Regency Solitaire by Grey Alien Games
Community Forums/Showcase/Regency Solitaire by Grey Alien Games
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| Hi all, we launched our latest game, Regency Solitaire on Jan 2nd. It's made in BlitzMax using my Grey Alien Games framework. This game was my wife's idea and she has been part of our two person team throughout the last year whilst we made it (we also hired in artists and a musician as contractors.) She researched the locations and costumes, created the characters and wrote the story, and helped me with the overall design and level design/testing. Some of you may know that I programmed a game called Fairway Solitaire with Big Fish Games back in 2007. My new game uses a similar base mechanic (the mechanic is a patience variant called "Golf") but is a completely new codebase, plus I have also added a bunch of new stuff to this game to keep things interesting for players. Here's a video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_W2GM1ECbwU You can buy it here: http://www.regencysolitaire.com/ It's currently no.1 on iWin and will be on BFG and other portals later in the month. Players seem to love it, which is good news as we put a lot of care and effort into making it great. Please check it out and tell your friends and family if you think they might like it. Thanks!    |
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| It's made in BlitzMax using my Grey Alien Games framework. You big tease. :) Looks lovely. My partner loves Pride & Prejudice and the like so I've just picked this up. Wishing you many successes. |
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| @LineOf7s re: framework ;-p Great thanks! Please let me know what your other half thinks of it, thanks! |
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| Congratulations! I see a 'female' touch in it! The intro-story (in the video) remembers me Downtown Abbey! :D (I'm quite sure that you need to write a sonnet to your Bella at some point in the game!) By the way, nice graphics (I like the idea of portrait-card! very original!) |
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| First of all: it looks really awesome. I did not test the game: if I want to play solitaire/patience I am satisfied with the "desktop games" (Freecell etc.) ... so I just reviewed the really superb looking graphics... I am always envy of the nice decorations (the swirls) people are able to draw and bring into life using shadows and lights). But hey, it wouldn't be Derron, if he wasnt nit-picking something. Ok, so there were 3 things I would "criticize" (need a lighter word for this, as it isn't really a big thing): - multiplier not centered on both axis - outer curve of the card deck is pixelated (happens to me when placing the vector handles "pixel perfect" in Photoshop - so moving the handles 0.25 pixels on their "side"-axis might smooth out everything) - bigger border elements have a dark border, the "decoration" does not -> visual recognizeable difference especially in the marked area. The bottom border of the title "panel" has no dark border because of the lighting... makes it brighter as possibly intended  I personally also think that the inner circle of the card-cutout on the bottomleft / topright is using a to small radius - making it looking "bulgy". I leave that as "artistically intended". Do not feel attacked by above critics, it is - like mentioned - just something very small compared to the rest of that really greatly looking game. Additional personal hint: Did you think of lowering the card-brightness to the back (just very small steps - like "-3" per card) this might not be physically correct (as cards have a thickness of "nothing" so there is not much height created through a staple of cards) but might introduce the similar "depth" the decoration elements create. Also possible would be some kind of "dropshadow" on the top portion of the card - but only when "not dragged" and there is some underlaying card. I understand that "shadows" or "darkening cards" removes brightness of the game ... so I dunno how the result would look at the end (from the consumers "view"). bye Ron |
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| o_O It looks fine. He must have done a great job if you have to stoop to such pedantry in order to cobble together a [seemingly obligatory] negative opinion. Saying "its awesome, but..." reminds me of people who say "I'm not racist, but..." - like, it cancels out the idiocy of what follows it. Hope it does well, Jake. Don't start listening to pedants. |
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| There is always something to improve - this is what I express in my post. I cannot write that much about what is always looking perfect in my eyes... I like the character drawing (except the main character lady - not my type of woman). I like the decorations I like the color palette ... I do not understand why people always think that my posts are meant to express negative opinions - it is just my way to expose things the "1 year looking at it" developer eyes might not see anymore. Also I want to note: these things above I just saw when looking at the screenshot - for me that is like seeing magenta borders of a intransparent sprite, I did not search for "points" just to write something negative. Maybe others look at other parts of a game, I look at wrong alignments, pixels etc. . Hmm, maybe I just look more at art in the way of "man how did they achieve this" than just enjoying the result. Like said: I do not want to disencourage people with posts like the above, I also do not want to make them feel sad or something in the likes: it is what it is: the "good bad sandwich" of feedback - with more words about the "bad" (remember: I said it is something "small") things - other people are surely better in honoring the good things. Also important: I "judge" by the product (commercial, commercial indy, free, free indy). In all cases nobody should take my words for granted and "must do", it is just a notice, and if it goes unheard, then it is so. I myself feel better to read a mixture of everything, not just soft-soaping someone. But maybe you like amazon reviews just mentioning the good things. PS: I knew that someone jumps on the bandwaggon as soon as I write something "negative" about a product. We will see if GaryVs unbanning leads to some more harsh words about my post. bye Ron |
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| This looks great Grey Alien. well done, a professional game this is. I must say with Derron pointing out some stuff, I think he's right, there's always room for improvement. You learn something everyday and looks like he has a keen eye for detail. BTW Derron, are you also a Pro game designer? All I see is one pic in your gallery and it doesn't say much at all. http://www.blitzbasic.com/gallery/view_pic.php?id=2548&gallery=hr&page=1 sorry. This game looks 10x better. What I'm trying to point also is to judge one you could at least be credible based on your portfolio/work or experience. Anyway, still great points though. peace. |
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| Hi gray alien. Ive seen your video of the game but I cant understand why you didn't put in the video some of the game played it self.. how can one get an impression from a game without that? though all the story video nicely made |
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| The artwork of my game is done by me. I am not a professional designer or artist - everything I do on computers is self-taught. Also my game is open source - everybody could improve things on it on their own. For me my game is a "learning by doing" project - code quality changed over the years, graphics changed too (I cannot change specific portions, people do not like a 3d-rendered version of the game but wanted that retro-pixel look I do not like that much). To see more of it, you might follow the link in the gallery to the show-off-entry. In short: no I am not a "pro game designer", I just code that for fun. I normally just code software tools for the Fraunhofer institute here in my town. @ "10x better" I fully agree ... I never wanted to claim something different. @GA Sorry for derailing the thread that much. bye Ron |
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| edit... double post |
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| (I cannot change specific portions, people do not like a 3d-rendered version of the game but wanted that retro-pixel look I do not like that much). Ah ok cool understood. sorry for being blunt, just stating my point. I did say you have a keen eye on detail which is good. I normally just code software tools for the Fraunhofer institute here in my town. Thats cool dude! keep it up :D |
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| @degac Aha, I'm glad it reminds you of Downton Abbey, we tried to make it feel a bit like that and Jane Austen stuff, for fans of both. @GfK Thanks. Thanks for the RT today too. @Hardcoal I have plans to make a gameplay one but just haven't got round to it. Screenshots help get an idea. So much to do post-release! Will do soon though. @Derron Thanks for your feedback on those various things - I agree with most of them and I don't mind. I thought I'd reply to a few things so you get more of an idea why those things are in the game: - Firstly, I also have an eye for detail, which is partly the game looks like it does. We spent a lot of time researching what we wanted the art to look like, then got lots of examples, and made many mockup screens/art and sent all this to the artists with detailed instructions. Then, whenever the artists sent anything I looked over it very carefully and then sent back comments to get it refined. However, there's only so many times I can do this before it drives them insane, and I really pushed my luck on this game. So once I get the "final" version, I still open it up in Photoshop and fiddle with more things. However, when you ship a game there's normally a large list of stuff that you would have liked to have fixed/added but just didn't have time. At some point you have to just go "OK, this is going out the door today" as long as all the major stuff you wanted done is done. I hope all that makes sense. People who've shipped games, especially to a deadline (I had one), know this well. OK onto some specific replies: - The multiplier is not centred on purpose. Huh? Well I didn't want to centre the whole string as when it counts up rapidly it has a different width for ever number (1.0 is not as wide as 3.0) and that makes the horiz position of the x flicker and the number move around a bit too and I dislike that. I prefer to have a fixed coord for the x and the left side of the number. Also when the number is higher, e.g. 2.0 or more (which is wider than 1.0), then it appears centred. Also I prefer the x to be on the same y baseline as the number and I vertically centered the multiplier based on the x rather than the number because I felt it looked better that way. So maybe already you are getting the idea that I think about every area of my game, and try out several things before settling on what you see...Some devs just slap in whatever the artists deliver first and it shows. - The card was supplied in a much larger version by the artists and I had to scale it down in photoshop to the correct scale. I tried out several minor variations in size based on which one gave the crispest outline and that was actually the best one (the others looked blurry), then I used smart sharpen on it at a specific value. Perhaps I could have manually tweaked the pixels some more too, but sometimes you've just got to move on (see my first point). - Border variations. Yep valid critique. Just again, had to move on and not hassle the artists. I actually spend HOURS getting rid of tiny anomalies (zoomed right in) on the various borders throughout the game that the artists supplied, but didn't fix shading. - Card cutout. We tried lots of variations here and spent a long time designing the card layout and that's our final design we are happy with. The cutout is actually a Georgian style cutout so true to the interior design of the time period. - Yes I did consider making each card darker based on depth but a) it was going to require extra code that I spent time on something else instead and b) from a playability point of view, it's better to have them all darker and top layer brighter so that it's clear what you can click on, and when a card is uncovered it suddenly goes brighter. Buy it and try it :-) - dropshadow. I don't fully understand you. There is a subtle drop shadow on the card at the moment. Something I do that other solitaire devs don't often do is, when I have many cards piled on the stock or foundation I only draw the TOP one so that the transparent shadow isn't drawn many times and looks too dark. There are tons more tiny things I fixed that you can't see now, and lots of little things I didn't have time or it wasn't worth fixing. If I made the game perfect it wouldn't be out for another 6 months and I'd have to pay the artists twice as much. Also I've noticed that many customers are not too discerning as they give 5 star reviews to games that really don't look or play great. As long as this game looks reasonably above average (I think it does) then it will hopefully do great. OK no more long replies after this one as I'm too busy :-) I hope you get my main point about I see a LOT of stuff but can't fix everything as it's not viable from a business standpoint, and I'm running a business here. |
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| Thanks for the long and elaborating answer. Of course "business" is more important. So I did not expect a patch from you concerning such things. @flickering numbers Yeah, I thought of that too - and the only way to avoid this, is to split "x" and the number (some kind of "block paragraph"). So the "x" is left aligned, and the number right aligned. But even this could look kind of "uncommon". @card Scaling something down - explains the odd "blockyness" the other parts of the game do not have @border variation Yep... business and deadlines. Next time send me some Betaware of your games and I check for such areas :p @darkening If you think of having some other solitaire/card games it might be a "code once, use often" portion of source coe @dropshadow I meant: additionally to the drop shadow at the bottom area of the cards, you could have one "subtle" one at the top area, so that some darkness falls on lower cards of a deck. But less than just "darkening" the cards. But hey... it's out now, and you should just enjoy sales counts. bye Ron |
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| Grey Alien, on the serious side of things, I think you should hire Ron here next time or on your next title as a beta tester or game consultant.. he could be a great asset :) At least he's concerned with the details. Best of luck! |
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| I meant: additionally to the drop shadow at the bottom area of the cards, you could have one "subtle" one at the top area, so that some darkness falls on lower cards of a deck. But less than just "darkening" the cards. AHA got it, yeah that could work, thanks.@videz yeah possibly a good idea. Like I said I already notice loads of stuff but just don't have time to do it and my wife worries I already spend too long on this stuff :-) I did have quite a few beta testers and some of them pointed out some useful for stuff, so one more who is detail-focussed could be useful at catching something I missed. I'd just have to evaluate if it was worth doing. |
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| I think you might find some beta testers willed to test more than just some hours because of "fun" - and a licence of the game to keep (for their wifes :p). bye Ron |
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| well done on your latest release Grey. |
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| Congratulations GreyAlien, it is a very nice game, polished and nice to play with some nice gameplay idea : the locking card requiring to draw Knight, Queen, the key and lock, the cupidon... (I played the one hour demo) The style and storyline also immediatly remind Downton (and movie "Belle") which is a smart move. The graphics are outstanding. I'm afraid I will have to buy the game for my wife, but I guess I'll play it also ;-) Bad luck for our recent JMS release, but I'm glad that the 1st pos on IWin is taken by your game, it gives some hope to the small indies. |
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| @Ron yes of course all beta testers got a full version and several played the game to the end. So did we. @Blitzplotter thanks! @Pingus Thanks! I'm glad you tried out the demo and have spotted the new ideas. I wonder how soon before they get copied ;-) There's nothing wrong with men playing the game too if you like a Downton Abbey and similar things, and of course a well-crafted card game :-) Ah yes, I saw JMS. Sorry if my games is pushing yours down chart. Did you release on BFG too? |
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| As always Jake, you have released another high quality game! I was a BIG fan of Fairway Solitaire. I've enjoyed watching you release all your games over the years, and I've been quite inspired by your persistence in making games that 1) Are COMPLETE in all aspects 2) Are FUN and ADDICTING (which is the point in making them) 3) You actually release them for a paycheck :) The biggest thing is that you dove in both feet first years ago (I want say around 2005-ish with BlitzMax) out of necessity and got your stuff together building up your Grey Alien Game Framework for Max. Way to go man! I stand up and applaud you on your efforts and abilities to "make it happen" :) I hope you make loads of success with this recent addition to your collection of games portfolio, and look forward to what you make next! Best of luck Jake! |
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| Congrates on the release :) Looks great! The card was supplied in a much larger version by the artists and I had to scale it down in photoshop to the correct scale. Did you specify the card size? |
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| @computercoder Thanks for your kind words! You correct(ish) on the dates. I got BlitzMax in late 2004 and fiddled around with some stuff before release my first commercial game, Xmas Bonus, in Dec 2005. I swapped to BlitzMax in 2006 so I could make use of scaling, rotation, alpha blending etc and that's the year I started my frameowkr. It's not been an easy ride over these past 10 years but it is satisfying to release a new game for sure. @therevells Yep of course :-) The artists always like to make stuff larger though, so it was the correct aspect ratio, I just had to scale it down. It would probably have looked better made at the correct size with perfect pixels, but I think it still looks pretty good. |
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| Jake, let us know when it hits BFG. My wife has some credits built up and I have already told her about it. |
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| Congrats Jake, the artwork is gorgeous and your attention to detail always shows in your work - even Derron is struggling to criticize ;) |
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| @Why0Why OK will do! Should be soon. @Steve Elliott Thanks. Yes the artists did a great job. I haven't been round here so much recently so haven't seen Derron's posts. I take it he does his thang frequently then? |
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| Yepp, I post my "bad things I found"-phrases on a regular base. Like said... feel free to post your thoughts about our game TVTower too ... if you enjoy German texts (I only translated some database entries + interface into English - because it is MUCH text) - so nobody should feel treated not equal to others. I post to all kind of subjects I am interested in - in the "show off"-section this are mostly the things with hmm interesting graphics (good or bad :D)- I am kind of addicted to graphics or core game play discussions. Keep us informed about sales stats (I liked the sales/income charts in the monkey board). bye Ron |
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| Hi Derron,I used to like sharing sales stats but it has let to people copying my business model and becoming competitors, so now I'm not so sure it's wise. Shame, but there you go. |
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| You do not need to write absolute numbers ... but maybe things like "over the last months the sales decreased slowly, raising when website X did a review ...". Think there must be people like me interested in such things, feeling better if they read about continuing rewards for efforts. But no problem if you frighten "business model" copyists. I also like diary-like-entry of the development process (like making ofs) but of course this is always a matter of time for the devs to make them. That is the benefit of an "open source"-development ... people tend to discuss / explain things in blogs/posts during the dev. Maybe keep the dev-thingy in mind for your next project ..hmm it might help you in the tinkering-process (gameplay brainstorming). If you are not sure about it (get your game idea stolen) ... release the posts after the release of the product. We discussed game mechanics (broadcast audience simulation) openly in our board, so other products might copy our results/approaches but for now it seems they did not do (maybe we make things to complex :p). Dunno if "themes" in casual games are subject of getting copied that much ... think it is more the "genre" which gets ups and downs regarding the audience's interest. bye Ron |
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| This looks very nice Mr Alien! :-) If I may ask... what sort of budget did it take for a game like this, specifically to pay the artists, since it's fairly art heavy? |
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| Hey Grey, having been around forever myself(even owning GAF), and being familiar with your history, do you mind sharing what you mean about copying? I don't see how sharing sales numbers would lead to competition. I always greatly appreciated seeing concrete numbers. I find it very motivational, but certainly understand that it is a very personal thing and most choose not to share. |
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| I presume GA thinks to the 'story/emotional/environment' factor of the game, not only the mechanic (the card game is more or less the same of Fairway Solitaire I believe). Of course if you spend time (and money) to search, create an story based on historical fact (elaborated more or less), assume an artist etc... the last thing you want to see is anyone else doing the same thing (an absolute copy of the game will be immediately banned... but a slightly different one maybe could be a potential competitor). I just think to the Wonderful Wizard of Oz: personally I never took in consideration the idea to use a fable as background for a game - a 3match game, not an adventure one! It's quite original (and based on the book, not on the films if I remember correctly). So I can understand the reticence to tell us the results. In any case, reading his blog, I understood the next game will be released on 2016! So the time-line production is so long nowadays? It must be something very complex or defined! |
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| @Derron Yes I'd like to do a dev diary for me next game. I kinda did one whilst porting Titan Attacks to monkey (for mobile) and I posted videos too. @ImaginaryHuman Sorry I don't want to go into details on art cost as it's not fair on them, but suffice to say it was 5 figures in $. @Why0Why Over the years I've shared details on the types of games I made in BlitzMax and how well they did. I used to be of the belief that would be fine and motivational as you say, but it has led to increased competition in my specific field of games (match-3s and solitaire games on casual portals) and even with the same contractors! I don't want to go into details, but suffice to say it has happened more than once and I didn't feel great about it. It's not illegal, and I don't have any say in what anyone else does, but if I hadn't been so open, things would have been different... @degac No in this case, I don't mean that (theme etc. though it is possible for people to copy and tweak so it's not a copyright issue). I mean business model as per my reply to @Why0Why Also I will be releasing a game this year (hopefully more than one), I'm not sure where you got 2016 from unless I said "next year" in the blog, but I wrote it at then end of 2014 :-) I did actually share some Direct Sales stats today you can take a look at: http://greyaliengames.com/blog/why-direct-sales-matter-to-indies/ |
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| Ops, surely I ve misinterpreted your post... Or didn't notice the date! Of course I hope you post more than a game! Edit Just read your post on your blog, interesting (but a little sad...) reading. About valve' steam: I don't know exactly how works, but greenlight program should be an interesting promotional system... Question : why your game are nit present on steam? |
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| Ouch, Jake! I thought you liked to motivate people and encourage them to create games. No one forced you to sell your framework or to share your journey with us. Regarding solitaire games, this is your 1st in what 5 years? And you could argue that the original Fairway Solitaire isn't really yours as you were contracted by BFG to code it. Over the years you have motivated me, but you didn't invent match 3 games nor solitaire games. You your self has called yourself a cloner in the past, so their is no difference. Fairway did really well and of course people will copy it to see if they can get some of the success too (like what happened with Flappy Bird!!). Regarding direct indie games sales, with casual portals we are getting their traffic and that is what we are actually "paying" for (paying as in the reduced %) and their marketing. If you compare your site traffic with BFG's site traffic what would be the difference? My guess would be huge! Do players actually know your site exists (or a large percentage of them)? I wish you luck with your games. |
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| Thanks for the insight-blog-link, enjoyed it to read (especial as I created some feedbackphrases right in the moment of reading your post there). First of all: you have a reeeeaallly! high conversion rate. Read: you only have 425 newsletter subscribers ... and got that much sales from it? I assume that most of the subscribers will ignore 90%+ of the mails they get... they read them from time to time or never. I have something in the 30k newsletter subscribers, but did not mail them for years - because there was only a handful of readers (PIs jumped a bit the days after a newsletter ... but this was in the lower hundreds then). If you believe in your "direct sales" through "newsletters" you might trade "efficiency" (conversion rate) against "potential" by gifting one of your casual games each month to X random newsletter receivers. Or better let them sign something each month on your website - so you only get the ones really interested. This increases your website popularity (installed toolbars tracking it, more links to your newsletter coming from sites collecting such competition games). Another option is to chose a random facebook friend to win a licence ... just to increase your facebook "friend" range. But as facebook allows to "ignore ad postings from X", this advertisement-branch is drying out. @35% Yepp, like said you pay for their traffic. Maybe increase your traffic by providing a chance to talented "lets players" to spread around 2-3 licences, or give them access to your games (not just one, but more of them - and the ones in the future). My (oss) game was reviewed by a lets player only having some thousands of listeners ... but my download count (of that months release) was raised by about 6-700x. So they just have some influence (which I cannot explain). Not all of them are interested in that kind of game but of course there will be lets players with a wider audience who are willed - you just need to find them (I luckily was contacted by the lets player ... because he also wanted to interview me about the game). On the consumer side "casual games" have one big problem: they are small in size and it takes no longer than 1-2 days until a illegal copy could get downloaded on the various "warez" sites... I googled for "regency solitaire download" and already on page 1 I got the "TE"-release presented. So it just needs some clicks to get your game for free ... and because of the filesize it is just a matter of seconds to have it on the hard disc. I do not know numbers regarding "copies" and lost sales (read: people who use "copies" wont buy your game at all) but if you catch one of the releasers (mostly they get the games provided by someone working for the "portals") you might sue enough money to get rid of the loss of sales through pirating. So to close this posting: Direct sales are of course a powerful instrument - but they need a wider audience to reach a break even potential. Keep up selling things and promoting yourself via social media and your website... numbers will increase slowly but hopefully steadily. And with the right pr actions you might sell something here and there (although I doubt people will surf to your site and think... "hmm lets buy something, lets look what he has to offer") I just wanted to offer to make the German translation (if there wasnt one yet) but when googling for "Regency Solitaire deutsch" (= "regency solitaire German") I just found some "boards" providing the self-localized version of your game ... via uploaded.to and consortes ... Maybe you should post a "thanks" there ... and explain in 2-3 phrases that you as an author do not go d'accord with it. Maybe it makes a small percentage of their users to think about it (I have come along to such a post when the android-software of someone was pirated - he explained that he does not earn thousands of Euros each month with his app but that he might have given a free licence to one of the pirates if they just do not have enough money to buy the app but absolutely want it -> was on the old "boerse.to" I believe). bye Ron |
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| @Derron: I read about 'warez' sites.... just tested... damn! (no I didn't download it Grey). I'm thinking a sort of 'user-validation'+low price is mandatory: package size to download is not a problem nowadays, internet is everywhere. It's a sort of insurance (surely cracker will invalid immediately the check)... the only solution I'm thinking is taking care of the paying customer with additional (and free maybe) thing, like new levels, levelboards etc It's not easy when you 'believe' in the DRM-free model. ps: a thing I cant' understand is the 'money back'... there is a demo to test it, if it works or if you like the game... after 60 days?!?!? No And I presume the credit-card/bank costs are higher than the final price. |
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| Money back is no problem as the only costs you have are the "money transfer" costs. There is no real hardware which you get sent back and then cannot sell again for 100% of the price. The price of your product must contain the X % of returned goods / warranty things. So in no case the sales prices is a calculation of "income i want minus nothing". @warez and filesize Most of the downloads are done via torrent (filesize no problem), usenet (filesize no problem, but age of the release - free usenet accounts only have low retention times) and sharehosters. Sharehosters (except some like zippyshare - which even provide 100mbit+ to me as free user) tend to have "captchas" or "wait till next time". A Download which is below the sharehosters filesize limit (often 100 or 200MB) is then split into multiple downloads: people will have to wait for the individual download parts. They have to type in captchas etc. BUT ... is your game below the 100MB you only have to wait 1 time, and maybe only have to enter 1 captcha. This lowers the barrier way enough that more and more people use this way of getting the game. The "easyness" of the download decides wether people are going this or that way. DRM wont help in all cases - things just get patched out. Even "remote data" could get simulated by a "mini server" plus modification of the hosts-file (so traffic to "mysupergame.xyz.com" gets redirected to "127.0.0.1:1234"). Of course it takes longer to gain enough information for a homemade emulation ...but if you sniff enough data traffic of a original/genuine game to its remote server, you might end up with enough information to emulate that at the end. For casual games this will of course be a thing up to nobody will do. But games like World of Warcraft were sniffed by dozens of users just to provide enough data for the private server's databases - so it nothing "purely theoretical". Sorry again for going more and more offtopic (albeit I doubt that this thread here is for pure advertisement of the game - as the potential audience of the blitzmax board will be aware of the thread already). bye Ron |
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| @therevills Sigh, I didn't want to get into this through fear of offending people on here, but I seem to have done that anyway (sorry, not intended). So I'll try to explain a bit more (and probably end up digging a bigger hole in the process): I don't regret creating and selling a framework as it was fun and the users (like you) helped to improve it, and some people have gone on to use it successfully (like you), which is pretty cool. Another company made a really great time management farm game and a bunch of others games with it and it has really helped their game dev career. Other people have just used it for fun or as a learning excercise, which is great. Yes BFG totally owns Fairway and their designer came up with the idea. I just coded it and helped with some of the design, and in fact my contract with them said I couldn't make a card game for another year after it shipped (so I couldn't compete). The first clone was Faerie Solitaire, and at the time the dev wouldn't admit it was a clone even though it was totally obvious to the extent that he had unknowingly even cloned a golf flag shaped piece of UI into his game which made no sense in his game. He did iterate on the concept (and added in some new features) to give him credit, and the game has done very well, probably because the theme resonated with casual users more. Cloning in the casual game industry is normal, and yes I did it by cloning Jewel Match EDIT: OOPS I Meant "Jewel Quest" which is one of the first match-3 games (which has different levels) and then iterating on the concept each game to introduce new things. However, what gets me is when people clone things but won't admit it. You have admitted it, which is fine, but others don't seem so honest, and for some reason that irks me. If I hadn't posted on these forums (and my blog) about my various success with match-3 games and Fairway and the fact they were made in BlitzMax, I suspect that some forum members would not have made match-3 games or solitaire games. In fact I know that's the case because some people have told me I directly influenced them in that regard. Perhaps these people would have eventually been influenced by other sources anyway, but posting my information online (and in talks) was definitely a factor. It's not really a problem in match-3s are there are just so damn many of them, but there are less solitaire games and so now I find myself competing in a market with competitors who I may have in part helped create. (Why I didn't make one sooner is too complex to go into :-)) So then I have to weigh up the good feeling of sharing information over the years with having more competitors in the here and now that directly affect my business (and thus my family's situation.) - though to what extent is impossible to measure. That's been my thought process recently anyway, and it's the reason many devs DON'T share their stats and certainly why many corporations don't go into details - to avoid potential competitors (I worked at one for 2 years and got to find out many related things.) Heck, even sharing my numbers has led to weirdness with family members who think I'm rich or something (not true, in case they are reading). Anyway, as I said (but don't want to go into details) it's reached the point recently where someone (not from here) who I've shared a LOT of information with is now directly competing in the same space and is using up bandwidth of the same contractors. That's just not a cool situation to be in, and I've been instrumental in making it happen. So that's why I'm now reluctant to talk about my process and finances. I hope that all makes sense and doesn't get anyone's back up too much, as I'm not intending to do that, just explain my through process. On the flip side, I've received many emails, and met in person, many devs who have read my blog over the years (or saw me talk etc) and gone into a different space who've said they are grateful for all the information I've shared. That is good to know, but I guess I just need to be a bit more selective now about what I share and who I tell "sensitive" information with. P.S. We've been friends for many years and I'd like that to continue, but now I've openly shared my thoughts, and I hope you don't mind or find them too offensive. |
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| Question : why your game are not present on steam? Well if I could press a "put game on Steam" button, I would, but there's no such button. Steam have to ask YOU to put their game on it, not the other way round, and they don't seem to ask casual game devs for their games (there are casual games on there but via publishers). Of course I've still tried to get my games on there (by asking several people there directly), but not yet succeeded. So meanwhile Spooky Bonus is on Greenlight and maybe Regency Solitaire will go on there too, though casual games don't get many votes on GL due to the type of gamers who browse GL.@therevills Yep for sure BFG has huge traffic. Many players know of my games (I talk to them on forums etc) but they prefer to buy from BFG and other portals as that's the way people have been trained over the years. There's a pretty big discrepancy though between a casual portal giving devs 35% (or less!) and Valve/Apple/Amazon/Google giving devs 70%, something I'd like to see change. A very small amount of casual gamers know about my site and I do some marketing for each of my games + maintain a mailing list, but wow it's hard. Just wish more people bought direct - that was the main message of the blog post to be honest; that and wouldn't it be nice if casual games got more press? @Derron Yes we have approached some let's players and twitch tv broadcasters (of casual games) as part of our marketing and got a couple of videos in the works. Probably won't move the needle though. Also yes the pirates "cracked" iWin's version on day 1 and flooded the Internet with it. Sadly that's normal for casual games and it's really not worth fighting them. I got one site to remove a post with a pirate version but others just ignored me. I could issue loads of DMCA Takedown notices (http://www.dmca.com/FAQ/What-is-a-DMCA-Takedown), but it's a lot of work. I prefer to just work on new good games and sadly accept the inevitable piracy that goes one. Wow it's weird that it's been translated to German already. I'm actually getting Zylom to do all the translations professionally. My game already supports Unicode files ready for localisation but I want to tweak the game in a few places to allow for lines/paragraphs to expand a bit more, especially for German. So yeah, I'm not sure how good those cracked translations are. It's kinda annoying, as it might make the game look unprofessional. @degac It's just way easier and better customer service to offer a money back thing. I don't want to get into arguments over a $10 game, it's not worth the blood pressure rise. |
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| Group hug lol. Like Therevills, I find your success a motivation - especially from a 2D game. Sometimes I think the world has gone 3D mad ;) I can understand why you now want to be a bit more cautious business-wise. But I kinda think you brought that on yourself by promoting your games here so much and selling your games framework. While you're inspiring some of the guys here, cool. You're also talking sales figures and or what number in the games charts at BFG you are currently. So basically you're inspiring and doing well - and promoting your games to a bunch of games programmers!! But complaining when they have a stab at jumping on that bandwagon! :) I guess it's a fine line between promoting - and too who - and what you say. But all the best with your endeavors. |
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| Oh, Jake. You always crack me up. ĤoD |
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| Grey, as I said, sharing is a very personal thing and I feel everyone should share what they are comfortable with. I can see how someone taking contractor bandwidth is an issue, but I don't think another Blitzer making a game in the same space is an issue. For example, when my wife finished Fairway, she naturally moved to LoS when it came out. I just think that the majority of people that buy card or match 3 are going to get what looks best and I don't think one sale is necessarily taking from another sale. I didn't mean to open a can of worms. I was just curious. As I said, I have always greatly appreciated stats. I am a hobbyist and will probably never release anything, but you never know :) I agree on piracy. I think most people that buy through portals don't even know what warez are. There is someone on the Monkey forums that is fixated on trying to encrypt and protect his data and art. It is just a waste of time, IMHO. I personally won't worry about it if I do release something. I'm not sure if you can share(or want to), but with an established property like Titan Attacks, is that a straight contract or is it a revenue share type thing? Thanks for the explanations and best of luck in the coming year. I may just go ahead and get Regency through your site for my wife, then you can get the full cut ;) One advantage with your releases is that the holiday themes lead to great year over year revenue streams. As I told you some time ago, Spooky Bonus was one of my wife's favorite ever Match 3's and I think she will love Regency. |
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| Thanks for the informations and for explaining so many aspects of this business ! Now it seems clear that too much informations (and sharing them) can have some collateral effects. many things to consider. And very motivational. |
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| Hey Jake, I'm not "ending" our friendship over one post, I just found it a bit weird on what you put and posting it here (especially if the person you are talking about isnt even on here). You have inspired me along the way and as I said motivated me, I still work a full time job and produce my casual games on the side, which is hard work... and my wife has also been part of the The Revills Games from day one (the amount of testing she is doing right now for our current game is amazing!) Thanks for expanding what you meant, in business there will always be competition in one shape or form. The casual market has been changing for many years and with the "public" playing "free" games (read IAP games) on their mobile devices it has hurt the gaming market overall for companies which sell their games. Regarding sale states, myself I cant remember even reading yours I took in how well Fairway did (although BFG did market it really full on!) and I thought I could make a game like that and Gunslinger Solitaire was born, I sent it to BFG not really expecting them to take but they did... and The Revills Games was also born :) As you know making games is hard work, finishing a game with the amount of polish is even more hard work... and then the marketing (is what I find the worse!). |
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| :-) |
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| @Steve Elliott Yeah I was just having a whiny moment, please excuse me. I want to have my cake and eat it ;-) Also, yeah 2D ftw! @Why0Why Titan Attacks mobile was both a fee and rev share. Still not out yet (even though it's done) but that's because we are waiting for something special...don't ask! @therevills yeah, you finally finish a game and you are knackered (British expression), then you have to do all the shipping of builds, localisation and marketing - it's the least fun bit I'd say. |
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| Anyway, it seems there are some new solitaire kids on the block and they are spamming out low quality games that all seem the same. Here's their latest one: http://www.bigfishgames.com/download-games/28731/knight-solitaire-2/index.html They seem to have shipped like one a month and are just filling up the card and board game charts with them. |
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| it seems there are some new solitaire kids on the block and they are spamming out low quality games that all seem the same Yes, I noticed a raise in the amount of Solitaires releases, same is true for Match3 games ;-) And after all, if people do not make the difference, or just don't care about all the subtil things we may add in our games... why bother ;-/ But the genre that have the bigger increase in the number of releases (and quite some success) seem to be the Time Management genre. That's curious considering that it is a 'casual' market with most people playing for relax. |
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| Yeah ever since My Kingdom for the Princess, that started a whole genre and there are loads of them now. Ever since Diner Dash the casual genre has had time management games. I like them a lot actually, but they are manic to play, so much clicking and strategy! |
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| Just a question. What makes Knight Solitarie 2 a low quality game? |
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| Actually graphically it's pretty good (which helps sales for sure), but there just wasn't enough to do to hold players' attention spans (as the reviews often say) No decent metagame or story or powerups. So ultimately it was boring. Also they've basically used the same UI on like a whole raft of similar games, so it's quite clear they are literally reskinning without any kind of care an attention to the theme/story and associated possibilities. People often say to me "can't you just reskin X" but I don't want to do that. This isn't just a souless money making exercise for me, I have to care about the theme and try to make each game different and interesting for players. |
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| No probs Jake, enjoy your cake ;) |
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| Congrats on the release, Jake. |
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| Thanks Gabriel. It's out on GameHouse tomorrow and BFG soon I hope, plus more in the pipeline. |
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| Hey Grey, have sales met expectations? |
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| Um, yeah I think so. Direct sales are a bit crap, which is to be expected but more than for previous games but we've also done more marketing and my mailing list is bigger. iWin sales aren't as strong as Spooky Bonus, but that was a Halloween-themed game sold at Halloween! But it's converting at the same % (i.e. very high), so as long as it gets in front of enough people it should do fine (the long tail will matter). It's out on GameHouse next week but has been delayed on BFG for a bit, hopefully not too long. Having trouble getting in contact with some other portals, but keep trying, and will launch myself on Amazon, Mac App Store and maybe some more soon. |
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| My wife and I did a photoshoot in Regency costumes and here's one of the fun images: https://twitter.com/GreyAlien/status/558657626457010176 We'll make a blog post with some more soon. |
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| Those flaky solitaire remakers are probably doing it just as an approach to business calculations, ie they figure it's possible to make more money by having more titles of a given quickly-repurposed style than to spent a lot of r&d time making whole new games. I think you see this a lot with the video slot machine games (which I hate because the usability is totally awful), where they more or less switch out graphics with the exact same gameplay. In terms of `being good for gaming` it sucks, but in terms of getting more eyeballs on your products.. probably makes sense. Sometimes it's not a game of having the best product, but of casting the widest net to have more chance of getting people to pay some attention... sort of like one game that takes on the form of multiple games, so as to have more entry points. Just a marketing strategy I guess. Regarding direct sales to a website... it's great if you can get the traffic, but getting the traffic is the hard part. Your website has to appeal to an audience and be original and engaging and have quality content. That also means it has to have quite a lot of good pages and be useful, e.g. articles with tips and stuff that people would want to come to you to see, or to share, rather than just coming to read what your latest news is about your own games. ie you have to tap into other streams of traffic besides just people looking for your product.... cast a wider net. But if you can do it and get better ranked for more search terms then you'll get the traffic and then that can turn into more direct sales. Ecommerce is a whole ball game in its own right. |
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| Indeed. Hey all, I just put it on Greenlight and could really do with your vote and a nice comment, thanks for your help! http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=383336796 |
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| Voted and commented. Good luck! |
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| Thanks man! |
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| Another pic for you. This time we are on the tea! https://twitter.com/GreyAlien/status/561157573106475008 |
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| 500 Greenlight votes and 16% of way to top 100. It's slowed right down now :-( http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=383336796 |
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| Here it is, Regency is on BFG. This will be interresting to follow. |
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| Yep here it is so far. Spare a good review governor? ;-) http://www.bigfishgames.com/games/8505/regency-solitaire/?pc |
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| Entered chart at 36. Interested to compare with other solitaire devs if willing to share. Thanks! |
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| I think Crime Solitaire 2 came in at mid 50's on BFG. Peaked, disappointingly, at 27. |
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| Did that still generate OK revenue though and pay for itself? Spooky Bonus started at 26 and went up to 14 where it kinda hit a brick wall. So 12 positions. Sounds like yours went up maybe 28 or so. And I confirmed with others that there can be quite a lot of variance. So I hope mine will get into top 20. We'll see! I don't hold out for top 10, though of course that would be epic. Only top 10 solitaires in recent years were Emerland Solitaire and the first Legends of Soltiaire by therevills (got to no.9) and maybe another one. It was hard then but it's maybe even harder now due to F2P games sitting in top 10/20 including Big Fish Casino. |
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| It paid for what the game cost me in terms of dollars spent, within probably hours. Factor in development time and it probably owes me about £20,000. In that respect, and without adding up sales since release so this is just an edumacated guess, I think I've about broken even. Oh, it's probably worth mentioning that the conversion rate was pretty high - over 12% I seem to recall. What's killed it a bit, is the total number of downloads has fallen right off since I released the original four years ago. If I'd released CS2 within 12 months of the first, when the market was stronger, I'm sure it would have done £20k in under a week. I'm not doing solitaire games any more. It's all I've done for 4 years and I need something new. |
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| Ah glad it's done OK. Well I also got a crazy CR% on Spooky Bonus, and Regency is shaping up to be similar. My theory is that in recent years all the people who just downloaded demos to play them for free (who brought the CR% down) have left and gone to Facebook, mobile, F2P whatever, and now all that's left is genuine customers who try and buy if they like. So yeah, we are getting less downloads but double figure CR%, so it kinda evens out. |
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| Well, I'm not happy with it. I want a Bentley Continental and it's not going to happen with those sort of sales! :) [edit] Oh, and a house. A house would be cool too. With a giant empty room to put all my retro junk in. |
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| Yeah just paying off the mortgage would be a good start. If I made the same number of sales on Steam, I would have done that easily. But the casual portal dev % seems tuned to keep me just forever playing catchup. |
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| ...which is why I want to do something different and target Steam, among others. |
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| A question (not related with Regency) Someone have infos about Chinese market? Competitors? Limits? Are there some direct publisher for/in China? Or... well is there a market for casual game (not on mobile)? Only considering the 'numbers', chinese market is - ehm - HUGE (I imagine the CR%...) A 'foreign' period/situation like Regency could be interesting for that market (assuming they like card game or match-3 game...) |
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| The Chinese market might be huge, but it's equally 'huge' with piracy, on the same levels as Eastern Europe. I personally wouldn't bother unless creating the build was a five-minute job (which, knowing how awkward Japanese localisation is, it won't be). |
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| Yeah I've done Japanese (and Russian) localisation before (as well as Euro languages) and it's a big pain. So I wouldn't fancy doing it. I believe to work the game would need to be F2P and also culturally tuned to make sense in China. Then yeah it could work but it seems to much like hard work with uncertain return to me so I personally won't bother. @gfK same here re something different. Watch this space... Also in other news ***WE GOT GREENLIT!*** Thanks to everyone who helped out by voting for it and sharing the link. No.2 card&board today (BFG Casino sits at top of course), and no. 30 in top 100. Top 20 is looking quite likely now... |
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| ok, thanks for the answers |
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| Please continue to make great games! |
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| Thanks! You too! |
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| Finally made it into BFG top 20 (at 20). Took longer than I'd hoped as it stalled around the 24 mark. Might go higher in the next couple of days but it's peak will be around Monday/Tuesday (charts are based on last two weeks of sales) |
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| 'grats! You still noticing the flow of dollars has declined massively in recent years, tho? |
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| Just on BFG or all portals? Well I don't know it's hard to say really because Spooky Bonus (Oct 2013) was my most successful game and Regency looks to be doing quite well. Also in recent years I managed to boost the sales of Holiday Bonus, and Oz by localising and putting on more portals (and releasing a GOLD verison too). Before Spooky Bonus, Spring Bonus (April 2011) had a better launch than Holiday Bonus and Oz, but the launch wasn't anywhere near as good as Spooky Bonus. Just under 50% of my revenue is from BFG now so at least I've diversified. Certainly on a lame month where there are no promotions and no new games my combined revenue does drop very low and wouldn't be enough to survive on, but the peaks just about make up for that. What have you found? I'm diversifying into indie games this year anyway but I feel I may have missed the boat on that by about 2-3 years. |
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| What have you found? It's a tricky one - i didn't go exclusive with anybody for CS2, whereas I did before. But overall I seem to be getting far fewer downloads, but a much higher conversion rate. So I guess one is kind of compensating for the other. I'm diversifying into indie games this year anyway but I feel I may have missed the boat on that by about 2-3 years. Same, though I'm not sure about having missed the boat. You're master of your own destiny, and get to make games how you want to make them, without having to make things that function in a very specific way. Going to places like Rezzed and talking to other devs, I just feel like an underling. Making solitaire games isn't something I feel like I want to shout about. You know?But really I'm just not 'feeling the love' with casual games. I never was. |
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| Yeah decreased downloads but higher conversion rate for sure. I think the freeloaders, who just played demos, left and went to mobile/facebook and the people left behind are people who actually buy games. Remains to be seen if revenue will drop in coming years (or even months) which worries me. Why did Rezzed make you feel like an underling? Oh because you make casual games. Yeah I get ignored due to that too. Well I still like casual games, think I've got the knack for certain kinds anyway. Will still make them alongside an indie game, hedging my bets. |
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| If you bring food to the table as a freelancer then that's impressive, in my opinion. It doesn't matter if it's by making solitaire games. |
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| The truth of the matter is you will be revered more (in the press and by certain types of indie) for making an arty game as a hobbyist (or as an indie but being broke and having to give up) than making a consisten living by making casual games. It depends on your perspective I guess, but I want to keep feeding my family and making games and that limits what I can attempt to a certain extent. |
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| I want to keep feeding my family and making games and that limits what I can attempt to a certain extent. That's my primary goal - to make money. And I know what you mean as I've agonised over this decision for five months.But I figure if I have to go back to a "proper" job at some point, I don't (and won't) have to do it forever. |
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| So when did you give up your bouncer job and do games full time? Btw, Regency peaked out at 20 in the BFG top 100. I'd hoped to go higher but I analysed the top 25 and they are almost ALL either exclusive collector's editions (BFG won't take a card game as exclusive or CE), or F2P and were all HOGS/HOPAs except for a F2P farming game. The only other "normal" game was a very good match-3, called Runefull, a couple places above mine. I don't think it's the same as it was several years ago. The top 10 is impossible to get into now, and 10-20 are pretty tough. |
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| Around 2010, I think? Never did the bouncer job, in the end - had a job lined up at Xscape in Castleford but by the time the DWP had fannied about for weeks and paid for the course (I was self-unemployed and skint at the time) and waited about three weeks for the exam results (which I passed), the job had gone. It's a struggle, tho. The way things are going I'll be lucky if I make a grand this month, and month on month, it's on the slide. |
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| Ah I see, well I guess it's worked out OK as you are your own boss. But yeah revenues do keep sliding down. My worse month in the last year was $2100 which doesn't house and feed a family of 4. Luckily I've just released a new game in the nick of time. |
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| Think every game I've ever released has been "in the nick of time" :) |
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| Yeah I hear you on that one. |
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