I remember being taught some of the metric system in the 70's in school, so it's a real shame they disbanded it. We are the only country in the world who doesn't use the metric system I think.
So because of you all, this happened: http://toucharcade.com/2012/10/15/ta-plays-polara-a-runner-with-a-cool-twist/ Thank you to everyone that has been supporting us. This is going to expose us even further and it's because you guys and gals supported this game. I want you all to pat yourselves on the back for fighting to make this happen. Sadly the video is a little dull as it's just at the beginning of the game so it's not the best example of it haha but still it is important to us and we're really thankful for it. Thank you from team HTWG! Dennis
Saw the video, congrats, at least your video wasn't as bad as the video for Wimp which criticized it's controls when they are moveable, and talked about Resident Evil 6 almost as much as Wimp. But Wimp won Toucharcade's game of the week, and got some big name good reviews from every website out there. Polara too will do well, it was losing in the voting, but it has now comeback and now is well in the lead. I project Polara to win now. I'm glad my change of vote helped your game regain the lead. It was tied 20/20 at that point. Anyone who hasn't voted yet, please go to http://forums.toucharcade.com/showthread.php?t=159932&page=8 If your game wins, I am sure Toucharcade will post a good review for you guys, so good job. Your game is good and any little help for Indie developers is always a good thing. Oh, TA may take a little time to do the full review, seems to be sometimes a little over a week, but I think one will be coming for your game. The video above is just a quick impressions, not really a review at all.
Ouch, ouch, ouch. Really enjoying this until the three rotating circles in a row on level 15. Sorry, not interested in any "Keep trying, you'll make it" strategies or tips: I've just attempted that section oh, must be more than a hundred times, easily (could be two hundred for all I know, since I can't finish the level), and it's just not happening. I always die at the furthest on the final jump, where the last press to colour change simply will not register. Tried jumping at what feels like every possible pixel across that stretch and nothing works. I liked everything else a great deal, and I can see why people are praising it, but that's just killed the game stone dead for me - as far as I'm concerned that's too exacting and needs to be changed, so if the game just keeps ramping up from there it's probably best I uninstall it now. Oh well.
Hey EightRooks! First off I'm sorry to hear you're frustrated to the point where you're wanting to just nuke the app. I assure you not every part of the game is really in depth with accuracy, but there is a fair amount of edge of your seat type situations. However... instead of this being an unhappy moment, why not take a screen cap of the obstacle you're having issues with so we can all take a look and see if we can suggest a strategy that might work? I've played through the level 3 times now and there are a couple tricky parts. Can you post a screen? Also are you on iphone5? The dead zone is an issue we're trying to get around with an update... it's in the works to get away from the black bar/dead zone.
I think I know the part he means. What you need to do is jump through the first ring, then make yourself blue (the color of the bottom half of the second ring) and you can run through into the second ring without needing to jump. Then, from the third ring, jump and change your color to the top half and then you're through. good news though, that's the last obstacle! Edit: This one here?
God damn it I wasn't even seeing 2->3 as a straight blue. Jesus Christ. I did honestly mean what I said (at the time, at least) - it wasn't meant as bitching, I do think there are sometimes games where you have to admit to yourself "No, this is beyond me" and give in - but I was liking it enough I couldn't resist trying it just a few more times and yeah, my mistake, slapped wrists. On the other hand, though, it's definitely not just my getting fixated on the wrong thing (since I was making it right near the end of that section even attempting it incorrectly). I'm getting some horrible lag after playing several levels in a row on my iTouch 4G, and it gets continuous minor stutters on my Android tablet (a dual-core OMAP, I think, at 1 Gig, with 512 MB of RAM). Neither device registers touchscreen presses one hundred percent of the time, especially not when done very quickly as I was attempting to do (jump and then instantly switch or vice versa), and I've died countless times when it's simply not been my fault. I've kept at it - since, well, I feel the game's just that good when it works - but I could see this keeping me from completing it if the later levels really do demand the kind of rapid-fire inputs I was trying there.
Hmmm strange... if you're missing touches, etc. be sure to reboot your device, there might be some memory leaks going on with your system. We spent a lot of time trying to optimize for older generation devices so the 4th itouch should work fine. In any event, glad you're able to move on to the next level!
Ok i was resisting buying days now, even if something inside me screamed that i would love this. But i couldnt resist any more Congratz on an awesome game from a fellow indie dev!
Glad to have you on board Syen! Sorry to give you such a dilemma hahaha but I hope you dig the game man. Enjoy yourself for all the self control you displayed
Have you ever thought about going the other way and just making the game like 150 mbs or less and adding a little better graphics? I'm not saying going to ipad retina and all, bit since right now you are kind of handcuffed on space as it is, maybe it would help the game to forget about the 50 mb restriction, and add some things to the game with a little better graphics. On my iphone this game looks retively ok, but on the new ipad it would be vastly improved with a little better graphics. Anyway, this will be my last question about this, if you could take a second to address this. If sales are much better from the less than 50 mb thing, or other things, please let us know. Thanks.
I've actually gone back to look at increasing the res and redoing all the textures... it's a large pile of work to be done. I'm going to see what I can do but honestly it's like a years worth of work to sift through at the moment haha I'll be really upfront with you. We don't have a lot of money...actually we used all of the tiny amount of money we got off the limited success of the Kunundrum launch. I haven't drawn a salary in two years... honestly, I haven't made a dime in 2 years. So the resources were limited to say the least and it was a shit-ton of work to take care of everything. The end credits almost embarrass me a little because my name is all over the damn thing, but we're so grass roots that I had to put on many a hat But that's business and it takes time to grow. We had to make concessions where I would have loved to poured a lot of time and money on so many things, but it just wasn't there. It's not an easy business to get into, but it's even harder to maintain. This is a dream of mine and I left a number of jobs behind to do this. Without any funding or backing, belts tighten and sadly features lessen. I know a number of high quality artists that I would love to commission(top tier industry types) if they would take the job on, but without the cash to both support your business and contractors, the DIY factor rises. We'll see how this launch goes and where we all are in terms of support and funding. I would love to intensify everything! I mean hell I'm a UI Artist by nature and I hardly got any time on that even. I'm sorry if it's falling short on any level for you, I really am. Technology refreshes itself so many times during a cycle that if you're not right there, you can get left behind. I don't want that to happen, but with this issue in front of me there wasn't much I could do as money and time had both hands tied behind my back. I had a composer I was so happy with that wanted to work with us but even that small price couldn't be paid and again we ran out of time... it's never ending haha So we had to make a decision and we went with what we created. Most of what you see in game cost us nothing because it came directly from resourefulness and effort. And for that I'm pretty proud Anyway... we will try to increase the quality level of our titles as we grow. But if we can't grow I'm afraid quality will be the least our of worries haha Instead how about...what am I going to eat for 0 dollars hahahaha
Even though I think the in game visuals are adequate and the cut scene art is excellent, I agree completely. Most people have access to wifi at some point during the day, and personally it's never been an issue for me.. I believe the 50 mb limit might sometimes detrimental to some games visuals and sound quality. I've at level 46 now and I'm at a point now where I suspect your level designer is actually evil!! Loving the game regardless..
Tim is evil. And we actually were at like 48.7mb and were hoping it would make it...but Apple puts stuff into the binary that pushed it over and ugh....
There's been several places like this in the game for me, where I just couldn't see how it's solvable. After making it past those points, when revisiting the levels later, they are much easier.. I haven't had any issues with the touchscreen registering, in fact, I find it remarkable precise, but I'm playing on an iPad 3. As mentioned by the Dev, it may just be a memory leak. I've had those many times on my iPhone 3GS, ancient thing as it is.. A reboot have solved it for the most part, although lately, after the last two iOS releases, even games that looks like the phone should have no problem handling have begun to stutter.. Maybe I should have kept it on iOS 4.. Games like Mikey Shorts runs badly on my iPhone now. And that's a Phone that used to run Infinity Blade...
Regarding the retina graphics. I think improving the resolution of the main girl would go a long way towards making it look better. She looks pixelated and everything else passes by so quickly it's not as noticeable. I hope this game takes off enough to support you and the other devs. I would love to see more games from you guys.
I am not too concerned about the graphics; I think they look pretty good on my iPad 3. After all, this game is really about the game play challenge. One thing I would like to see added is a Game Center leaderboard that reflects progress on the story mode. I could see a couple of ways of doing it. One way is to simple reflect the number of levels where a flawless is achieved, although the granularity would be quite low. An alternative would be to assign points to each type of goal achieved (each letter, special, etc) and show the total points.
I also found level 15 much harder than the levels that preceeded and followed it. It required a brain switch that I didn't immediately make, apparently. I had that at more times, that the difficulty progression seemed a bit off. Not a big deal though, and it is interesting to see here that others had that with other levels. I saw level 19 mentioned as super hard for example, so I worried when I got there after struggling with 15 but I found it not so hard. I still find 15 difficult, I have all the polara until then, but I cannot get that last A near those circles near the end. No problem though, there's still so much to do and I'll get back to it later. I find the endless modes quite hard and they feel a bit too random for me. I'll probably get a bit better at pattern recognition over time, but still, my high score at random normal is only 748 and even that was mostly luck. I voted for this as GOTW. Found it difficult to choose between this and Crazy Taxi. I chose this one mainly because it just works much better on my iPad 1 and therefore it got a lot more gameplay than Crazy Taxi, so it seemed only fair to vote for Polara, even though the games are impossible to compare otherwise. I love that the filesize is so small for such a big game. I don't really buy runners anymore and have also been disappointed in too many platformers. This one looked interesting enough, the price was low, no IAP's, but if the filesize would have been large, I would have to make room on my device and probably not have gone through the trouble. I recently even deleted Crazy Hedgy, which is one of my favorite games ever, because of space concerns. I really like slewis7's idea of leaderboards with points for each letter! I hope you'll consider something like that.
