Battle Gem Ponies DevLog #175 (E3 2018)

     After such an amazing E3, I feel reinvigorated. Gotta admit to feeling pretty jaded/apathetic about AAA gaming lately, but leave it to the Sony & Nintendo press conferences to remind me of why I love gaming in the first place. The hype I felt over the past couple days is the same feeling I want people to have for the things I'm working on someday. Unprecedented levels of polish, earnest interviews and announcements by hardworking developers, shocking surprises, gameplay to analyze, and jaw-dropping tournament moments... 

     And at the heart of it all? Hours of fun promised by teams I know can deliver. I'm hype ya'll. Now I want to work hard to make sure starting next E3, I'll be there to show off something in person every year.

Battle Gem Ponies DevLog #150 (Roster Complete)

     Finally finished everypony and their ultra forms! They're in need of cleanup, but sometimes you just gotta move onto the next step or the bigger picture will never be framed. Can't believe I've been on this for over 150 weeks now... Time to kick things into even higher gear to get this game out on time for a Spring 2018 release!

     This week is filled with tons of exciting news, updates on Yotes Games as a business, retrospection on previous games, plans for the future, and tons of inspiration for getting through the rest of the development of Battle Gem Ponies.

Get a MAJOR gamedev update to make up for the weeks of silence below, on this week's devlog!

Dragon Souls Prologue Status Report #2 (Setting Up)

     Development is underway! I am seeing the pieces come together as I try new techniques I want to perfect in future games. Things like smaller/sharper sprites, smooth controls, and clean general organization.

Check out some sales data below!

Review Request Email Templates

     Getting reviews is endlessly important, but you need to contact people to get them to see your stuff. Even when you do there's only a 1% chance they'll even notice you unless you have something mind-blowing to show off. When requesting reviews it's important to provide all the info reviewers would need, along with some spare download codes if necessary. Instead of giving friends & family freebies, this is where your free copies should be given out.

     I follow a basic structure just barely under the character limit. I try to keep it polite, humble, and easy to read. I'm  no gaming giant so I assume my emails merit an eye-roll when someone first sees my request. I really am just some kid submitting one out of a thousand apps that day. Someone has to sift through all those emails and I want mine to leave a good impression. Take a look at what I send out to people. It might give you a starting point or something to compare with.

Fish Feaster Gets A Review?

     I got a confirmed review for Fish Feaster on the way from Best10Apps.com. I looked them up and it seems to be one of those review sites where you have to pay to be featured and reviewed. These types of sites should be avoided because you're only paying to be shown to the thousands of other developers visiting the site to get their own apps reviewed. Sites like this help get your app out there, but the wrong people are seeing it. If your game is worth reviewing, they will come for free in time. Although, for some apps, these shady artificial reviews could lead to genuine ones once enough people see your product out there.

     What surprised me about Best10Apps though, was them coming to me with not a offer for paid promotion, but just requesting information. They just wanted the description of my app to pair with a review. The negative side of me says they probably populate their homepage with random apps and descriptions altered slightly to resemble reviews, but the positive side of me is excited to have something out there focused on Fish Feaster. Whatever goes I suppose. I could use the Google hits and as long as it's free, any review site can have my app descriptions.

Take a look for yourself.

Getting iOS Reviews

     I've been tossing TriGrid around lately to get reviews and maintain it's featured status. Much like the post from before, I felt like giving a nice little list of sites to visit if you ever wanted to request reviews for iOS games instead of Android ones. This should save some newbies the trouble of finding them like I had to.

Getting Android Reviews

     I've been tossing out URLs for my game left & right in order to get people to notice it more. As far as that goes, all I needed was a few single sentences to either grab attention or describe the game quickly, a few paragraphs to describe what makes it special, the app description, and links to the game and web pages associated with it. 

     Since I can't start sending out the iOS version until I fix it, I have a few go-to android sites to depend on to boost sales. I can even list a few for those who are curious. 

• Android Authority
• Best Android Apps Review
• AppStorm
• AndroidTapp
• AndroidAppsReview
• Life of Android
• App Review Central
• Crazy Mike's Apps

     Obviously there are much more than this, but it's a start. Also, it'd be a good idea to avoid spending money to get reviewed. If your game is great, the reviews will come on their own and others will follow. If a site needs money to get your game out there to it's "thousands" of followers (who are most likely fellow developers), it's likely a waste a money. 

Making TriGrid - Part 2

   TriGrid is just weeks away from release and it's gameplay has been polished all summer. After getting relatives to playtest the game I had to make the game easier t play and understand. I also had to make players care and want to keep playing. I also needed a way to boost it's popularity so people can find it on the app store. How do I make money from a free app? That PlayStation 4 isn't going to buy itself. Read on to see how the project turned out.