What The Ball / Monsters Roll In - Beta Testers needed

* None-information = empty = not contributing to the game
* Landscape was what I meant

* None-information = empty = not contributing to the game
* Landscape was what I meant

Thank you so much for the feedback.
None-information would be fixed as the table is where the points and lives left will be shown. Since it's gonna hold the HUD, I felt it would be better to leave it a bit empty.

Also, the slider isn't attached in the screenshot. So after including the slider thing and HUD, the table would feel filled I believe.

Landscape was in my mind at the early stage of the game. But the problem is I felt the "curvey" should have enough space to rotate than the sufficient space between pipes. Also, it could make the game increasingly difficult. I feel that the game is difficult enough for someone who's playing first time. So I implemented portrait mode.

Why can't the details on the balls be increased in size to be made more visible?

If I increase the ball size, I'll have to increase the pipe size. Then the gap between the pipes would reduce. When grey monster start to appear, player should have enough space between pipes as they are dropped outside the pipes.

Though the pipe may look bigger than monster, the collision box is of equal size. The pipes have three collision boxes just to give real pipe effect. Corner collision boxes guide the monster into the center collision .  The center collision box only detects the ball and pipe collision. This center collision box is equal the size of the ball.

I don't think you should increase the ball size, I was suggesting you increase the 'details' on the balls. I'm sure if you show the artist what the ball looks like on a small screen they will have an idea how to make things more visible, that is their job as the game artist. Increasing the eye size, width of the lines used for the details etc.

Oops! My bad. Sorry.

I'll check how it turns out for the details to be increased.

Two New modes implemented:

- Single Curve mode
- Dual Curve mode ( One curve moves in the direction you swipe and other curve moves in opposite direction)

Scale to fit - Full screen
Game is now ported to 'Scale to fit - full screen'

Monsters blink
Added animations to the monsters. It blinks eyes.

Requesting everyone to check the game and see if none of the actors collapse over each other. Since 'Scale to fit' is pretty new to me yet, I'm just wondering if I may haven't set 'y' of actors properly.

The 'y' positions of all actors looks good in my iPhone 5s but not sure about other devices. Please check and update. 

I think you are doing  good job, I like the double curve mechanic, but I have to be blunt here, In my opinion, I think the game looks like a great flash game, nice student project, but not a clean, polished, feature quality iOS game.

There are too many little things that bring the overall quality down.

I feel the background is the biggest issue here, its really difficult to make a big detailed image like that look good, right now I don't think it looks good/professional. I don't think I have seen many blurry backgrounds recently, Can you find a good, featured game that has used a blurry background art style?

Also the curvy bar is now blending in to the background, I though it hadn't spawned the first time I opened the game.

Look at the current list of Best new games/Games we love. There is a very clear/clean art style across the board.

In my opinion, I think the game looks like a great flash game, nice student project, but not a clean, polished, feature quality iOS game.

There are too many little things that bring the overall quality down.

I feel the background is the biggest issue here, its really difficult to make a big detailed image like that look good, right now I don't think it looks good/professional. I don't think I have seen many blurry backgrounds recently, Can you find a good, featured game that has used a blurry background art style?

That's correct. Even I felt that something was missing. (May be because I'm a great fan of minimalism). But I'm not sure what I should do. Every background he works on, I agree to go with it but then at a later stage get unhappy. That would irate a designer wouldn't it? I might just raise the budget bar and will ask him to work on a minimalist theme also.

I got a publisher response from Bulkypix. They seem to be interested. Not sure if the company is good and secure to work with. Their games are definitely great and a few or top hits but so is Ketchapp. But every developer who approached ketchapp for publishing complaint that ketchapp stole the game and published with a different publisher banner.

How about Bulkypix? Has anyone had any experience with them? Google search result seems like they're good to work with.

Remember that Ketchapp started with 2048, a clone of Threes that they didn't even create.  Of course they'll continue to rip off other devs as much as they can.

The only thing I know about Bulkypix is they get featured a lot.

Remember that Ketchapp started with 2048, a clone of Threes that they didn't even create.  Of course they'll continue to rip off other devs as much as they can.

The only thing I know about Bulkypix is they get featured a lot.

Ketchapp's 2048 itself is a ditto clone of 2048 that was actually a web browser game created by Gabrielle who is no way related to Ketchapp So I do understand that.

I'm just not aware of any other publishers. I'll start a separate discussion thread in case anybody else who worked with them can share their opinion.

This Background problem is a classic issue. You are thinking about background 3 but you are not happy with the first 2 backgrounds. You should have stuck to one background and iterated on it until you are 100% happy with it. You should get the artist to do a mock up of a game scene, how they picture the game would look, then adjust it until you are both happy with it, then work towards making the game look as close to that vision as possible. Especially on a tight budget.

If I was in your situation, I would ask for the ball characters to be adjusted so they are sharp and visible on a small screen, then have a flat, basic pattern for the background, I liked the dimond wallpaper. Make sure the balls, Curve, pipes all 'pop' in the scene, They should standout to clearly show that this is where your attention should be, anything else that is not relevant to the game mechanic is just a distraction.

If I was in your situation, I would ask for the ball characters to be adjusted so they are sharp and visible on a small screen, then have a flat, basic pattern for the background, I liked the dimond wallpaper. Make sure the balls, Curve, pipes all 'pop' in the scene, They should standout to clearly show that this is where your attention should be, anything else that is not relevant to the game mechanic is just a distraction.

The first thing he showed me regarding the background was a background with diamond wallpaper alone only. It was too simple and didn't impress. Thus we started to add things to it.

That's correct. The balls and curve should get attention. That's why I thought the other things being blur would help it. But the fact that there aren't top iOS games with blur background effect is also true. The background is indeed a classic issue.

I'm not going to ignore the fact that the monster's details should be visible in smaller screens. I just didn't prioritize that now. I thought we would implement the following things before deciding if the current theme looks good:

- Changing to scale to fit.
- Implementing a homepage with all necessary buttons (I felt this could also be a reason why we feel the theme isn't looking good).
- Increasing the visibility of the monster details.
- Changing the pipes on top/adopting the slider to the current theme (The slider is now adopted).
- Going for a more suitable font.

I just feel that after implementing all of these things, we might even like the current theme. That's why I'm still waiting.

Not an update pretty much. But Having much difficulty renaming the game keeping the monster theme in mind. Any idea would be appreciated. Names I'm considering:

• My Pretty Pity Monsters
• My Pretty Monsters
• Monsters Checkout
• Monster Checks In
• Monsters Drop In
• Monsters come in any form
• Monsters roll in

Thanks again.

Small publishers like Pandemic out of Australia (I think) and AppHub/Hubwester out of Scandinavia  are probably more reliable in terms of not stealing ideas. However, since they are small, it is difficult to find them.