Puzzle Warehouse

Dimension Q, which is my very small indie studio will soon be releasing Puzzle Warehouse for iOS a little while after we finish getting it on the OSX App Store. Much of this information is the same as described in the OSX thread, so if you read it there, sorry for the duplicate reading.

It's something like Sokoban, but more granular. Sokoban has the player and crates moving on grid where everything is the same 1 unit size and moves 1 unity at a time. To understand this better, the player is 6x6, the crates are 10x10, and the movement is handled in 1 unity increments. This allows for some complex puzzles.

Many of today's games are too easy, in response Warehouse is quite challenging. It's not unforgiving, you can rewind the game and go back to where you made your mistake, but the best score would be done without using the rewind feature.

On the iOS version, there will be a small control pad (rather large in comparison on the iPad, though) for controlling the player. Unfortunately the game has 50 puzzles and Game Center only supports 25 leaderboards per title. How would people feel about a 3rd party leaderboard option which just goes out and pulls the world record? I'm working on a DimensionQ online system for another game, so the accounts could just overlap. Some people might not find leaderboards to be important and others might just be interested in pulling the records for their own information. Also, I could just let it go without registration and upload whatever name people provide (with some moderation, of course).

Before I drag this on too long, I'm including a sample screenshot. The puzzles are hard, but they're not as difficult as they look at first. The graphics are colorful, but don't let that lead you into thinking it's an easy game. If you'd like more information, you can read about it @ http://dimensionq.com/warehouse/.

I'm quite approachable, you can hit me up here, Twitter, or on Facebook if you have any questions. If you're into puzzle games and want to support this genre of challenging puzzles, let me know. Goodness knows we need all the encouragement we can get.

 

Update 1.2

Version 1.2 is probably the final update on OSX before sending it off to the iOS store. I'm content with the art overhaul (I'm not an artist, be gentle). If things go as planned, it'll be available for iOS by the end of this month and the sequel will be out on the OSX store in April with its release on the iOS around the same time (it's easier to do sequels).

Please let me know what you think of the new art style. The wallpaper actually scrolls (those images don't show it well).

If you have any marketing tips, send them my way as well, I'm terrible at it.

 

That's very kind of you to say, but I'm not too happy with it. On the OSX market it doesn't matter if your game is good or not, it won't sell many copies. The iOS market is another story altogether, so it has to look good to stand out. To hit the end of March for release, I have to have it completed by around the 20th. Since those last screens, I've made more refinements to the art at the suggestion of somebody who is actually good at art and plan to put those into v1.3 since v1.2 is already underway on the OSX store.

The biggest problem is empty space. The wallpaper helps with that empty space, but it lacks variety. I've put in a few more updates since this morning to make it more visually pleasing. I'll try to post those in a few days at the latest. Hopefully somebody else will provide feedback, too.
It's funny that the changes I'm making now have absolutely no impact on the gameplay, but people enjoy games that look nice so I should try to improve that.

The 2nd game is programmed already and the levels are about halfway done, it needs a lot of polish. When it's time to clean it up and make it look nicer, which really should happen throughout the development cycle for games, it will be much quicker than this game as I'll have some experience at it. My other games have been horribly ugly, far uglier than this one, they are probably borderline offensive just from being ugly.

 

I have decided to not put this on the OSX store. It's just too difficult for the broader game market and I would rather not put something that will get a lot of 1-star ratings from unsuspecting players who thought "hard" meant it will take 30 seconds of thinking to figure out a puzzle.

The follow-up game is much easier and will be released on the OSX store as it is being made with the broader market in mind. After that, the harder version might be released for iOS.

There is a Windows build, but I have no outlet for it at the moment. Bummer.