Difficulties and joys of developing the first Android game

I want to share the history of the development of my first android game.

Background

To begin with, my name is Eugene, I am 26 years old. All my conscious life I tried to make a game. In childhood, these were homemade board games with dice; in his youth, attempts to understand basic and programs for creating games on the ZX Spectrum; as a teenager, before I had a personal computer, I invented and drew mazes in which it was possible to collect keys, kill enemies, etc.

After the advent of the PC, I diligently searched for a program for creating games. And once a disk fell into the wrong hands ... so I met Game Maker 5.3 and got hooked on it. And now, after many years, I have the opportunity to create good games in Game Maker Studio, porting them to different platforms.

Game idea

The idea of ​​the game was born for the competition Ludum Dare 26 in the recent 2013. You control a hero who is trying to escape from the tower and bypass traps. The trick is that the main character is so scared that he opens any door that he passes by, losing his key. Therefore, the player needs to brainwash to make the right route and not waste the keys. At the competition, the game received quite a few warm reviews and was well received.

In the spring of 2015, a good friend of mine saw this game and advised to release it on android, but choosing a setting is more interesting than just a GG and a tower. As a result, the idea of ​​a panda was born, which escapes from the zoo. However, this idea has undergone changes to the final. Now the essence of the game is to help the panda get to his favorite treat - bamboo.

Graphics

At first I made a prototype and started looking for an artist, which turned out to be a very difficult task: either they wanted money, or did not want anything. And since I worked on enthusiasm, I had nothing to offer. As a result, my friend pushed me to draw everything myself and are not afraid, for which I am very grateful to him. Although there were difficulties with the graphics, in particular with the choice of resolution for the game, so that it was not small on the phone screen and looked good on the tablet, all these difficulties were successfully overcome and the game looks decent at a resolution of 480 * 800 and 2048 * 1536.

Music and sounds

If I can draw somehow, then to write music, alas, no. Therefore, the composer was found and 3 short tracks were written: 1 for the menu and 2 for the game locations. Sounds are found on opengameart.org and similar sites.

Game design

I read a lot about gamedisans. I understand that practice is practice, and theory is theory, but nevertheless articles on Habré and the book "The Art of Game Design" helped me a lot. Reading the last, I already have food from pleasure. And of course, do not forget the gaming experience. During development, he often opened games from the top of Google play and casual games from PopCap.

For 4 months, a panda, levels, tiles, menus, etc., was invented and drawn, and the whole thing was put together in a heap.

Monetization

For monetization, it was decided to use Appodeal, which I do not regret a bit. The most difficult thing to monetize is, of course, to choose how, where and how much to show ads. Initially, I had interstitial every third death of the protagonist. However, after the release, the appodeal girl gave advice on improving monetization, in total we have: the keys give for watching the video, the interstichial appears every fifth death of the protagonist, the banner appears on pause or after passing the level without distracting the player.

Is this solution effective? It is not clear yet, but the opinions of the players are divided. Someone thinks it's great to watch ads and get the key, no need to strain. And someone believes that the essence of the game is lost, that there used to be an interest in finding a key or getting to it, but now all the charm is gone. For myself, I concluded: with respect to monetization, there is no limit to perfection and it needs to be thought out no less than balance, while not being afraid to experiment.

Promotion

Even in the development period, pages were created in VK, Twitter, Facebook. A bit of motivated traffic was bought for the release and along the way the game was uploaded to Amazon, Yandex Store, Slide Me, w3bsit3-dns.com. Scattered articles and links to gaming forums such as gamedev.ru and gcup.ru. As a result, since the release, in total we have more than 6,000 installations. The ridiculous figure that has accumulated over the month since August 12.

Results, mistakes, experiences

Honestly, the first week after the release, I did not behave very adequately: I updated the statistics every 5 minutes and was happy as a baby for new players, fives and positive comments. But perhaps this is the best time in 4 months of development. Inexpressible euphoria.

In the development of the game I invested about 10 thousand rubles. This includes buying traffic, composer, domain and other little things. To date, $ 40 has been earned from the game, and I consider this a failure.

But there is a spoon of honey in this tar barrel. My game was seen by one publisher who “delivers” games for bigfishgames and offered to release the game on a PC. I plan to complete the PC version by October 1 and try to earn something on it. So this is not the end, in any case, I hope so. All success!