Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
has to be done. You probably want to define more of everything: more levels, more
enemies, more different items to pickup, more challenges, more sounds. You may
also want to introduce a few things that we did not address in this topic: playing
with other players over a network, side scrolling, maintaining a high score, playing
in-game movies between levels, and you can probably think of a couple of other
things that are interesting to add. Use the
Tick Tick
game as a starting point for your
own game. With the techniques that we have provided you with in this topic, you
should be able to do this on your own now. Your only limit is your own creativ-
ity!
Publishing games—
Now that you are programming your own games, you
might have started to think about how to get your games published. Maybe
you want to publish games just for the achievement, but maybe you also want
to make some money with it. Fortunately, nowadays getting games published
is very easy. For mobile devices there are app stores to which you can submit
your games. And you can of course make your games available on your own
website.
The challenge lies in making your game visible. On iOS or Android more
than 100 new games appear every day. Most of them are played just by a few
people. And if you create your own website for the game, how are you going
to get any visitors?
First of all, you need to produce a quality game. Do not think you can do
everything yourself. If you are a good programmer it does not mean you are
also a good artist. And, unfortunately for you, initially it is often the visuals
that determine whether a person is going to try your game. It is a good idea to
form a team with an artist and maybe also with a game designer and an audio
expert.
Do not be over-ambitious. You are not going to create the next Halo! Set
reasonable goals. Start with small, but excellent games. Do not trust your
own judgment. Talk to others about your game and let them play prototypes
to make sure players actually like your game.
Get yourself connected. Be active in social networks, start your own
blog, post on forums, and so on. You are going to be an Indie devel-
oper so check out websites like
http://www.indiegames.com/
to learn what
other Indies are doing. Be active in game jams, like the Global Game Jam
(
http://www.globalgamejam.org/
) to meet other developers.
When your game is nearing completion, make a marketing plan. Post about
your game wherever you can, make a press kit, create a video, send informa-
tion to blogs and other websites, and so on. People will only play your game
when they hear about it. So you would better make a lot of noise.
