Tap the Coin (By Thoopid)

EvanGreenwood

Thoopid put out a free game on IOS (which they described on their Facebook page as having been made in a day).



This doesn't seem to have been already posted here (unless I'm being thick).

I think it's REALLY awesome that SA developers are putting out quick to develop games onto the App Store. I hope this isn't only a symptom of the Flappy Bird bubble.

In any case I think Tap the Coin oozes class.

bigbadwofl

I'm not sure I share your enthusiasm. I'm honestly tired of the half-assed crap that gets put onto app stores by every 'developer' who thinks he's going to make it big.

Don't get my wrong, I'm in no way attacking Thoopid as they've definitely proven themselves.

While 'Tap the coin' definitely seems polished, it's still a terribly half-assed attempt at a game. I'd love if the general consensus among gamedevs would start leaning more towards a desire to release proper, larger scoped games instead of lackluster titles such as these.

Am I wrong? Has the market devolved to a point where this is what people want? I'd love some more views on this.

Rigormortis

@bigbadwofl, all I read in your comment was: "I don't like these types of games. I wish people would make more of the types of games that I like." It's not a question of being wrong. It's personal preference. Calling games bad because of personal preference is a bit silly though.

Tap the coin seems like an interesting game to me at the very least. I would love to see if there are more types of coins that vary the gameplay. The mechanic seems limited form the video but it looks like there is lots of room for expansion. I wish I could get to that amount of polish in one day, or even a week. :P

Hmmmm, since it's free I might just download it and give it a spin. :)

Edit: Just a lingering thought...all games are half-assed attempts...until they're not.

bigbadwofl

@rigormortis, Looking at the trailer, what part of TtC interests you? Have you played any of those 'tap the ball to keep it in the air' games before?

Edit: Been reading up some more about TtC on other sites and it seems as if there might be more to it than simply tapping a coin. In which case I might withdraw my initial argument. It's worth noting that I have a special place reserved for hating the mobile market so I'm usually quick to jump onto the closest horse when it comes to these kinds of games.

Rigormortis

[quote = bigbadwofl]Have you played any of those 'tap the ball to keep it in the air' games before?[/quote]
No, why?

The first thing I noticed was the polish. That's a sweet SWEET sound effect for tapping the coin. The general aesthetic of it seems pleasing as well. Nice clouds in the background, a blue sky...almost tranquil. But what made me go download the game after watching the video was a question that occurred to me. Can a game with a mechanic as simplistic as this one create an engaging experience? I want to know how that looks and feels.

I'd also like to see how the mechanic can be expanded. Maybe you tap your coin higher and higher and you become less effect by gravity...eventually your tapping the coin to stay down instead of keeping it up. The possibilities are endless.

What part is not interesting!? :D

bigbadwofl

I think I've seen so many of them that they've become like infinite runners to me. That is, the kind of game you make when you really don't want to put any effort into it.

I'm ready to admit that making in a game in one of those categories doesn't mean the game is automatically terrible though. Let's just call it a prejudiced rule of thumb I've started using.

You're right though, based on the demo it is really well polished and taking into account how large a part of the marketplace is filled up with games that not only ARE terrible (gameplay wise) but LOOK terrible, this is a step in the right direction. Just the other day I was thinking how I wish people would just start taking pride in what they release, even if it only means that it's well polished and this should be enough for me.

Let us know how it is when you've played it. I don't own an ios device.

FanieG

What's wrong with endless runners? Have you played dead run? Awesome fun. Polished too.

bigbadwofl

FanieG said:

What's wrong with endless runners? Have you played dead run? Awesome fun. Polished too.

bigbadwofl said:

I'm ready to admit that making in a game in one of those categories doesn't mean the game is automatically terrible though. Let's just call it a prejudiced rule of thumb I've started using.

There are infinite runners that I love but sadly, they're one of the goto genres for people starting out because you don't really need to work on progression to make it 'complete'.

EvanGreenwood

@bigbadwofl I did mean that I'm excited about developers trying ideas and releasing them commercially and learning from the experience... more than "this specific game excites me as a player and I want more developers to release quick and dirty games".

I agree with the sentiment that a lot of developers are plopping out dime-a-dozen games in the hopes of scoring big on random luck, and the App Store is poorer for this behaviour...

But I want to assume that Thoopid isn't like that, and Tap-The-Coin (which I haven't played) was created because of genuine curiosity and/or passion (or just for the fuck of it).

Tuism

I agree with the sentiment that HOLY CRAP DAT POLISH. In a day, too? Wow.

That said, yes I do want games with bigger scope and more depth. That's cool. But not every game has to be those :)

And quick-n-dirty experiments are also cool. I don't think anyone is under the delusion that these quick-n-dirty games (Dead Run included) will make a fortune. For me, I make them cos they let me learn faster.

That said, we really need to tie Dead Run up, it's been too long already. Though while the actual time spent on it hasn't been as much as the calendar suggest, I need to wrap up :P (but a lot of things are getting in the way of that, unfortunately)

Anyway I think it's pretty cool that we're open to rapid experimentation. Then I'm going to convert those learnings into bigger projects as I can. I can only take one step at a time :)

ffz

I tend to like the rapid prototyping and mini games, they are also quite well received on mobile.

I'm going to download ttc and give it a crack ;)

dislekcia

Played it.

The hitbox on the coin feels really random. When the coin switches at 10 clicks it got really laggy every time that happened and I couldn't click a second time... The clicks up until that point were extremely gameable though - I could just tap the screen like crazy and I'd get to 10 no matter what, unless the coin went really high randomly and then fell past my finger spots too fast.

Um. I don't feel like it's very viral, tbh. What is it about the game that makes you guys feel that it's polished?

Rigormortis

@disleckia, I had trouble getting it to work on my phone. I'm a complete iAnything noob. The thing is that it looks polished in the video. I wanted to test it to make sure that I'm not deluding myself. I think for me it's usually the graphics. Because I suck at creating/implementing how things look it always looks polished to me if it actually looks good. I also like the sound from the video, but I'm not sure if that's just part of the video or actually in the game.

farsicon

Having finally looked at the video, I'm pretty sure this game is a parody aimed at the state of mobile games.

Tuism

The video looked nice and juicy. Sounds, coins flying everywhere, etc.

Then I played it... Funny enough, I had a somewhat opposite experience to @dislekcia's - the hitbox on the coin was hard to catch. Felt like it was made too small. Then I tried to tap it like mad, but that would always fail. I played on iPad, maybe the game behaves differently on a lesser device?

But got really bored of it really quickly, as expected. The compulsion isn't really there, I guess it's a theme thing. I've come to realise theme is important to me... For example Lords of Waterdeep was a good game, I liked it, but I didn't enjoy playing it because it was just coloured blocks. Yes strategy, no theme. So I wasn't that keen on it.

thoopid

Hi Guys! @BlackShipsFilltheSky Thanks for posting Tap the Coin! We appreciate all of your feedback and input. You guys are all geniuses at what you do.

We built Tap the Coin as a side project to give us a bit of a breather from Snailboy as a challenge to our developer, without any plans to share it on the app store. After an hour we had a pretty polished prototype of Tap the Coin and over teh weekend we let a few of our friends play it. We realised our friends were pretty big fans of the gameplay. So over a week we spent a little bit of time here and there to polish up the game. In total the game took a day to complete, including app submission for Play and iOS it took less than two weeks.

We understand this casual game isn't everyone's cup of tea, but we are happy with the final product! Plus it has been quite learning experience to see what we are able to do in the mobile gaming space.

We are busy working on a sequel to Snailboy. Once we reach the final phases we plan to stop by Make Games meet ups for some of your guys feedback and wise words.

@Dislekcia and @Rigormortis! Please let us know your device specs so that we can figure out why you are having those glitches. It is not supposed to have inconsistencies like that.

farsicon

I stand corrected :-)

dislekcia

@thoopid: bog standard iPhone 4 here, running iOS 6.1 because 7 looks like derp.

I just noticed on your video that the tapping seems to be happening below the actual coin. Is that an intentional thing? If so, that might explain why I felt like I was missing it a lot - I'm trying to tap on the actual coin itself.

Tuism

You still running iOS 6?? Does everything still work well? I didn't like iOS 7 cos it's a rip of Android, but I like to be up-to-date, or I might as well Jailbreak and stay in iOSprevious and get widgets :P

Rigormortis

@thoopid, I'm not sure what my device spec is...but it was an id10t error. I couldn't get it from iTunes to my phone. I'll try again over the weekend and give some feedback here.

dislekcia

Tuism said:

You still running iOS 6?? Does everything still work well? I didn't like iOS 7 cos it's a rip of Android, but I like to be up-to-date, or I might as well Jailbreak and stay in iOSprevious and get widgets :P

I've only had a couple of things tell me that they won't work, then they worked anyway. I always take a while to update my phone when something new comes out, just to make sure I only switch once all the derp is worked out. iOS7 seems heavy on the derp.

Fengol

I'm running an iPhone 5 with iOS 7 and it also feels like the hitbox is below the coin, but sometimes not :(

I personally like these little games, they're great "standing in queue" fillers.

I want to play this more to see what happens but I regularly only get 1 tap and game over and my best has been 10.