Game Progress Update #77

Hello World! Welcome the the seventy seventh Dev with Dave Game Progress Update! It’s been another busy couple of weeks here in Dave’s world. Work on keeping up my existing apps and games on the various stores has become a bit of a priority and has taken up quite a lot of whatever spare time I would ordinarily have spent working on the game.

It was also Valentine’s day this week, which I spent having an enjoyable chinese meal with my gf while we watched Douglas Trumbull’s 1972 classic, Silent Running.

As always I have managed to get some work on the game. I have split my time two ways mostly this update. The first half of my efforts was spent on working on the remaining Trello card. The other half was spent on planning and implementing a social media strategy, preparing to promote the game.

Level Difficulty

I have been working on this card for a while now. It is the last remaining card on the Trello board which isn’t a bug fix. Carrying on from >the last progress update<, I have been mulling over how best to handle this.

My current thinking is to have a wider range of zones created, and record a maximum speed for each zone. I plan on doing this by manually setting the specified zone for testing, and also manually setting the speed variable each test.

This is proving to be quite a slow process, not helped by the fact that the game is quite a lot of fun to play.

I have so far created several new zones. Compared to the first few zones I made, these are more varied in the objects used. I have also made more use of the ceiling to floor pipes which I thought were lacking in the other zones.

Social Media

The other half of my efforts have been spent working on the marketing strategy.

For those who have not been following along, I am going to be concentrating my marketing in three specific areas.

• Organic social media promotion
• Paid advertising
• Website with email capture to build email list

The general plan for the three areas are as follows..

Organic Social Media Promotion

As I mentioned in the previous progress update post. I have already selected and joined several Facebook groups which seem to fit the target demographic. I am planning a series of of scheduled posts to these, as well as regularly checking and interacting with other peoples posts.

Paid advertising

Paid for advertising is a little less well planned. I’m not entirely decided on how much budget will be available for this. I expect I will use a variety of adverts to direct people towards social media or the landing page during the pre-launch campaign.

Then I will switch efforts to promoting the store page with a Google UAC advert when the game is finally released.

This will coincide with a renewed effort on the social media front as well.

Website with email capture to build email list

As I am just using a simple landing page with email capture for this, I haven’t really been able to use SEO to bring people to the page. Instead I am planning on using social media and adverts to drive people to the landing page and to leave their email address.

Once the game is closer to release, then I will use the list to send a few emails (A week, before, the day of release, and a few days afterwards) to announce the release to those interested.

Perfectionism strikes

I have also decided that I don’t like the text at the end of the game which says “Tap to try again”. It doesn’t seem to fit the rest of the UI particularly well.

Instead I will replace it with either a button with the same text, or a duplication of the two buttons from the title screen (the menu hamburger and the play button).

I would still like the button(s) to remain hidden until the speed has reduced enough, just like the current line of text does.

I have added this to the Trello as a new card in the Known bug/issues column.

That’s all for now

That’s all I have time for this week. I’m already two hours late publishing this post, and I have still to create the social media posts for it as well!

I’ll be back in two weeks time, with the next update. It’s a special one next time as it’s number 78. This marks THREE YEARS of me working on Flappy-vaders. If time allows, I will try and do something special to celebrate this.

In the mean time, It’s time for me to go.

Catch you all later 🙂

Game Progress Update #76

Hello World, and welcome to the seventy sixth Dev with Dave Game Progress Update!

It’s been a busy couple of weeks, and I’ve not managed to get quite as much done as I would have liked to do.

It was my girlfriends birthday at the end of last month. She had a lovely day, we had a party in the evening with drinks, a buffet and a few friends. Unfortunately, she overdid things and has been laid up on the sofa with a bad back since.

I also have been suffering with a toothache the last couple of days. This has not helped my concentration or my ability to work on the game.

On the plus side, It’s a lot warmer now. I hope that the worst of the winter is over. I am looking forward to getting out with the laptop or tablet.

It would sure be nice to get some coding done without Khaleesi getting in the way, lol

Anyway, let’s see what I managed to get done this week…

In this update..

I managed to get an amazing amount done in the >previous update<. I left only one card still to do in the in progress column of the >Trello board<.

• Level difficulty

I also planned on trying to get some of the new bugs which had appeared recently fixed also. Sadly, fate had other ideas.

Level difficulty

Despite spending most of my spare time this update thinking about how to adjust the level difficulty. There is little to show for it here but a few scribbled ideas on paper,

I refuse point blank to scan in 4 pages of notes (and awful handwriting) and use that for the blog! I think I have left it a little late to mock some of the ideas up in paint.net or the game itself to demonstrate the ideas.

Initially I was thinking that I may increase the gaps between obstacles in relation to the speed of the players ship. I think if this was proportional, it would still give the impression that the game was getting harder. It would be a gentler transition for the player however.

I am now leaning towards having several sets of levels which are only selected if the speed is inside a specific range. Even if this means having 2 or 3 similar levels which simple have larger spacing between the objects.

Social media leveraging

I had a quick run through of the Facebook groups I had considered as potential groups for marketing my game in. Of the six I originally selected, I have decided that four are ideal for my needs.

As I said in >this previous blog post<, it is important when you join a new group to interact and get to know the community before trying to promote your game. Any group with active administration will frown upon newcomers who just spam the group with promotional material.

I have developed a posting plan for each of the groups. These plan out over the next few weeks, a number of posts which fit the group which I shall be posting. I will also try and comment on a handful of other peoples posts in the group as well.

I don’t expect I will post anything about my game in any of these groups for a month or two yet.

And that’s all I’m afraid..

That’s all there is I’m afraid. It’s time to publish this post, and share the social media posts. As much as I’d love to squeeze in a couple more hours working on the game, I need to do other things.

Fingers crossed, I will be able to do much more to the game in time for the next update. I also hope that the universe won’t throw quite so many obstacles in the way.

Until next time…