Our game Mystic Mine has gotten some improvements, and we are making the update freely available. Here are the most important changes: The multiplayer game now tracks the overall scores for all played levels. This means that you can organize a tournament with your friends, and at the end see who won the most games. Mystic Mine is now running faster, so slower machines are now better supported. The first levels of adventure mode are Read more…
As a kid I saw the animation movie Fire & Ice, and absolutely loved it. Back then I didn’t know the creator was successfully competing with a big corporation like Disney. You should definitely check out this video with the creator of that animation movie, Ralph Bakshi, on how to compete as a small studio.
Indie and casual game developers can sell their games through various portals. Unfortunately these portals offer very low royalty rates (about 25% to 35%). Some ‘developer friendly’ portals offer 40%. Remark that this percentage is not calculated on the game’s price, but on the ‘net revenue”, which means that when a game is sold, first some payment processing fees and other costs are deducted, and you will get the % of what’s left. And you know what, it doesn’t stop there. Portals make sure they stay in control by forcing following policies: (more…)
I’m currently doing some improvements on Mystic Mine. The first few levels are going to be more challenging, and it will run better on slower machines. A few tweaks here and there, but the most important thing will be that the multiplayer game will feature a ‘Totals‘ score board! I received feedback from players who sometimes organize little ‘Mystic Mine Tournaments’ among their friends. But in the current multiplayer game you only see the scores Read more…
Feeling down? Then watch this great motivational speech of Gary Vaynerchuk. He’s funny, angry and energetic, and can surely get the message across.
When developing a new game, the first thing you should consider is your high level game architecture. You’re probably going to use some 3rd party libraries, maybe you already have some in-house libraries that you’re going to use, or develop them for future use. How these things fit together seems obvious, but when you consider following architecture, it will save you a lot of time and frustration later on.
The Rampant Coyote has created a list of 19 general purpose 2D engines that you can use for you project. Now how do you choose the right one? Well, an indie game developer should consider following things: To get as many customers as possible, use an engine that supports multiple platforms: Windows, Mac and Linux. To make the best use of your time, prefer higher level scripting languages over lower level programming languages. Paying for Read more…
So, you know how to create games, you have plenty of ideas, and now you want to finish one game and sell it. You’ve come to the right place to get started on that. The first and most important thing to focus on is marketing. Marketing comes before creating your game, it comes even before thinking about your game.
Most people think that marketing is about advertising and press releases, but that’s only a tiny part of it. Get this into your head: Marketing is everything, and everything is marketing. Marketing is the kind of game you create, for which platforms, your price, your customer support, your demo, the graphics, game loading times, … everything!
Marketing focuses on the customer, it’s how (s)he experiences your products and services. If you want to sell a game, you have to start asking yourself the right questions, marketing questions. I’ll provide you with a list of questions you need to think about, this is crucial if you ever want your game to sell.
Sometimes you want to work on your game, but you just don’t feel like it. You want to browse some forums, watch some TV, do a nap, read some articles on overcoming procrastination, … anything but to work on your game. I too have procrastinated by reading lots of articles about procrastination. That was until I came across this simple solution: ‘Just do it!’. And indeed it’s that simple, no excuses, ‘just do it’. The Read more…
This question has been asked an answered many times before, but none of the answers seems satisfying. I’m going to give you a clear and realistic answer, but you’ll have to work hard to achieve those numbers.