Kleur: Color Challenge - word game by 9 To Friday

subjectZero

Hey peeps

check out my latest creation.





download free https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/kleur-color-challenge/id997711014?ls=1&mt=8
Please share on social media, it would really help out.
thanks

subjectZero

in fact - can we please get a share button for this purpose? built into the forum or something.

subjectZero

thanks for all the love peeps!

hermantulleken

Not sure if you want feedback or just want to promote the game.

If the former:

Games that rely on psychological anomolies are very interesting I think, and perhaps fertile ground for intersting ideas.

But I did not want to install this game because the colors (and fonts) really put me off.

Showing text in all rainbow colors on a single color background is a tricky problem, but can immediatly make all the text more readable by using a black background. Make the blue more cyan; the red more magenta; the yellow actual yellow. This will also make the game more attractive. (The game is named after color, so make sure the colors are actually non-ugly).

For feedback purposes, a web build would be better.

subjectZero

@hermantulleken thats some awesome feedback thank you so much! I think i will definitely explore your ideas.
I actually think its pretty but, wow, no install because it put you off...hmmm very very interesting. I seriously need to do a bit more research regarding what consumers are looking for. thank you so much for being honest.

This was just something silly i quickly put together for fun. built the game mechanics and then just tried to make it a little prettier (well, what i thought was pretty according to @hermantulleken, LOL) . And with this 4th title on the app store I've learned so much.

Im actually going to do the android build today and upload. the purpose is to get familiar with android and google play. And also gage an interesting factor I'm analysing - which is my social media verses device downloads. my games analytics show an extremely interesting pattern at the moment, i will share my findings.

Rock on!

dammit

I would really advise that you share your games on this forum before putting them on the store. Valuable advice like that offered by @hermantulleken could mean the difference in hundreds of downloads.

While I understand the interest in exploring the android and itunes store backends, please do also consider that paid apps and free apps are consumed very differently so what you may find to be true in your explorations about free apps might not necessarily translate when you decide to go for a premium or free-to-play title.

Final thought. I haven't downloaded the game myself (android) but I'm very familiar with the source of your mechanics. This is very much a "test" used in psychological examinations and experiments and I wonder how much "fun" it is. Have you adjusted it beyond the original mechanisms to add something that is fun? Having done these tests as part of a subject in a sleep study, I didn't exactly enjoy completing them. It is good brain exercise, granted, but not something to "play".

subjectZero

sorry but could please you rephrase this, i don't understand what you are saying?

dammit said:

While I understand the interest in exploring the android and itunes store backends, please do also consider that paid apps and free apps are consumed very differently so what you may find to be true in your explorations about free apps might not necessarily translate when you decide to go for a premium or free-to-play title.

Concerning asking the community for advice before i upload; that starts with all my new and current projects. So I'm taking your advice.

And your final thought is really interesting. honestly i just made it for fun to see if i could. i don't know if i will spend more time on fixing it or updating it. i just wanted to do it. AND i hear you.

I really appreciate this constructive criticism, thank you very much for taking the time to read this.

rock on peeps!

subjectZero

@dammit what i meant with my analytics is the collective data from all my games not just this one. it has to do with the friends i have on Facebook.

dammit

What I mean is, is your game any fun to play?

dislekcia

I've never understood the interest people have with "coming to grips with iTunes / the App Store / Google Play / etc" (paraphrasing from numerous discussions). In my experience those stores and systems change so fast and so often that any learning you get now is going to be either obsolete or actively harmful to a release cycle by the time you're putting a "non-pathfinding" game up on them.

The Desktop Dungeons iOS release process changed 3 times while we were working exclusively on the mobile build and it'll change again in the future... Android still took over a month for us to build a release pathway on, but we only started on that when we needed it.

Even the ins and outs of marketing your app change drastically - the conventions for what people expect in descriptions and images are not the same now as they were a year ago. The formats and sizes you have to support are completely different, etc...

So the part that I don't understand is this: Why, if you're going to be redefining a release pathway anyway with unique marketing for whatever "for real" game that you're actually investing in, is the time spent on learning these ephemeral systems worthwhile for games that people don't expect to do well? Surely you could just release a spinning polygon instead? (and yeah, maybe this isn't the thread for this discussion)

subjectZero

@dislekcia on the one hand i understand what your saying, but lets face it you travelled a completely different path with desktop dungeons. i don't know how long you've been doing this, but I've only been doing it for a year. and yes i was attracted to that flappy bird phenomena and tried to replicate it, whatever, it got me here.

Having said that this the purpose for getting my stuff on different platforms is to see which kinda people like my games the most. ultimately this is actually invaluable. and lets say some silly youtuber picks up my game by chance, if it wasn't there he would have played something else. you hear what I'm saying?

anyway thats my response.

subjectZero

@dammit i don't know. my mom is playing the crap out of it. LOL

dislekcia

subjectZero said:

@dislekcia on the one hand i understand what your saying, but lets face it you travelled a completely different path with desktop dungeons. i don't know how long you've been doing this, but I've only been doing it for a year. and yes i was attracted to that flappy bird phenomena and tried to replicate it, whatever, it got me here.

I started Game.Dev in 2005, so 10 years or so? Longer if you count bumbling around before that. I'm interested as to what the path differences you see are. I mean, it's the issues we had with getting QCF to be a registered Apple dev that helped sort out that stuff from Apple's side. Surely releasing a game on iOS/Android depends more on the game and not the platform?

You know why Flappy Bird worked though, right? ;)

subjectZero said:

Having said that this the purpose for getting my stuff on different platforms is to see which kinda people like my games the most. ultimately this is actually invaluable. and lets say some silly youtuber picks up my game by chance, if it wasn't there he would have played something else. you hear what I'm saying?

I'm not convinced that platforms are really that segregated in terms of markets and kinds of players. Yes, I think that something like Steam has a different bias than mobile games, but there's no reason you wouldn't be focusing on casual portals for similar biases to mobile players on PC. It's more like the PC space is stratified into differently targetable groups of players and mobile is all one big lump. It's much harder to find a niche on mobile.

So, what are you learning from your platform tests then? Let's bounce that off the experiences and data that other people have here and get ourselves some learning happening!

And I hear you about youtubers, kinda... So far we've found mobile streamers/lets players to be a lot less impactful than PC-based ones, plus it's much harder for mobile players to stream your games and get early versions to them. The mobile early-release systems are changing pretty much every few months at the moment, which is fantastically annoying. If anything, having lots of test games on simple-to-release PC without spending the time to put them on mobile might work even better in terms of finding that magical youtube luck :)

That said, relying on luck to get featured isn't a stable long-term strategy AFAICS.

subjectZero

dislekcia said:

I'm interested as to what the path differences you see are.

Me too, i will tell you once i have all the info. its got to do with the different regions. i promise you once i have something solid i will tell you. basically;

my big toddler bible - is mostly downloaded in USA - this thing is just selling itself
prototype snow (shitty) has more downloads than rocket rod (mixed feelings). but the time i was tweeting a lot i have like 2 maybe 3 people that talk back, and this is where this research of mine is coming in. Most of my fb friends are south africans. and most of them don't have iPhones.

dislekcia said:

Let's bounce that off the experiences and data that other people have here and get ourselves some learning happening!

i want to compare the total downloads for these platforms - regardless of how good the games are or not. do you see where I'm going with this? i need to know where i will get my best reach. at the end of the day i want to see if having it on android will make a difference------and my bad on grammar errors

And Look i totally agree with you that youtube thing is like hoping to win the lottery - But i get to play it for free just by having it out there. having said that your right....

look I've learned now, a year in business, ok. so I'm working on it and will take your advice:
going to start share my stuff very early to get proper feedback.

thanks

dammit

subjectZero said:

i want to compare the total downloads for these platforms - regardless of how good the games are or not. do you see where I'm going with this? i need to know where i will get my best reach. at the end of the day i want to see if having it on android will make a difference

I'm just going to point out again that different rules are going to apply when releasing a premium versus a free to play title. Or a free title. Aside from downloads, you need to actually look at retention on your applications, because that matters. And then when you have a great title, you're going to need a marketing strategy to get a bit of noise going about your game.

The key to selling well on iOS is being featured, which requires your game to be great and liked by the team at Apple. The more noise their is about it, the more likely the are to see it exists, play it, love it, and suggest it gets featured. Android is different and it's better to get some built in social media strategies going to help maintain an ongoing building of customer bases.

My 2cents, though, from the experience of a premium game release.

subjectZero

Thanks super much for the feedback

dammit said:

The key to selling well on iOS is being featured, which requires your game to be great and liked by the team at Apple. The more noise their is about it, the more likely the are to see it exists, play it, love it, and suggest it gets featured. Android is different and it's better to get some built in social media strategies going to help maintain an ongoing building of customer bases.

true!

i consider all the games I've made thus far to have been for learning purpose - i have 4 on the app store this year. like i said before i just started. I feel now that I've heard form the community and have some experience that my next title will have something special - anyway i hope so.

rock on!