RPS Mutants (by an indie game developer)

[kentoh]

Hi everyone,

I am Ken Toh, an indie game developer and I am pleased to announce that my first ever game, RPS Mutants, is now live on the AppStore! RPS Mutants is a fast-paced endless arcade game based on familiar Rock-Paper-Scissors rules! Do let me know if you have comments, questions or feedback!

Thank you





Website: http://www.kentoh.com/rpsmutants
Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/rpsmutants
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/rpsmutants

[kentoh]

Low bandwidth Version | Pop Up

[coderkid]

Nice game concept! Good execution too, for an indie dev.

[kentoh]

Originally Posted by coderkid

Nice game concept! Good execution too, for an indie dev.

That's very encouraging.. as barely anyone has downloaded it yet or left a review :[ Thank you coderkid

[TimEggers]

I really like your concept here, and its executed quite nicely. I like the RPS twist on the endless runner.

Overall your game is really pretty fun, done quite well and in the end enjoyable. Nicely done!

As an inspiring developer myself can you share some of the development process and describe the making of the game? I'd love to hear it.

[kentoh]

Originally Posted by TimEggers

I really like your concept here, and its executed quite nicely. I like the RPS twist on the endless runner.

Overall your game is really pretty fun, done quite well and in the end enjoyable. Nicely done!

As an inspiring developer myself can you share some of the development process and describe the making of the game? I'd love to hear it.

Thank you for the kind words!

It actually took me more than a year to make the game because when I first started the development, I was still studying in college. It was also very hard to focus on the same game for so long; during the whole process, I produced at least 3 other "half-games" (which I still hope that someday I can complete). Luckily I decided at one point that I had to focus and stop toggling between games or I will end up with no end-product!

Nevertheless I felt that making those half-games actually helped me. Through other game projects, I managed to figure out how to do certain things which I could also apply to RPS Mutants. For instance, the rock, paper and scissors were initially not animated, and they were pretty ugly:/ But another half-game that I did required strong emphasis on character animation, which forced me to spend time to understand animation concepts and even learn how to use Illustrator well enough! When I jumped back into RPS Mutants, I was able to redraw all the characters with Illustrator better and even made them somewhat animated and presentable (I am no expert animator, really). Best of all I was able to take a break from RPS Mutants whenever needed

This toggling thing really sounds very unconventional, but that was really how it was for me. I really felt that while I was taking a lot of time with no end-product, at least I am leveling up some aspects of my game development each time I come back into RPS Mutants. Everyone has a different way I guess!

As for the actual development process, time and talent (like music) weren't always on my side, so I tried to leverage on tools that help overcome these limitations. I used cocos2d for my 2d game, and many other excellent tools such as Zwoptex (spritesheets), GlyphDesigner(fonts), ParticleDesigner(particle effects) and cfxr (soundfx generator). I also bought fonts online to give the App a professional feel. Luckily, I had a close friend who is musically superb, to help me with the music!

There are also a ton of gamedev tutorials/resources which I find very helpful. Ray Wenderlich's site is must-visit, as well as the cocos2d forum (if you are using that, I would recommend it for any 2d game) and StackOverflow. Also, following established developers help a lot too as they will tweet or blog about useful materials and new tutorials. (idevblogaday.com is a great site to follow).

Also, in my opinion, a lot of game design boils down to repetitive iteration and testing. There are just so many parameters in a game that are tweakable (spawn rate, enemy speed, powerup probability) etc, that finding the right combination which will feel "fun" and scale well as the game progresses can be a challenge. After many runs of self iteration, I usually dish out my builds to a couple of close friends via TestFlight for beta-testing after settling for something satisfactory.

And finally it's the polishing up when it's done. There's always something that I think can be improved: a button that can be resized, a tinge of additional gloss that I can add to the particle effect, etc. This process took really long for me, and in fact I know I can still do more. But I know I have spent too long in a way, so I decided to just release it. I told myself that the key essence of the game are already there, and if needed I can still improve it even more through updates. So that's where I have ended up!

Having created my first ever "complete" game (a half-game no more!), I am really happy! There is the hard part on marketing, and admittedly, I haven't done much besides sending some review requests (only heard back from 1 in Singapore so far). I have much to learn still, especially on this marketing part!

These are my thoughts and experience, hope it helps

[kentoh]

Originally Posted by TimEggers

I really like your concept here, and its executed quite nicely. I like the RPS twist on the endless runner.

Overall your game is really pretty fun, done quite well and in the end enjoyable. Nicely done!

As an inspiring developer myself can you share some of the development process and describe the making of the game? I'd love to hear it.

@Tim, I just happened to see your name on the GameCenter leaderboard (in 2nd place, well done! ..and yes, I still play my own game everyday!) as well as a review (my first ever!) for the game on the US Appstore. Thanks, I really appreciate it

To every else who had managed to try out RPS Mutants: any thoughts/suggestions or features that you might like to see in future updates?

Thank you!

[TimEggers]

Thanks ken for the follow-up. I'll admit I'm a long ways away from having anything substantial to distribute, but I am enjoying the process and always learning.

Playing games by people like you is what keeps me so passionate about learning new things and working hard towards developing the kind of games I want to play.

Really, nice job on RPS Mutants. I like it a lot.

[kentoh]

Hello everyone, RPS Mutants has been updated with universal support and is now FREE on the AppStore! Do try it out and let me know if you have any comments or feedback! Thank you

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/rps-mutants/id511688118?ls=1&mt=8