Tank in Space (DEAD) – PostMortem

Blog Originally from : https://jaykalabs.wordpress.com/2013/12/11/tank-in-space-dead-postmortem/

"Tank in Space" my first Indie Game died yesterday!!

Cause of death : Mercy Killing by the Creator

In this blog i discuss the reasons why the game was dying and why i had to kill it finally.

History

"Tank is Space",my first Unity game, is a Space Physics based game, in which you shoot the tank to move in space. Well if you have seen A-Team movie, where they fly a tank, then you know what my game is about :D. After experimenting with LibGDX, Rajawali and ANDengine , I finally decide to use Unity for my Game development venture. After three weeks of struggle with Unity, the game was launched on October 15 2013 for android. It received 1700 downloads in 'Slide me' and around 100+ in Google Play with zero reviews and It was FREE!!

Here's why it died

1) GUI should be good even if gameplay sucks

Unity's in-built GUI is neither flashy nor cool. It is just enough to get the job. So i wrote my own GUI Script. I used a Quad for the Entire Main Menu with created a Box Collider over the "play, exit,rate" texts of the quad. When user touched the screen you cast a ray from screen point to quad and see if it hits the Play or Rate Collider,etc and using the collider name do game stuff. There is no tween animation for each button (it's just one pic for entire menu), no cool stuff. It did have a 'Click' sound and got the job done. But was not professional and a major negative for the game.

2) Don't make the Game Difficult

You have to shoot Right to move left. Pretty complicated Right.. i mean Left. Play the Game you'll see how difficult it is. The required lot of thinking. You have to use Parallelogram law of vectors and Newtons First and third law of motion ot make the tank move wherever you want . Well some people found the game so difficult that they had headaches. So make games which are fun and doesn't use brain much.

3) Marketing is why games become hit, mostly

It was my first game, so didn't give any press release or Ads.I just posted in some random facebook groups i just joined at that time. Never release a game without making a big announcement. 'Make Sound or even Noise to make people notice you'. Try this on a plane. Same goes for apps too

4) Don't make Google Play you only appstore

Around 800 apps get published each day, your app is just one of them unless you tell everyone how cool it is. After faking death initially in Google Play it survived for 2 weeks or so in SlideMe. 1700 downloads for a free game is bad but is better than 100+. So publish everywhere.'If you don't make sound and don't move then you are considered dead'. By this law my app is dead. Anyone interested in reviving the game can contact me :)

The creator now moves to his next game "Thumbi".