Tap To Play - Our story

Discussion in 'Public Game Developers Forum' started by Tap To Play, Aug 25, 2014.

  1. Tap To Play

    Tap To Play Member

    Jul 1, 2014
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    #1 Tap To Play, Aug 25, 2014
    Last edited: Aug 25, 2014
    Hi folks,

    I'm a freelance/indie game developer from Belgium. I've worked on a few titles (both personal projects and client work). Some examples are Pig Shot, ReRave (iOS / arcade cabinet) and the on-hold Kill The Pikakiri.

    About two years ago, I had the idea of creating a social game (much like Wordfeud and Draw Something), but with multiple casual games. I tried developing it solo a couple of times, but since my graphical skills are not that good, I never got far. I made two prototypes in Unity, and one using Flash, but I wasn't too happy about any of them.

    At the end of last year, I talked about my idea with a client of mine, and sent him one of the prototypes I had. He loved the idea, and wanted to help out. He is very good at designing UI, and had a guy that could help with the rest of the graphics. So we became partners for this project.

    So we worked on the app for over six months (then still called "Beat This", but we changed that to "Tap To Play" because there was a trademark on that name).

    We decided to make our menus in HTML5. That was a smart move, because this meant I didn't have to work on them alone, as my partner also knows html and css. We used a plug-in called Coherent UI to bring our HTML template into Unity, and used Unity for the games themselves.

    We worked on the app almost full-time, with no other sources of income (luckily, I had some money saved up).

    The app is now finally out, and we're really proud of the result. I've been lucky enough to get some local media attention (TV, newspapers), which has lead to a nice amount of downloads in Belgium, but worldwide we still have a ways to go.

    You all know how difficult it can be to get noticed in the app store. We knew that in advance, and we didn't expect an overnight success. We started under the assumption that the first 2 months, we wouldn't be making any (serious) money from the app. We will keep pushing, and we hope we will eventually get a loyal fan base :)

    If you are interested in our app, you can download it here : http://taptoplay.mobi/download

    Thank you for reading. Any advice or impressions would be greatly appreciated.

     

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