Battleheart - Release Trailer

Howdy folks.

So I've been working on a new iOS game for nearly a year now, and its finally off to submission. Here's a little video I whipped up to announce its impending release.

 

Dude, that's just awesome! Well done

 

Uhh.. wow that was one year well spent. This looks absolutely fantastic. Great work. This one should definitely be a huge success.

 

I've always loved the art style of your games, but this one is just mindbogglingly awesome. Did you do all the special effects in photoshop too? They're excellent.

 

The effects are achieved the same way we do the characters - various textured quads (sparkles and smoke puffs instead of arms and legs) bound to a cloud of joints in Maya. We then animate their scale/rotation/position and the overall mesh's transparency in order to achieve a wide variety of visual effects.

And the best part... thanks to manually loading resources only as needed, we didn't even have to resort to texture compression this time.

 

Instant buy from me for sure. The graphics look amazing, I can only hope the same care was taken with the items and upgrades for the characters. Any idea when it will be released? I've run out of games for the iPhone =S Keep us updated.

 

Should be released sometime next week.

 

Heh, I always liked your graphics style/gameplay, I loved Zombieville USA and have both iPhone and iPad versions, I specially liked OMG! Pirates, I still play them from time to time,instant buy from me either

Oh, personal question for ya! You're Kelli or Noah? Still working together? (Just curious!)

Good Luck guys

 

The game looks very nice. Good luck with this game!

 

Amazing...

 

this is an amazing looking game!

well done!

 

Can't wait! Looks awesome

 

Looks great! Any plans for an android release?

 

Looks incredible, will definitely pick up a copy when it hits the app store!

 

@Betelgeuze

Taken from the FAQ's part of the mika mobile website.

 

Thumbs up!

 

Excellent work, it looks like a great game! Very polished! Good luck with the launch!

 

Looks like a winner! Nice work.

 

How many are you at MikaMobile because if you're solo then I'm extremely envious of your skills in all things related to game development.

This looks amazing and like others have said your art style is great. Graphically it looks like a simpler Castle Crashers.

 

Wow that does look amazing. Really polished looking and fun. Good job guys

 

Just approved minutes ago, woohoo!

 

Bought and Loading ^^ Congrats on the release

 

Downloading now.

This is the first game for iphone/ipad I've actually looked forward to playing. As an avid gamer I just hate how casual all iOS games are. I'm not expecting Baldur's Gate, but here's hoping Battleheart offers something more engaging than most games.

 

Excellent game. My crew is level 10 now.

It's a bit too cramped on the iPhone for my taste, but it really shines on the iPad.

I think it's really fun. A bit simplistic, but imo all iOS games are, and a difficulty setting would be really nice as I doubt the default difficulty is for everyone. I find it a bit too easy. Would like it if you really had to play at your peak with the correct team, spells and items to get through some areas.

There's one thing that's really bugging me though and that's the over the top effect when activating a spell. If it was for some ultimate ability once or twice a match it wouldn't bother me, but having the game slow down and flash every second throughout the entire match is just straining.

Also straight away I got into the situation wondering if the gloves that give you 10% extra gold stack. I have 4 of them now and I don't want to sell any until I find out. A notice in the tooltip would be nice.

And I bought the game twice... Thought I was logged in with my norwegian account on the iPad, but apparently I was not.

Still, $6 to play it on both platforms is still dirt cheap so I guess I can't complain.

 

Congrats, will be buying this tonight!

 

TwiiK you been experiencing any sudden crashes forcing exits? I've had it happen like 8 times in the space of 4 hours...

I don't own an iPad but I agree the unit selection can be tricky on the iPhone screen, when sprites overlap its near impossible to get the background character. I'd also love clarification if the item %'s stack across characters, I'm saving those gloves aswell.

Maybe it's because I suck at multitasking and normally despise playing more then one character at a time but I'm stuck at the moment on the giant blob boss battle on the 2nd map =S I've decided to go back and try level up some other classes to see if I'm missing some vital ability that might help ^^

 

Many users have reported random crashes, and we recently isolated the cause. An update is on it's way, sorry for the inconvenience. It's a glitch in our touch controls, which is aggravated by very fast touches the are not quite a tap OR drag. Will be fixed shortly.

Multiple +gold items do stack, btw.

 

+1 MikaMobile ^^

That makes sense since it always happened to me when I was in a panic sending units all over the screen in a rush to try and save the stupid cleric =S If the + gold % items stack I'm going to assume that all the items effects stack... even the slowly regenerate health items right?

 

hey ... i think i just saw this on the app store. I was gonna download it tomorrow at work. cool stuff!

 

Guess my wish came true. Met the stone golem at the end of map 2 and was obliterated in seconds.

My Team setup at the moment is knight, barbarian, wizard and cleric. Knight and cleric seems to be alpha omega, but the pure damage from the wizard and barbarian seems to complement them nicely. The wizard ice spell definitely was key for me to kill the blob boss because it made his minions move uber slow so I could kill them quickly.

As for the stacking gold items I can't imagine they stack accumulative because with 4 of them that should be 40% extra gold and I didn't really notice that much of an increase.

 

This looks amazing. Your 12 months of development worth a lot more than mine! And it's always encouraging to see great quality Unity iOS games. You keep our dreams alive, keep up the great work!

 

It looks...in a word... Awesome!

Many Congrats,
Matt.

 

Finished it very early this morning, clocked in at 7 hours with my cleric just under lvl 25. I've also noticed that stacking the items doesn't seem to boost as much as you would think. Grinding a bit to see what the other classes had to offer with the +10% XP books and the increase only seems to be on the character which is fair enough, just have to save the gold for the +20% items =S

Overall I enjoyed it and once I got a good position layout with my team I rarely ran into the problem of not being able to select the unit I wanted. Luring enemies around while blasting them with magic is kind of cheap but once I started doing it I couldn't stop myself =P

 

I'd like to hear the answer to this question as well. It would be interesting to know what kind of team size or structure is behind a game like this (I noticed that you referred to the team as 'we' so I'm guessing it's not a solo project). But whatever the case – it's a fantastic looking game anyway!

I've purchased my copy and look forward to playing.

Good luck with the sales!

 

We are a husband/wife duo just workin from home, with some audio help from my dad back in Indiana.

 

Great game
Got mine last night, hope to find some time to play it inbetween ... perhaps it can cure the Game Dev Story curse haha

 

That's amazing because everything in all your games is so polished at least one of you must be very skilled in several areas. I at least thought you were 4. One artist, one rigger/animator, one audio wiz and a programmer.

 

Hey, good luck guys :-D

Was that too personal?

 

Sorry, I just skimmed over your question, this is Noah. I do most of the forum posting/tweeting these days.

I'm really stunned at how well Battleheart is doing, I kinda figured it would be more of a "niche" sorta game due to the nerdy RPG elements, so I'm pleasantly surprised to see it doing far better than OMG Pirates did... and without even having to resort to sticking an advertisement in Zombieville (yet ). We got some prominent featuring just a couple days after release, and in spite of a couple of embarrassing crash bugs that many users have run into, its being well received.

 

I started playing it yesterday, and even though I don't usually play RPGs, I found myself enjoying the game tremendously. It's easy to pick up and play, exciting to advance and level up characters, and fun to tap and draw when battling enemies. Gameplay sessions are of perfect length for mobile gaming, and the visual is both unique and has an appeal to everyone, even people out side of the typical RPG gamer pool.

I have bought and played a lot of popular games on the iPhone (all the ones on the top chart), and I got bored of them very quickly. Battleheart is different, I find myself not only wanting to keep advancing in the game, but replaying levels over and over again just so I can pass without losing any teammates. I am both inspired and wowed by your achievement, and can't wait to see more from you guys!

 

I bought it, will play later this afternoon, looks awesome though.

 

@MikaMobile,
Thank you Noah, I'm really shocked, you've got so many reviews and just in a week!!! I envy you guys
AND, I wish you the best...

So, you didn't do anything on marketing, just the twits and a great game, right? I would love to hear about this, cause people keep telling us that marketing is THE MOST IMPORTANT THING in iOS game dev market! Do you have anything to add?

Oh, and, how's the Android version doing? Is it up yet?

Regards

 

Great job, this game is fantastic. My wife and I love it.

Just got done playing through the whole first set of stages.

I'm hooked!

 

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/32854/Top_iPad_Games_Battleheart_Challenges_Dead_Space.php

Congrats for getting in the top 10 Ipad games

 

I don't think marketing is the most important thing in app development - quality is. Generating awareness is something you have to do as best you can, but once people are aware of your product it won't sell (and continue to sell via word-of-mouth) unless its actually good.

Most developers will tell you that the best marketing you can hope for is to be featured by Apple. There's really no comparison - it's the equivalent of the "super bowl ad" as far as getting eyeballs on your product. They tend to feature stuff that looks professional, whether its from EA or a mom-and-pop like us. If your app is of a certain caliber, your chances of a feature are very good. So far we've had the good fortune of all of our releases being featured somewhere, sometimes multiple times, and that's been the source of most of our success. We haven't had to pay for a single ad, or incorporate some goofy social network in the hopes of squeezing out a few more impressions or whatever - we just focus on making something we think is cool, and let the market (and Apple) take it from there. So far so good.

 

Wow, impressive...
Thank you for your informative post Noah
I'm sure I'm gonna have to memorize this post

BTW, I love the name, MikaMobile, cooool

Best wishes for you and your wife...
Curious

 

WOOOOHOOO
You've get a review from my favourite German review side!

http://www.4players.de/4players.php...t_Wertung/iPhone/26359/71319/Battleheart.html

4player are always very critical and for that, you doing very well!
The major issue they said is the missing chracter selecting way. It would be good if you can select the characters over an icon.