SETH's Puzzle Boxes - Gold!
Community Forums/Showcase/SETH's Puzzle Boxes - Gold!
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| http://www.respawngames.com/sethspuzzleboxes/ Finally got a new game out the door! Check out the demo and let us know what you think.   Have fun! |
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| Looks fun if you're into puzzlers but Seth don't look too evil to me! :) |
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| Try it, it's a lot of fun! I created the art for Selena the girl and Seth the robot, and came up with the acronym to go with his name. Seth was never intended to look evil or realistic, he was intended to look silly. I'll post a thread showing how the artwork of Selena evolved soon. It was a long and difficult journey because I'd never drawn any human characters before, and I'd never drawn in an anime style either. Hell I don't draw much period. :-) Seth pretty much went from sketch to final result in less than a day and didn't change much during the process. |
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| Hey good work on creating a decent puzzle game. I have some criticism that may make this a much better game and possible sell more. First, the most important. You give away 13 puzzles out of 40. Now, After playing the 13 puzzles.. why would anyone pay 19.95 if they have completed a little more than 1/4 of the game for free? My first suggestion is to only show maybe 5 levels perhaps. Of the five, only the first 2 easy, then the other 3 get a LOT harder to make you want to buy ;) Also I do not believe 40 levels is nearly enough for $19.95 since I beat the first 13 in less than 10 minutes. Therefore in less than 1 hour I can completely beat the game. Is there any way to add many more levels or have a random level generator? Also, I think you could make the puzzles even more challenging by adding additional features like magnets or something that operates on a rhythm, so not only do you need flipping skills but also timeing. EpicBoy, I believe you have a potentially good game for puzzle lovers, but a real puzzle solver will beat this far to quickly. If this game was 4.95 I think Id say what the heck. But for $20, you better give a bang! For instance, I recently bought a puzzle book that contains 1,000 puzzles for $14.95 ;) Good work on gfx, sound, and playability. It just hasnt pushed its envelope. Hope you take this in a positive way. That is how it is meant. -lucid |
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| Lucid Well, you're also getting the full story mode which is worth something to some people. Plus, it opens up the "match" gametype which people seem to like. 5 puzzles wouldn't let you get any kind of feel for the game. And remember, you're only seeing the easiest puzzles. Trust me, they get tougher as you go higher... |
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| Oh, and as for pricing ... you can't price something at $4.95 and have it sell. That price tells the consumer that it's crap. Seriously. Anything less than $10 or even $15 and you're almost telling people not to buy it. |
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| Not played the game (downloading) but ive got a puzzle game, see my sig below, I'll tell u a little story. The first release had just 29 puzzles, i gave 9 away in the demo, the price was $14.95... I sold 1 copy. I decided to make some changes so I upp'ed the puzzle count to 35 and reduce the demo levels to 5, the price was again at $14.95.... I sold 1 copy. To date I've sold 2 copies. The only marketing ive done is submit it to shareware sites. I dont think the number of demo puzzles or total puzzles has a huge impact... i think good marketing does, which I hope to put into practice this summer. As I said im still downloading the game (Damn 56k) I hope you looked at reducing the download size as much a as possible, i usualy avoyed downloading shareware games over 5MB... and some other migth also. 2 points, Maybe have a built in editor and try and reduce the download for your 56k customers. |
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| Good presentation.. well presented, puzzles got hard around puzzle 9. I would still like a puzzle editor. ;) |
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| "I dont think the number of demo puzzles or total puzzles has a huge impact... i think good marketing does," Actually, there are a lot of factors besides marketing which affect sales. Was the game fun? I made a game called Poker Solitaire and it has sold few copies. There's little animation, and it's too easy. It's not flashy enough, nor is the demo limited enough. Did you put it up on Download.Com? Did you try time limiting the demo by allowing them to play the game only X number of times, rather than playing X number of puzzles? This depends on whether the puzzles are fun to play more than once of course. Did you have butons to encourage registration in several obvious places in the program, rather than just at the end? Did you accept multiple forms of instant payment/download? Was the demo under 5 megs in size? Did the demo run on lower end PCS, or only high end? Lots of stuff that could make a game fail, not just poor marketing. Hell I heard some guys talking about Crimsonland in a computer store near me, and as far as I know that got no marketing. |
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| Yes, there are a ton of things that make a demo sell, not just marketing. If you look at your download demo -> sales conversion rate that's when you start getting into the nitty gritty of what you can do with the game to make it sell better. I'm finding that there's a lot you can do to make or break a game's sales. One thing I've been thinking of is increasing the number of levels in AA actually. We've been using 5 levels and that sells ok. I read a statistic that said that 86% of gamers who rent games also buy the title afterward. That says to me that a gamer wants a big chunk of the game and then if they like it they'll buy it. With AA we've sold a lot more then 1 copy but I know from my stats that it's not doing as good as it could be compared with similar games, thus I keep experimenting with new demos. I think through all of this that I'm not actually a gameplayer anymore. I don't think many of us are. Sure we'll play a game occasionally but we're more about making them then buying them and we tend to just want to get the idea of a game, not to actually play it through. Gamers are a different breed, they want to be completely absorbed into a game and then if they feel absorbed they'll spend the money. My advice is to find the right balance between too much gameplay and not enough. That's where I'm at right now. I think my next attempt is going to be a 60 minute demo with 15 - 25 levels. At 25 levels that's half the game (well if you can beat that in 60 minutes), but back in the day Doom was the king of Shareware and that demo took forever to beat, yet it sold extremely well. I know for a fact that Real Arcade does very very well by giving the whole game away with a 60 minute time limit. So it doesn't seem so bad to give half the game away with the same time limit. Mix and match time limiting and feature limiting can be good. |
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| SOme of the best selling shareware titles offer little or nothing in the demo. One site said they sold more copies of their games to users who were not offered a demo on the website, than to users who were offered a demo. Popcap's games, like Bejeweled, only offer you something like five plays of the full featured game and then it won't let you play again. I plan to limit my own puzzle game in this manner. Of course the way in which you limit a game depends on the type of game. And if you don't offer a demo at all, then you'll have a hard time finding websites to offer your game and get the word out, since there will be no game to offer at all. You also will have nothing to put on download.com. |
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| Yeah, it was Dexterity who tried not offering a demo, but you know they can do that since they've been in business for a long time and make nearly a million a year with their own nice large customer base ;0 It's definitely a balance and it depends on the game. I've heard of games tripling their conversion ratio by switching from a feature limited demo to a full version of the game with a 60 minute time limit. |
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| Care to name names? |
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| I quite like this! There is one annoying thing, and that is that the menus cannot be navigated with the keyboard. When playing with keyboard, it's stupid that you need to use the mouse to click 'Next level'! The shadow below the ball, also seems to come and go as it pleases. Apart from that it's a nice, and well thought out little puzzler! |
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| When playing with keyboard, it's stupid that you need to use the mouse to click 'Next level'! It's (stupidly) undocumented, but you CAN press ENTER to move to the next puzzle... As for marketing, I definitely learned a lot of hard lessons with my first game, Bubble Bomb. I've uploaded this game to download.com (should be live on the 8th) and to Tucows (should be live on the 6th). Tucows has reported back to me that it's getting 5/5 cows so that makes me happy. They get a lot of visitors so hopefully that will translate into lots of traffic for the demo... Of course, I'm also sending it to hundreds of other shareware sites, but download.com and tucows are the big boys. Gotta give them priority. :) |
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| Yeah we got a mad amount of traffic from Download.com and also got 5/5 from Tucows. Both of those are very important. Your game looks rad, I'll have to check it out. I like that style. |
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| Heh, since the release I've gotten a strong desire to add the things I never got to in the current version. Different kinds of tiles (teleporters, spinners, jumpers, etc), multiple level puzzles, and other things. If this game does well, I would definitely be open to doing a "gold" edition or something. |
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| " Yeah we got a mad amount of traffic from Download.com and also got 5/5 from Tucows. Both of those are very important. " Well not the 5/5 from Tucows. I got that for my screensaver and it still didn't sell. :-) |
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| Well, traffic doesn't guarantee sales - but it's the requisite starting point. :) |
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| I would loe to post my stuff on downloads.com.. but i dont have the spare ca$h =(. |
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| Hey, I posted a new demo of the game ... http://www.respawngames.com/sethspuzzleboxes/ I decided to open up the first 9 puzzles in story mode and lock out "timed" mode instead. I think this will grab people a little better if they get interested in the story and such. |
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| Nice game! |
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| Is there anyhting different in the demo besides the change to which modes you have access to? |
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| Is there anyhting different in the demo besides the change to which modes you have access to? Not really. Other than changing a few of the "par" values that were reported to me as wrong. Some people came up with some really creative (and shorter) solutions to some of them. :) |
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| Woohoo! Quick update, but SETH's Puzzles Boxes is the featured game on download.com. http://download.com.com/2001-2012-0.html?tag=dir Makes me happy, anyway. :) |
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| Man, I really like this game! Totally awesome and now it's only $14.95 eh? I think I'll pick it up a little later as I'm not on my own computer atm. Great Job! |
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| Jeremy Awesome! Glad you like it. :) |
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| EpicBoy Hey, check your support email. |
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| Tried the demo it's realy a great concept!! I was only let down cus the game is a bit buggy as in the sprite drawing order.... I needs a bit more polish... |
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| It ran fine on one computer then I bought the full version for my laptop and that's when it went all buggy on me (can't read any of the text and there's some sorting issues on the cloud level it seems. On the desktop though it was highly polished. It sometimes amazes me how different a game can be between two pretty similar computers. It's almost as if computers running programs are like people with their own opinions. Oh well, I'm sure it run fine on one of my machines. |
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| Darklordz I was only let down cus the game is a bit buggy as in the sprite drawing order.... It is? Where? Can you send me a screenshot or post one here? I never saw any issues with drawing order or else I would have fixed them before releasing. :) |
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its mostly the arrow and x button in the text baloons they apears earlier then the baloons also sometime when the robot is talkin the button >> and X are where the gurls baloon is supposed to be but it isnt... Am i making any sence? first ya see this then the baloon apears... Happen all the time troughout the game... Also i don't think it's very original to use M$ Icons... |
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| Oh, that's by design. The buttons always appear in the same spot on the screen so you don't have to move your mouse up and down the screen to click the arrows in each window during cut scenes. That would get highly annoying. I could have positioned them halfway between the two or something, but even that looked weird. In the end, this seemed to be a decent compromise. As for the icons, well, originality isn't the goal. Functionality is. Is there any question what that red X button does? No, everyone immediately knows. |
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| BTW, screw you, you had me worried that there was some serious rendering issue or something. :P |
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| heh, it seems kinda odd, when the girl starts to talk her baloon apears underneath the buttons and it's not like the fade in, they just aprear. And that makes it look like a flaw. it's merely suggestion that that is the only flaw with the game design other then that i love it....And functionality is 1 thing but it's eye candy that sells. Now i personaly would be like "Hey thats from M$, what a rip off..." but thats just my opinion i could be wrong... EDIT: I forgot to mention that i played out the demo in 3 mins... |
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| You are wrong! ;) |
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| Oo do some searching online about m$ useage policy on their icons i think u;ll find that it's illegal! Checkout this FAQ. if they cant use m$ icons why can you? http://www.visualpharm.com/faq.html http://www.microsoft.com/permission/copyrgt/cop-img.htm#Icons It's just a hint :P OO guess ur out of luck huh... Icons Microsoft does not generally allow the use of our icons in advertising, in books and other printed matter, on clothing or other promotional items, on-line and internet locations, in software applications, in television programs, commercials, movies, or on video tape, as they are NOT to be used as "artwork" or design elements. EXCEPTIONS: Use of our icons is permissible in relation to a training manual or documentation written for and/or about a Microsoft product. In such cases, use of Microsoft icons must be specific to the function of the icon within the Microsoft software, and not used as a graphical element or design for your own purposes. Further, icons cannot be modified or altered and must appear as they would within the Microsoft software. In addition, Software developers (ISV’s) may be allowed to use icons specifically provided in Microsoft Software Development Kits (SDK’s) and certain other programming tools and applications, (like Visual Basic or Visual C++), provided the use of icons is specifically covered in the Microsoft End User License Agreement (EULA). Please carefully review your EULA and other product documentation to determine your rights to use Microsoft icons. You may also wish to note that Microsoft Press has recently released the Microsoft® Management Console Design and Development Kit, ISBN 0-7356-1038-X. Redistribution rights for certain icons are granted under the EULA. Please visit http://mspress.microsoft.com/books/4479.htm for more information. i think im enjoying this too much.... |
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| I think we'll need a better definition of "icon" then. In my mind, an icon are those pictures you see on the desktop and quicklaunch toolbar. Confirming my suspicion, the example shown in the link you provided is the desktop icon for Outlook. The red "X" and such are standard graphics that are provided with the base operating system that every app is, well, forced to use. So if it was illegal to use those, every company on the planet would be libel. |
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| THere has been some good input on the game and I thinkit is good but not finished yet |
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| Not finished yet? |
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| Yeah, what are you talking about. The game is quite nice, playable, polished, and only $14.95. There is kind of a little text bug for me but only on my laptop. You can never get a game to run perfect on every system though. |
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