Or this one: http://www.trainyard.ca/solutions/pickYourPartner where some people figured out you dont even need the first splitter. I saw the splitter, figured it was necessary, and didnt even consider that you could just bypass it.
[GAME] Trainyard: An innovative puzzle solving game
(69 posts) (36 voices)-
Also, did you intend for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day to be the exact same puzzle?
Heh, nope, that's one of the (many) things that'll be fixed in the next update, good catch :)
The db calls to do the main "city list" page are really heavy, so that page is cached and only regenerated every once-in-a-while. All of the other pages, including the puzzle page, should always be up to date. I think when you looked at it, you probably saw an out of date cache. If you look at the bottom of http://www.trainyard.ca/solutions you'll see the date, which is the last time I regenerated that page. Later on I'll use a cron job to update it every hour or every 15 minutes or something, so that it's always very current.
Posted 1 year ago # -
Nice game Matt. Very original and very polished! Congratulations.
Posted 1 year ago # -
Thanks for the kind words everyone!
I just submitted an update to the App Store with over 40 new(hard) puzzles, and a whole bunch of other enhancements.
Next step on my agenda is to make a fairly long lite version(of sorts). It's a bit of an experiment.
Soon I'm also going to start a dev blog, where I'll be able to post some of the things I've made in Cocos2D(like the tableview stuff).
Posted 1 year ago # -
eshirt
MemberCongrats on cracking the top 10! I went to the store today to download your game (after reading your post about Express) and I was surprised to see the price dropped to $.99! No reason not to get it now, though it's clearly worth the $2.99. I'd be interested to hear if your price drop pays off in volume sales now that you're in the top 10.
Congrats again and great game! You're success is well-deserved!
Posted 1 year ago # -
I just beat all the levels on Trainyard Express today so I went to the store to buy Trainyard and it was $.99! I was expecting to paying $2.99 like eshirt, but what good timing. I then went and read your blog post on your "experiment", which I found very interesting.
Looks like your experiment is working! Congrats on cracking the top 10! Would be interesting to see what you do with this wonderful game next.
Posted 1 year ago # -
eshirt
MemberCurrently #4 on US Top Paid (all categories)!
Great job Matt! Seems like you found the winning strategy:
- Build a great game
- Get noticed in Italy
- Get featured by Apple
- Drop the price
- Get in the top 5
- Take a family trip to the Bahamas and watch the money roll in:)
One request - GameCenter support with achievements and make sure it counts all my previous stars (only 124 so far, but I'm getting there) so I don't have to do it all again ;)
Posted 1 year ago # -
Congratulations Matt. #2 on top US. That's awesome!!!! I watched your game climb the ladder and its exciting to see a fellow cocos2d developer be successful. I actually have a question for you regarding the application (if you don't mind answering). What was your main process for gaining exposure to the game?
Posted 1 year ago # -
I have a confession. I haven't even downloaded OS 4.1 yet, I'm still using 4.0 on my iPhone 4, I'm weird like that. I've received a LOT of requests about Game Center support, so I think it's time for me to upgrade to 4.1 and see what it's all about.
I wrote a very popular blog post a couple days ago (right before climbing to #1) about the full story of the game, including everything I did to promote it: http://struct.ca/2010/the-story-so-far
Posted 1 year ago # -
"I wrote a very popular blog post a couple days ago (right before climbing to #1) about the full story of the game"
Thanks Matt. Your story will be very beneficial. I hope you can claim that #1 spot!!! It would be great to have a cocos2d game be the top dog :)
Will you be working on other games any time soon?
Posted 1 year ago # -
Umm do I see correctly and your game was on AppStore for months before that ? That's quite a feat !
How did you manage to pull this off ? Go from a barely visible app waaaaay to top #2 ? I've seen featured apps make a great jump, but nothing like that one :)
And... What did you do so that Apple actually wrote back to you after contacting you for the first time ? We've been contacted twice, sent them all the assets and... That's it. Never got a word back after that. Did you do something special ?
I see that your lengthy post ends with experiment - it seems that it really paid off for you :D
Congrats !
Posted 1 year ago # -
Hey Matt.
First of all: HUGE Congratz!My brother bought it about a week ago, and he showed it to me, and I'm like - "Hey, I think I've seen it in the Cocos2D forums" :)
I really like it.
Some levels are a bit annoying (no offence), but some of the levels really made feel like I've accomplished the impossible :) And that's awesome that you've managed to trigger such a feeling for me (something that Angry Birds, as fun as it is, couldn't trigger).All the best!
Posted 1 year ago # -
just bought the game...
thought it's a simple logic game but it's incredibly deep ! just got to levels with color mixing via collisions and I'm stunned :D rarely I see a game that is more deep than you expect it to be, but this one REALLY delivers :D
my only - and a tiny one - complaint would be that some of the intro levels are simply too easy. I know that average Joe isn't the smartest person on earth but still ;)
Posted 1 year ago # -
congrats Matt!!
and thank you for your interesting post in your blog
http://struct.ca/2010/the-story-so-farPosted 1 year ago # -
Congrats again! (Already posted a comment in your blog).
I´d love to hear that riq gets a big fat piece of the cake (donation), too ;)
Marco
Posted 1 year ago #
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