[Game] Balloon Loons is going FREE for a few days!

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[Game] Balloon Loons is going FREE for a few days!

(23 posts) (7 voices)

Started 3 months ago by appsolutecreations
Latest reply from varedis

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appsolutecreations
Member

On 2/21/2013 I will be setting Balloon Loons to completely FREE in the App Store. So if you haven't had a chance to play and you're curious about this game, now is a perfect chance!

Also included is a chance to win a brand new shiny ipad Retina! What do you have to do? Simple. Download the app, and hit the facebook button in the app to share Balloon Loons on your wall. You will be automatically entered to win a brand new iPad 3! Winner will be notified over FB and arrangements for shipping will be made at that time.

GOOD LUCK and I hope you join us in Balloon Loons!!!

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/balloon-loons/id525949876?ls=1&mt=8

Posted 3 months ago #
ewersp
Member

Cool game, reminds me of Joust! I just beat the first world; gotta say it's pretty challenging! I was a bit confused by the tutorial though. What happened to using the buttons to control the avatar?

Also I see you made good use of CCBlade. :)

How have sales been?

Posted 3 months ago #
appsolutecreations
Member

Thanks ewersp!!! (Can I get your real name :) ).

You know what? You're right! We need to redo that tutorial. It was relevant and created before we had all the new control schemes. I'm guessing you're playing the iPad version? You can select from 3 controller types by pausing the game any time.

Thanks for reminding me!

Sales have been great since we did the new update and I've actually had more time to spend on advertising.

I'm glad you enjoyed it! Please leave a review if you have some time.

Posted 3 months ago #
ewersp
Member

Just left it a review! Name's Paul by the way :-)

Ah that makes sense. I do actually like the default tap-to-move anywhere control scheme the best. And I am playing on the iPad.

How have you been going about advertising? Any secrets? :P I'm a few months away from finishing up a little indie game and it's always great to get first-hand advice. Googling only gets you so far!

Posted 3 months ago #
appsolutecreations
Member

Paul. Pleasure to meet you. Thanks so much for leaving a review! What game are you working on? Are you doing it by yourself?

Really there is no secret honestly. It's pretty much what everyone says. Have a nice site; good trailer, and all your social networks covered. I find twitter to be the most valuable. You can reach out and follow some great people there. Without a budget it's hard to get noticed. We just bought some fb ads starting yesterday. I'll post on how it goes. But honestly it's luck lol. Make sure your product is the best you can make it on day one of the launch not later. Day one is vital. Many places won't review an app months after it has been in the store. Keep that in mind.

I wish you best of luck buddy!

Posted 3 months ago #
ewersp
Member

I haven't announced it yet or anything, but I can show you a work-in-progress screenshot!

https://www.dropbox.com/s/rarc32xqi1kisxz/Photo%20Feb%2016%2C%205%2031%2021%20PM.png

It doesn't show any gameplay (I'll leave you in suspense for that) but at least it gives you some idea of the visual style I'm going for. I'm a programmer by trade, so art has been challenging to say the least! I'd like to think I've come a long way with my little Wacom tablet. :)

I decided to fly solo on this one, so we'll see how far I can get. How many people worked on Balloon Loons?

I should probably settle on a name so I can start my social network presence.... and learn how to use Twitter lol.

Best of luck with the fb ads!

Posted 3 months ago #
woodigloo
Member

I'm walking through the tutorial and found some issues. First off when it teaches you about collecting coins, no coins appear on the screen, but if I fly around I can periodically hear the coin collecting sound and it told me great when I guess I collected them all. In the next part where I'm supposed to fly against the McBunBuns ... they also do not appear on the screen but I do hear them and they pop my balloons.

I'm running this on an iPhone 4S with iOS 6.1.1.

Posted 3 months ago #
appsolutecreations
Member

Hi woodigloo. Thanks for the feedback.

Are you running a fresh install or an update of balloon loons?

We have seen this issue occur on updates but aren't sure why it's happening.

We are going to completely overhaul the tutorial and integrate it into the game.

Thanks!

Posted 3 months ago #
Eternity
Member

What's this download thing at the start? What do you download?

The missing controls were confusing though. Will try it out a bit tomorrow.

Posted 3 months ago #
appsolutecreations
Member

In order to get the app down to a size that can be downloaded to any device we needed to upload assets to our server. The download occurs one time only.

Yup we will work on a fix for the tutorial right away. I agree. Let me know what you think when you have a chance to play!

Posted 3 months ago #
woodigloo
Member

It was a fresh install.

Posted 3 months ago #
grillaface
Member

I decided I was going to try your game. But then got bored waiting for the download on first launch.

I think it was a nice idea to offer the mini game during the download. But then the mini game sucks because the hit detection on the balloons is waaaaay too small.

So then I turned it off and deleted it.

Not sure why you coded it this way - to download the files on initial launch instead of just including them in the bundle. Saving on app space, I'm sure, but how many customers will feel the same as me?

In short, your game may be great, but ill never know because your mini game was so frustratingly broken.

Not saying any of this to be harsh - just honest objective opinion here.

iPhone5 btw...

Posted 3 months ago #
appsolutecreations
Member

To download the entire package on wifi takes about 40 seconds. Not sure what you were downloading on. iPhone 5 4g takes about a minute.

Either way thanks for trying. Most people who download the game, download to play it lol. Not to shut it off after 30 seconds and totally delete the app. No complaints this far from literally anyone regarding this.

Posted 3 months ago #
appsolutecreations
Member

File size to support all devices ran about 100mb. Therefore the app would only be purchaseable via wifi. I think the decision to move some files to a server was a good decision. We actually borrowed the idea from field runners 2. Their assets took like 4 minutes to dl on the first launch of the game. Yet no one complained and people waited for the download to pass. It's a one time download.

Posted 3 months ago #
grillaface
Member

Don't know what to tell you - just that that wasn't my experience. I waited at least a minute - and actually since I've popped 37 balloons and it felt like I should've popped about 250 I think it must have been a few..

Says 5 files remaining btw..

Maybe use a progressTimer instead?

Posted 3 months ago #
appsolutecreations
Member

Were you wifi or network?

This can happen on rare occasions where your connection actually hangs on wifi. So sometimes especially with iPhone 5 that is known to have issues with wifi and holding a steady connection (my iPhone 5 does this alot with safari and fb). For me I haven't been able to troubleshoot connection issues with my iPhone 5 yet and it's frustrating. The last apple update basically killed any chance of me using the web via my router unless I'm next to it literally. Such seems to be the case with many people. Maybe you as well. It sounds like the connection hung and the dl got stuck on 5.

Posted 3 months ago #
DonomaGames
Member

I had the same problem as @woodigloo. No coins visible in the tutorial, but can hear them. iPhone 4S iOS 6.0.1.

Posted 3 months ago #
appsolutecreations
Member

Oh no. Ok we will fix an update for this right away. Such a strange problem because it doesn't always happen. We have about 5 iPhone test devices and a few iPads and the problem occurred once on one device and we made a fix for it. Then it worked fine. Now it seems you guys are getting the issue as well but the game works 100% on all my devices even from a fresh install. So strange! Nevertheless we will solve it ASAP. Thanks for letting me know!

Posted 3 months ago #
grillaface
Member

So I caved and gave this another go (84 balloons).

I think you did a particularly good job with the level select / score menus, they look really nice. Also the AI is pretty damn good - excellent work, but that also leads into some of the problems...

I played on casual. I'm one of the best Tetris players in the world (I'm a fucking obsessively talented gamer). And I thought it was too hard. Given the art style and sounds (if I heard that "fun fun fun" one more time I'd stab a pencil in my ear), I think the difficulty is way off the mark for your target audience.

The gameplay has universal appeal, the aesthetic choices do not.

Regardless it's overall impressive, I just think if you keep the current style you need to drastically tone down the difficulty.

Good job though and good luck with your sales.

Posted 3 months ago #
appsolutecreations
Member

Thank you so much!! And thank you for the great compliments!

Your input is extremely valuable. What we can do is add a third difficulty option: easy. Normal was decided on based on input from other players who originally said (back on initial release) that the ai was too easy.

Also we can easily change the touch area on the balloons in the loading screen. Good idea there.

Thanks again for playing!

Posted 3 months ago #
appsolutecreations
Member

Btw are you also seeing issues in the tutorial?

Posted 3 months ago #
grillaface
Member

I didn't check out the tutorial yet lol maybe that's why I suck ;)

Posted 3 months ago #
varedis
Moderator

Cocos2d game announcement rules:

One post per game. If you have 5 games to announce, it's better to create 5 different threads

You have at least 6 threads for this game, please use your original thread in future

Posted 3 months ago #

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