November Challenge accepted! 4

thomastc • 5 years ago on November Challenge 2018 

I have been working on and off on turning my award-winning AKJ 2 entry, Misty Isles, into a full-fledged mobile release. The idea is to make it about the journey of Odysseus, following the story of the Odyssey but making the characters a bit more colourful.

It still needs a fair amount of work: more levels, character art, dialogue, sound, music, and some more mechanics to keep it interesting. But it should all be doable in a month if I put my mind to it, and approach it game jam style: "don't think, just do it".

Oh, if anyone has a good idea for a title ("Misty Isles" is a bit boring), please let me know!

Comments (4)

Wan
 • 5 years ago • 

"Don't think, just do it" A good catchphrase for the event :)

I personally found your jam version to have a fun story already, so a much less ambitious but decent alternative would be to just fill the game with a few more puzzles, slap "campaign levels" on it, then complete the app with a generous series of story-free challenges.

The Odyssey idea does look promising though, so if you have the time I'd really look forward to play it!

Raindrinker
 • 5 years ago • 

Yeah this game was amazing and I already told you back then that this was 100% marketable, especially as a mobile game.

You may wanna consider making some sort of automatic puzzle generation system, given the sudoku-like quality of the game.

As a title, not sure… Once you get used to one it just feels natural and hard to change.

Best of luck! I can be easily convinced ot buy this one :D

thomastc
  • 5 years ago • 

@Wan Was there a even story in that one? :)

@Raindrinker I already experimented with automatic puzzle generation. My dream was to have an infinite supply, but it turns out to be pretty hard to measure or control the difficulty level. One approach could be that I just play a bunch of autogenerated puzzles, pick the suitable ones, and arrange them roughly by difficulty for the campaign.

My main concern is with monetization: paid app, free demo with IAP to upgrade to full version, free full version with ads, free full version with ads and an IAP to disable them? Each has its pros and cons. I personally hate ads, but it seems to be what "the people" want, and for these short puzzles it could work out okay…

thomastc
  • 5 years ago • 

Eh yeah due to lots of client work in November, this ended up failing miserably :(

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