100 Balls now in the Android market

[adshead]

Hi all,

I've just released my first physics based mini-game to the Android market called 100 Balls. I'd be interested to know what you think. It's meant as a quick time killer (each game lasts on average 60-90 seconds) and it took me just over a week to produce.

As a single developer, rather than risk spending a lifetime building one massive game I thought I'd release a series of mini-games instead...


https://market.android.com/details?i...=search_result

[DadTimesTwo]

I'll check it out and let you know.

[HL706]

I had a quick play and have a bit of feedback for you. I'll start with the positives;

• The physics work really well from my experience.

Now onto the negatives;

• The game is a bit pointless. There wasn't any 'hook' for me. I didn't feel any desire to have a second shot.
  
• The game doesn't clean up properly when pressing the back button. I had to force close.
  
• The font is a bit basic and the graphical style doesn't grab me at a glance.
  
• There's a grammar mistake in your description;
  
  "and if you can beat 60 seconds your in the minority!"
  
  Should be "you're". It may seem a bit pedantic but if I noticed then some others may notice. It gives a less than professional first impression.
  

I don't mean to sound overly critical but I've made the same mistakes and had to learn the hard way through poor sales and a bad reaction my game. I don't think your concept is a million miles away from being something interesting it just needs a bit of work and alot of polish.

HTH

[adshead]

Thanks for the feedback HL706. I agree with all your observations and corrected the spelling mistake

I put most of the game together over one weekend so I realise its a bit rough around the edges. As a proof of concept though it has done it's job for me and I now know what to do for my next game.

My next game will be based on an old J2ME game I wrote a few years ago which I think had a better hook and I also intend to add more polish, integrate OpenFeint etc

[Derek5432]

Hi all,

I've just released my first physics based mini-game to the Android market called 100 Balls. I'd be interested to know what you think. It's meant as a quick time killer (each game lasts on average 60-90 seconds) and it took me just over a week to produce.

As a single developer, rather than risk spending a lifetime building one massive game I thought I'd release a series of mini-games instead...


https://market.android.com/details?i...=search_result

Full-time indie mobile dev here (mostly Android).

First of all, congrats on completing and publishing a game. That's an accomplishment in itself.

As for the game itself, yeah, it needs a lot of fundamental work. As it is now, it is dangerously close to simply being a physics demo.

The display indicates only two things: time and balls. Why no score? If there is no score, what is the objective of the game? Games are about choices. It seems like the choices here are essentially meaningless. Whether I drop the ball in the middle or the side does not matter. It always goes to the same place, and there is no indication that how it got there matters. This would be a relatively easy fix. It's very close to pinball, so simply add a score and increment the score based on interactions with the elements on the screen. Hitting pegs earns more points. Getting the ball into harder-to-reach areas earns more points. As is, without anything to differentiate actions the player makes, I'd hesitate to even call it a game.

Also, a pretty big no-no from a UI design standpoint: I was confused about how the game worked initially, so the first thing I did was look for some kind of instructions. There is no button on the screen, so I did the most sensible thing, hit the hardware Menu button. This ends the current game! No, no, no. The menu button should bring up a menu of some kind, hopefully with a button for how to play, options to enable/disable sounds, and a button to restart the game. Having the hardware menu button end the game is very counterintuitive and does not follow general Android development guidelines.

If this was just technical practice, that's great, but hopefully this feedback will help on your next game. Make sure you have clear objectives to the game and that you have a way to communicate those (within the game) to the user.

Also, did you use an existing game framework (AndEngine or libgdx)?

[adshead]

Full-time indie mobile dev here (mostly Android).

First of all, congrats on completing and publishing a game. That's an accomplishment in itself.

As for the game itself, yeah, it needs a lot of fundamental work. As it is now, it is dangerously close to simply being a physics demo.

The display indicates only two things: time and balls. Why no score? If there is no score, what is the objective of the game? Games are about choices. It seems like the choices here are essentially meaningless. Whether I drop the ball in the middle or the side does not matter. It always goes to the same place, and there is no indication that how it got there matters. This would be a relatively easy fix. It's very close to pinball, so simply add a score and increment the score based on interactions with the elements on the screen. Hitting pegs earns more points. Getting the ball into harder-to-reach areas earns more points. As is, without anything to differentiate actions the player makes, I'd hesitate to even call it a game.

Also, a pretty big no-no from a UI design standpoint: I was confused about how the game worked initially, so the first thing I did was look for some kind of instructions. There is no button on the screen, so I did the most sensible thing, hit the hardware Menu button. This ends the current game! No, no, no. The menu button should bring up a menu of some kind, hopefully with a button for how to play, options to enable/disable sounds, and a button to restart the game. Having the hardware menu button end the game is very counterintuitive and does not follow general Android development guidelines.

If this was just technical practice, that's great, but hopefully this feedback will help on your next game. Make sure you have clear objectives to the game and that you have a way to communicate those (within the game) to the user.

Also, did you use an existing game framework (AndEngine or libgdx)?

Based on your and other peoples comments it is clear the game needed instructions so I have added that today.

The reason there is no score is because this game is just a casual speed test. There are always 100 balls so your sole purpose is to get them down the hole as quickly as possible (hence the timer). There doesn't need to be a score because you score is your time at the end of the game.

Today I have added a menu system, instructions and have also slightly simplified the gameplay as well as improving the sound effects. The new version is in the market right now.

That should be enough to let people play without problems - no on to my next game.