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A run down of what went right and wrong with the release of Battle Group. From perfect score reviews to critical bugs on day one. How we released a game on four platforms simultaneously.
Battle Group, our multiplatform rail shooter title, is out and selling well. Today I'm going to give a basic run down on what went right and wrong with the project. For those that don't know, Battle Group was our (Bane Games) third game together and was released simultaneously on 4 platforms: iOS, Android, PC and Mac.
Since its release we've been featured on the Mac App Store, won bunch of awards and received a number of "perfect" reviews. All sounds good right? Not everything went as smoothly as it could. We made some new mistakes and repeated (for the 3rd time) other mistakes which we'll hopefully finally solve on our next project.
1. Amazing Audio 
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Without a doubt, the first thing people comment on when they talk to me about Battle Group is the amazing audio. Mick Gordon our audio engineer went above and beyond with the audio for Battle Group. When we first pitched the idea of the game to Mick he was quite for a minute or so and then became even more excited than usual. He had grand plans for what he could do with the audio which included voice overs and movie quality explosions (and no snare drums). Voice overs for a mobile game is fairly uncommon, particularly from an indie studio, but amazingly he managed to pull it off and it sounds awesome. We were runner up in the Freeplay Independent Game Awards for audio based on a very early version of the game. Since release nearly every review has mentioned the high quality audio and we're really proud of how well it sounds both on PC and mobile.
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As I mentioned previously, we've received a lot of great reviews for Battle Group. A few of them have been perfect scores with an average around 85% for all reviews. This was one of the biggest improvements since the release of Flick Buddies (our last original IP game). The major issues of not contacting enough press and terrible release timing were rectified and it paid off. We had a number of previews before the game was released and this helped build a buzz so our day 1 sales put us in a good position on the charts in a number of countries. These glowing reviews also helped push our sales in the initial few weeks which helped us to reach our "break even" point for the development of the game in a relatively short period of time. While we didn't make it onto all the big sites like TouchArcade.com, we did manage to secure a number of major sites including a feature as app of the week on cnet.com.au which was also aired on Australian TV.
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From the beginning we designed Battle Group to work on as many platforms as possible. From mobile to tablet to traditional PC/Mac we wanted to challenge ourselves and release simultaneously on all available markets. We weren't sure which would be the most successful and to our surprise the Mac App Store was one of the best sellers. We were featured on the Mac App Store and this drove some really great sales in the first few weeks. Thanks to Unity, porting to the different platforms was fairly painless. I've spoken of this previously so I won't dwell too long, but suffice to say that without the non-iOS markets we would not have been as successful as we are with our sales. We also would not have secured a publishing deal for China.
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One of the big lessons we learnt from Flick Buddies was to keep the controls as simple as possible. From the outset we wanted a game players could pick up and instantly understand. We met this goal allowing us to reach the largest market possible. The first instinct for new players was to tap the screen near an enemy. They instantly get feedback as a missiles flies out from their ship and ends in a rewarding explosion when it reaches the point tapped. We spent a lot of time playtesting Battle Group and from the youngest to oldest players we saw almost universal approval of the control system without any instructions or need for a tutorial. We included in-game queues if it seemed like players weren't picking up the controls and this resolved the small number of people that didn't instantly understand.1. Release Day Bug
The down-side of a simultaneous release on four platforms was that a fairly critical bug crept into the iOS version at release. The bug meant that on the new iPhone 4S the water did not render leaving a large black gap in its place. Thankfully it was an easy fix and we had the patch submitted to Apple on the day of release. After the month's of development it was disappointing that bug like this got through the cracks, however it's taught us another valuable lesson in thoroughly testing the FINAL version of the game on as many platforms as possible.
2. Raster Lines
Invincible Damaged
Blackjack Damaged
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