Magma Monsters - My first game (iOS / Android)

Hey guys,

Thought i'd share my first personal project with you guys; Magma Monsters! it's out today! Developed with Unity5

iOS: https://itunes.apple.com/app/magma-monsters/id970085916
Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ScottMitchell.MagmaMonsters

you guys know the deal, please download / review the game! you know it helps out allot!




Any questions / feedback will always be welcome!

Thanks guys!

Facebook: https://facebook.com/MagmaMonsters
Twitter: http://twitter.com/s__mitchell
Website: http://magmamonstersgame.com

 

Nice work! I love the art style, very simple.

 

Cheers dude! Appreciate it

 

Also like the artwork, gameplay reminds me of Fists of Fury. How long have you been working on it?

 

Thanks, uh I worked on it for about 6 weeks.

 

here's some pretty screenshots of the game for those who can't download the game:

 

I like the music from the trailer on your site. Is that in-game music?
Did you create the music yourself?
Only issue with the trailer is it doesn't show any game play.
Nice aesthetics.

 

The music from the trailer is based off of the music in game, so it's very similar.

All the audio is custom, composed by the talented David Burrows: http://davidfburrows.com

and yeah the trailer is a promo trailer, not a gameplay trailer, working on a gameplay trailer now

Cheers!

 

Gave you a 5-star rating, despite it being kind of choppy on my S***ty iPhone 4s. You should include a rate/review button in your game to make it easier to do!

I'm curious about your monetization model, as the only revenue model I see is from voluntary ad viewership for in-game currency, which is great! I think everyone appreciates that. Is that from Unity Ads?

I saw you using Vlambeer's PR kit, how is that working out? Are there any other external marketing tools that you are using because I checked on Sensor Tower that you aren't really optimizing your keywords for the app store, you should check out their blog posts about app store optimization, its good stuff. App Annie is a better alternative for app-store analytics but Sensor Tower is free for some things (like keyword translations). This also may be late but I believe TapJoy, TapDaq and PollJoy all have unity integration available. Never used them but I've heard good things about them.

Sorry about the wall of text and questions, I'm just super intrigued and excited about your first app launch.


EDIT: Although maybe I spoke too soon about your ASO, you've been featured in the iTunes store 321 times.

 

Appreciate it dude! you're awesome

Yeah I've considered adding a button for rating the game, but then I thought maybe users would find it annoying; if I were to do it I'd have to make sure it wasn't intrusive and it didn't force anything. But it's definitely something I'd probably need to do for sure!

Uhh so the thing people get confused about with my game is the fact that I have no real monetisation model, the game was not designed to make money at all, it will not be generating any sort of income for me, I just want it to be played! I invested quite allot of my own money in the game, but I really don't care about making it back, that wasn't its purpose!

The ads are only there so players can earn that little bit of extra in-game currency to buy a mask, most often you're just a few away from unlocking one so it's a bit annoying that you can't .. So boom! I added the ads And players are definitely appreciating it, they're watching ads quite often.

And yup! good spot, it is indeed UnityAds. The game uses Unity Analytics also!

Vlambeer's stuff is great, I also use Promoter which he made! that's pretty cool, it searches the web for mentions of your game etc and then if you pay a small membership it does it in the background for you always, then just sends you an email if it finds something. But generally for marketing I find social media is the best platform for a indie dev to market, I've gotten allot of love on social media

You know I looked into ASO S*** loads! like absolutely S*** loads and I studied the crap out of keywords so when I finally got round to doing mine I thought man I got this! but you're right, according to Sensor Tower my ASO is bad! But to answer your question I use Sensor Tower, I know of App Annie quite well but I haven't used it for Magma, I should probably start!

Also one thing I noticed with keywords on sites like Sensor Tower is that your rating changes based on popularity rather than actual keywords, like I've seen games scores as a F but then get a little bit more popular and then all of a sudden they're graded as a C or B etc

whoa thats awesome! (I think), I'm really hoping I get a feature from apple next week, that'll help the game out loads.

 

My son (age 7) and I played for about 30 minutes.
Nice aesthetics. My son found it hard to play. I guess he just didn't like swiping fast. He liked the graphics though and said it was fun, but hard.
I found it fast paced and fun also. I liked the in-game visual time indicator you created for the special attacks when they run out. Nice touch.

In addition to the game there is some valuable marketing and analytic information in this thread. Thanks for that as well.

Nice work.

 

Thanks for checking out the game! And I love that you played it for so long, that's awesome!

the game is pretty difficult, it was designed to be fairly difficult, it was supposed to be a quick fix kinda game, where you'd play it for a couple of minutes on the tube or sitting on the toilet etc so you don't want a user to play for too long! And plus swiping can get fairly tiring, so yeah short bursts worked well in testing!

The game actually used to be wayyyyyyyy more difficult! I had to tone it down a little

Again thanks allot!

 

Here's a view of the game in engine for anyone who's interested in that sort of stuff:

 

Whaohhhh! Magma Monsters is now available for android, wooo!

Google Play Link: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ScottMitchell.MagmaMonsters

 

Hey Guys!

Currently doing a small competition for my game if any of you want to take part:



you can win a little shaman model from the game! All you have to do is beat my score. Simples.

 

Hey I've seen your game on Twitter (I'm @mjholtzem) but just saw this thread and wanted to post something with more characters

Good Stuff:
Art is great!

I like how you can quickly get started again after you die. This works great with the quick pace of the game. The rounds tend to be short so it's great that you don't have to wait for long animations and stuff to restart.

The gameplay mechanic is pretty sweet. I thought it would get boring to fast and although I haven't played it a ton I feel that I'm getting the appropriate mileage out of it.

I think my favorite thing is how you handled the UI. It looks good, everything is smooth and seamless and really pleasantly animated. I love that the menu and gameplay are contained in a single scene so there's no loss of fluidity when moving between the two. Totally might steal some ides from your UI implementation

Criticisms:
Note: sorry if this seems longer than the good stuff, it's just easier to identify gripes :/

I wish there was explanation of the mask stats. If I didn't ask you on twitter I wouldn't have a clue what they actually did

It would be nice if there was some feedback when killing enemies such as an indication that the gold ones give you money and some indication of when you get two points from a single kill. Just simple particle effects maybe

It bugged me that the rhythm of the music does not match the rhythm of the game. I ended up disabling music because it was throwing off my timing a bit and making me die.

Anyway good job When I get home from work and have some time I'm coming after that shaman model!!!

 

Hey,

Thanks allot for the feedback. Means allot! yeah UI was a big thing, I didn't want you to ever have to wait for anything, just nice small little animations and you're in!

And yeah I remember you saying about the mask stats not being obvious, so in the latest update I made it so if you tap on the stats a little information pops up explaining what they do for you!

And I agree with the need for some indication, it's something I've played around with allot! When the game is pretty slow it's fine, but as it speeds up it starts to get super confusing if like a ghost animation or anything happens. get's pretty frustrating. I'm going to keep looking into it though for sure!

As for music, having the music adapt with you was something implemented early on! I actually had a somewhat procedural audio system where the track was split into a bunch of different segments and I played segments based on speed and mixed them with each other to make a endless procedural soundtrack. It was awesome but the file size ended up being huge since all the little segments were separate..

Thanks again dude, Appreciate it