Rotor: My first indie game (Schmup)
polycounter lvl 19
Rotor was made by
*Ben Mathis - 3D art www.poopinmymouth.com
*Ágúst Karlsson - programming is.linkedin.com/pub/ágúst-karlsson/9/86a/908
*Peter Boehme - illustrator http://www.peterboehme.com/
*Ian Dorsch - Sound http://www.iandorsch.com/
Snjóhús Games is myself and my husband Ágúst. We wanted to make a small game as a proof of concept of working together as a small team. We were inspired by a lot of older classic arcade games.
Google play
iTunes
The trailer:
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcNsuJPYx7k"]Rotor official trailer - YouTube[/ame]screenshots:
The art!
The monetization works in two ways. There is a free version, and a paid version. In the game, collecting drops from enemies allows primary and secondary weapon upgrades. The free version is limited to upgrading to level 2. If one wishes to continue playing, it is possible with a level 2 weapon, but the game's difficulty will most likely make progression above level 3 or 4 impossible. A 2 USD (1.50 euro) purchase price will unlock the full version, with nothing further to buy. However, we do have inn-app purchasing, which is basically the ability to cheat, to buy any weapon upgrade, or overcharge shields for a fee. It is not required, but we are experimenting with monetization schemes.
Start to finish is longer than I want to admit, but were the time condensed to full time, 40 hour weeks, the project took Ágúst and I around 8 months.
The number one thing you can do to help, is to download the free version and rate it positively. Hopefully you will enjoy it enough to buy, but just sharing the link, and rating the youtube trailer, and Android/iTunes apps will give us good exposure.
Google play
iTunes
Replies
There's no chance you'll port this thing to the PC, is there? I don't have one o' dem fancy phones/tablets :poly005:
what's also really cool is the camera - not like old school topdown where it was almost literally top down - here you can see quite far into the distance which gives it much more depth and sense of actually flying over the terrain
i'm not too keen on the GUI though - it looks too soft/bubbly and hmm... too painter'ly
cheers
and grats on a finished product
There is a PC version coming, though it will be paid only (not going to have a licensing server for it). Also coming are Amazon Kindle, Barnes and Noble Nook, Leap Motion, and Ouya.
Grabbed it now
Really great post! Thanks for the breakdown of your techniques
Hey, I can't even get past the first stage, so kudos to you! :-D
Haha, thanks. It's a tough game, for sure.
I like the art style. Nice uv tequnices to!
The environment pieces were mostly the things I was least satisfied with. Good crits, I appreciate it.
Already working on our next app!
Did you use anything to generate a base for the terrain?
Way too much text / dialogue, I never read any of it. I'd say trim it down to 10% of what it is, and make the font bigger.
Stages feel really long, and the density of interactions / input is really high -- like I'm constantly swiping around, and it demands so much attention it's exhausting. I don't think I'd ever play this on the subway, it requires so much from me, there's never any pause / release / rest.
Make bullet meshes / sprites twice as large (I can barely see the bullets on my phone) but make the player hitbox smaller than the model.
In general it's hard to do a bullet-hell shooter like this because my finger is always going to be directly in the way of the most important area of the screen.
Trens: iterates on joke
joke isn't funny, frankie sad, trens tries fix joke
joke backfire
Frankie had nothing to do with joke
Trens is bad person
There needs to be more lowpoli stuff.
Rotor is simply AWESOME...I've seen your ships posted here and there for a while now, and it was great to finally play your game; I bought it immediately...I love your weapon upgrade system, and I love how even when you get powerful upgrades and breeze through a level (after struggling), that you go right back to struggling on the next level
I would like to suggest that your weapon particles probably could benefit from being set to a shader of like Particle/Additive? The chunkyness to them feels kind of wierd at times, and adding some intensity to them might be kinda cool
It's a really fun, addictive game and I hope you guys are proud
That is why we designed the text to be so easy to skip through, there for those interested, super easy to skip if not.
As for the design crits, I agree it is not very similar to most more casual mobile apps, but it was not designed to be. It is on the mobile space, but we wanted to capture the longer play and more challenging aspect of older arcade shooters.
I have heard many crits about the bullets, so it is definitely something we are going to change hopefully for the better.
As for the finger being in the way, the plane is actually offset from the finger point, and I have never felt like my finger was in the way, but we have heard a few crits like this, so we might offset it further.
It definitely plays better on 7" screens and up.
Thanks for the kind words everyone else, it has been really fun watching the reception of this after working so hard and long on it. :-)
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Also, sorry for the bump, but it's worth it I think!