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 achievementWas 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.
