Hello fellow indie devs, We are a new indie dev group about to release our very first game. This is a very TINY dev team(by TINY it's actually just 1 main person and another mostly part-timer ) Here is the game we are about to roll out: http://www.kestrelmoon.com/SentinelTales/default.htm It's a real-time strategy + action title with a strong emphasis on massive battles with tons of giant enemy creature bosses(dragons, trolls etc.) We always wanted to see how far we could push the iDevice hardware and get as many units on screen with full on dynamics + AI as possible in 2D. Anyway, we are wondering if any other indie devs can give us some tips/advice on rolling out a title like this. How many downloads can one expect for a freemium title of this nature? I am sure there are some very experienced devs on this forum that could share with us some useful insight. Is there anything we can do to hopefully help us push the number of downloads? I am guessing a good app icon, optimize SEO and maybe post on the forums? Are banner ads or press releases effective for a game like this? We would love to hear your suggestions/advice. Being our very first game, we have a lot to learn from the much more experienced devs on this site. Cheers, KestrelMoon
You've done a good job for a one (and a half) man team, but it shows in terms of visual presentation game design (and website design too I should add) are both decent but you should consider polishing up the ingame assets: sprites, particles, fonts, etc Devs these days place too much emphasis on marketing, but no amount of marketing budget can replace the importance of having a quality product in the first place Good luck with the release, the game looks interesting
Thanks for the tips. Definitely, it's pretty hard handling literally everything with a 1.5 person crew for a title like this. Our plan right now is to polish a bit more and probably release in a month or so. The assets (as you pointed out) aren't completely polished but given the limited budget and manpower we have, we'll most probably release a full update with polished assets after that. The idea is to use this title as the base for the next "great" game we want to make which is even larger in scale. We hope to make a game that can rival AAA strategy games in terms of scope ( not necessarily in terms of polished assets... but scope nonetheless ), gameplay and breadth given such a small team. It sounds really crazy but I guess we're just a bit naive. Time will tell if it happens. So far, we've managed to pull this one off somewhat. Once again, thanks for the advice/tips. We'll be working hard on the title in the meantime. BTW, 3D Olympus Archery Pro looks pretty cool! The lens flare is a nice touch!
Hi, Thanks for the reply and concerns. The freemium model isn't what we are sticking to. As I mentioned before, this game is the first we have ever done and serves as the foundation for future titles built on top of it. The plan is for the next title to have 2 versions: paid and freemium. We'll see how that pans out. Cheers, KestrelMoon
