myself find utterly boring and not very game-like.