[iOS] Microbian

Hi! Microbian is live in the App Store!!:spider::spider:
I´m very grateful to this awesome community who helped me so many times in the process.

You can see all the information of the game in www.microbiangame.com but this is the most important info of the game.

Description

Dodge, run, eat, scape, jump and change the gravity so that your microbe survives!

Microbian is an addictive runner, a semi-procedural game in which a microbe flees an organic and hostile world.

By a simple and original control, Microbian keeps the balance between an art game, with an original graphic and sound art, and an addictive platform game developed for iOS.

Features

• Platform runner.

• Semi-procedural system: the order of the obstacles isn’t repeated, making each game different.

• Innovative art, sound design and game mechanics.

• Simple player control. Single or double touch.

• Rotating universe up to 360º.

• Very immersive game and music experience. Enjoy it with headphones.

• Global online challenges:
• Reach the goal with the best score.
• Get the largest combos and energy particles.
• Survive as long as you can.

• iOS Fremium Game. Play the 15% of the game for free and get more lives seeing a video add.

• Buy the full game with a single payment.

3 Likes

congrats on releasing!

What version of Cocos2d-x? Anything else about the tech stack?

Thanks;) I´m using cocos2dx 3.4, LevelHelper and cricket for the audio. Also I´m using sdkbox for the game center, unityAdds, review and IAP.

looks awesome :star_struck:

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super impressive!

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Superb! Massive Kudos to you!

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Thank you all for your kind words.
I have doubts if the free versión has a correct amount of publicity and if the limitation of the 15% of the game for the free versión is enough to get hook the potencial buyers;)

Let me know if you like this commercial strategy for the game.

OK I got the beta and its terrific. Two quick thoughts:

Maybe find a publisher? It’s easy for even great games to just get lost in the 100’s of new releases every day. And an experienced publisher can help you figure out the best way to monetize. You will take in a much smaller % of sales but that will probably be balanced out by getting Microbian in front of so many more eyeballs.

Maybe the controls could be a tap for jump and a swipe-up (or -down) to change the direction of gravity. Right now sometimes I want to jump and end up changing the direction of gravity. Maybe a swipe input would be a more definitive control - not sure!

Is it OK to continue the discussion of the beta here on the community board?

Thanks for try it! We talk with a few publishers but didn’t get real interest…

About the mechanics we tried the swipe up and down but the feeling was bad in smaller screens, also, if you wait a little to make the second touch you have a more precise control of the player and you will need this later when the spider runs faster.

Of course we can discuss anything about the beta here…

A few questions… . how much time you needed to get use to the mechanics? It’s 10 lifes enough to learn It? Did you reach the 15% limitation to buy It?

Thanks again and sorry for my english;)

Harsh :frowning_face:

OK - I see now

almost immediately. 10 lives were enough. Maybe for the first 10 lives dont subtract a life unless the player has gone past 2% - that way if someone is floundering they can keep trying for free until they understand the basic mechanics.

For me I played through my 10 lives, then I watched an ad, then I burned through 5 more, then I was ready to purchase. However I hate ads and I am an adult and I am happy to drop $$ for a quality game/app. I am always shocked at the number of player who are unwilling to pay a $1.99 fee as opposed to watching ad after ad after ad. So you will need to do more market research on this one!

I fell down a gap and at first I thought I had died, however the screen seemed to clear out of any landscape or anything but the background and my score kept going up and up. I have not been able to reproduce the bug and Im not sure what I did differently this time to cause it.

That is a interesting solution, but i don´t know if the players will understand why sometimes they doesn´t lose a life… I will think about this.

We decide to include video adds in the free versión as a claim to buy the game and avoid the adds. Also, the pourpose of the add is to get more lifes who is also a claim to buy the game with infinite lifes. The other aproach is disable the adds and limited lifes in the free version but then i´m out of “claims” to sell it;)

Here, the player missed the death collision-sensor, I make a double check for this but probably I have a sensor with a wrong tag.

Here some more questions;)
·How do you see the performance of the game? the loading time when you open it, the transitions between scenes, the animations…
·How do you evaluate the difficulty of the game? Like from 0 to 10…
·How about the sound of the game? I mean if you feel it too invasive and dark…

BTW you could buy the game with no charge, in the moment of the purchase you must have a message who tells you that there is no charge because is a demo.

Regarding to my last question, if you purchase it, the game loads with new music who loads randomly every time you start the game or when you comes out of the tunnels.

Thanks again for your opinions. really appreciate!

Dodge*

:slight_smile:

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Ups… Thanks!

Just FYI - this has happened twice more with the latest build (1.13), so there still is at least one gap somewhere in your collision detection boundaries.

Maybe you will need to do some A/B testing to find your sweet spot. On first run set the number of tries the player will get before needing to pay at random from between 10 or 20 or 40 tries. Then use an app analytics (google analytics, flurry, etc.) to see which of those gets the most conversions. You can use analytics to see where people drop out too. So if you see most players dying at 2% and then closing the game and never coming back you might want to ramp down the initial difficulty.

I can tell you I was hooked pretty quickly and it’s the kind of game I would drop $1.99 on from the get go - but thats anecdotal and what you need are data.

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I had meant to post about the sound design. It’s terrific. It is also pretty fucking scary. But thats your game’s theme right? Scary, spooky, dark in imagery and sound. If Edward Gorey was alive I think it likely he would play “Microbian”

I dont have any performance issues. I am on an iPad Air 2.

As for difficulty - Ive played many rounds and yet have only got to 18%. But most of the deaths have felt ‘fair’, like I knew what I did wrong and how to try and fix it next round.

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Your most welcome. Your game looks immensely great! I hope it succeeds!

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This is fixed in the new versión (1.14) i think you can update it with the same link.

This is very interesting but I’m just a musician who got crazy making a game with no idea of programming and no more than stubbornness… i’m learning a lot in the process but I’m totally lost in some areas like analytics… probably don’t have time for this before the release but i will check this for future updates…

Thanks for your kind words, I didn’t know about Edward Gorey and it’s very interesting so thanks again;) Regarding the game, sometimes i think the game is too arid, but it’s our bet so, all or nothing :wink:

Sometimes i think the game it’s too hard but the other way to see it, is that the 100% is only for the chosen ones;)

And finally, Thanks again @Codemattic, your help is priceless.

Hi again! Finally Microbian is now live in the App Store! :spider::spider: