Postmortem: Into The Blue SD

Welcome to our first #iDevBlogADay post in which I want to revisit our first game Into The Blue SD. It is in the appstore by now for about 2 years more than one year. So it's about time to figure out what went right and wrong and what things can be learnt for the future. Let me illustrate what the process was like.

The Beginning

The idea for the game was obviously influenced - as you probably expect - by the game Flight Control. It wasn't our intention to make a clone in space, we just thought it might be cool to make an RTS/Action title that is playable on a small screen and is as easy to understand and pickup as FlightControl with a bit more to do than directing spaceships.

As newcomer indie developers we didn't know much about prototyping so we immediately started with development.

The game idea was the following: Topdown view on the surface of a planet. Base in the middle. Player has to land transporters to top up weapons. Enemies attack the base. Fight them off. Hiscore++

Sounds simple right?

Early Concept Art

Little did we know

We both soon realized that it wasn't that simple afer all. There were heaps and heaps of design decisions to make: Should the transporters crash into each other while landing? At first: yes => Frustrating. Then: don't collide within range of the base => Confusing. Finally: No collision at all=> Better.

Should you be able to draw lines or touch and shoot torpedos? Should the number of torpedos be limited and if you don't bring in transporters you can be out of ammo? Unlimited ammo?

Game over when a transporter is shot or can the base be destroyed?

You got the picture.

Crossroads

About 2 months later and lots and lots of design decisions later we had the game done. You had to land transporters at your base and blast away incoming enemies. That's it. You get hiscore++ once you shot an enemy and it was game over once a transporter was down.

We found that the game was "ok" and maybe "fun", but we weren't amazed about it[2]. Markus had ideas to add more levels (or missions as they are called within the game) with different objectives to make it more interesting. I didn't like the idea at first since I knew that those missions also meant a lot of work and yes: scope creap. Also I wasn't sure adding more would pay off and make it a better game after all. I can't remember anymore what the thought process was like but in the end we decided to give it a go and add more missions. Probably because the gameplay felt too flat and repeatitive.

Missions

We started out with about 10 missions in mind and for reasons that are unknown to me now, I decided consciously against crafting a level editor for that. Instead I had some sort of base level class that could be extended to fit different scenarios and different game over conditions. It didn't take long to bring the missions to life but it took ages to polish them and adjust the difficulty to be right. After 6 missions were finetuned, we felt that it was time to get the game out of the door. We had been working on the game for 5 months straight and just couldn't do it anymore. We didn't have a clue, if people would like the game anyway so why adding more missions? So we went ahead and added a survival endless mode and OpenFeint with hiscores and achievements to add more replay value.

Final Game Screenshot

Outcome

Since the release end of December 2009 the game was featured multiple times by Apple and was reviewed by many youtubers and game sites. We got a lot of good feedback on the game design, graphics, sound and unique gameplay.

The main issues people have with the game is the limited number of missions (8+2 extra modes by now), repeatitive gameplay, the way difficulty progresses (first missions too easy, later too hard) and controls (line-drawing AND touch-to-shoot).

Despite some sales peaks the game seems to have a strong tendency covering dust and sinking towards rock bottom.

Until now our efforts to make this a viable project (going free, more content, additional features, LITE version and advertisement) have more or less failed. To give you a rough idea, we have a plus of around $1500 since release which we both have to share.

So what went wrong?

1. Lack of Prototyping

Due to missing prototyping and game conception prior to the start of development, we sacrificed a lot of valuable time on coding and graphics that we later had to cut out or rebuild from scratch. I think there's only so much you can find out with prototyping and game concepts before you have a game in your hand that you can work with. However there was definitely potential to get answers cheaper than the way we did.

2. Missions: Decision too late, No Tool Support

When we decided that the game should have multiple missions the main development on the game was already done and the game code wasn't really built to support various missions. Also the decision to not make a level editor wasn't wise, since handmade mission creation turned out to take too long.

3. Difficult Balancing

The way the game was designed it was very cumbersome to adjust difficulty and to get the missions balanced. One enemy less and it's too boring. One too many it's too hard. Maybe there's the perfect one-line-formula out there to make this happen. We, however, never found it.

4. Unholy Marriage

The decision to control one part of the game by drawing lines (transporters) and to control the other part by touch (weapons) is surely interesting but despite our efforts it never felt 100% right and I think that this combination in case of ITB was doomed to suffer. It often occured to users, playing the game for the first time, that transporters where moved when they meant to shoot and vice-versa.

5. Into The Blue

In fact we also picked this title because it described the way we rushed into this project and didn't really know where we are going. We didn't have alternative game ideas in mind before we picked this one. We just went with the first idea and that witout prototyping.

What went right?

1. Unique Game Concept

After all the game has an interesting and unique game concept with a lot of challenges which gave us the opportunity to learn a hell of a lot about game design and development. Also the game concept and particular look&feel(&listen) got us a lot of reviews and let the game stand out.

2. First Game ever, shipped, plenty of reviews and featured by Apple!

Even though the game neither got us rich nor was able to top up our budget, we still consider it a huge success because we got it done & working and made the game concept work after all.

3. Pickup & Play right away

Our efforts to make this an RTS/Action mashup that is easy to pickup and play worked out. I watched a lot of people that don't own a touch device or played a mobile game in their life before and were able to understand the game right away.

4. Challenging & Fun

A lot of people told me that the missions were well balanced and challenging so that it was hard to put the game down. Whilst not everyone shares this experience my hunch is that we did more right than wrong making the game balanced and fun to play.

Conclusion

1. Prototyping vs. Content Creation & Balancing

As already stated a lot of game design questions could have been answered with less efforts.

If we had realized early that the game only works with plenty of different levels, we would have either dismissed the project or designed the game in a way that more content can be created with less effort.

2. Alternative Game Conepts

If we had put more time into evaluating different game ideas we might have come up with another game that is more fun and simpler to create or picking this game would have been a more conscious decision.

3. First Game? Keep it simple!

After all I think the game was too complex for a first game. Spending 5 months and probably more time with updates and promotions on your first game is a risky undertaking. In this time it might have been possible to make two games where the 2nd one could have already profited from lessons learned while doing the first. If you take up running you don't start with a marathon, do you?

Future Development

Although we heard a lot of voices saying "an iPad version would be so cool", we have been quite reluctant to spend more time on the game in the past . We would actually love an iPad version and/or sequel but are still unsure if it's a good idea. My hunch is that there are more viable game concepts to pursue.

What are your thoughts on our game and first #iDevBlogADay post? Any more lessons we should learn?

Thanks!

We would like to thank everyone who supported us to get this game out of the door, tested and known across the internet. Thanks to everyone who wrote reviews, made youtube videos, rated the game on iTunes and emailed us with ideas and feedback. Thanks to OpenFeint to put the game on their spotlight back in the days. Thanks to Apple and the review team. Thanks to the cocos2d community for helping us bringing the game to life. Thanks to PlayHaven for supporting us getting their SDK implemented and last but not least thanks to the creator (@mysterycoconut) of #iDevBlogADay and everyone who is reading and writing under this tag.

[1] = 2D Rockers are Markus, the guy for gfx+sfx and me doing the coding.

[2] = It's so hard to tell if your game is good after you played it a zillion times during development.