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Show HN: I built an Android game after work with a friend in 6 months
- thearn4 12y agoAwesome! Congrats on getting it out there. I just started getting into mobile development as a hobby this year (after 6+ years of mostly systems programming/scientific computing). I'm hoping to have something released within the next few weeks as well.
- valevk 12y agoYou should consider adding an option to at least try the game without giving your information away (facebook or email). Maybe an offline mode.
- quiqueqs 12y agoThat's not a bad idea, maybe in the signup screen have that option. I know a lot of people really hate downloading and app and having to signup before using it. Thanks for the feedback.
- sdernley 12y agoDefinitely worth doing. I've noticed in some of my apps where i haven't had this as an option that people really drop off after downloading, but if people have the option to play without signing up they usually at least give it a try.
- StavrosK 12y agoSmall typo: addictive. "Addicting" is a transitive verb. I'm addicting you to heroin.
- quiqueqs 12y agoFixed. Thanks!
- dotsamuelswan 12y agoAddicting can be used as a participle adjective. You'd be hard-pressed to find a style guide that says otherwise.
- StavrosK 12y agoDescriptivist pig!
- dotsamuelswan 12y agoI couldn't possibly argue with that.
- volent 12y agoI can't seem to login via email. It asks for my email, then it says "Do you want to create an account with this email ?", I press "Yes" then it asks for my password and whatever I type it's wrong. If I click recover password it says my account is not yet created.
- quiqueqs 12y agoOh, if it asks for your password than it's because that email is already registered. If password recovery is not working in this case, the it's definitely a bug. I'll look into it, but meanwhile can you maybe use another email address to signup?
- Doublon 12y agoI'm also unable to register with my email (then it says "welcome back" and asks for a password) or recover my password (says that my email address is not registered). When trying to use FB login I get "Whoops! We could not log you in using Facebook. Please try signing up using your email".
- rikkus 12y agoLooks like Snap Attack, which I've played on my Windows Phone and is good fun! Did you write up anything about your experiences making it? Would be interested to hear.
- quiqueqs 12y agoHaven't really setup a dev blog yet, but I will soon. In the development side there isn't anything overly complex actually. The app doesn't use any graphics/gaming library, it's developed in native Android targeting versions 4.0+, mainly to avoid spending a lot of time testing and adding patches for older devices. The backend is done in ruby but it will probably be rewritten in erlang/elixir in the near future if the game gains traction. The main reason being that my friend which developed the backend works full time as an erlang developer and is eager to try out elixir on a real project :)
- fat0wl 12y agoon a news site i would rather be linked to an article about the process than a download page for the game. booooooooOOooOoOo (jk just sayin)
- jbeja 12y agoWhich country are you guys?
- quiqueqs 12y agoWe're in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
- dreamweapon 12y agoFinally, someone who has the guts to admit that their app wasn't built in a weekend!
- Someone1234 12y agoHonestly and the claims seem to be getting shorter and shorter all the time. First it was "we built this in a month," then a week, and on to just a weekend. Recently people have been saying they built the entire app in a single "hackathon" (basically one day). If you really look at almost all of these claims they're false. Often times people would have built three similar apps and for their "new" one they just combine elements of the three and call it done.
- dmix 12y agoEh I don't know, I've been on HN for years and feel like people have stopped posting articles like this. The look-at-my-app-I-built-in-24hrs is definitely past it's heyday. The programming languages, design frameworks, and PaaS infrastructure that allowed people to start making apps quickly has been around for a very long time now (2007?).
- general_failure 12y agoWell, I did write my app when I was waiting for the food to cool down after I put it out of the microwave.
- actionscripted 12y agoSo you wrote yours in a singe snackathon? Congrats!
- 9point6 12y agoDepends on the food, there're things I've heated in the microwave that have been cooling down for the past two weeks
- ttty 12y ago
- lmedinas 12y agoDid you used any engine ?
- quiqueqs 12y agoNo, we just used the Android SDK.
- vblord 12y agoCongrats! I wish you guys success with your app!
- quiqueqs 12y agoThanks!
- nachokb 12y agolooks awesome and fun
- med00d 12y agoNice! It's funny, but I was just reading about a similar game being built, but this guy took 16 months and spent $58K building the app. Here's the post http://forums.makingmoneywithandroid.com/income-reports/16351-expense-report-wordsearch-hero.html http://forums.makingmoneywithandroid.com/income-reports/1635... where he talks about it. His game isn't exactly the same, and definitely has a lot more going on, but there are some similarities for sure.
- quiqueqs 12y agoWow, $35K just for graphics work, and cheaper than the actual development. Definitely something I couldn't afford hah
- dmix 12y ago35k? That seems like a big, risky investment considering he doesn't even have any developers or designers in-house and this is his 3rd app. Although maybe he prefers doing one-offs? I'm not super-familiar with the game scene.
- med00d 12y agoIt seems like this is sort of a "hail mary" for him. He's hoping to make $600K over the next 3 years and he's planning on spending a ton of money on ads.
- cocoflunchy 12y agoThe thread is from march 2012, and his app has between 1k and 5k downloads. I doubt he made a good return on his investment... https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.rhs.wordsearchhero https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.rhs.wordse...
- med00d 12y agoThe user joined in March 2012, but the thread is from 10-17-2014.
- artmageddon 12y agoNice work! :)
- jonaldomo 12y agoI just played a few rounds, it is really fun. I did not understand what to do the first two times though. I kept looking for a way to submit a word similar to what you would do in a scrabble game. Very nice design and animation. Well done.
- quiqueqs 12y agoThanks, it means a lot for a developer to hear the the design looks part of the app looks good :)
- funkyy 12y agoLooks good. Can you give more details to us? Like what was biggest issue for you, did you do it full time or part time. How many hours average a week you would spend on it and how many downloads did you got thanks to HN? I thinks those details would be very good to have! Good luck with your success!
- quiqueqs 12y agoSure. The app actually went through several iterations. The first thing I developed was the main board of the game and it was definitely the hardest part (at least at the development side) since it needs to detect valid words. If you play around with it, you'll notice that you can form combinations of words that are linked together, so you basically have paths of words that might be connected to one of the fixed words through this path, and are thus valid combinations (hard to explain, but I think it makes more sense when you see the gameplay). Getting this logic right involved a couple of weeks of trial and error. On the bright side, it increase my vocabulary skills :). Most of the gameplay was developed locally, without any backend. By the game I was sure I could get the gameplay right, I asked my friend to join me and work on the backend. So for the past 3 months more or less, we've been working on getting all of the endpoints right, and testing, testing, testing and more testing to make sure we could catch as many bugs as possible. In terms of hours, we probably put in about 2 hours per day on weekdays and about an average of 5-10 hours during the weekends. In hindsight it looks like a LOT of time, but if you've ever done Android development, you probably know that the amount of time and effort that goes into testing the app on several devices, probably surpasses the actual development time.
- fharper1961 12y agoCongrats on finishing and publishing a side project. I know how hard that is! Some quick feedback. First the Play Store listing. I installed Tiny Words on a Nexus 7, and it shows the first 3 screenshots for a 7 inch tablet. Then it shows the same screenshots but on a phone. It is only by scrolling to see the other screenshots that you finally see the 4th and following screenshots "The best score after 3 rounds wins!", etc. After installing I chose the FB option, but it opened a FB login web page which would require typing in username+login. I have the FB app installed and logged in, so this shouldn't happen. You'll lose a lot of users at this stage unless you fix this.
- quiqueqs 12y agoThanks for the feedback. I wasn't aware of this Facebook login issue. I'll take a look at it. Thanks!
- tjmckenzie 12y agoI used the FB option as well, and was not required to login to FB.
- pavel_lishin 12y agoDitto, but inviting friends doesn't seem to work - I see a "facebook" window pop up, then it disappears, and I don't see a list of friends to challenge. :/
- pacofvf 12y agoGreat game, just a few silly nitpicks, the UI looks a lot like Etermax games, I hope you do ad free versions, I didn't liked so much the Spanish name (Apuraditos), also I don't know if that word is used in all the Spanish speaking word. Saludos desde México.
- Jonovono 12y ago"Hurry up! You only have 1:30 minutes"?
- Perdition 12y agoYeah that irked me as well. "1.5 minutes" "One and a half minutes" "one minute and thirty seconds" The use of the colon to separate hours/minutes and minutes/seconds means that you need to supply units to tell which it is, but "1:30 minutes" seems wrong.
- xandroid4net 12y agoHi, I'm New to hacker news, but I also built an android app on the side and have 20ish downloads. I built it all myself and it cost only a couple hundred dollars. However I can't get users to stay. Most of the 20ish users installed it and then didn't play. So my question is what is your plan to get users to download and keep them interested? My app took about 4 months and I build it using Xamarin.Android. I don't want to break any forum rules by adding a link to my app, but I would be interested in getting some direction for marketing and feedback.
- privong 12y agoIt might be better to submit this as a standalone "Ask HN", with more specific information about your app.
- sdernley 12y agoIt's hard to tell with only 20 downloads. Some people will just download it and not use it, it just happens sometimes. Is it a free app or paid for? If it's free then this will happen more often. I'd suggest finding out where they stop, is there a signup screen that stops them or is it something to do with the setup? I imagine you don't have any information for them if no one has started playing it, but if you do, contact them and ask why they stopped. Be friendly to them about it, people will help you out. Good luck. It's hard, but it can be a rolling ball, getting a few people playing can help things take off slowly.
- joeblau 12y agoThat's awesome. I spent 12 full weeks last year and built a game for iOS without using a game engine as well. It really gives you an appreciation for understanding the OS, Memory constraints and trying to model concurrent actions. Another thing that I really like about game development is that it really challenges all of the sensors on a device. It pushes the limits of animation and sound which a lot of utility apps don't really embrace.
- avinassh 12y agoany resources/tutorials for a beginner? I know Objective C and have built basic apps, but not games
- reshambabble 12y agoWow this is awesome! Motivates me to get moving on my own side projects.
- sjs382 12y agoHow do you currently market the game? How do you plan to? Do you have any planned (or potential) revenue streams other than ads? I'm in the midst of building a single-player word game, so anything you have to say on this would at least give me something to think about.
- quiqueqs 12y agoWe actually just released the app yesterday. We don't really have a formal plan, just this sort of stuff, like posting to HN, game and android related subreddits, twitter, etc. Right now we only offer ads (and very few actually) since the goal is to attract users. In terms of revenue, our plan is to get some metrics and user feedback, figure out how users use the app, what they like, don't like, etc, and use that to add some relevant in-app purchasable items.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- levirosol 12y agoTake my $0.99 and give me an ad free version! Take additional $0.99s and give me boosters, like clock extenders, wild letters, and hints. Leaderboards. OMG. Leaderboards... Let me grow your user base by inviting my FB friends in exchange for said boosters. Relevant leaderboards (because people i know are on them) Spend half of those $0.99s and hire a designer to create a design that caters to the middle aged women crowd. Spend the other half of the $0.99s on advertising. Web / Fb of course, but late night TV seems to do exceptionally well for that demo. Recoup those $0.99s by running your own ads for said ad free version and boosters with a larger audience.
- quiqueqs 12y agoThis is some really useful info!
- wernercd 12y agoEverything except the booster/wild-cards/etc... Unless THOSE people are kept in separate leader boards. .99 for add free version would be much appreciated.
- MichaelGG 12y agoCareful, it sounds like you're proposing a pay to win model. Maybe that's good financially, but it ruins the game. If "boosters" (sounds like cheats) are allowed, somehow compensate in game. Maybe by offering pure matches, or by giving the boost to both players (kinda defeats the point). OTOH, perhaps I'm a strange minority, and these annoying, unbalancing devices are loved by many. I'd certainly pay for ad free, even a buck or so s month (Google Play has subscriptions).
- levirosol 12y agoyou are the minority, and so am I. I hate that stuff in most games, and rarely fork over my cold hard cash. But the middle aged women demo does not think like your typical HN reader. And that demo is orders of magntude larger than the HN community. At best, OP should pray to monetize 2% of their audience. Of that, only maybe 15% end up being repeat customers. and remember, 37% of all stats quoted on the internet are made up. but you get my point ;)
- leetNightshade 12y agoI just wanted you to know that I can't try out your game since it doesn't seem to support Android 2.3.
- quiqueqs 12y agoYeah, it requires Android 4.0 or newer to run. It was a decision we made at the beginning since we don't own Android devices running those versions and didn't want to spend all of our time making the app compatible with all android versions (or at least starting at froyo).
- icedog 12y agoYour phone version is in the lowest 12%-tile. No offense to you, but as an Android developer, I'm content making my minimum required version Ice Cream Sandwich if it means avoiding any complexities.
- ode 12y agoMake a promo video and put it on the play store page.
- MichaelGG 12y agoWhat an excellent game. Please charge me for an ad free version!
- Rinum 12y agoThere's a typo on the help page, the first word: "Objetive" ... missing the "c"
- quiqueqs 12y agoCool, thanks!