Posted the full details in the official “Apps in the Store” thread, but wanted to double announce the Free aspect for people who might browse the forums but don’t check the official thread daily. (Mods feel free to delete if this is considered double posting.)
As an experiment, I decided to launch at free, then set the regular price of $1.99 sometime this weekend. An update is already in the works to help balance out the inevitable negative-rating-on-delete effect, and by launching at free I’ll REALLY have a solid idea of what people think about it.
Even free apps have a fantastic rate of copping one stars, people are just douchbags… I’ve had apps that average 4.5 stars when paid with a few hundred sales, and tank at 1.5 stars when their free.
I have an iphone 3G and it crashed everytime I tried it so I rebooted. It still crashed the first time after reboot but worked the second time when the startup time was faster. You might want to look into decreasing the load time as if my phone crashes then your likely to have 80% or more of your users not being able to run it, as I almost never have problems with games crashing on startup.
Thanks for the reports. I tested it on a 1st gen iPhone, 3G and 3GS before submission, so I’m not 100% sure what’s causing the crashes.
I did notice, however that the distribution build from iTunes crashed once when connecting to Facebook through AGON, but hasn’t crashed again since (on either a 3G or 3GS). Connecting to Facebook the next time wasn’t an issue. Based on ej2009’s description and my own crash, I suspect it has something to do with AGON calls, though I’m making VERY few calls on my end and am not able to reproduce the crashes, so that makes me think it’s in the actual AGON package code itself.
As for loading time, the first scene is actually just the BoiledGoose logo, so beyond making it a completely empty first scene, I’m not sure what else I can do to shorten it…
ok, found 100% reproducible freezing of your game.
After it loads into main menu touch the area at the bottom where player name is, between “How To Play” and bottom <…> thing, freezes every single time for me.
It’s funny the quality of people you get with free and 99cent applications versus $2.99 apps. I’ve had my application priced at 99cents and at $2.99 and the reviews when it’s priced at $2.99 are much more thoughtful,thorough, and mostly good reviews. When it was priced at 99cents I got a ton of “WTF I no like” one star reviews by people who likely ran it for 10 seconds and threw it away on a whim. Sales went up a lot for a short time at 99cents though revenue wasn’t up all that much.
I’m also going to try to stick to $1.99 for for most of my paid games going forward.
Another benefit of 1.99 is the ability to have a sale, and get noticed on places like TouchArcade's "Newest Games and Price Drops" list periodically. .99 leaves you nowhere to go but free.
I have tried the game, and shown it to a couple of friends. It is entertaining (if a tad “montonous” after wave 7). But it has been well received, and is intuitive to play.
Fix the freezes (yep, I had them on my 3G also), and it should do well.
Thanks for the feedback InternetCodesmith. The menu screen freeze issue has been fixed and will be submitted to Apple by Sunday, along with a snowy Xmas theme. I’m also looking at adding power ups and new enemy types in further updates to add a little spice. Thanks again!
Just wanted to update this thread. The Lite version was rejected a couple of days ago for the private API issue, but somehow version 1.1 of the main game was approved and went live today! :shock:
1.1 fixes the main menu crash issue and a few other small bugs, and the main new feature is a Christmas theme option.
I was hoping 1.1 and Lite would hit the store at the same time, but I’m very grateful that 1.1 got through at all. I put it on sale for a buck to get it onto the sale lists.
Here are a few promo codes for anyone who missed the initial free day:
For 1.2 I’m going to do a rebuild using SpriteManager2 to squeak out better performance on 2G and 3G devices and then add power ups, new enemies and new themes after that. As always, feedback is welcome.
Thanks for the feedback shadowman. The next major update (probably 1.2) will have weapon power ups, and opportunities for extra lives and extra points.
I agree about extra game modes. I think what it needs is a timed quickplay mode - a 3 minute in and out kind of thing, for times when you know you have a few minutes to kill but don’t want to get into a potential 10 minute game.
Also - are you talking about a crash on the previous version or the current version? I’m not aware of any crash issues with 1.1.
