If anybody's looking for a side project, I think there's a curation opportunity here. I'd subscribe to a newsletter focused on great, non-IAP-driven iOS games.
It could be weekly or monthly, with a mix of new games and classic gems that maybe aren't so well known. I'd tolerate a fair amount of advertising or sponsored content in the newsletter as long as it was clearly labeled.
The key thing for me is quality. I think that's true for many (extremely) casual phone gamers. I'd much rather get 1 outstanding recommendation per week/month than 10 of varying quality. And I know game enjoyment can be somewhat subjective, but there are still some games that are generally well-done and broadly appealing to fans of a genre. If the top recommendation is a racing game, I might skip it. That's okay. I don't need a new game every week or even every month. I just don't want to waste my time sifting through bad games or games that start fun but quickly ramp up the IAP pressure.
HumbleBundle kind of fits this niche, but I found their volume to be too high. And frankly, I don't want to buy a bunch of games at once. I think I'm less of a gamer than their target audience.
I wanted to say that I developed Rocket Renegade [1] for iOS. It's an 80s-inspired arcade shooter, with elements reminiscent of Space Invaders, Asteroids, Galaga... and, of course, it contains bosses.
I wrote all of the code, and I composed the soundtrack as well. The bitmap graphics were done by game designer Daniel Cook, who released them under a Creative Commons Attribution license.
I believe that it fits all of your requirements: the quality is high, the gameplay is fun, it runs rock-solid at 60 frames per second, the music is awesome, and it's a POP game (Pay Once to Play); no IAP, no ads.
It's essentially a straight-up, gun-for-your-highest-score-classic-arcade-shooter.
Just purchased and played several times. Very solid gameplay, nice retro graphics, fun music. Congratulations.
I was kind of hoping for some power-ups, like a faster shot rate or scattershot. Those might be present, and I just didn't get to them yet, only made it to stage 3-x on first attempts. I also wish the stages had more variation, might feel too repetitive after a while – though that might happen later also.
Anyway, for $0.99, I'm definitely not complaining. It's a fun game and definitely an example of what I'm looking for. I'd personally be willing to pay more, in the $4.99 range, for a game like this, especially if it had some the variation features I mentioned above – but I might be unusual.
Well, first off, a massive THANK YOU for both the purchase, and for taking the time to provide feedback!
Unfortunately, there are no power-ups, and the levels do repeat after the boss level (although the game does become progressively more difficult). Those are definitely great ideas for the next iteration of the game.
Fun game! (Sorry for your loss, indicated in the credits.) I'm not much of a gamer and I kept getting clipped by the rocks because I couldn't see my ship under my finger!
As for your game-play issue, try off-setting your finger on the screen, away from the actual ship. That is to say, I made it so that you can actually have your finger anywhere on the screen to control the ship (i.e., you don't have to have your finger directly on the ship to control it). That will help you as you're trying to navigate through the asteroid field (and the other levels as well)!
At 0.99 though, do you really make much money? Back of the envelop numbers seems that any game at that price point is so underpriced to never be profitable or more than a side project. Especially when an ad driven install costs more than that - relying on the pretty poor app store discovery mechanisms cant drive much traffic. (ive worked for free to play, so maybe we just saw a totally different thing)
The reason IAP became so big is because there was a huge race to the bottom in pricing in mobile, $1 isnt sustainable, so everyone was forced to find alternate revenue streams. If apple got rid of free and <$5, the average quality of the app store could be so much higher
I keep thinking that a virtual arcade model could work well... you get N plays per day for free, but if you want to buy more "coins" you pay like $5 and they carry over...
Each version improves existing games in the arcade and/or adds new ones... you can play your 20 coins/day first, then buy extra if you choose... there's no reason that model couldn't work quite well.
Piggy backing on this to plug our game as well: Fleet of One [1]. Retro 80s space shooter with an original soundtrack composed by a SAMA (South African Music Awards) nominated musician, original artwork by a professional artist, a lot of time spent on level design with classic bosses. Have a look, there's a free demo as well. No IAPs. Real love went into this.
We didn't even make the development cost back. We actively fought against the idea of IAPs and trying to hook whales, even though it would have been easy to introduce mechanisms to do it (on the hardest level it's almost impossible to beat).
I just bought it and gave it a try. I have to say, it is not really my type of thing. After beating the boss, it just repeats, which is not really fun. I really liked the graphics and whatnot, but there was very little in ways of Replayability. It reminded me a lot of Xenon, but was basically over after the first boss. Still, great job! Hope it makes you rich.
Thank you for checking it out! Yes, your feedback is well-placed; it does need additional game-play elements (e.g., power-ups, shields, variation, etc.) that would give it a higher replay factor.
Again, thank you for taking the time to play and provide feedback. This was my first game, and it's clear that I have a lot to learn!
Pocket Tactics [http://www.pockettactics.com] is mostly what you want. This site should be stickied every time HN talks about mobile games.
Most of what they cover is buy-once. IAP in their covered games usually takes the form of optional DLC or as a way to buy the game outright after trying the initial levels. When they occasionally review a F2P game, they take the side of the average consumer and discuss how intrusive (or not) the IAP is.
Quality is also a key requirement for me. We developed our game Ellipsis for iOS with quality as the main driving factor. It's a minimalist action game of survival and dexterity, with zero text, no ads and no IAP. We've put a lot of effort crafting a polished experience that respects the player.
Please check it out, you're precisely the type of audience we are aiming for: http://playellipsis.com
Regarding curation, aside from places like TouchArcade, there are occasionally nicely curated video lists of best new premium games like these from Gameranx:
VSauce 3 used to have videos dedicated to apps. Some were games. I'd be lying if I said I tried all of the games, but I will say that most of their recommended games were of good quality.
They stopped making those videos sometime last year.
I'd just love to be able to search the respective stores being able to filter out stuff I'd never want.
If I could:
* Filter out any apps or games with microtransactions.
* Filter out any apps or games with ads.
* Filter down to apps with at least x downloads or ratings.
* Choose how the content is sorted.
I feel I could find things that I'm actually interested in. As it is at the moment it feels random whether I'll find something I'd actually want to download.
It's on hiatus right now, but I really recommend the @games_we_care twitter feed for this. The 1,041 recommendations in its archive are pretty great, and if/when it comes back, I'm sure the future will be good too.
I was poised to post that site in this thread earlier on, but on googling I found not the site itself but this sadly relevant comment on Reddit from the site's former owner describing their eventual exhaustion in searching for the good stuff and disillusionment with the Android platform in general.
Long time lurker, first time poster. I wrote and published a completely original puzzle game for android, got featured on google play a number of times.
It could be weekly or monthly, with a mix of new games and classic gems that maybe aren't so well known. I'd tolerate a fair amount of advertising or sponsored content in the newsletter as long as it was clearly labeled.
The key thing for me is quality. I think that's true for many (extremely) casual phone gamers. I'd much rather get 1 outstanding recommendation per week/month than 10 of varying quality. And I know game enjoyment can be somewhat subjective, but there are still some games that are generally well-done and broadly appealing to fans of a genre. If the top recommendation is a racing game, I might skip it. That's okay. I don't need a new game every week or even every month. I just don't want to waste my time sifting through bad games or games that start fun but quickly ramp up the IAP pressure.
HumbleBundle kind of fits this niche, but I found their volume to be too high. And frankly, I don't want to buy a bunch of games at once. I think I'm less of a gamer than their target audience.