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[Squid Party]

I really enjoy games that combine good art and clever design with simple but effective and original gameplay 

[Franklin's Ghost]

Great video, nice job and really like the bounce back on the puzzle pieces.

[08--n7.r6-79.84]

it's remind me this manga:

[eigenbom]

Hey just saw this, looks cool! How did you find working with Marmalade? Did you encounter any platform-specific bugs?

[HernanZh]

Thanks for the comments I was worried about whether the video was any good or not.

Hey just saw this, looks cool! How did you find working with Marmalade? Did you encounter any platform-specific bugs?

Working with Marmalade isn't bad. Haven't encountered anything serious so far, so it's fine

[HernanZh]

Hey does anyone have an iPod Touch or an iPhone 3 (or older model) and want to help test this game? I'd like to know if the game works on these devices...

[HernanZh]

Well, I spend my entire weekend working on a new feature as fast as I could. I had a really nice suggestion from one my beta testers. Despite the game's cute look, the puzzles are actually brutal as hell. So I was suggested to put in some hints, in the form of revealing the first block placements.

That's why I implemented hint coins, which a player can use to reveal the correct moves. You collect the coins during Endless mode


Even though it was already possible to skip a puzzle, I think this is a great way to help out if you're utterly stuck in a puzzle. Of course, you're not supposed to use these hints all the time, so you can only collect up to 5 coins at t a time.

[HernanZh]

Well, I submitted my first game to Apple for the review process. How exciting

[sabajt]

woohoo 

[Franklin's Ghost]

Nice, good luck 

[Udderdude]

Nice art style and it looks polished.  Can you explain the exact differences between this and Puyo?  It seems pretty similar.

[HernanZh]

Thanks!

It's not so surprising the game looks similar to Puyo Puyo, since I based it on my Puyo fangame. The main difference is the ghosts, which are always the key to solving the puzzles. You catch them by making chains like Puyo Puyo. Instead of battling with opponents, you try to make chains and catch all ghosts. (In the previous screenshot you can see you need a 6 chain to catch the last ghost)

If you're good at Puyo Puyo (and pretty much noone is ), you'll find it easier to solve the puzzles. But there are still some clever tricks to the puzzles, making the answers not so obvious.

Oh and in other news, I've decided to go for a release date of 12 March, two weeks from now

[Udderdude]

It's nice that you've put a spin on the Puyo gameplay rather than just make yet another Puyo clone.  Good luck with it.

[My Escape]

I just watched the trailer and wanted to say congrats! The game looks really polished and seems to have turned out well. Good luck to you!

[HernanZh]

Thanks for the comments!

The game was accepted by Apple Of course I discovered bugs after I had sent it to Apple (*sigh*), so I sent an update right away

I've decided the launch date and price too: next week on March 12th and it'll go for $2.99. If you think it's a little pricey, the game will go for $0.99 on launch day. The free lite version follows the day after.

On another note, the game doesn't run that well on some Android phone unfortunately D:
On the Galaxy Nexus it runs slow and the HTC Hero won't work unless low-res assets are used (and it still runs slow) orz

[HernanZh]

Today I sent a bunch of review requests to a dozen websites or so. I dunno how others do this, but I feel stressed somehow -_-
Can't help but to feel worried about every email i send (I keep rewriting them every time i send them). Maybe because it's my first game and all.

I guess marketing and PR isn't my thing

[Xienen]

Today I sent a bunch of review requests to a dozen websites or so. I dunno how others do this, but I feel stressed somehow -_-
Can't help but to feel worried about every email i send (I keep rewriting them every time i send them). Maybe because it's my first game and all.

I guess marketing and PR isn't my thing

I know how you feel, man!  We ran through the same thing just 1 week ago.  I was lucky to have a few contacts in the industry to help me toss around e-mails, but there still hasn't been a whole lot of coverage.  I just want to make the games...why don't they market themselves?

Awesome game, btw.  Highly polished and aesthetically pleasing/interesting.  Best of luck with the release!

[keoni29]

You're an amazing artist!

[HernanZh]

I just want to make the games...why don't they market themselves?

I know, right XD
Thanks for the encouragement.

You're an amazing artist!

Thanks! I don't see myself amazing though -~-; I still need to improve on a lot of things.

Well anyway, no nibbles so far from any emails i've sent. Not sure how long I'm supposed to wait for a response anyway I'll try again I guess. Also after reading some more articles on Gamasutra about marketing, I'm now coming to a conclusion that my emails were probably too long (whereas I was worried about them being too short lol). Oh well, whatever. Everyone seems to say something else anyway.

I'd also love to contact smaller websites, since I only went for the big fish so far. Except I don't know how to find them, haha. I'll most likely have to go for some guerilla marketing and spam the hell out of forum/website/whatever I come across

[Falsen]

Your game looks pretty cool and as some people have said, the art style is really nice.

I haven't had the opportunity to use this site myself but promoterapp.com has a pretty huge list of sites that can be organized by platform. Might be worth checking out. You may also want to check out sites like gamespress.com and bluesnews.com.

The more emails you send out to relevant websites, the better chance someone from the press will cover your game.

As far as the content of the emails, my plan is to keep it short (short game description, platforms) and link to a section of our website with everything a journalist needs to write about our game. Things like screenshots, videos, a press release, box art and so forth. Also, it might be a good idea to have a trailer link in the email too. Basically make it as easy as possible for the the person reading your email.

This strategy worked fairly well when we first announced Dark Scavenger.

Well I hope that was at least slightly helpful. Good luck with Ghost Puzzle.