Dead End (one-button zombie-killing)

[ceka]

randyo, i see your point and I understand your feelings. I also wasn't suggesting to make the game free. Like I said, i bought it, liked it and recommend it. I'm just of the opinion that with little twists and relatively little work (hours-wise) this game has the potential to be bigger. Maybe twice the game with only 20% more effort. I definitely see where you are coming from and am not complaining. just suggestions like a I said.

Good luck with future projects

[randyo]

@echoseven
THANKS! Really appreciative of the compliment. And so excited to see the victory! I would say you got a straightforward reasonable final score. The power multiplier is for a single bullet or flame hitting 4 or more zombies. Only possible with the pistol or flamethrower, as the machine-gun bullets and shotgun pellets stop at their first impact.

@brainframe
Sorry, I am conserving my final codes as I might need them. Thanks for the interest though!

@ceka
I definitely came off very strongly yesterday, and it was more like your little comment just ignited all my various feelings over the past week, so although I was a little put-off by the comment, it wasn't directed at you, but more the general climate of game biz. Thank you for your patronage and your comments!

Game business is in a crazy state these days, as more and more content is produced. As players, the amount we can get for a dollar is nuts. I barely finish 1/10th of my purchased iPhone games. And that's become the norm, so it's very tough to fight. And meanwhile there are potential free-to-play considerations which is proving itself viable but is primarily a wash so far in my opinion. Then in-app-purchases. It's a fascinating world to be in. There are a ton of directions this could go, and heck, I've only been on the market 6 days!

Point is: Y'all have forever to pay me your dollar!

[randyo]

I am stoked to say Dead End is now a New and Noteworthy game! WOO!!!

[Grubjelly]

Originally Posted by rocity

Being in business with someone doesn't necessarily give you an indirect interest in their interest. I want randyo to be successful in his own right, and I want us to be successful together. But those things are mutually exclusive.

The point is that a) you're in business with the developer and b) you and he were the first two to rate this game 5 stars on Toucharcade at a time when it had no other ratings, and c) you created the account immediately before rating your partner's game; that's what seemed suspect.

[randyo]

@Grubjelly
Fair enough. The reality is that I didn't know about thread ratings until Mike rated it 5 stars. When I saw I could rate the thread, I rated it 5 stars. The whole thread rating thing is kinda curious to me. I looked into removing my rating to be fair or somethin like that, but all I see is changing the thread rating, and I'd rather not rate my own thread down.

I'm writing a lot on here because I don't really have another connection to the public other than this forum, so I'm probably writing more here than necessary. (I do have various outlets I write from, but they don't really allow conversations.)

I am very much using this forum to market my game. Most definitely. I want people to buy my game. I don't think I'm over-posting but you can tell me if I am.

[rocity]

Originally Posted by Grubjelly

The point is that a) you're in business with the developer and b) you and he were the first two to rate this game 5 stars on Toucharcade at a time when it had no other ratings, and c) you created the account immediately before rating your partner's game; that's what seemed suspect.

well i'm just some guy who's a friend of the developer of this game who wants his friend to be (more) successful. if i had ulterior motives, i probably wouldn't have disclosed that you should consider my opinion somewhat biased because of my relationship to the developer.

perhaps more importantly, i want people to play this game because i personally think it's a great game. speaking of which, do you have anything to say about the game?

@randyzero congrats on getting featured in the new and noteworthy section!

[Echoseven]

I've been having a lot of fun with this game, even after beating it for the first time!
While I do think there's little content for someone who's good enough to finish it quickly, personally I only finished 3 times and still going for more! It's a perfect damn-so-close-just-one-more-go game, especially for anyone that's going for high scores.
Congrats, Randyo! Hopefully the feature will get you more sales!

[randyo]

awesometastic, echo seven! I'm so glad it hits the right chord for you. I wish I had more free time so I could get you updates sooner than a couple months from now. but with such gamer appreciation, how can I not to add more modes and levels and so on when I get the chance?

[randyo]

Hey toucharcaders!

I haven't said hello in a long-time, but I thought I'd update y'all.

I'm pretty focused working on the new Tiger Style Games game Waking Mars and trying to keep my eyes from going cross-eyed staring at iPhone/iPad/Macbook screens too much.

I try to spend spare time not looking at screens, so Dead End is still a little ways from a public update, but I am messing with a bunch of new stuff.

-2 new levels: a supermarket and a picnic/park.
-2 new weapons: a croquet mallet and an exploding watermelon.
-new mode: endless (no waves, just constant zombie bombardment til you die)
-tweaking current story mode difficulty curve
-stats page
-removing OpenFeint (making GameCenter the only stats for this game)

SO, for anyone with an opinion:
-Is everyone in agreement that they prefer GameCenter to OpenFeint? I keep hearing this, but I want to hear from you guys.

As a developer, OpenFeint is great in many ways. I just put in a few lines of code and it takes care of leaderboards/achievements/social posting. With just Game Center I have to personally code more (I'm an artist by training). But it's several megabytes of app-space, and no one ever tweets from my game, so it doesn't seem worth it. And it's somewhat intrusive.

-What types of stats would you like to see in a zombie killing/survival game?

-Would you prefer that all three game levels and all weapons are immediately playable, or that you have to unlock the more difficult levels/weapons?

I am going to add a Lifetime Kills stat, and I've been thinking that it'd be cool to link that up with getting new weapons. So, kill 1000 zombies overall, you unlock the ruined picnic/croquet mallet. You don't get supermarket/exploding watermelon until 5000 total kills. I'm thinking of doing this because all of these additions make the game even more difficult than it already is, and I'd like to gate the difficulty. But the game is hard from the start, so I'm not quite sure.

-If you want to help test my game, I'm going to be looking for a few additional testers. Just PM me your UDID, I'll add the first 4 to my beta-testing list.

That's all for now, just thought I'd say hello. Now back to other work! And if you'd like to see some of what I'm doing for Tiger Style Games: http://blog.tigerstylegames.com/post...ars-a-detailed

Thanks guys!

[LordGek]

Cool!

While I feel OF is a little slower loading (with some leaderboards taking several attempts to load), I do appreciate how it seems to allow unlimited leaderboards and makes it easy to message other players/devs from in game. Another whine would have to be how poorly it handles the best of the Day/Week Leaderboards (you have to find your ranking on your own).

Statwise I want most of all to know my best run stats, much more than combined career totals. Like I'd love to know my top score and number of killls on each map (assuming they are more than just background window dressing).

Unlocking levels is a bit more fun but I think the best way to go here is what they did in Pac'n'Jump from Namco. Each stage beyond the first had two ways to unlock. You can beat a threshold score in the previous level for instant access or get a combined from all accessible stages career score. So, in PnJ, to access Stage 2, the player must get over 30k in Stage 1 in a single run or get a combined career total of 100k. The skillful player can unlock a further stage in one great run whereas the more casual players can still eventually get there over several games.