(New Space Game!) Asterun - Released TODAY for Android and iOS!

Game/Demo Showcase
#1




Hey there everyone!

I’m Ryan, an independent games developer from the United Kingdom! Today I released my first cross platform game, Asterun, for Android and iOS! After 7 months of hard work, it’s so exciting to finally show it to everyone and see what you all think of it!

Asterun is a asteroid shoot-em-up game (because yes, the mobile gaming world needed another!), where you tilt the device to dodge (and tap the screen to shoot!) the asteroids, while taking down any UFOs that may enter your path! There is also a RIDICULOUS mode where the asteroids fly fast and the damage rises faster, where only the most skilled pilots will succeed! There are highly competitive leaderboards, and amazingly obscure achievements which reward the more interesting attempts at flying!

Asterun is available for free (with no microtransactions!), and is supported by adverts, which are shown between rounds as to not interrupt gameplay. Asterun was previously available solely on iOS, but has since been rewritten entirely for Android as well.

If you’d like to take a look, please visit onelink.to/asterun to download! It’ll take you to either the Apple App Store or the Google Play Store, depending on your device :slight_smile:

Built using Cocos2dx, Asterun uses SDKBOX to implement Appodeal, Google Play Games, Google Analytics, OneSignal and Social Sharing.

My experiences with Cocos2dx have been fairly varied, and at some point it’ll be great to share my experience with you all and perhaps help to guide those who may come across the same issues I did.

Another thing I wish to do in the future is to start open sourcing more components that I’ve produced! I’ve already open-sourced a c++ replacement for iOS UIAlertView’s, which runs cross platform in Cocos2dx! I use it so that I can present alert views on both iOS and Android, where the pop-ups are in keeping with the same style as the rest of the game. Authentication failure dialogs have never looked so amazing! :wink: There are further components which I’d like to open-source, such as a social-sharing plugin that uses the native sharing provided on iOS and Android (which won’t require as much code overhead as the SDKBOX social plugin requires!) and code to provide a more extensive Audio API while remaining in keeping with the SimpleAudioEngine API already in use. Further parts are still in design and are awaiting implementation, but should not only help Asterun perform better, but also allow everyone to have more streamlined solutions to the problems that we sometimes face with third-party integrations!

Anyway, I’d love to hear what you all think of Asterun! Again, if you want to download it, check out onelink.to/asterun!

Have an awesome evening/day/whatever it is where you are!

Ryan :slight_smile:

1 Like
#2

Cool :slight_smile: keep going!

1 Like
#3

hello man, can i ask you what kind of marketing do you do for your game?if any?

#4

For marketing it’s a good idea to post on forums, Twitter, Facebook etc. Then send out press releases to review sites, newspapers etc; and then see where you get! :slight_smile:

#5

Congrats on the release.

1 Like
#6

I used the search and it looks like the game is not released “today” or even this year…

About the game
The background looks somewhat blank, you could add stars or small asteroids. Or maybe some nice background image.
In general, I like it.

#7

The original iOS version was released in 2015, however it got entirely rewritten to make it cross-platform; the original Android version was released earlier this month alongside the iOS rewrite. The new version is cross-platform (obviously!), but also handles screen resolutions more nicely, runs slightly faster and has quite a few more features :slight_smile:

Thank you for your feedback! There are some very slight stars, although they aren’t very obvious :slight_smile:

#8

Thank you @slackmoehrle! :slight_smile:

#9

Oh yes, I see now. But still there is a feeling of empty. Maybe I just do not understand this style.
By the way, I really like the description.
Good luck with downloads!

1 Like
#10
  1. Gameplay : too fast
  2. Restart game : too slow
  3. Ads : too much
#11

@BPri When I start work on the next update after last week, I shall have a look at perhaps making them more obvious.

I’m very glad you like the description… took me quite a while to get that right! :smiley:

#12

@gfrstudios Thank you so much for your feedback!

1: It can be quite difficult, especially ridiculous mode. I have the analytics for the game scores and it doesn’t seem on average to put them off when the gameplay is fast, if anything it seems to encourage them to come back! I’ll investigate perhaps tweaking it slightly though to make it more enjoyable! :slight_smile:

2: Believe it or not, that used to be even slower! I did try to tweak it to appear in ~ 1 second, however it looked rather awful and rushed. Again, I’ll look at tweaking that too so perhaps it doesn’t take as long.

3: The adverts can get a bit intense. There’s some plans I’ve already got regarding those to make them less painful, however that’s probably two or three updates away as there are more features which need to be done first (and the new advert system I’m developing will take a few months to get written and tested!) When that update is available you should notice a drop in those irritating adverts! :slight_smile:

Again thank you for your feedback, I do really appreciate it! :slight_smile: Have an awesome day! :slight_smile:

#13

Hey there everyone!

Asterun for Android has been updated this week!

In this update, we’ve restricted access for downloading on incompatible devices - as it seems Asterun was available to download on some incompatible architectures. Another small glitch has been fixed in the game where right at the end some still active missiles become very bouncy… while that was funny to watch it’s now been fixed :smiley:. All of the third-party frameworks have also been updated too!

The update for iOS has been delayed, as I’m awaiting a call from Apple, so the iOS update should be out once that has been resolved.

There will be another update out in a few weeks, to fix some of the feedback mentioned so far. Thank you to those who have left feedback already! :slight_smile:

Give it a play, and let me know how you get on! :smiley:

:rocket: onelink.to/asterun :rocket:

1 Like
#14

Hi!

I like how it looks, especially the font. And the description here is pretty funny.
I’ll download your game today or tomorrow.

Could you share your impressions of the use of ad network/networks?
Also, how do you think is it worth to implement iap in such games?

#15

Ha-Ha! It is difficult!
I like music. Animation is simple, but it looks good.

Interstitial advertising with sound is annoying. I wonder if it’s possible to show interstitial ads but without sound?
As a user, I would prefer to see ads every 3-5 attempts, not every time. But I’m sure that you know better.

I also used to use the back button to go to the previous scene, but in your case it closes the game.
Did you not add a listener for the button back, right?

At startup the game wants to update Google play service, but I refuse and I continue to use the game. Not sure that this is the correct behavior. I mean, I think that it requires an update to invite me to log in, but if I do not want to use the leaderboards, then I do not need an update and login. Am I right?

And if you have any statistics how many people share their results, then I will be just happy.

Icon for android looks different than here.
And I prefer the android version, but Google Play has a light background, so your icon will be less noticeable among others.

I did not notice any problems with restarting the game on my very low end device.

Or did @gfrstudios mean that the animation is too slow?
Well, it’s easy to fix. Just let the user skip the animation.
Add the new flag isAnimationOver. Before run the animation, set this to 0.
Use CallFunc to set isAnimationOver to 1 after the animation ends. (The menu is fully visible)
In addition, add EventListenerTouchOneByOne. If the event happens, check if isAnimationOver == 0. In this case, stop the animation, make the menu visible immediately and set isAnimationOver to 1.

I hope that you are not too tired reading this post.

1 Like
#16

Glad you enjoyed Asterun! I’m also glad other people apart from me are finding the description funny! :smiley:

My experience with ad networks has been varied, for example iAds was atrocious, while Appodeal has been amazing to work with. Personally I wouldn’t put myself through the effort of integrating in-app purchases right now, as I don’t think they’d be exactly worth it. Perhaps in the future it’d be something cool to sort though, when I have a bit more time!

The adverts are quite annoying with the sound, I do agree. Sadly the network I use doesn’t seem to allow you to control the volume of the adverts, which I will have to raise with them to sort out! I’m also looking at reducing the frequency that the adverts are shown, although that will come in a future update with a few new features!

On Android, the back button closes the game as before that it didn’t even do anything at all! However, you raise a good point and I will investigate whether it is possible to sort out!

If you do not wish to use Google Play Games, then you shouldn’t need to update Google Play Services, however I have personally not encountered this before. The game is entirely playable without the leaderboard integration though :slight_smile: Let me know if you have any issues with it!

For the sharing statistics… TO GOOGLE ANALYTICS!

…

…

Yeah… not a lot. Still worth having, just in case though :slight_smile:

The icon is different as on Android it isn’t necessary to have the background and I decided it looked rather cool without, so I went with that. Could be interesting to experiment with it though!

I’m currently investigating the animation speed, so I shall look into doing that, thank you! The aim is to not make it seem rushed or jolty, so I shall see what the results are!

Have an awesome day!

#17

Thank you for your time!

If you want I can send you an example of how to handle this.

Yes it is absolutely playable. I’m just getting a message about the need to update the services to continue. And I was not sure if this is caused by your code or is it something like an automatic message.

Personally, I’m absolutely ok with the speed of this animation. It was just a possible solution.

#18

can’t download it for android 4.1 = ( :angry:

#19

Hey! Sorry about that! Asterun has a few dependencies that require Android 5.1 and above at the moment. I’m looking at removing some of them in the future, so perhaps soon that may change!

Thank you for taking a look though! :smiley:

#20

Could you explain this, please? Is this related to Appodeal plugin?

At least this explains why I was not able to find the game in the store.