MHGames

It’s been a while since I first released the Jewels on the Android Market. I suppose it is a good time to look up some statistics, so here you go!

So it’s been a blast, I still cannot understand why it’s been so successfull. Ok, mostly because it’s Bejeweled, but there are loads of other B-clones on the Android Market, so that doesn’t explain it entirely. I guess there just was a (big) niche for a free & polished B-game.

Although some people have complained about the addition of ads — which are only in the main menu and not some distracting blinking colorful banners either, I need to clarify — turned out it really was the best thing to do. I’m not allowed to share any numbers, but it’s been waaay over my lowly expectations..

I’d like to express my gratitude and thanks to all those numerous active players, and of course to the good folk at Google AdSense for making this possible! I had never anticipated it, but turned out that ad supported apps and games are indeed a viable business model.

…and still it’s only the second most popular free game on the Market; I cannot beat that bloody Solitaire for the life of me!

Driftmoon, a role playing game in development by my co-worker Ville has made it in the TOP-4 final games at a contest held by 2BeeGames. This is the final week of the competition, so take a look quickly and cast your vote! Driftmoon seems very promising and reminds me a bit of the good old Ultima-games (mainly VII/VIII); definitely worth trying if you like role playing games.

Check out Ville’s games at www.monkkonen.net or head directly to 2BeeGames in order to check the finalist games. You can place your vote in either of the sites.

Just wanted to announce that I’ve finished the Android port of Jewels. It is now available through the Android Market, for free. The comments so far have been very positive, thank you. I’ll probably release an update later with some fixes and tweaks, but after that I think it’s time to start thinking about the next project.

I’ll write something about the porting experience from programmers point of view later; it definitely has been interesting as I have not done any mobile coding before this.

UPDATE on 13th of November:

Now that Jewels has been on the Market for a week, I’d like to share some statistics with you. Turned out that the game is a huge success (ok, it’s mainly because it’s Bewejeled, but interesting still), I had not anticipated this at all! At first I thought it’d break 5000 downloads before the last weekend (the game was released on Thursday). It did, Sunday the downloads were over 16 000. On Monday, it was over 32 000. And now, it’s over 100 000 installs, 92% of them active (i.e. still on users’ phones)!

Jewels is actually the second most popular (free) game in the Market right now with a average rating of 4.5 stars (596 ratings at the moment), only behind a Solitaire-game. Very nice. I’ve actually gotten more comments about Android-Jewels in a week, than I have from all my previous games combined during all these years, wow! So there’s definately market for good Android-games. I’m planning to make something a bit more original next,  so stay tuned.

Of course, it’s not all roses: I’ve released about a dozen updates but still there remains some mysterious bugs that don’t occur in most of the phones, but do in some.. Partly that is because Jewels was not originally writting  for phones (XNA as an environment is way simpler than Android!), and partly because I’ve probably screwed up something (my first Android app, after all). I will definitely try to design the next game to more solid and not so prone to these various bugs and crashes. But one thing bugs me: the Anroid phones are truly different from each other, although in theory the same code should work in most of them, in reality it won’t.. I’ve seeing reports of some really weird crashes that really should not be happening.

Just wanted to report this: Annemari and myself finally got married a couple of days back, 7th of August to be exact. Phew, lot’s of preparation for a single day, but it was all worth it. Everything went well and I’m happy. Seemed like our guests enjoyed as well. ^^

In other news..

I haven’t progressed on the game project, but I have played games. I finished Saints Row 2, it was a blast. Currently I’m playing InFAMOUS, which I bought recently. Great game! Thinking of buying Red Faction: Guerrilla next. So many great games, so little time..

Last week I finished Fallout 3. I somewhat rushed it through, as the urge to start playing Fallout 2 had grown too strong! I probably continue playing FO3 from an earlier save later, since I had heaps of places I didn’t get to visit and a good deal of unfinished quests as well.

So what do I think of the game? Well.. It’s a great game – much better than Oblivion, for example – looks great and sounds great. I enjoyed my time on the wastes a great deal. But… how could I put this… It’s not Fallout! :/ While there are plenty of things done right (the VATS system works quite nicely!), it’s still missing much of the good old Fallouty spirit.. The biggest problem is the dialogue: it’s just not that good, especially when compared to FO/FO2. NPCs feel like answering or quest machines. Where’s the humour? Not much of it left. The ending was not very good either, although not as bad as some people claim it to be.

Nevertheless, as I said, I enjoyed the game a lot, and will be playing it again. Perhaps they should’ve called it Fallout: Something something something, though. I had a few problems with the game: three freezes (two of them while approaching Evergreen Mills) where I must restart PS3, one crash and several little (graphical / physics) bugs. Not too bad, I guess. Lots of PS3 players have complained about worse problems.

And after completing FO3, I’ve been playing FO2 again, after many years. As I mentioned in my last post, I never actually finished the game and have held FO1 as the better game. Let’s see if the order changes after I finish the part two. It’s very hard though (at least in the beginning), much harder than I remembered. I think I’ve hit a bug though (I’m using Killaps unofficial patch 1.02.25 – highly recommended, I’ve yet to try the Restoration Project), skip the following paragraph to avoid FO2 spoilers.

*SPOILERS* I cannot seem to be able to give Bishops holotape and the Raider account book to Lynette in Vault City. I wiped out Bishops in New Reno, found the holotape in the safe. On my way to Vault City, I cleaned out the Raiders cave. At Vault City, I can tell several people I’ve neutralized the raider threat, and they say I should tell the First Citizen, but I cannot give the account book to Lynette. Nor the holotape. I tried before doing the Gecko power plant quests and after – doesn’t work. Oh well, I guess I cannot complete those quests then. *END SPOILERS*

Now I just need to plug GOG.com, the Good Old Games! The service is excellent, so far I’ve bought FO1, FO2 and Gothic. The games come prepatched and DRM free, it’s great. Good stuff, highly recommended.