Spooky Bonus - out now!
Community Forums/Showcase/Spooky Bonus - out now!
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| Hi all, I just released my latest match-3 game made with BlitzMax. So far it's on iWin, Big Fish Games and Real and will be on other portals soon including localised versions. There's a PC and Mac version on my site here: http://www.greyaliengames.com/spookybonus/index.php People seem to love it. It's got a 5 star review average on iWin and 4.5 on BFG (mostly 5 stars). It got to #1 on iWin and it just entered BFG's top 100 chart at #26, which is the highest any of my own games have ever debuted (except for Oz back in Nov 2006 which got to no. 10 eventually) Anyway, please check it out! It's my best one yet and is really polished. There's a metagame where you decorate your house with spooky objects that give you bonuses and powerups in the main game. [EDIT] Just created a video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2cigtRGOaI    |
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| Those background images would make killer wallpaper. Looks really good! |
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| Thanks GaryV. In fact in the game there's an option to set those backgrounds as wallpaper (on PC only as I couldn't figure out the code for Macs) |
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| Great job! Spotted this on BFG just a moment ago. Unwell Mel was great and I've completed it about 5 times over these years. Now I have something else to play, so off to Old Town! |
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| Looks good. Be sure to post some sales stats. |
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| @jayparker Thanks! Glad you like Unwell Mel so much. @GfK thanks. Yep I'll do a postmortem in a month or so on my site. Well I enjoyed adding a new game to my sig today :-) |
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| Happy to see that you are still working on such great games. |
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| In fact in the game there's an option to set those backgrounds as wallpaper (on PC only as I couldn't figure out the code for Macs) You just got yourself a sale because of this feature. |
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| Congrats Jake :) What would you say is the biggest/newest feature of this game? |
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| @Grisu Thanks! Glad to see you still visiting here. @GaryV Wow, awesome, thanks! Enjoy :-) @therevills the biggest/newest features are the house decoration metagame and having Powerups along the bottom of the screen (I used to just have on-screen bonuses). Of course other games have done that sort of thing before (and we did that for Unwell Mel but I couldn't use that code base and I have been meaning to add these kind of feature for years). Also the graphics are really good, better than my previous games. The music was great on previous games so that's not new. I also put a lot of effort into the design to make it feel right, added a bit of story (not much as people don't read much), a decent intro (again not new, I've done it before, but this one is pretty cool), spent a while making great sound effects and adding general polish so that things like the bonus items feel satisfying to use. It just all came together. Of course there are many things I didn't get time to add that may have to go in a future game, if I ever make another match-3. However. this could be my match-3 swan song for reasons I discussed with you. |
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| Congrats. You've got a damn good artist, there. |
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| The gameplay is smooth and 'nervous'. Musics are really good and the graphics fits well. Congrats, I wish you good sales. Why would you stop doing m3s ?! |
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| Thanks. Well it's a secret why I might stop doing them ;-) |
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| Nice one. Also the game is great for this time of the year. Nice cash will come out from this. |
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| Looks awesome, very good artwork really can make a game shine, but I'm sure the code etc behind it is top notch too ;) |
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| Finally completed it - took considerably longer than your previous outings. Nice closing message - thank you for writing such an addictive little game! |
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| Thanks guys! @Chalky wow, congrats! Yeah should have taken you 8+ hours. Thanks very much for buying it, appreciated! |
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| I just made a video of it! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2cigtRGOaI |
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| Nice |
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| Just wanted to report back in that this has been my best game ever. I thought that match-3s had a kind of ceiling revenue potential and that card games can do better, but Spooky Bonus disproved that. It got to #1 on iWin, MSN and was game of the week on Exent. It got to #14 on BFG PC top 100 (#1 match 3), and #7 in BFG Mac top 100, and is currently at #11 on BFG French site (German not out yet). It has an average rating of 4.7 stars and 97% of players recommend it on BFG: http://www.bigfishgames.com/download-games/25026/spooky-bonus/index.html It also got mostly 5 stars on other sites. Revenue is pretty significant too and hopefully it'll stay fairly high and get a nice boost next year in various Halloween promotions. I guess I just got everything right for this game (the art is a massive factor). About bloody time! It's only taken me 9 years. |
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| I guess you've got total control over this one, so it won't disappear a couple years down the line? Wish I could get something else finished. It's horsework just now, for reasons I cannot be chewed to go into. |
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| That is awesome to hear! My wife and I have both enjoyed it. Thanks for the update. |
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| excellent work! |
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| It does look really, really well done. I am curious though, to what extend sales of these games are seasonal -- I'd expect it would do fairly well during autumn, but probably plummet once Christmas hits. Any plans to do another non-seasonal 'neutral' game, like your wizard of Oz? |
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| Congrats Jake... still life in the ol' Match3 eh?! :) |
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| Congrats Jake... still life in the ol' Match3 eh?! :) As much as I personally despise the game, it's probably the likes of Candy Crush Saga that's breathed new life into an old genre. |
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| Congrats for the release Jake. Not my kind of game but it looks clean and you have finished another game which is very motivating for you i guess. I hope you will have many sales. OT question : on the theme of halloween i have found this game : http://www.desura.com/games/spooky-range Why none of you guys try to make and sell similar "action" games ? Don't you think there is at least some potential to have some sales ? |
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| @GfK Yep all my own IP so it shouldn't get taken off sale. Fairway did at least get 5 years before they swapped it out for their version. @Why0Why Glad to hear you both enjoyed it! Thanks! :-) I am curious though, to what extend sales of these games are seasonal -- I'd expect it would do fairly well during autumn, but probably plummet once Christmas hits. Any plans to do another non-seasonal 'neutral' game, like your wizard of Oz? Well after Spring Bonus I said to myself that I'd never make seasonal games any more so that I could have games that sell all year round, and in fact I have several like that planned. But then this summer I basically ran out of money and thought I could make a "quick" seasonal match-3 that would help cash flow. However, once I planned it out I ended up paying a coder to make quite a lot of additions to the engine and paying quite a lot for the art. I'm glad I did that though as it has really paid off. My next game won't be seasonal though. You are right that there's a big drop off in sales after the seasonal event. For example on BFG Holiday Bonus sales drop to as low as 2.5% of December sales during March but by Aug they begin to pick up again until they are quite big in November (it's the second biggest month). Also sales in January aren't too bad. I also ask all the portals to repromote the game every year and many of them do that. You can't get a non-seasonal game repromoted as easily but it is possible. So seasonal games have a long thin very spiky tail, and non-seasonal games have a long thicker tail. Make sense? @therevills There appears to be, yes! In fact a lot of players say they are fed up of gloomy HOGs and like the chance of vibe/pace my game gave them. I was of the opinion that unless you spent a LOT of time/money on making a top quality match-3 that you could only make a certain OKish amount of money and that card games had a better chance of making good money (based on your games, Roman's and GfKs) but it seems that it is possible to construct a fairly low-budget match-3 that does great! That's an eye opener for me anyway. I do believe I got a lot right with this game though based on my experience and that probably helped a lot - I have made a shitload of match-3s now after all ;-) As much as I personally despise the game, it's probably the likes of Candy Crush Saga that's breathed new life into an old genre. Maybe a bit with people who'd never played match-3s, but to be honest I think that original fans of the genre didn't really go away it's just that HOGs were outselling them and devs are making less match-3s these days. All it took, for me, was a decent quality one with the right theme at the right time to do well.@Remi thanks. Yep it is indeed motivating for me! That's my 9th commercial game (excluding mobile ports) and I'm working on my 10th now. I took at look at Spooky Range. Looks kinda fun but I guess people who are into action games will just buy the big budget ones. |
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| Do most of your sales for it comes from the USA, given that halloween is a far more prominent holiday there? Just wondering, if that's the case, then maybe you should target other US holidays such as Independence Day 4th of July (patriotic, fireworks, football etc), Thanksgiving (family, turkey, food, etc.) |
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| Yes most of my sales come from USA/Canada although there are still quite a lot from Europe and other locations. Thanksgiving could be a big one but the Canadians celebrate it on a different date! |
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| dont forgot about the postmortem Grey Alien |
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| Well thanksgiving tends to be more to do with eating a lot of food and getting together with family, and travelling, whereas 4th of july tends to be more local and celebratory and fun, so you might do better with the 4th. |
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| Spooky Bonus won "best of holiday-themed games" in 2013 on Big Fish Games! http://www.bigfishgames.com/daily/best-of-2013-pc/ I'm pretty pleased with that. @Ravi: Yep will do one in Feb probably when I have full 3 months of sales data (it always arrives quite late) @ImaginaryHuman I evaluated the ideas and in the end I think that Thanksgiving could be made quite fun, plus I'd call it Harvest Bonus so it could sell each autumn maybe. I think 4th July might just be too specific and it's hard to make fun. Plus being a Brit, it's maybe not the best topic ;-p |
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| Nicely done, good job! Seems most of the other games on BFG are hidden object/adventure style. Is BFG a way to make good profits or do they suck up too much %? |
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| Congrats Jake :) @IH - BFG has such a huge market following it is really good to make profits, normally they offer two packages: one exclusive with 40% and non-exclusive 35%. |
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| I'm 90% sure that the exclusive deals are reserved solely for HOGs/CEs now. |
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| Nah, you still can opt for it in your contract when you submit your game (I last did it end of November). They have changed localizing Collector’s Edition content only... |
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| @therevills Can you please explain that last bit about CEs and localising a bit more please. That sounds like bad news for my next game (and probably yours). |
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| Also won another award: this time best match-3 of 2013! http://www.allaboutcasualgame.com/p/best-of-2013.html |
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| @therevills Can you please explain that last bit about CEs and localising a bit more please. That sounds like bad news for my next game (and probably yours). Yeah it is bad news, I asked if BFG would do the localising of our latest game and they said they said nope: "I’m afraid Big Fish is not currently looking to localize into these languages at this time. Our resource capacity remains focused on localizing Collector’s Edition content and QAing pre-localized versions. If you do happen to have this game localized we would be happy to test and release the DE, FR, and JP versions. " So if you get someone else to do the translations for you, BFG will put them on... So I am trying to get GH to do it, but no word as yet. |
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| @therevills Thanks for the detail. Yeah that's a bummer. Luckily for Spooky Bonus I paid for the German translation and got the French one done for free. Didn't bother with Spanish or Japanese (or other languages seeing as they phased them out). Zylom (GH) are translating to Spanish + more. After 90 days you can use their translations yourself, so I'll send the Spanish back to BFG for next Halloween. As for future games, guess I'll be paying for German/French then and sending to BFG. It's still a no-brainer in terms of ROI. |
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| Hi all, I just added the game to Steam Greenlight and I'd really love your YES vote and a positive comment, thanks!! http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=323215696 |
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| I love the polish on this Grey, good luck with your Steam Greenlight. |
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| We've added an entry on our site: http://www.lemonbytes.com/spooky-bonus-on-steam-greenlight/ By the way, are you using FontMachine too? (just being curious) |
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| Voted yes! My wife had a great time with this last year, she said it was one of her favorite match 3's ever. |
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| You got my vote. I hope it gets on Steam before the 31th! |
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| Thanks all, appreciated! Saw your comment Grisu! I don't think they'll take it this year sadly despite it doing really well on the casual portals. Don't seem to be able to get them to take any notice or get enough votes. @Ziggy Thanks! Great post and someone left a nice comment. No, I'm using my own bitmap font code with that AngelCode Bitmap font generator. @Why0Why Think I saw your comment too! Thanks. Yeah lots of people seemed to say it's the best every, which is pretty cool. I guess I've made enough of them now to know how to get it right ;-p |
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| We just launched on Steam! Please take a look: http://store.steampowered.com/app/388450/ If you already bought it and want a Steam key, email me: http://www.greyaliengames.com/contact.php |
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| Just wondering how sales ballance out between windows, Mac and Linux. I've heard that mac and Linux are not worth producing for |
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| I made a Mac version in BMax because I have a Mac and it was easy, but yeah I didn't bother with Linux. Currently Mac accounts for about 7.7% of my Sales on Steam. |
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| Thanks for the info. Thats pretty much what I heard about cross platform. I hear that android and ios are not much better as the market is flooded and nobody wants to pay for phone games. I guess windows is where its at right now |
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| I hear that android and ios are not much better as the market is flooded and nobody wants to pay for phone games. I guess windows is where its at right now you can say that: "Gartner Says Less Than 0.01 Percent of Consumer Mobile Apps Will Be Considered a Financial Success by Their Developers Through 2018" http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/2648515 There's quite a bit of money spend on mobile, but for every Angry Birds / Flappy Birds / Whatever runaway success that makes millions, there's thousands of apps that won't make back a fraction of their development costs. |
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| So basically, you might as well just develop for Windows and save yourself a ton of time and effort. |
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| Will there be a Halloween Steam discount on Spooky Bonus? |
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| Sorry, I would be breaking my terms with Steam if I answered that, but you could possibly hazard a guess based on the fact there was a Halloween sale last year and that my game is Halloween based... |
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| So which was your favourite "bonus" game Jake (as in, was most fun developing)? Personally I really liked holiday bonus but I'm sure it's mostly the same game really. Also, how are things going for you these days, overall? Are you still in Vancouver? Great city I hear. |
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| @xlsior - from article: Furthermore, of paid applications, about 90 percent are downloaded less than 500 times per day and make less than $1,250 a day I'd be more than happy earning that much if i was in the 10%! |
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| The game is on Sale on Steam and Humble Bundle. I knew it. This is the perfect Halloween gift! |
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| The game is on Sale on Steam and Humble Bundle. Doesn't appear to be in a bundle, but it is in the humble store itself. Note that the price is the same at steam and humble store, but the humble store version apparently gives you both a DRM free installer AND the steam key. |
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| Yeah the humble store is the better deal. Also devs get 5% more and charity gets 10% too. @munch I think the best bonus game is Spooky Bonus. As for which was most fun to develop, that's tricky because all of them were intense projects with fixed (seasonal) deadlines. My first two bonus games (Xmas and Easter) were made in BlitzPlus and because the language wasn't OOP, I found it awkward to use. Also I was learning the ropes about how to make a proper commercial game. Both games flopped btw. I did have fun though and was naively positive about how well they would do. After they shipped I changed to BlitzMax and made my Grey Alien BlitzMax Framework and made The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (as a contractor), and then reused the engine to make Holiday Bonus. I enjoyed making Holiday Bonus with iPete2 from these forums (he sorted out the graphics) and made a great intro movie from several 3D rendered stills. At the time casual games didn't really have intros so ours stood out. Also I got into the Christmas spirit when making the game and I knew it was way better than Xmas Bonus, my first game. I had high hopes it would do really well, but actually it didn't sell that well despite people liking it. However, that was just the first year, but it kept selling every year and in fact sold better in later years when I made the GOLD version and localised versions. So in the end it turned out great. Spring Bonus started off fun, especially as I'd just quit my corporate job at Big Fish Games, and Spring was on the way. However, my wife got really ill towards the end of the project and finishing it on time became a nightmare. I still think it's a great game and I'm proud of it. It's an improvement over Holiday Bonus because it has level goals, and the golden eggs mechanic. Spooky Bonus was supposed to be a quick project to bring in a bit of money because I was broke. But I got really into the design, and I worked with James Mintram (Lemon Moose Games) who helped with some of the new mechanics such as the shop/decoration screen, powerups, and the stone blocks. It was an intense project, and having to review and test someone else's code so close to the shipping deadline was a bit stressful. This game is quite a lot more advanced than Spring Bonus though with all the new features. Basically each of my match-3s isn't just a reskin, it has incremental (sometimes large) improvements. As for Vancouver, it is a great city! In fact this weekend there's a Full Indie conference running there, which is a group I co-founded with a friend. Jeff Vogel is one of the speakers, which is pretty awesome. However, I moved back to the UK 3 years ago! |
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| Thanks for the insight. bye Ron |
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| Hi Jake! I finally got Spooky Bonus from Steam. :) Well done, it's a great game. Do you have any new "Bonus" games in the making? Stefan |
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| Brexit Bonus? |
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| Ouch |
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| Trump Bonus: a wall is built seperating the tiles. Clinton Bonus: deletes all your emails. Johnson Bonus: Great game, but little chance of winning. |
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| I don't know about you, but I come here partly to get away from politics!! It all got very bitter on Facebook, friends arguing with friends over Brexit. Trump is an unfunny joke. But we voted for a disaster too. |
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| Trump is an unfunny joke In the wee old area of Northern Englang. A trump is a fart. So Trump is always a joke :) |
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| Hi Grisu, no major plans for one at the moment. Spooky Bonus was a great match-3, in my opinion, and did well. Maybe best to go out on a high note? But I'll never say never ;-) |
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| Hi Grey Alien, It seems to be a fun game with good graphics. This theme looks so spooky... Friendly, |
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| Thanks! It is a fun game :-) Play it in October for extra spookiness. |
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| Thanks! It is a fun game :-) Play it in October for extra spookiness. The darker nights are drawing in, in Blighty and here comes Halloween :0) |
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| It's on sale on Steam this Halloween. |
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| A really nicely polished game :) |
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