Show HN: 6 months ago I quit my job to pursue indie dev. Here is our first game

http://www.playadrift.com

858 329 13 years ago

I wanted to share this with you guys because it's taken around 3 years of reading HN to really convince myself to quit my job and build my a business with my friends

nicksergeant2• 13 years ago

This game is really fun. Congrats on that.

ceoloide• 13 years ago

I agree! Congratulations!

NDizzle• 13 years ago

Yeah, I got to level 9 before I had to pull myself away. Good work.

bsaul2• 13 years ago

Congrats on doing that. Please keep us posted on the progress of the commercial part. Now that the game is out and since it's a good game, i'd be really curious to know how you plan to get people to buy it, and if it succeeded.

damoncali4• 13 years ago

You should charge for it.

tobyjsullivan2• 13 years ago

I agree. Free demo on website + charge for app = profit... probably.

Does the website demo work on an iPhone (I don't have one to test)?

damoncali4• 13 years ago

By the way, the parent of this comment is getting a lot of up votes. Others seem to agree with me.

exch• 13 years ago

He/she probably can't. The concept is not new. Here's a flash version of the same game. it is a few years old.

[1] http://www.addictinggames.com/puzzle-games/3dlogic2.jsp

seanalltogether22• 13 years ago

We felt that out of the gate making it free to download was our best chance for success, but who know, if we start getting into A/B testing in the future, we may find that keeping the game free in the browser and charging for app store installs is the way to go.

mtrn• 13 years ago

I don't play a lot of games, but this is really cute. It reminds me of Freefall by Denis Auroux (http://math.berkeley.edu/~auroux/software/freefall/index.htm...: a Java Applet (1996)).

CodeMage• 13 years ago

Congratulations! Looks even nicer than "3D Logic" by Alex Matveev [1] and has an advantage of being playable on mobile platforms.

[1] http://www.kongregate.com/games/AlexMatveev/3d-logic

philh• 13 years ago

Is it intended that any solution will have all squares coloured? I like that property, and I think most of the online levels have it, but I solved level eight with some blanks.

If I had an iDevice I would pay for this. Good luck.

MicahWedemeyer• 13 years ago

It's a fun game and has a great style. Great work!

I'm not sure how making a game for free is a business, but still, best of luck!

NathanKP• 13 years ago

Very nice! I beat the ten demo levels too quickly, and found myself wanting more. Two things:

* An iPad version is needed. The graphics seem to be high res enough to make an iPad version feasible, and if this is on the iPad I'd buy it for sure. I don't really like the idea of trying to trace out the paths on the tiny iPhone screen.

* Charge money for it. I'd definitely be willing to pay personally.

shawnc• 13 years ago

Great game! Played to level 5 on your site, heading to download it onto iPhone now, for more playage later.

Without having looked yet, what is your revenue model, if there is one? Is the plan to release this for free, build an audience, a name, get feedback and all that - to go bigger later with a new game?

danielhughes• 13 years ago

Well done. I love that you allow users to try out the game on your site first. I wasn't initially inclined to download the app, but after trying the game I was hooked.

ctdonath2• 13 years ago

Ditto. Was "meh" on yet another free trial, but one easy click "hey why not" and 10 levels later I'm downloading it, and figuring if addictive enough a buck for more levels is cheap.

seanalltogether22• 13 years ago

It's actually really good to know that spending the time to make an online demo was worth the effort.

lost_name• 13 years ago

How much would you say you knew about your game before you quit your job? By which I mean, had you sort of started on it before leaving?

gilesvangruisen• 13 years ago

Awesome! Very fun and a good challenge.

skhamkar• 13 years ago

Great work! The UX/Design is really great.

Jemaclus• 13 years ago

I've played this game before (well, not this one, but the same game by a different company). Very enjoyable and your UI looks better than the other. The question I have is: how does one go about creating a puzzle game? I've always wondered. It seems like a lot of work to make something that's difficult-but-solvable.

seanalltogether22• 13 years ago

Yeah, its a clone of an old shockwave game I played about 10 years ago and felt it would be perfect for touch interaction. For this puzzle game specifically, I found that starting with the solution and working my backwards was actually the best way to build levels. I'm not sure if that holds true for other puzzle games.

clebio2• 13 years ago

Interesting. I kept wanting to rotate the cube in your game. Nice to see it in the 3d-logic game the other commenter mentions. Do you plan to add that?

adam-a• 13 years ago

Maybe http://www.kongregate.com/games/alexmatveev/3d-logic . I had the same feeling, it's annoyingly hard to find the original version, there are a lot of reskins and other very similar games.

luxstyle• 13 years ago

Interesting game. I downloaded it and will rate. Good luck!

alexvr• 13 years ago

It's simple and elegant. I might have to grab it on my iPhone. And as others have said, it's a great idea to offer it online to give prospective users a taste of the game. Now I can see if it's challenging enough to be worth my time :P

fitzpasd• 13 years ago

Fantastic, reminds me of one of my favorite mobile games - FreeFlow.

I'd rather if my move didn't get set until I stop holding down the cursor (may be different on the mobile version, don't have an iPhone).

aqme28• 13 years ago

What is your monetization strategy if you have one? Ads? Free now but paid in the future?

ctdonath2• 13 years ago

Seems there's an in-app purchase, $0.99 for additional levels.

ETA: Thanks for no ads. Easy-priced paid content is worth not cluttering my head with more noise.

seanalltogether22• 13 years ago

For now the strategy is to avoid ads on iOS and sell in-game level packs, however I'm not sure how well that model works on android, I'd love to know if anyone has thoughts on that, it seems most people just do ad driven games on android

melling• 13 years ago

Small tangent, but what is the state of the Lodsys in-app patent? Are mobile devs protected at this point? I also read somewhere that the patent was suppose to expire soon.

I went with two apps and a Lite version. It's a bit of a hassle.

jhdevos• 13 years ago

There are so many free things on Android that it's hard to get myself to try paid for games. The exception is games that I get to know through some other source, like your excellent web page with live demo.

I'd pay for this game on android, but paid level pack would also work for me.

ebbv• 13 years ago

Well done. Visually pleasing, engaging and entertaining.

Just grabbed it for my phone for free but I would have easily paid $0.99 for it. :)

km3k• 13 years ago

I really like the look of this. Any plans for an Android version?

seanalltogether22• 13 years ago

absolutely, its probably our highest priority for the next month or so, we focused on just iOS for release since we have a small team.

yaddayadda• 13 years ago

Please post an update to HN when you release the Android version.

peeters• 13 years ago

FYI, there is a less-polished clone on the Android store called "Flow Cube".

nkozyra• 13 years ago

The game is definitely polished and nice.

How do you intend (or do you intend) to ramp up revenue to match your previous salary?

obviouslygreen• 13 years ago

Definitely well-conceived and fun! As others have said, very well done on the web-based version. It's too bad it's not on the Play store, though, any plans for an Android version?

[edit: Asked and answered below. As an Android user (and obviously this is anecdotal but it's all I've got), I spend more money on in-game purchases -- reasonable ones, not FarmCityWhatever insanity -- than I do purchasing them outright. For something like this, level packs seem like a good IAP.]

knes• 13 years ago

I did the first few level on the website and I think they are a bit too easy

nicksergeant2• 13 years ago

Did you keep going? They get more challenging.

precisioncoder2• 13 years ago

The later ones are more challenging, it's pretty fun =)

n00b101• 13 years ago

I like this game, good idea!

Scene_Cast23• 13 years ago

Not to detract from the fun of the game, but I get a strong feeling that this is probably a very studied problem in topology - and that thought keeps on nagging me to write a solver script :)

namank• 13 years ago

Haha, yes, that's what I thought too.

But that's what makes it fun. It's the perfect combination of familiarity & challenge!

seanalltogether22• 13 years ago

Yes in fact I've spent the past 6 months thinking about whether i could build a level generator that can verify and solve the levels too. The way I see it, with a simple 5x5x5 cube with 5 colors on it, the number of possible combinations to check is 75^5, which might take awhile to brute force, so there needs to be a intelligent way to map lines.

clebio2• 13 years ago

The general case might be something like that, but you only need any given configuration that fits those parameters (that is, you're not trying to solve complete, abstract topological problems). Maybe if you arbitrarily fix the first path, thereby artificially reducing the solution space? Just thinking out loud. Very cool puzzle!

EDIT: or even take a lower-level solution and inject another path into. So every prior level is a seed to future levels. Rotation of the three faces, even cycling the colors, would probably make it hard to recognize the older level within the new one (at least, for casual use).

lkozma2• 13 years ago

I think solving any of these can be reduced to a max-flow problem, and thus it is efficiently solvable.

Scene_Cast23• 13 years ago

My thoughts: what if you select the initial 5 colors, then recursively "extend" one of the colors in one of three possible directions. The sum of results is your level-space. Store results in a DB. Then, select all levels that have a)cell coverage of 85%+ b)min path length of 5 on all paths.

In order to cut down some of the search, you can make the recursion smarter (e.g. extend one color at a time, early cycle / impossibility prediction, etc)

barristan• 13 years ago

This is an ideal problem for constraint solving. If there is one thing constraint solving does well it is make NP-Hard problems more manageable. I wrote up a quick solution to the first puzzle in sabr (1), you can see what the puzzle result looks like here (2). The key insight is: "each color must be surrounded by exactly two of its color, unless it is on an end, in which case it is surrounded by exactly one" after that it's just a matter of coding it up. It's not much extra work to go from here to a generator, which I may make later if I have time. Cool puzzle game, I like it ;D.

1) https://github.com/dbunker/SABR/blob/master/module/other-tes...

2) https://github.com/dbunker/SABR/blob/master/module/other-tes...

whileonebegin• 13 years ago

Nice game. Please post any monetary results, once you have some data. I thought making serious money from a game in the app store today is very difficult.

arasmussen• 13 years ago

For the web based version, I might save the last color they clicked on and then use that when they click on a white square because I've found the game a little harder to play with that feature missing on a laptop with a trackpad.

prawks2• 13 years ago

Question: how essential do you think it was for you to quit your job to create this game? How much longer would it have taken you had you developed it on the side/weekends?

I'm in no way trying to argue your decision, I'm genuinely curious how much work it was to create a game like this. Also, how much of the conceptual work for this game had you done prior to leaving your job?

seanalltogether22• 13 years ago

I would say pretty essential, but that's really because of my personality. I've started and stopped more projects then I can count over the past ten years while holding a steady job. Without saving up money and leaving my job, I'd probably have a half finished game sitting in my projects folder right now.

prawks2• 13 years ago

Thanks! It's a very fun game; it really gets me hooked in terms of difficulty around level 12-14.

cacois• 13 years ago

Neat idea, but FYI the web version doesn't seem to work in Chrome.

robertfw• 13 years ago

Experiencing this as well

edit: It seems that on reload, things are working fine, there is some glitchyness with the intro help text not always disappearing

precisioncoder2• 13 years ago

Worked for me in Chrome, so either fixed or may depend on version

heywire• 13 years ago

I'm also not able to get it to work. The only link that seems to work is the one to the iTunes store...

HyprMusic• 13 years ago

Great work. The fact you can play it straight away on the website is great, I'm not really a games player but I quickly got hooked.

Out of interest, do you make the levels by hand, or do you have a script to generate them? Would be interesting to know the rules for a valid level against an impossible level.

seanalltogether22• 13 years ago

We made the levels by hand, writing a script to generate and validate levels is still an interesting math problem I would love to tackle if i had the time, its just very difficult from the limited attempt I made.

sbochins• 13 years ago

I really like your landing page. Do you know of any other game devs that have a playable demo on their landing page or did you come up with the idea yourself?

38leinad• 13 years ago

Looks great! Did not play much yet but I guess it needed a lot of trial/error and deep insights to designer some of the hard "levels".

knowaveragejoe• 13 years ago

Your game struck me as pretty similar to "Crazy Cube", a fairly popular flash puzzle game. I'm sure it's crossed your mind(s), but if you used an entire three-dimensional cube like that you could probably get even more permutations for levels. Just a thought :)

Edit: Ah, didn't realize you increased the density of squares on the cube as levels progressed. Very nice.

bornon5• 13 years ago

I'm impressed with your take on the level list. It's so nice to see something more than a grid of colored, numbered boxes. It may be a simple puzzle game, but approaches like that make it feel like an adventure.

The game is beautiful, too. Wonderful job!

lanna• 13 years ago

Very neat, looks much better than Flow. Congrats. You should charge at least $0.99 for it, no need to be free.

Swizec• 13 years ago

This is a really awesome game! Great work!

Just one thing, the web version seems kinda blurry. Even on a non-retina 5+ year old LCD.

Just checked and it's even blurrier on a retina ... the website itself is super crisp, but the textures in the game area itself kind of aren't.

MrUnderhill• 13 years ago

Very nice. Happy to see it work in Opera too - thanks!

slajax• 13 years ago

So much great feedback. Now I REALLY wanna see it but it crashes flash for me on latest chrome osx. Bummer.

vinayan3• 13 years ago

Level 5 is super hard

mariocesar• 13 years ago

Beautiful, If you include a puzzle editor would be awesome

Scene_Cast23• 13 years ago

Just finished my first play-through through the 10 web levels. Comments: an "erase" functionality might be nice, besides the "reset puzzle". By the end, I figured out a pattern to solving them (identify color with the least path choices, choose one and recursively solve from there) - but then again, I don't like Sudoku either.

Congrats on the release, and best of luck with the game!

oftenwrong2• 13 years ago

I only played a few levels so far, but I really enjoyed it. Excellent concept. I would probably buy it if it was available on Play.

Some feedback from my experience playing the HTML5 version on a computer with a mouse (Firefox 19) and on an android smartphone (Chrome 18):

- On both platforms the "LOADING" message does not go away after hitting "close" on the little instruction cloud, and the level does not load. Only after hitting the reset button (with the circular-arrow symbol) does the level load.

- On my smartphone, my finger tracing can easily outpace the tile coloring, and this leads to some tiles being skipped. The animation is also choppy. Probably not an issue on the native version.

- I think you should prevent diagonal tile markings since they do not work to connect the star tiles anyway.

- If there was a way to stop accidental over-writing other colors due to clumsy mouse usage, that would be nice. This seems like less of a problem on a touch screen.

seanalltogether22• 13 years ago

thanks for feedback, i think we have bugs with asset loading in the playable demo but I haven't been able to easily debug it

oftenwrong2• 13 years ago

I tried the iOS version on a friend's iPad. I had none of the problems I mentioned, and it was really nice on the big screen. I am only about halfway done with the free levels, and hoping there are more special tiles like the rainbow-swirl one. Do the level packs come with more special tile types?

city41• 13 years ago

The web version did not work on Metro IE10 on a Surface Pro. It didn't recognize my touches.

dylanz• 13 years ago

It looks very nice! Here is some initial feedback:

- Even though it's bouncing, I didn't see the "play now" arrow, and went directly for the video button. You might also want a "Play now" button in the main button list.

- In the video, I had to watch quite a bit of it to even know what the game was actually about. I would have liked if you showed me actual gameplay earlier in the video.

Keep it up!

justjimmy• 13 years ago

Same sentiments. I didn't get the game till the last 10 seconds - and up till that point, it was rather boring.

But It's a beautiful looking game and when the light bulb went off of how the game is played, I will be downloading it.

Perhaps edit the video so it shows more of the core gameplay (like the part in the last 10s in the video).

seanalltogether22• 13 years ago

Thanks for the feedback, I think accurately portraying game mechanics is a challenge we keep try to solve. Any thought on a way to better convey how the game works?

tripzilch2• 13 years ago

In the video, use onscreen text, like "connect the squares that have the same colour" (sorry I didn't play your game, but this is what I got from the video that it's about, I'm not sure how the air balloons tie in though).

astalwick• 13 years ago

Nice work. The playable website is fantastic.

FWIW, I would have paid $0.99 up front. I bought the level pack, but it's pretty rare that a game will hook me to the point that I make it through the free levels. I probably wouldn't have bought it if I hadn't seen this post - if I'd just stumbled across the game somewhere.

enraged_camel3• 13 years ago

Nothing happens when I click on the arrow that says "play now."

seanalltogether22• 13 years ago

which browser are you using?

damoncali4• 13 years ago

this got me too. I clicked the arrow, not what it was pointing at.

enraged_camel3• 13 years ago

Chrome 25.0.1364.152

seivan• 13 years ago

Looks incredibly amazing! Quality work. This is what I say is missing from most iOS games out there.

You did good. I hope it sells. I am gonna pay for it now.

t_hozumi• 13 years ago

Are there correct answers more than one? I could complete the Level8 without filling all spaces. I prefer only single possible answer, which fills all spaces.

scottchin• 13 years ago

Looks great! Congrats on the release!

Did you work on this game by yourself or with other people?

Did you use any existing game frameworks like Cocos2D or Unity?

quickpost• 13 years ago

Just FYI, google thinks your dev blog is / has spam:

http://i.imgur.com/za2UXWh.png

One a separate note - awesome game! I plan to buy it. On the web version, one thing I'd like would be able to toggle a miss clicked space back to "neutral" with a click. I'd also make the levels slightly harder before getting to level 5 - they all seemed too easy up to that point.

seanalltogether22• 13 years ago

Yeah I can't figure out where thats coming from, I've poured over my site to find it and even resubmitted to google and they don't see that spam when i manually submit. Maybe I should just go with a hosted solution and stop trying to manage wordpress on my own.

rachelbythebay• 13 years ago

[site:craftymind.com viagra]

Try that query on there. They managed to index a LOT of pages that way.

Here's the thing. Your site has been compromised. Look. I'll fetch the same page with two different user-agents. One will show up as some generic curl thing and the other will look like Google's crawler.

    $ curl http://www.craftymind.com/factory/guimark3/video/flash_720p_high.html > ordinary

    $ curl -A "Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Googlebot/2.1; +http://www.google.com/bot.html)" http://www.craftymind.com/factory/guimark3/video/flash_720p_high.html > googlebot

So I look for the term in the first file.

    $ grep viagra ordinary
    $

... Nothing.

I do the same for the second.

    $ grep viagra googlebot
    [ ... tons and tons of garbage ... ]

Your site is running something which only emits garbage when Googlebot (or something resembling it) hits it. Install a user-agent switcher in your browser and you can see it for yourself.

Sorry.

frontsideair• 13 years ago

Awesome little game. How do you plan on making money, if I may ask? I really like the design language, very "flat" and modern looking. I'd like to see more games taking this approach.

unfamiliar• 13 years ago

Great stuff.

* The cube could do with some lighting hints

* Some visual clues on the menu would be helpful. I didn't know how to get past the tutorial besides randomly swiping.

iamwil• 13 years ago

Pretty great work with all the little touches. How were you able to write both the web version as well as the iOS versions? Did you have two different code bases, or did you use something like Phonegap or trigger.io?

Were you in game dev before you quit to do this?

And would there be a possibility of rotating the cube?

kayoone• 13 years ago

Id like to know this too, do you use some kind of JS wrapper for iOS ?

tonyhillerson6• 13 years ago

Nope, Web is all custom, iOS is all native, but the data format for the levels is shared.

AdamTReineke• 13 years ago

Only 10 levels?

bsaul2• 13 years ago

Reminds me of bit of "colorbind" and "flow" iphone games. it's really cool to see how small changes to a game makes it interesting again.

snarfman• 13 years ago

Reminds me very much of Flow Free: iOS: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/flow-free/id526641427 Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bigduckgam...

Incidentally, it would be nice if you could backtrack to remove colored path blocks if you make a mistake like accidentally dragging across a small corner. I've only tried the webapp version, so not sure if that works in the iOS one.

kdazzle• 13 years ago

Lots of fun! Great looking and all that, too! Except the strategy gets a little stale after the second level when you realize that at least one of the colors always has to take a really roundabout way to get to its partner.

itry• 13 years ago

Whats your business model?

fishercs• 13 years ago

just played through it and it's a pretty great game. fun and easy to pickup and play right away. so more levels?

Sumaso• 13 years ago

Just wanted to add my congrats!

Very impressive!

webwanderings• 13 years ago

Nice and challenging. Is this an original idea? I don't play many such games.

tonyhillerson6• 13 years ago

Soundtrack for the game, for your consideration and enjoyment: https://soundcloud.com/tackmobile/sets/adrift-soundtrack

BoppreH• 13 years ago

The puzzle is identical to 3D Logic: http://www.kongregate.com/games/AlexMatveev/3d-logic-2-stron...

Are you sure this won't be a problem?

Edit:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5332485

  Yeah, its a clone of an old shockwave game I played
  about 10 years ago and felt it would be perfect for
  touch interaction.

If you played it 10 years ago, it seems like a reasonable idea to clone it, but the fact that the old devs have been active may prove itself to be an issue.

seanalltogether22• 13 years ago

The game I was referring to is hyperframe and has been available at least since 2002. http://www.shockwave.com/gamelanding/hyperframe.jsp, I don't know which one came first, but I can't imagine it will be a problem since we built our own unique levels.

pbhjpbhj• 13 years ago

That 3D Logic game worked how I expected this one too when I started.

>"it[']s a clone of an old shockwave game" //

Personally it doesn't look close enough to me to be a copyright infringement, game mechanics aren't copyrightable (but are patentable [depending on jurisdiction]). It wouldn't matter if the game had been released yesterday - in copyright terms - you can copy the concept of the game as long as you don't copy (or derive) your implementation.

IMO the 3D Logic version is vastly superior I'd just add a "hold button" to allow the cube to be held still whilst you draw.

bluetidepro• 13 years ago

I loved the demo! The 10th level had me stuck for a few. How many levels does the normal game have? It may be cool to include some text that describes that. Maybe like "Features 100+ levels. Try the first 10 below" or something like that.

ronyeh3• 13 years ago

Welcome to the App Store! I'm very impressed with what you guys have done in 6 months; it took me much longer to ship my first app.

Here's a little bit of feedback:

+ The graphics are super polished. Great work!

+ The touch interaction could use some work. Sometimes, I drag and I feel it colors squares that I don't want to color. Or it colors squares that I've successfully colored already, and it's not clear how I can backtrack. Take a look at path drawing games like Scramble with Friends to see how they handle backtracking.

+ I understand that advertisements are ugly and you want to keep your game very slick and polished, but... you are leaving a lot of money on the table. I would make your app a Universal Binary (add iPad support) and then throw an iAds/AdMob banner ad at the bottom of the screen. Then, make it very clear that if the user buys an IAP, that you'll remove ads forever. You can keep your iPhone version ad-free.

+ Why isn't your app just called "Adrift"? Was it taken already? "Adrift by Tack" looks a little clumsy, or err... tacky.

+ From appstorerankings.net, it looks like your keywords are "3d cube connect center adrift by tack". Center comes from Game Center, and Adrift by Tack comes from your title. So it looks like you don't use many keywords. As a new app on the store, I'd add more keywords like: puzzle, flow, board, etc. And try to find more unique ones where you might rank highly.

+ Good luck working the press! You've already done a great job with HN. :-)

Email me at {my_user_name}@gmail if you want to chat.

ronyeh3• 13 years ago

Additionally: Since you already have a web-playable version of the game, you should have a feature where a user can share a puzzle with a friend.

Once they complete a challenging puzzle, say something like "Congrats. You demolished that puzzle! Want to share this with a friend?" Then when they hit the FB/TW share icon, you can share the same exact puzzle (http://playadrift.com/?puzzle=3653) as a link. This will improve your virality.

Also, what toolkit did you use to write the iOS game? cocos2d? Or is there some magical toolkit that allows you to render out an HTML version of your app too???!!

seanalltogether22• 13 years ago

Thanks for all the feedback, it's all really good advice, We've gone back and forth on the ad thing and we're still not sold on whether to integrate them or not. The game was written in cocos2d, and I wrote the initial prototype in html5, so thats whats being used on the website. Also yeah "Adrift" was taken as an app store entry, so we had to figure out something else for the title, I agree its a bit clunky.

azharcs• 13 years ago

Very addicting. Amazing stuff.

flixic• 13 years ago

Very similar to one of my favorite flash games, 3D logic 2: http://www.kongregate.com/games/alexmatveev/3d-logic-2-stron...

mihn• 13 years ago

I just wanted to say that. But game still looks nice.

digitalzombie• 13 years ago

loved it, all 10 levels.

I wish you can undo a color so it can be neutral (grey again). But I realize you can repaint it with another color while you're in the middle of dragging, you just need to drag a diff color to the mess up paint.

vyder2• 13 years ago

You can drag a 'clear' color over colored tiles to clear them again.

alexobenauer• 13 years ago

Wow - that version on your website was brilliant. I was hooked by the second puzzle; and would have happily paid for this app. You must have spent a lot of time making a web version, but I can only imagine how well that is going to pay off; I probably never would have downloaded this game otherwise (I don't download games, basically, ever). But with it, you sold me very quickly, and definitely left money on the table...

edit: I would also love a shake gesture to clear the cube.

aw3c2• 13 years ago

You forgot about "colorblind users"! Best and easiest way to make the game accessible for people with color vision deficiencies would be to also use a unique symbol for each color and a variation of the same for the connecting tiles.

Very nice presentation!

mcdoh• 13 years ago

Fun game! I'm colorblind, though, and on level 10 the orange and green look very similar to my eyes. The ability to adjust colors, hues, or even just the "star" icons would be a huge help.

pm90• 13 years ago

Very nice game! I couldn't stop myself from wasting 10 mins playing this.

One minor feedback: when the tile color is yellow, the star should be colored different (because when highlighted, it is also yellow)

shloime• 13 years ago

Holy shit, that's addictive.

iends2• 13 years ago

Got to level 7 without much trouble, but started to feel guilty about playing at work :)

Would love to hear more about your technical stack, especially on the web side.

Congrats to shipping.

maerF0x0• 13 years ago

maybe im not so smart, but level 7 was killer for me.

volcom• 13 years ago

Very cool game, love the graphics. Good luck!

AndyKelley• 13 years ago

I would be interested in following up on this and seeing whether this makes you enough money to sustain your company.

bpn_sasi• 13 years ago

Great game and well made. I am sure you guys know the little quirks with the product ( like dragging sometimes includes blocks which I dont wanna include ) but on the whole very impressive. Good way to get the brain juices flowing :)

fourmii• 13 years ago

Great job! Congrats on a slick product. I noticed you had a link to listen to the soundtrack. Cute music, did you guys make the music too?

I'm glad people are getting onboard with HTML5 for apps and games. You should get a blog going, I'd love to hear about your trials and tribulations over the 6 months since you quit your job.

tonyhillerson6• 13 years ago

Yup, we made the music too. YOu can hear the soundtrack here: https://soundcloud.com/tackmobile/sets/adrift-soundtrack

tarikozket• 13 years ago

Great work! My advice is just change the first screenshot at the appstore. Because it's not feel like a game at the first impression when searching the game.

RexM• 13 years ago

Looks very nice and polished. I downloaded your app and played it for a bit. I would have paid for it after being able to play the web version and knowing what the app was about. An IAP upgrade would be cool if you decide to put ads on it. I would upgrade in a heartbeat.

chillericed• 13 years ago

Love the music!

First stab at basic time challenge puts me at rank #2.

I think the challenge system could be something quite fun if you integrate it well.

tonyhillerson6• 13 years ago

Thanks for the feedback! You can hear the soundtrack here: https://soundcloud.com/tackmobile/sets/adrift-soundtrack

prezjordan• 13 years ago

Excellent choice allowing me to play the game right on your website. Now I'm going to download (and buy, does it cost money?) your game. If I couldn't play it immediately, I probably wouldn't have.

mratzloff2• 13 years ago

Great work! I finished all 10 levels on the website--I'm assuming more are available with the app, but it's not completely clear.

I linked my wife to it and she got a kick out of it, too.

makerbreaker• 13 years ago

As a other-than-the-occasional-nes-play non-gamer, this is addictive!

VonGuard18• 13 years ago

Hey guys, thought I'd throw in my 2-cents as an Independent Games Festival judge, and as press.

First of all, your presentation is terrific. Great art and sound. Top notch, feels like it came from a very talented team. With this game on your resume, you've got a great future ahead of yourselves.

Now, the bad part: from a gameplay perspective, your game is not unique enough to win out on its own merits in any app store. If you have any money left, spend that cash on those awful, dark-alley fake review and promotion services. Take all of Ronyeh's advice, it's excellent, but you can't stop there. To succeed today in the app stores, you have to cheat, so go buy some reviews and downloads so you can raise your ranking in the store. It's a self-fulfilling cycle: higher rankings, more sales.

There is an awful lot to be said for this being a complete game with a pleasing experience, but there are already a dozen games with similar gameplay in the AppStore. though yours may be the most polished, sales of games in AppStores are less about quality and more about cheating to get more sales, or having a juggernaut that's already on top, like Angry Birds.

That being said, this is a perfect game to hang such cheating tactics around: it looks the part and sounds the part of a successful game, and it doesn't go the easy route of copying Angry Birds in every single interface window. Compare that to, say, Hill Climb Racing, a top ten app store game that looks awful and is infested with spyware.

But I think the best advice I can give you is to add some sort of meta-layer to your game. The fundamental gameplay is interesting and often challenging in the right ways, but there's no uniqueness factor. Perhaps adding some type of incremental reward for the puzzles. Completing a puzzle without reset gets you some form of currency, which can then be spent on customizing your hot air balloon, or on some form on in-game assistance. Think Dungeon Raid. Most mobile game companies just implement the puzzle and are done with it. The real stand out games take those simple puzzle interfaces and layer complex game elements triggered by successes and failures in the puzzle game.

Keep up the good work. You're obviously talented. You'll make money at this, but you can't rely solely on the press and the quality of your game. You have to game the app stores to succeed.

Oh, and when it comes to press, I really don't have any good advice. Try to find some small outlets to work with because the big guys will ignore you, and do so in a mean and churlish way. It's sad to say, but the gaming press these days are mostly retarded monkeys with no idea what it actually takes to make a game. Yer not going to get to the front page of IGN, so don't waste time trying. Find some small app store review sites no one has ever heard of and be nice to them. They'll give you a bigger bang for your buck.

jrajav• 13 years ago

> If you have any money left, spend that cash on those awful, dark-alley fake review and promotion services. Take all of Ronyeh's advice, it's excellent, but you can't stop there. To succeed today in the app stores, you have to cheat, so go buy some reviews and downloads so you can raise your ranking in the store. It's a self-fulfilling cycle: higher rankings, more sales.

> You have to game the app stores to succeed.

What the hell?

Edit: As antoko points out, this doesn't really add anything to the discussion, which I was aware of. I just felt the need to express disgust at what I feel to be blatant and inexcusable dishonesty. Never mind the risk of getting caught or some other backlash, what if you value honesty and pride in your work as much as the money?

VonGuard18• 13 years ago

Hey, this is not my advice. This was given to me by someone who charts successes and sales in app stores. It sucks, it's ugly, but it's fucking true and it works.

antoko• 13 years ago

It is obvious you take exception to the GPs quotes but you've not done a very good job of explaining why.

Do you believe the quoted statements from the GP are false?

Or do you not care if they are true, and rather believe that that kind of advice is always wrong?

loumf• 13 years ago

Reading this made me a little sad. My remedy was to immediately go give it an honest 5-star rating and real review. I need to go do this for a lot more apps I love.

joeld423• 13 years ago

Do this. It really means a lot to an app developer. I wish I could send a thank you email to everyone who writes a review for my apps. Even the bad ones. Though I'd rather they email me for support first in case it's something I can help with, at least a bad review points out a problem and I can do something about it and fix it in the next release.

phil4• 13 years ago

This is disturbingly cynical advice. If you stand by it, why not attach your real name to it? If not, why put it in public?

And by the way, you're recommending buying fake reviews. Here's a better tactic (and one that's guaranteed not to get you kicked out of the app store): get your launch announcement to the top slot on a popular discussion site, and get the real people there to leave real reviews instead. Which, if you're reading this and want to help these guys, is probably the best thing you can do.

VonGuard18• 13 years ago

Hey, look at the top ten apps on both app stores, then come back here and try not to be cynical about anyone's chanced of succeeding there. I've seen numbers on sales in the app stores. If yer not in the top 25, you might as well not even be in the app store, from a meaningful revenue perspective. There are very few exceptions, as far as I know. One possible one would be any app that's $20. Those probably make money, despite low sales numbers.

It's entirely possible to succeed using only honest, community focused methods. But yer competing with a huge pack of other guys who don't use those methods, and have a significant advantage because of it. This isn't hugs and puppies. This is business.

huhtenberg3• 13 years ago

> If you stand by it, why not attach your real name to it?

Seriously? You don't understand why not?

lotso• 13 years ago

>This is disturbingly cynical advice. If you stand by it, why not attach your real name to it? If not, why put it in public?

Could you explain this logic?

archagon4• 13 years ago

I agree completely.

90% of the games that are currently on my iPhone were a) made by dev teams with 1-3 people, b) provide a unique and polished experience, and c) became known mainly based on community outreach. None of them are currently in the top rankings, but as far as I can tell they make enough money for the teams to get by. People keep talking about "hidden gems" on the App Store that failed to succeed despite having an excellent product, but so far, the only ones I've seen were either outright clones, failed to do any outreach at all, or had a poor business model. (Freemium with very little incentive to upgrade, for instance.)

Sure, if you're a hundred-person company, you might need to resort to shady means to be profitable. But I don't think that's at all necessary to make money on the App Store.

heyitswin• 13 years ago

My up-and-coming online gaming-related publication is seeking great people in the industry with awesome stories and insights to share to write.

Feel free to email me win@insertquarterly.com, would really love to have you write a piece for us!

artimaeis• 13 years ago

Do you have a source about Hill Climb Racing having spyware? I've seen my friends play it and was unaware of any spyware problems reported with it. Google isn't showing anything using relevant search queries; I'd love to read a source!

VonGuard18• 13 years ago

Verizon pointed out that Hill Climb eats battery and bandwidth. http://support.verizonwireless.com/information/app_ranking/h...

I expect that's due to sending infinite data back home. Plus it has permissions to read all sortsa data, like every free game.

joeld423• 13 years ago

A less sleazy way to do this is to offer players something ("unlock the secret panda level") in return for giving you a five star review. You can't verify that they actually do, but if you give them the item and then send them to the app store, some of them will. Then, set this up as a timed promotion along with a push notification so you can get a bunch of players to hopefully respond at the same day. It's not as effective as buying rank, but it's less sleazy, and it can have some effect.

UberMouse• 13 years ago

I would assume that's against the iOS store TOS, you can ask them for a review but you can't ask for a five star review.

derefr• 13 years ago

Another strategy--and I'm not sure about the morality of this, except it's less evil than the above--is to pop up a "please rate!" dialog right after doing something nice for the player.

For example, have a random time-based trigger that will unlock a DLC item in the middle of regular play. Tell them they got it, make it shine and sparkle, and then--maybe not right away, but after a minute or so, after they've gotten back to the game and might be playing around with their new toy--ask them for a rating.

Another way to put it is: if Nintendo, as some unknown up-and-comer, had released SMB3 on the App Store, a ratings dialogue would almost certainly appear approximately two minutes into the Kuribo-shoe level.

becauseracecar• 13 years ago

I think this is good advice and an accurate view of how to get ahead (as much as I hate to admit how much of an advantage everyone with deep pockets has). It's definitely hard as a little guy to get started but there are ways to get some attention if you can afford to invest in buying installs.

There's of course Facebook mobile app installs, but a lot of other ways to get installs also that might be more cost effective. Some others: http://www.appoday.com/#developers http://www.curios.me/

Best of luck!

physcab• 13 years ago

I'm not sure cheating helps as much as it used to, and even so is a poor tactic and will possibly get you banned.

That said, Apple's App Store is an absurdly tough market in the U.S. When your game goes live, it needs to be at its best, and even large gaming companies have trouble getting games out there that do well, even with significant legitimate ad spend.

Here are some ideas, based loosely off of the experience I have had:

- Start contacting other indie-devs with relatively high dau numbers and arrange for X-promo via notifications and features.

- Stage your ad-spend when your metrics are known. Ie, if you beta test your app in some country like Brazil or New Zealand and improve your metrics so you have a known LTV, you can spend accordingly when you launch in a big market like Canada or US.

- Start with Android first because it is an easier ecosystem to iterate upon and attain an niche audience.

- There is a growing body of proof that burst spending on launch day is not the best strategy. There are games that launch early and are unknown but gradually improve their grossing metrics and buy audience in batches over time. I believe Rage of Bahamut was one such game [1]

[1]. http://www.appannie.com/app/ios/rage-of-bahamut/ranking/hist...

VonGuard18• 13 years ago

Far better advice than I gave, and far more timely. This fellow has more recent info than I, I'd bet.

meitalvered2• 13 years ago

hi physcab

Please see my thread http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5339639 i will appropriate your your input.

I have a similar problem i guess :) , although i am in the thouht that we did a very good game but the game is not climbing...maybe i am just asking too much :)

if you dont want to look at the thread i will just say that my game name is Atlantis Breaker HD, link: https://itunes.apple.com/app/atlantis-breaker-hd/id576385319...

What do you say?

kolinko2• 13 years ago

about Android - aren't the costs of testing on multitude Android devices prohibitive for an indie dev? I think even Rovio had problems with that when they launched..

seanalltogether22• 13 years ago

I just wanted to say I appreciate your perspective and advice here, we've been spending some time in the office talking about your post and the discussion that has emerged from it.

VonGuard18• 13 years ago

Glad to hear it. Take the advice on cheating with a grain of salt. Some excellent legit strategies have shown up in this thread, too.

Additionally, if you are going to cheat, get that monetization play in order first.

nakor• 13 years ago

I also want to echo this sentiment. It's sad how many people here have responded with disgust and have wished bad things upon you. I come to HN to read discussions of a higher level, and instead of proposing level-headed solutions as to how to improve the app-store, you are treated with insults, and that's really sad.

As a developer you are already at the total mercy of these app stores. That doesn't seem to be a problem apparently for many people here because of the belief that the pride of the work should be completely secondary to monetary gain.

The owners of these app stores don't seem to care much either. The more people who make apps regardless of revenue expectations, the more they improve the quality of these app stores and add value to the owners, not the developers. The Apples, and Googles don't have any incentive to make the marketplace any more fair it would seem.

lmirosevic2• 13 years ago

I don't quite agree with your phrasing, but as an indie iOS dev on the app store since 2010, I sadly have to agree 100% with what you said. It is what it is. Some people might find it easier to swallow if instead of "cheating" you simply called it CPI though.

VonGuard18• 13 years ago

LOL, give it an acronym and it's a legit business.

mrcharles• 13 years ago

I hope you lose your IGF judge status for this, if you actually are one.

nawitus• 13 years ago

>Oh, and when it comes to press, I really don't have any good advice.

I recommend contacting local newspapers, they are usually very willing to write stories like "local programmer quits day job to pursie his dream of creating games etc".

kostya-kow• 13 years ago

This is a horrible, selfish advise, and you should be ashamed of yourself! It harms both the community and the games.

What's more surprising is that this is a top comment! People who upvoted this are not any better than you are!

It's always better to be honest and take pride in your work. Hacking is about making something great and interesting, not making a cheap buck.

return0• 13 years ago

People who didn't upvote it aren't, either

optymizer• 13 years ago

This is sad.

ramykhuffash• 13 years ago

Doing so well on HN will help massively with press. I'll enjoy writing about this on a decent sized app site tomorrow :-)

VonGuard18• 13 years ago

I was thinking this! I hope to god they are able to succeed without resorting to the awful things I suggested. It'd be awesome to see this succeed based on the HN community.

seanalltogether22• 13 years ago

thank you, we appreciate any press we can get out of this, i imagine most blogs are buried in spam from the hundreds of apps that are released daily, so I'm not expecting much from the sites we've already emailed

pdog• 13 years ago

> Oh, and when it comes to press, I really don't have any good advice. Try to find some small outlets to work with because the big guys will ignore you, and do so in a mean and churlish way.

With nearly 600 upvotes, 250+ comments, and the front page of Hacker News, he shouldn't have trouble finding press coverage.

chipsy• 13 years ago

Unfortunately, it's a clone of a type of game that is commonplace on Flash portals. It doesn't have remarkable features beyond being polished - and what the press and the (word-of-mouth) public needs most to market the game for you is stuff that can be remarked upon. On HN the same rules don't apply because pure execution can be praised instead.

adestefan• 13 years ago

You're vastly overrating the size of the burble that HN sits in. On top of that, while this game is pretty, it's really not that unique.

Trufa• 13 years ago

Why is the most up-voted comment here is one that suggests cheating?

tatsuke953• 13 years ago

Reality.

tripzilch2• 13 years ago

Because the discussion that came from it is really good.

gavanwoolery• 13 years ago

I hate to admit it, but VonGuard is right -- without a novel game your best bet is to "cheat" the system - you can hack it in "honest" ways though. It is no different from SEO. That said, even doing so will by no means guarantee you success. Your real best bet is to make a good, novel game. This game is highly polished, but the mechanics were just not interesting enough for me to recommend it to anyone.

If you are "going indie" you have to think about your real motivations -- are you building games to make a profit, or are you building games that you want to play but do not exist? The most successful games seem to fall in the latter category (successful indie games, that is). I do not say this to be snide or critical, just my honest, well-intentioned advice.

VonGuard18• 13 years ago

> If you are "going indie" you have to think about your real motivations -- are you building games to make a profit, or are you building games that you want to play but do not exist?

This. The latter, indeed, always make the best games. But if yer making this game because you want to make a living making games, push ads, track phone calls, pull down people's address books and sell that shit, after pumping fake downloads and such. If you want the money to fund the game you really want to make, just go full on evil, no half measures. You can be nice on the game you really wanted to make, when gameplay can float it on its own.

cscurmudgeon3• 13 years ago

VonGuard,

Observing that a lot of corruption is taking place is different from actively suggesting someone to do it. You can do the first, but the second is bad!

You are not a game dev. You don't know our pains. If you are honest, I suggest you reveal the evidence anonymously. I hope all such scums get outed. This is morally bankrupt.

VonGuard18• 13 years ago

You're suggesting I change my advice to say "Hey guys, people cheat, you shouldn't." Either that, or you're suggesting I should have simply said "Hey guys, this game isn't going to be big, so just make another game."

Gaming app stores isn't morally bankrupt, it's about circumventing an arbitrary set of rules set out by Apple or Google. It's not breaking the law, it's not raping and pillaging. It's capitalism. The other games in the app store that have this gameplay are dialing home, selling ads, etc...

Yes, you can make a good living making awesome games and selling them in the app store. If yer a game dev, you should know that just expecting every game dev to make an awesome game is ludicrous. Gameplay design is about iteration, refinement, testing, and iteration, refinement and testing. Just like software dev. It's really tough to get right, too, because gameplay doesn't "compile" in the same sense as regular logic. You have to test subjective "fun" levels. Making an awesomely fun game with a unique gameplay hook is the hardest possible thing to do in making a game.

So what is an indie dev to do? Monetize the lesser games to fund the big, awesome ones. Is gaming the app store any more scummy than downloading a user's phone book? Tracking their phone call regions? Reading their cookies?

zeidrich• 13 years ago

It's a good game, it's a bit short though. I think as a simple game it's pretty easy to solve the puzzles, and while you can make it more complex by introducing a larger grid and additional colors, it will ultimately be the same problem. Adding 20 more levels at the same level of complexity would make the game seem trivial after a while.

It might benefit from additional types of tiles that introduce complexity, maybe like a tile that reacts to the color placed next to it and becomes colored the same way. Maybe a tile that reacts to all the colors next to it and becomes a mix. (IE: You need a purple tile in one spot, so in order to have that tile or tile group to turn purple, you need red and blue squares next to it). Sparse use of elements like that keep the problem from being identical.

Then again, maybe it's not needed. People enjoy working through books of sudoku problems.

lucian1900• 13 years ago

With a web demo, I'd just charge for the game if I were you.

phil4• 13 years ago

Very cool.

This reminds me of Colorbind, one of my all-time favorite iOS games, but expanded and taken 3d. I've always wished there was more to Colorbind...

aeosynth• 13 years ago

Reminds me vaguely of http://arv.github.com/jelly/.

muuck• 13 years ago

Very neat how this game is presented. But I played this game years ago. Back when it was still called '3D Logic' http://www.i-am-bored.com/bored_link.cfm?link_id=17727

FiddlerClamp• 13 years ago

I suggest you try Gamezebo (http://www.gamezebo.com/) - they review many casual games.

sylvainww• 13 years ago

Game looks great. Pretty neat website, I like the attention to details. Best of luck!

lttlrck• 13 years ago

This is great fun. However, I installed it on iOS and found what looks like a bug:

http://imgur.com/toAfNs7

jordan_clark• 13 years ago

This is great. Fantastic work.

kenshiro_o• 13 years ago

That's a great puzzle game. It's even more impressive as you guys made it in 6 months. I am always amazed, humbled and energized with posts and projects such as this one. Keep up the good work!

buildnship• 13 years ago

Yea, great job on the game!! I was past level 7 before I had to pull my self away.

The game is A LOT of fun ;) I definitely see myself and people I know playing it. Best of luck in the app-store. No doubt you all will do GREAT!!!

rartichoke• 13 years ago

Well done. The game is strangely intuitive. I skipped the trailer and just played. It almost felt like I knew what to do just by looking at the cube.

That's a huge win IMO.

asgentile• 13 years ago

Can you provide a code or rather just set a cookie so that when I go back to play I can start on the level I was at. Fun :D

rorrr• 13 years ago

It took you 6 months to develop it?

jason_slack• 13 years ago

It sort of remind me of FEZ...yes, I said it FEZ.

braco_alva• 13 years ago

How many of you are in the team? The games looks very polished, amazing you made it in just 6 months.

rglover• 13 years ago

Please, please, please charge me. This is way too well done to not ask for at least 99 cents. Especially if you haven't been working for 6 months...

intelliot• 13 years ago

Reminds me of one of my favorite puzzle games of all time, Trainyard. http://www.trainyard.ca/ But Adrift is definitely different. Love it!

Revex• 13 years ago

Posts like these are a great inspiration. I hope to see an update post with information regarding to how well it/you are doing. Also, the web based demo is sweet.

NateLipscomb• 13 years ago

This is great. Beautiful design and gameplay. Congrats on the launch.

kanamekun2• 13 years ago

I love this game!! Once I got past the second level, I really got the hang of it and loved the mental challenge of solving levels.

One thought: I'd consider making the first few levels much easier. This article on Yoyodyne's trivia games is along those lines:

"As Yoyodyne got busier, we had less and less time to write each game's questions. Finally, one day, we launched a game that had very little effort put into the questions - a rush job, as I recall. The questions were factually correct, but there was no witty writing, no twist, and the questions were really easy to answer.

When the game ran, we were surprised to see that the response rate, instead of hovering around 30%, actually exceeded 60%. We had put less work into crafting the experience, and there were more players who wanted to participate. ... [u]sers wanted two things from their e-mail game experience:

1. POSITIVE REINFORCEMENT: Users wanted to be told that they got the answer right, and that they were winning.

2. NO INVESTMENT: Users did not want to pay for that positive reinforcement in any way. They didn't want to think, work, get up from their chair, or otherwise make any effort to get the reward."

http://www.goodexperience.com/columns/04/0513.slots.html

nazgulnarsil• 13 years ago

I realized this when I played the currently popular 4 pics 1 word game. I was expecting clever lateral thinking using homonyms. Instead I got 4 blue pictures and the word is blue. But it pops up a U DID IT screen and gives you fake money, with the option to purchase more fake money from the app developer.

People ultimately want just enough veneer on their games that they can pretend it isn't just a big you win button that showers them in confetti.

jdflorezpa• 13 years ago

Very nice game, enjoyed the 10 levels. I would gladly pay for a version in Android.

mratzloff2• 13 years ago

All you guys leaving advice and comments in this thread... download the app. It's much more polished than the website version.

I rated it 5 stars, added a review, and referred it to a couple friends. I want to see this game succeed. If you want to support these guys, why not do the same?

ruswick4• 13 years ago

In my opinion, the app is not deserving of 5 stars. The mechanics are grating and difficult to use. I spent 3 minutes trying to draw a path on level 10, and every time after rounding the corner a that I did not intend to change would change. After a while, I gave up and deleted the app. It looks nice, but there are more fundamental flaws in the gameplay.

zopticity• 13 years ago

This is exactly like the pipe game on the Android market / Apple store.

meerita• 13 years ago

My girlfriend loved the game and I, that hate iphone games, am enjoying it a lot!

vyder2• 13 years ago

This game reminds me of laying out circuits in Eagle CAD for a 1 layer PCB. Yet, somehow, I'm addicted to it already.

femto• 13 years ago

My feelings exactly. The same topological rules apply. I wonder what happens if you throw this game at an autorouter? :)

dmauro• 13 years ago

Nice work! Very polished, good puzzles. The whooshing sound when going through the menu items in the main menu was a little annoying, but otherwise there wasn't a bit I didn't like.

tnash• 13 years ago

Awesome fun, played all ten levels. MORE LEVELS!

stevewilhelm• 13 years ago

If you like this game, you'll love Colorbind http://nonverbal.ch/colorbind.html

ehaterade• 13 years ago

If you are looking to increase distribution you may want to consider reducing the title of the game and moving the buttons around so that the game is well above the fold. You can then approach different game portals to host the game iframed in, but with the way it is now you won't have much luck.

Take a look at Cut the Rope web version, they have built a pretty sweet web version.

If you change up your webversion to be better suited to being iframed in let me know (or contact us at Kano Games) and we can iframe it for web and link to you iOS version for our mobile users.

http://www.kanogames.com/

barbs• 13 years ago

Nice work man. I really like the style, and the soundtrack. Will be listening to that while I code today ^^. Also, any chance for an Android release?

tonyhillerson6• 13 years ago

Yup, we'll be working on an Android version.

anon987987987• 13 years ago

Please make it possible to rotate the cube!

seanalltogether22• 13 years ago

I'm not able to respond to every individual, but I want to say that we've been reading every single comment here and GREATLY appreciate the feedback, you guys have given us a lot think about in terms of trying to make this successful.

consta• 13 years ago

After playing the first 5 levels I would definitely pay for this game. Keep up the good work!

dsego• 13 years ago

Great game! I'd definitely buy it. Too bad it's not already on the mac app store, I was ready to pull the trigger. Maybe it can be a part of the next Humble Bundle.

dools• 13 years ago

This is too fucking addictive.

pins app tab

I hope I get some work done today.

weaksauce• 13 years ago

Your website could use a tweak or two. I would change some of the text to reflect the fact that adrift is just a demo online and the iOS version is much longer.

+ the website javascript to load the next level or refresh the current level doesn't work on my computer(aurora firefox on osx)

+ the video doesn't work that well. (volume controls don't work, the play button doesn't work, got the video to play by clicking the video background)

overall it looks like a fun game but I am curious how you are going to make some money with this if it's free.

doctorstupid• 13 years ago

Playing this triggered a familiar sensation, and I realized that this game has strong similarities with Slitherlink, an addictive puzzle developed by Nikoli, the Japanese publisher who popularized sudoku. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slitherlink

andrewroycarter• 13 years ago

Really fun game, and it looks great! Awesome job!

enraged_camel3• 13 years ago

Minor issue: if you accidentally cross the paths of the colors, it fails silently. There's no "you fail" message or anything like that given, and it's not immediately obvious that the only way to try again is to reload the level.

iends2• 13 years ago

I didn't have this issue on chrome, you can just start dragging again and reconnect the paths.

greggman2• 13 years ago

you just draw over the tiles with the correct color. I guess that wasn't obvious though I figured it out. You can make as many mistakes as you want. I guess a tutorial would solve that but there is no fail. Just win or give up.

fedenusy• 13 years ago

Flow Free: Bridges, with nicer graphics and a better soundtrack. I like it. Controls could be a bit smoother, but nice game overall. Great start.

ruswick4• 13 years ago

There are some irksome mechanics issues, and the game is far from novel, but it is excellently implemented and aesthetically pleasing.

kranner• 13 years ago

You should monetize with paid hints. I've got a similar game in the App Store (I'll be polite and skip linking to it) and as of this morning, 53.8% of my total revenue has come from hint packs.

To see what I mean by hints, see this HTML5 port of my game I've been doing (work in-progress): http://noisytyping.com/NCT6745/index.html

z3phyr• 13 years ago

Great work imho !!!!

One thing I may want to add - Porting the game to different platforms would be great.

jonathanjaeger• 13 years ago

Love it, did all 10 levels on the website (addicting). Will download!

bblough• 13 years ago

Very nice!

imperialdrive• 13 years ago

great mind game - looked and felt good to me - i did finish the 10 levels in about 10 minutes so ya, what's next? congrats on the game and thank you for sharing!

sidcool• 13 years ago

Congratulations. It's a brilliant work of art and technology. Good luck, you guys have a great career ahead of you. Hard work pays!

crapshoot101• 13 years ago

Really enjoyed it. But was I the only one who took more time on 5 than 6/7 which were less than 30 seconds? Is the difficulty out of whack?

soemarko• 13 years ago

Very pretty,... it does remind me of Flow Free (http://html5games.com/2012/07/flow-free/ - also on iOS and Android store near you)

1. You've earned my $1 2. Please cater more of my OCD. I see you count number of turn and time... GIVE MY 3 STARSSS!!! 3. Utilise Game Center more,.. "Hey, John finish this level in 2 second with only 3 turns." Since Letterpress I actually have friends in game center.

gurpreet42• 13 years ago

nice game ...

blinry• 13 years ago

This is based on Nikoli's number game called Arukone or Numberlink: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numberlink

Here are many more for you to enjoy: http://www.janko.at/Raetsel/Arukone/index.htm

pschastain• 13 years ago

Got to level 9, which had no solution.

neworbd• 13 years ago

After playing in the browser for a good five minutes and deciding to purchase, I was sad there was no Android version. :(

lambtron• 13 years ago

Cool game. I remember flipping through old puzzle books as a kid and playing these types of puzzles.

One small thing that annoyed me was that even if i connected a path to complete a puzzle, if my finger slipped and removed another path, i would still have to go back and correct it before the puzzle is completed. I think that the puzzle should complete as soon as the final path is connected; the validation shouldn't occur after my finger is lifted from the last move.

Anyway, great look and feel and overall design. Best of luck!

huhtenberg3• 13 years ago

Please make a paid version.

I have the in-app purchases disabled in the Settings, so upgrading an app like yours requires doing an app switch, then typing in Restrictions password, enabling IAP, switching back to the app (frequently needing to restart it to), making a purchase (including typing a password), then going back to Settings and re-disabling IAP. In other words it's a hassle.

Eylith2• 13 years ago

Nice game but too easy. Less than 15 minutes for all puzzles.

Eylith2• 13 years ago

This game reminds me the integrated circuit creation :)

culo• 13 years ago

You should have created APIs on Mashape.com too

CaptchaReader• 13 years ago

I sent you an email to adrift@tackmobile.com , copied it from your footer, and got a Mailer Daemon error :)

erikb• 13 years ago

I played the SAME game before as a flash game. Even the first 5 or 6 levels are the same... Hope, that you don't get sued for that!

a1a• 13 years ago

Love it! I would love to see social integration as well. For example 1 on 1 matches - first one to fail a level looses. And maybe even co-ops, this requires advanced levels though. You have n-sized teams, e.g. n on n matches - the first team to fail a level looses.

queasyroberto• 13 years ago

as associate producer on 65 iOS games w/ $12M in revenue to date...

you guys made a nice game, but it's very fringe, and it's not even super striking like swords and sworcery, which, btw, was not a big financial success.

i learned the hard way by working on ~20 super fringe games that failed hard (less than $5k total revenue) during the early days of the app store. these are the games where the artists went wild and really had themselves a time and were super pleased with themselves... not a formula for success.

your art is fringe, your gameplay is fringe.

try finding something else not so fringe that you guys STILL love, and make another game, and then another...

kanamekun2• 13 years ago

I've been playing your game for a day, and really enjoyed it. I found it really gave my brain a workout.

That gave me a thought around branding. The name ("Adrift") and the tagline ("A puzzle game in worlds of whimsy") both feel whimsical and fun - which is great for a game. But I wonder if focusing the branding around "brain training" might help expand your target market.

Most games are fun time-wasters, and tend to appeal to people who want to have fun and/or kill time. This game has a considerably wider appeal: it can help people exercise their brains, especially older people who want to keep their minds active. This is why a lot of people do Sudoku and crossword puzzles: http://healthland.time.com/2012/01/24/use-it-or-lose-it-keep...

I had a brain injury a decade or so ago, and the doctors told me to do certain puzzles to keep my brain active. It gave my brain a workout, and I was reminded of that feeling when I played your game.

One way to expand the target market might be to eventually do an expansion set called "Adrift: Brain Island" or something? You could target PR to the demos that brain workouts could appeal to.

Good luck!!

giis• 13 years ago

cool game :)

triplesec5• 13 years ago

Well, I enjoyed this game. I suppose I can see how this gets tougher and tougher as it goes on. I'd buy it, after the trial. Good luck. Game dev is a precarious and chancy marketing biz as all these HN experts are telling you!

gpgpgp• 13 years ago

This game is a complete ripoff of 3-D Logic...

http://www.kongregate.com/games/AlexMatveev/3d-logic

ckvamme• 13 years ago

more levels!!

meitalvered2• 13 years ago

I understand you all, but even getting review these days dont give you so much traction... For example, we are a small Indie (3 People) and release our game for IOS...you probably didnt hear of the game unless you are in the cocos2d community...

The game is FREE and it went live on the 15th of February 2013, till today we got more than 150 reviews with an average of 4.3 and we still dont see us in the rankings..

sorry, i forgot to mention the game :)

Game name is Atlantis Breaker HD link is : https://itunes.apple.com/app/atlantis-breaker-hd/id576385319...

by the way any suggestion and feedback would be highly appreciated.

thanks.

Show HN: 6 months ago I quit my job to pursue indie dev. Here is our first game

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