It's the Journey That Matters... Right? [Game Postmortem]

I always had wanted to do my own game. It's a personal goal of mine, and truth be told, working on other people's games, while fun at times, isn't exactly all sunshine and flowers, as you always have to contend with extreme deadlines they put up, much more so with last-minute changes that they think are quick to implement but isn't. The crunch some of you read about in the gaming industry is very real.

But I didn't initially plan to go solo when I did. The previous company I worked for went belly-up, and that's when I started to think about (well, more like daydream) just plotting my own future. It sounds nice in theory, but I have a long way to go to make it a success.

The Game Concept

Initially, I had planned to partner with an artist friend of mine. Even before the company we worked with before went belly-up, we were already kicking around a couple of game prototypes we're trying to see the viability of as an indie project. But he found a job and his daily work schedule and deadlines would mean that he won't have that much time to work on indie projects.

On my end, I didn't exactly have the money on hand to hire an artist. Around this time I figured to just think of a simpler concept that wouldn't need as much art to create, and also relatively quick to get out there, since I didn't have the benefit of a bottomless wallet.

Believe me when I say how hard it is for me to make this compromise. I always thought that if ever I went indie, I'd want to make some really fantastic games like Braid or Limbo. But you need high-level art to get that, and I'm not exactly an artist, not even a passable one.

I can only dream about having such artistic skill. (Credit: KingIsaacLinksr)

Also, as mentioned, I'm not exactly flush with money, so I can't spend much time on development, too.

So I have to think of a concept that I can do on my own, and quickly.

Now, I know my limits, and I know I'm not a genius on Sid Meier's level (at least not yet, or maybe it's more of not ever), so I decided to just make a simple concept. Easy to make, easy to get out, hope that it might make a bit of money enough to get me through another indie project. That's when I made the decision to take cues from 4 Pics 1 Word. Now cloning a game leaves a bad taste in my mouth, and I've derided Zynga before for doing that. So I wanted to introduce a twist to it, but what?

A friend suggested (as a joke) just reducing the photos per level from 4 to 2. I gave it some thought, but decided that it's too much of a clone idea still. I then thought about having two words per level, with something that would tie those two together. I decided on using rhymes for it.

With game concept in hand, I started to make the game.

The Underlying Code

Throughout my time as a game developer, I will readily admit that a lot of heavy lifting was done for me. No, I'm not talking about riding other people's coattails, but this game engine I've been tied with ever since I started in the industry. It's called Unity, and I recommend anyone who wants to make their own game to give it a shot.

Obviously I'm not making full use of the engine's capabilities. (Credit: The Next Frag)

At the very least, one wouldn't have to worry about programming graphics, sound, all those hardware-related stuff, leaving you with more time to just worry about game code (or cut development time by a lot).

Now I know programming purists will deride me for not being able to code in C++, or even just C. To those people I say, "Hey, whatever makes you sleep better tonight."

Anyway, yeah, with Unity at hand (their recent decision to make the basic mobile versions free of charge helped a lot - you used to have to pay a couple of hundred dollars for each mobile platform), I should be able to get the game out pretty quickly.

That was the idea, at least.

The game mechanics themselves were pretty easy to code.

The Plugins

I figured that these plugins deserve a special mention of their own. I used quite a number in making the game, benefits of each are explained below for each plugin. Unity has a very robust plugin system which allows developers to cut even more time from their development or to overcome limitations from using just what's available in Unity.

NGUI - Pretty much the de facto UI plugin of choice now among Unity developers. It's so much easier to use and more powerful than Unity's own UI system, I wonder why Unity Technologies doesn't just straight up hire the guy making it.

Neatplug Facebook plugin - Now here's where I deviated a bit from the norm among Unity devs. Where most Unity devs would suggest using Prime31 plugins for social networking, issues with my own home internet connection forced me to look for alternatives to Prime31. Whether the problem is on my end (I'm on SkyCable) or on Prime31's (maybe they've blocked SkyCable's IP addresses), the thing is that I'm not able to access the Prime31 site, so I'm essentially locked-out of their documentation and support site. Good thing there's this relatively new kid on the block, Neatplug. Their e-mail support was quick to respond and very helpful, and they even take suggestions to improve their plugins from customers, as well as providing e-mail alerts on updates to their plugins. I also found their plugin to be easier to set-up than Prime31's for the same functionality. Cheaper, too.

Neatplug AdMob and iAd - Since I had such a positive experience from their Facebook plugin, I decided to also get ad plugins from Neatplug, too.

The Art

All graphic assets in the game aside from the photos were done by me. I am proud of how they turned out, but I would gladly trade them all in for real art done by real artists. The art I did was placeholder art, at best. But I had no luxury of having an artist with me, then, so I had to learn basics like using paths and such. I already had so much respect for artists before, having worked with some really good ones in previous jobs, having to work for my own art assets only raised my level of respect towards them even higher if that's even possible.

Original screen from the prototype. You can see I really needed help on the art stuff.

I picked out a design that's relatively easy to do, but still having enough character to hopefully stand out. I'm not so sure how effective my design style is in standing out, though.

I started doing the title screen first then the rest of the game's design elements followed. The original title screen leaned heavily on 50's design.

For the photos, having sites like Pixabay, Morgue Files, and the like, as well as the photographers who contributed to those sites were truly a blessing. They are generous enough to make their photos free to use, and it saved me from having to pay expensive fees to license images to use.

As with my stance towards artists, I'd gladly pay for high-quality photography if I had the resources, though I have none at this moment.

For sound, I tried my hand at composing, but I really can't make anything worth listening to, not even as a placeholder. I also sourced my sound files from sites where they have contributors willing to let others use their creations for free.

How my compositions sound like. (Credit: Chron)

 Attempting to Monetize

To be honest, I spent more time trying to put in as many money-making gizmos as reasonably possible than actually coding the game mechanics and doing art combined. Initially I thought I could just get away with placing banner ads and having in-app purchases.

That's when I was hit with the realization that Google only allows developers from a small set of countries to earn money from paid apps and in-app purchases. It was a hard pill to swallow, and I spent quite some time trying to see if I can work out deals with friends in other countries to publish my game, and they'd receive a cut of the profits. But I eventually stopped that idea after thinking all the legal hoops and taxation issues that would entail.

So I had to find alternatives. Good thing there are service providers like Tapjoy and NativeX who could provide players with virtual currencies for doing certain actions, like trying other apps and the like, and give developers a cut of the profits from there. For players who don't like to spend hard cash in games, Tapjoy and NativeX provide reasonable alternatives.

Sample offer wall from TapJoy. (Credit: Tapjoy)

 I also put in a couple of offers where players can watch short video ads in exchange for aforementioned virtual currencies. My idea is to let players have a wide variety of options to choose from in earning diamonds (the virtual currency in my game) so they won't be locked-in to just one provider.

For the iOS side of things, Apple is perfectly fine with sending money to Philippines-based developers, so I am able to offer in-app purchases in there alongside the free option for players who don't want to spend.

Another option I did was to create a build for Amazon's own app store, where they, like Apple, are able to send money here. They have their own in-app purchase system that I utilized in the build I made for their app store.

The Release

Looking back, I may have been too excited and may have jumped the gun in launching the app on Google Play without waiting for Amazon and Apple's to complete their own review of my submission to their app stores. While I don't think there's a huge market at this point for my app (more on this later), I did have a few friends asking me about the app's availability on iTunes. A simultaneous release would at least have meant that the few who might be eager to try out the app and share with other friends could load the app on their Android device and got friends to download the app on their own iOS devices and vice-versa.

Next time, I think it's better to release simultaneously.

The Hard Knocks of Reality and Marketing

Now here's the harsh reality. Two days from launch, I'm finding it hard to get users to even just try the game even though it's free. The total installs sits at only 17 as of this moment, and that definitely won't be enough to earn even a bit of money to get by and be able to push out more games, much less be able to hire an artist and work on bigger concepts.

Look at that sad graph. Hwehwehwe. :D

I've done the usual rounds of announcing on Facebook, posting on forums, and submitting to sites for review. Remains to be seen how effective free marketing is, but I'm very thankful for the handful of friends and family who've shown support over Facebook. Much love, you guys!

I am eternally grateful to you guys for supporting my crazy dream. :D

 At this point, I've probably exhausted most options in doing free marketing tricks, with the exception of trying to contact local news agencies and blogs, as well as trying my hand at Twitter. Outside of those unexplored avenues, the only recourse I have now is to pay for ads and marketing, and that's something I don't have budget for right now, along with not knowing which ad networks are worth putting money into.

Future Prospects and Lessons Learned

About the most difficult thing about doing this solo game is that you're never too far away from feelings of loneliness and doubt. When you're working solo, there's really no one there to lean on for support development-wise. You can ask around for help, but ultimately, fixing things are for you and you alone. Also, the full brunt of failure (and I'm pretty certain my game is doomed to fail) falls on you alone.

I took a shot of myself while coding. (Credit: Indecent Xposure)

But there are small victories to be had, like the small pride in being able to make a game all on your own. Never mind that it's an unloved game by people. It's still a full game, and I have managed to complete it from inception to distribution.

From here, I'll most likely be making a couple more apps (I'll probably try to reuse many of the underlying code I already used with my first game) and see if they collectively would be able to earn enough to let me keep doing this. But I wouldn't be surprised if they fail, so I'll probably be back at some desk job in the near future, which isn't a bad thing altogether, just not the future I would've preferred.

Well, at least I tried. :D

P.S. While I'm at it, here's a link to my game at the Google Play store, with Amazon App Store and iTunes App Store versions to follow.