Snjóhús Games is myself and my husband Ágúst. We wanted to make a small game as a proof of concept of working together as a small team. We were inspired by a lot of older classic arcade games.
The monetization works in two ways. There is a free version, and a paid version. In the game, collecting drops from enemies allows primary and secondary weapon upgrades. The free version is limited to upgrading to level 2. If one wishes to continue playing, it is possible with a level 2 weapon, but the game’s difficulty will most likely make progression above level 3 or 4 impossible. A 2 USD (1.50 euro) purchase price will unlock the full version, with nothing further to buy. However, we do have inn-app purchasing, which is basically the ability to cheat, to buy any weapon upgrade, or overcharge shields for a fee. It is not required, but we are experimenting with monetization schemes.
Start to finish is longer than I want to admit, but were the time condensed to full time, 40 hour weeks, the project took Ágúst and I around 8 months.
The number one thing you can do to help, is to download the free version and rate it positively. Hopefully you will enjoy it enough to buy, but just sharing the link, and rating the youtube trailer, and Android/iTunes apps will give us good exposure.
Cool stuff, followed your work for many years (if this is Ben). I like the environments but they feel a little blurry when compared to the crisp assets flying in the scene. What is the texture size of the floor?
The ground textures are 512, and I agree the texel density is not the same, but wanted some way for the backgrounds not to steal focus from the ships, since we were not using any lighting.
I would personally upres them a bit and then use some fog or DOF in the actual scenes, or you can fake it by blurring the texture as it goes deeper into the earth to fake depth. I think youre going for the old arcade type feel where its all almost like one layer, but since youve gone and made 3D assets, why not add some little touches to sell the depth of the valleys and canyons? I know you also have the talent and experience in games, so add some rolling dust in the desert scene, add some wisps of debris being blown off the edge of the cliff with an animated texture on a plane etc
There are a lot of technical shader things that could be done, but one goal was to have this as “primitive” as possible so it can run on everything. It runs fairly smoothly on an ipod touch 4th gen, the oldest supported iOS device, as well as the cheapest android phones and tablets. I also am not a huge fan of particle or procedural based stuff, just the existing particle effects were a bit of a challenge since my strength lies more in painting and sculpting.
I agree those things would add visual interest, and it is a good crit, but the development of this has gone on for too long for my comfort already, and I am glad to have it out the door, and have started on our next product.
We are thinking of doing that, the problem is figuring out the licensing aspect. We are aiming for a Ouya and leap motion release though, which should cover PCs.
