Hello! here's the second part of the development blog for our latest game: Come Home, Space Carrot Bunny If you miss the first article, you can check it here Here's what we have so far. Two bunnies flying through space in a carrot rocket visiting planets searching for their lost comrades. Monetization Such an evil word. But with an honest and good meaning. To help us to make a living making games and focus all our efforts to make better games each time. As a mobile game, we have certain options to monetize and we evaluate each one of them: 1. Paid game: Is simple, but this is such a small game that we think that nobody is going to pay for it. Sad, but true 2. Microtransactions: We could add a store section and sell some content on it, but again, the game is so short that maybe nobody is going to buy anything. 3. Ads: This is maybe the best, because people are going to play it several times in short amount of time. Well, the best alternative was the ads, but we also add one microtransaction: 'eliminate ads'. That may allow us to gain a few extra bucks. The next thing to check was the type of the ad. We have the banner type in the bottom or in the top. The interstitial (a big image that covers the screen from time to time) and the video ad. Before anything i want to add that almost all of them interfere with the flow of the game. The most important thing is to deliver a great experience to the player. We can't predict the image that is going to be shown. Taking all of that in consideration, we decided to add a button at the end of each play that allows the player to revive, just one time, but this works as an sponsored revive, were the player has to see a interstitial ad and it gets revived. In this way, if the player does not want to see ads, just has to press the re-play button and start over. The ads will never interfere with the experience in that way. Testing It's time to make a few test with people we know in order to check that everything is going as we expect. This are the results + The graphic style was well received, but it was boring for them at times. Too cold say someone. + Too difficult was the other big critic. They want to go further and they couldn't. This cause frustration on some of them. (But too easy can cause boredom)- They play around 3 minutes and then give back the device. This is a bad sign. The game is not engaging. + Nobody press the revive button. They didn't even ask for what it do This give us very good data about what we should change and improve. Let's start working! We start adding detail and movement to the game. We add shooting stars, meteor rocks, rotation to the planets and color to the stars. Also work better in the atmosphere of each planet and work on the gravity. The next thing was to work on the planets, and make all a little more detailed. After changing the background and adding more detailed and color, the graphics were better and the game looks much more 'alive'. The next issue was to fix the difficulty. We change the gravity of the planets in order to attract the rocket. Also, we put a 'force indicator' to help the player to visualize the power given to the rocket and calculate their trajectory. Also, we add a little tutorial image, showing how to play the game and improve the final screen adding some light the the revive button. With all of this, the game become more easy, but only the testing will show us if we do a good job. In the next and final article we'll look deeper into our testers minds and prepare the launch! there's a few things to have in mind like promotion, keywords, facebook page, product page, press releases and more. Stay tuned! Follow Come Home, Space Carrot Bunny in Facebook
