I,Marble a finished game for mobile devices

iichiversii · 29 Apr 2015, 18:15

@rich o brien said:

Ads make revenue? In app purchases?

We stayed clear of ads, personally i hate ads in games and i usually delete a game that displays them, we did however add an option for IAPs but its only to unlock everything which can be unlocked without making a purchase, its a fast way to unlock all levels and marble skins, not expecting much revenue from the IAPs, im more happy with the amount of downloads we make and i hope people enjoy it, it was a learning curve more than anything designing I'Marble, learnt a lot about game development, it was fun to make

Rich O Brien · 29 Apr 2015, 18:21

Good call on the ads.

I'll definitely buy the iap though.

iichiversii · 19 Jun 2015, 12:04

Hey folks, finally released our award winning game I'Marble on IOS devices today, its now available across all mobile platforms, please feel free to download and leave an honest review, and most of all enjoy the game
IOS
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/i-marble/id693807483?mt=8

ANDROID
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.joshblazergames.iMarble%26amp;hl=en

WINDOWS PHONE
https://www.windowsphone.com/en-us/store/app/i-marble/e1420d37-e858-4656-af4f-36db666593c2

ken28875 · 19 Jun 2015, 13:45

That's awesome news, Damien. Congrats!

Cheers!

_KN

p.s. Our game ChronoBlade also launched a couple of days ago. I will tell you more about it later, and hopefully will be able to post concepts I did for it.

iichiversii · 19 Jun 2015, 21:56

@ken28875 said:

That's awesome news, Damien. Congrats!

Cheers!

_KN

p.s. Our game ChronoBlade also launched a couple of days ago. I will tell you more about it later, and hopefully will be able to post concepts I did for it.

Thanks Ken, really looking forward to seen your concept work

ntxdave · 19 Jun 2015, 22:20

Guys like you astound me. I could only hope that I could even get part of the way. Some days I think I will never learn to use SU correctly.

It is really a pleasure to see work like this.

iichiversii · 19 Jun 2015, 22:24

@ntxdave said:

Guys like you astound me. I could only hope that I could even get part of the way. Some days I think I will never learn to use SU correctly.

It is really a pleasure to see work like this.

Thanks Dave, its a rocky road to gave development, but still with it if its that route your going down, practice makes perfect, be patient and you will get there eventually

iichiversii · 13 Apr 2019, 09:47

Wow, I forgot about this post, but thought I would give a brief end of action review.

How did the game fair out?
The game was downloaded over 60’000 times across all platforms, considering at the time of release it was competing against over 50,000 games a week, that’s the average amount of games released on app stores, our game was free so the outcome would of been higher than payed versions.

How long did development take?
The game took exactly 1 year to complete, I guess the level design was what took up most of that time, I would design levels in sketchup and import to unity, make an IOS build and demo the level, 99% of the time there would be an issue in the level Where I would need to adjust in SU, it wasn’t the ideal workflow as my knowledge of Unity was non existent at the time, the game had 18 levels, each level would take on average 2 weeks to design.

What were the public opinions?
Reviews, ok I’ll be honest here, most of the reviews are from my work colleagues, they were trying to help boost downloads to make it the next flappy bird, that didn’t work, the game never went viral however it seemed to be very popular in Asia. I guess marketing a game is very important to have any success in the casual games industry.

Achievements?
The game had a crack version, some developers would find this as a threat, I was more the opposite, I was actually amazed somebody spent time to unlock our game and all its levels, I suppose if the game were a payed game my attitude would be very different, I guess you could call that an achievement

Was it successful?
The day this game became successful for me was the day I decided to bring my son to an indoor playground, while I sat there having a coffee I could hear a familiar soundtrack playing in the background, it was the custom soundtrack a good friend of mine developed for this game, that was the day a father like me was sitting in the parents commune area playing I’Marble, seen a member of the public playing a game you designed and built is a beautiful feeling.
It also managed to kickstart the sound engineers career with a games company, “Frontier development” he’s working on elite dangerous and what an amazing game it is, but I’m glad he found success in that area.

So was it worth the effort?
Yes it was, I learnt a lot since, the games file and size was evident that it was never optimised enough, I was lacking the knowledge of game development so I decided to pick up the skill and learn more of the unity engine, I’ve come up with a better workflow using SU in unity and made my SU models work more efficiently, Unity has become more friendly over the past 5 or so years, I’ve moved on to more challenging projects using VR/AR tech, nothing like seen a model you built in real scale using VR, it’s a whole different level.

What’s the future of I’Marble?
Well it’s only available on window phones for now, with android and IOS updates the game became unplayable so we had to remove it, the license for IOS was also expensive so we dropped that, the game was a free game so we were losing money, I’Marble was never meant to be a fully released game, it was just a test to see what a group of 4 could make together, it was simply just a fun project to do.
Our team discussed online lately maybe I’Marble Would be a great game for the Nintendo switch, so there is the possibility we will redesign it which it clearly needs and be ported for a playable future on the Nintendo Switch, who knows, it’s a possibility.

So there really isn’t much more I can say about the game, it was a fun project, I learnt a lot, it was one of my goals to make a video game, I inspired my son, he’s currently 10 and designing games of his own, it was a challenge to make but worth it, If You are working in SU for game development and have any questions, please don’t be shy or afraid to ask, I will always be here to give advice or a helping hand.

HornOxx · 13 Apr 2019, 10:19

what an exciting, (from my point of view) exotic, great, unusual SkUp-related story! Thanks for this documentary which, at least for me, showed so many new facets that I had no idea about yet but I enjoy hearing about it.
And this story teaches us that there are so many ways to deffine success but the most important deffinition is always your own one! Thanks for sharing this!

iichiversii · 13 Apr 2019, 12:47

@hornoxx said:

:thumb: what an exciting, (from my point of view) exotic, great, unusual SkUp-related story! Thanks for this documentary which, at least for me, showed so many new facets that I had no idea about yet but I enjoy hearing about it.
And this story teaches us that there are so many ways to deffine success but the most important deffinition is always your own one! Thanks for sharing this!

Thank you HornOxx, I'm glad you enjoyed this post

Mike Amos · 14 Apr 2019, 10:05

A very interesting up and down history of a project. I got a lot out of it having a project I have almost dropped over the many years it has taken so far. You did good and the lessons will hopefully give you an edge in other projects and even just life itself. Just a small aside, does the program run on a pc or is it just phones etc?

Being a Hobbit, I have very little use for the average mobile device, apart from my car. My phone is a rather ancient Nokia 2700 fliptop which works and the fancy extra's are unused.

Thanks for showing us the story of your project, marvelous.

Mike Amos · 14 Apr 2019, 12:01

Apparently it is possible. https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/2/17929908/microsoft-app-mirroring-android-windows-10-desktop

ken28875 · 15 Apr 2019, 05:01

Great updates. I really enjoyed reading. Thanks for sharing and best of luck, iichiversii!

_Ken

@iichiversii said:

Wow, I forgot about this post, but thought I would give a brief end of action review.

How did the game fair out?
The game was downloaded over 60’000 times across all platforms, considering at the time of release it was competing against over 50,000 games a week, that’s the average amount of games released on app stores, our game was free so the outcome would of been higher than payed versions.

How long did development take?
The game took exactly 1 year to complete, I guess the level design was what took up most of that time, I would design levels in sketchup and import to unity, make an IOS build and demo the level, 99% of the time there would be an issue in the level Where I would need to adjust in SU, it wasn’t the ideal workflow as my knowledge of Unity was non existent at the time, the game had 18 levels, each level would take on average 2 weeks to design.

What were the public opinions?
Reviews, ok I’ll be honest here, most of the reviews are from my work colleagues, they were trying to help boost downloads to make it the next flappy bird, that didn’t work, the game never went viral however it seemed to be very popular in Asia. I guess marketing a game is very important to have any success in the casual games industry.

Achievements?
The game had a crack version, some developers would find this as a threat, I was more the opposite, I was actually amazed somebody spent time to unlock our game and all its levels, I suppose if the game were a payed game my attitude would be very different, I guess you could call that an achievement

Was it successful?
The day this game became successful for me was the day I decided to bring my son to an indoor playground, while I sat there having a coffee I could hear a familiar soundtrack playing in the background, it was the custom soundtrack a good friend of mine developed for this game, that was the day a father like me was sitting in the parents commune area playing I’Marble, seen a member of the public playing a game you designed and built is a beautiful feeling.
It also managed to kickstart the sound engineers career with a games company, “Frontier development” he’s working on elite dangerous and what an amazing game it is, but I’m glad he found success in that area.

So was it worth the effort?
Yes it was, I learnt a lot since, the games file and size was evident that it was never optimised enough, I was lacking the knowledge of game development so I decided to pick up the skill and learn more of the unity engine, I’ve come up with a better workflow using SU in unity and made my SU models work more efficiently, Unity has become more friendly over the past 5 or so years, I’ve moved on to more challenging projects using VR/AR tech, nothing like seen a model you built in real scale using VR, it’s a whole different level.

What’s the future of I’Marble?
Well it’s only available on window phones for now, with android and IOS updates the game became unplayable so we had to remove it, the license for IOS was also expensive so we dropped that, the game was a free game so we were losing money, I’Marble was never meant to be a fully released game, it was just a test to see what a group of 4 could make together, it was simply just a fun project to do.
Our team discussed online lately maybe I’Marble Would be a great game for the Nintendo switch, so there is the possibility we will redesign it which it clearly needs and be ported for a playable future on the Nintendo Switch, who knows, it’s a possibility.

So there really isn’t much more I can say about the game, it was a fun project, I learnt a lot, it was one of my goals to make a video game, I inspired my son, he’s currently 10 and designing games of his own, it was a challenge to make but worth it, If You are working in SU for game development and have any questions, please don’t be shy or afraid to ask, I will always be here to give advice or a helping hand.

iichiversii · 15 Apr 2019, 13:52

@mike amos said:

A very interesting up and down history of a project. I got a lot out of it having a project I have almost dropped over the many years it has taken so far. You did good and the lessons will hopefully give you an edge in other projects and even just life itself. Just a small aside, does the program run on a pc or is it just phones etc?

Being a Hobbit, I have very little use for the average mobile device, apart from my car. My phone is a rather ancient Nokia 2700 fliptop which works and the fancy extra's are unused.

Thanks for showing us the story of your project, marvelous.

It was originally planned for a PC version as well however it was very difficult to port over due to the gyroscopic gameplay controls on a smartphone, we tried it on gamepad controllers but it just didn't work out as well as we had hoped so we abandoned it, the game levels would have to be redesigned for using on a PC unfortunately.

iichiversii · 15 Apr 2019, 13:54

@ken28875 said:

Great updates. I really enjoyed reading. Thanks for sharing and best of luck, iichiversii!

_Ken

Thanks Ken