I would go with "the game is feeware forever but you are more than welcome to donate so I can make an improved version". You don't risk much, since your game is already a very niche one, so you won't earn much via traditional model anyway.

You might also try a model that some/most webcomics use "the next update will be when donations reach $X". Althrough, I doubt that one would work as good for a game as for a webcomic.

Agree with all of this. Though the episodic game would work if your game is very story-driven. Kinda like Visual Novel or interactive webcomic.

Anyway, I think you should just release it for free to spread it as much as possible so that it'll reach the niche target you want to reach. From there, if they really like your game and know that they can't find this game from anywhere else, they'll support you. I mean, Dwarf Fortress is anything far from accessible yet it gets approximately $2,000 every month from donation. 

I read this thread and tried Rescue Time that burtonposey suggested, and it helps. I now know how much time I've wasted and I could have spent those on making games >_<

My typical day is now something like this

7:00 - 8:00, Wake up. Grab iPad to check emails and stuffs.
8:00 - 9:00,

and breakfast
9:00 - 10:00, Free time. Check whatever you have to check. Social network, forum, twitter, etc. Set three goals to do today.
10:00 - 12:00, Work on the goals. At this point I use Chrome Nanny to block website that I spent too much time on based on Rescue Time.
12:00 - 13:00, Lunch break
13:00 - 17:00, Try to complete the three goals of the day.
17:00 - 18:00, Exercise. Jogging. Weight training. Yoga. Depends on my mood.
19:00 - 22:00, If goals are not met, better finish it now. Otherwise, free time. Research. Try new stuffs.
23:00 - , Go to bed. Or watch movies or play games before I go to bed.

I'm trying to stick with this schedule and so far, it's been a week and it feels great! Setting 3 goals a day make me feel like I accomplish something and the game's going somewhere and not working without knowing where I am now.

I use WorkFlowy to list my goals and mark a tag #today for what I have to finish today. On the next day, WorkFlowy will send you an email showing what you have changed to the list. I'll then forward that email to SpringPad, naming it YYYY/MM/DD Task History, so that I can come back and see what I have accomplished each day.

I did this and feel that I'm a lot more productive and get more stuffs done than before. I used to be very productive but for the past few months I don't know what happened to me but I wasn't really motivated.

I hope I can stick to this schedule! 

I agree with st33d about the IDE. I used to hate it and never understood how to use it, but my latest project required using it since we had a very tight deadline. So I had no choice but to sit down and learn the darn thing.

To my surprise, GUI did't take forever to test anymore and updating assets was a breeze. I still code in FlashDevelop, but seriously if you want to do GUI stuffs it's much better to do in Flash IDE than coding and clicking play to see the result and find out that you have to move some images by 5 - 10 pixels.

And no, I didn't have to deal with any SWC stuffs at all. I had to when I work with FlashDevelop, but if you make all the GUI and graphic from Flash IDE, you don't really need to.

This is one of the reasons I moved away from Game Maker. Anyway, while I was still working with it, I used a spreadsheet and save the file as csv. You can write or find a script that will parse the csv, and then assign it to your data stucture.

Searching an entry inside spreadsheet is a lot easier than going through the whole GML, believe me  

Also, I don't think Component System is what you're looking for... It seems more like you have problem with database.

Flash itself may not focus on mobile but AIR does. With AIR, you can convert an swf to a native iOS and Android application. All this can be done for free without having to pay for Flash CS. You can use flixel or flashpunk library, or you can go for a gpu-based library like starling or ND2D. All these are free as well.

The downside of this is that you have to pay for the license to sell your game on that platforms, which is unlike HTML5 where you can just upload the game and you're good to go.

I just tried your game on my Galaxy S. In the card matching game, the flipping animation is already slow and lagging. If simple game like this still has speed problem, it's hard to call it playable

The game on space monster game works fine though and I'm surprised to see it work well. Thanks for the link

And I'm sure there are people making money from it. At least the guy who made Impact did, and it's just from advertisement not even publisher. However, I still feel that you won't miss much if you don't invest in it right now.

I can't even play Angry Bird made by PlayN and I'm using Chrome  
 
And most of the HTML5 game right now work sluggishly on iPhone4s. Game that works well on desktop browser took longer to make or more complicate than just using Flash or Unity. 

The only reason to go for HTML5 game on mobile right now is that if you're going to make a porn game which isn't allowed on Apple Appstore 

I think moi pretty much sum everything up for you. If you want to get yourself ready for HTML5, maybe just learn javascript, HTML and css3. But no need to go into anything advance yet. Solid background on these should help you choose your HTML5  game engine in the future better.

If I were you, I wouldn't get it. I don't like GM workflow in general, and I think there'll be better engines in the future for HTML5. By the time HTML5 become playable on mobile device, I'm sure you'll have many more choices. Right now, universal tools are growing like mushroom. Monkey, PlayN, Corona SDK, GameMaker, Unity, cocos2d-x, AppGameKit, etc.

Thanks for sharing the data, larsiusprime! It's really interesting and I think it'll be useful for many people. The game is really fun and I'm going to buy it as well

As for View and Play, if I understand correctly, View is when you initialized Playtomic. It means that the player load your game or 'view' it. But if you don't make a call to Playtomic.Play(), then player won't be considered as playing the game. Though if this is the case, the localhost stat surely is strange!

This is a great list!　There are many books on that list that I've never heard of, so this is interesting

Surviving Highschool is like a visual novel and it's doing really well, in my opinion.

I love Puyopuyo so I'm sure that I'll love this as well 

Bought! Will come back with feedback after I play the game 

yeah the pig is super cute!!
like I said Michael is definitely a talented guy.

however, for the final game I think it´ll be better to go 8-bit, so as to reduce the workload.  oh well, still a lot of work left before getting into any graphics so just rambling.

by the way, controls are heavily based on pocky and rocky, which in my view is awesome.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=02qEz-qn8SE#t=142s

Ah! That explains why I feels the control is really familiar! I've just played Pocky and Rocky last month or so and was like 'Man, they don't make games like this anymore.' I even went on youtube and search for the new Pocky and Rocky game and was disappointed with the latest one. Glad to see someone work on this genre again! 

Too bad that the pig has to go though... But I understand that 8-bit would reduce a lot of workload than going full hd for the whole game. Anyway, looking forward to this!

I love the look of this. The pig looks so cool and I love how he got a red face while swinging his bag. All these small details really make the character more charming. I can't wait to see how this will progress!

It would be nice if he's actually getting fatter instead of increasing scale x and y, but I like the look of this!

Also, the idea of different characters come with different controls sound interesting and much better than just changing the graphic.

Good luck with this

It's still very hard to control and I keep falling into the oblivion 
Hope you can change from mouse click on the invisible thumb stick to a keyboard control soon!

I want to get this for my little boy. The graphics are charming and the gameplay is non-violent.
I think he'd love the puzzles.

• Who did or Where did you get the music?
• Do you have a release date on iOS?

thanks

sean

Wow, thank you! I think the first episode should be finished in a month or two. I'll keep you update once it's ready

As for the music, it's done by Van, a musician friend of mine. I'm not sure if he has his personal site or not but if you would like to get in touch with him about the music I can talk to him about that.

Great visuals and cute characters! Makes me want to play this game just for the cute story.
However, you can see the game is still WIP, there are some interface and polish issues. Also, it seems like you can drag the power arrow beyond the screen? I think you need to think of a way to allow a maxium power roll in every position on the screen.
But it's definitly work in progress, and already looking like it has a lot of potential.
Keep up the good work!

Thanks! You're right about the UI though. There'll be no Lorem Ipsum in the final one XD

- The arrow goes a bit beyond the screen because I extend the arrow to go beyond your finger. If not, your finger will cover the arrow and you couldn't really see it.
Still, I can see that it looks bad and I should fix it so that the arrow stay inside the play area. Thanks for mentioning this!

- The position of the character is also part of a puzzle. On the bottom right, you'll see Puipui's emotion. That represent how powerful he is during that turn. The more powerful he is, the faster and further he'll roll even with a short finger drag. I think being able to roll at maximum power in any position on the screen is too much freedom, so I want to limit it and let this be a hint on solving each puzzle.


Hmm, maybe I should change the arrow color according to Puipui's status. I have a feeling that the face icon isn't enough.

Looks lovely, eclectocrat! Downloading the demo right now though I'm sure I'd probably be spending money again   

I actually like how you add the shooting the flying object part though. It requires some timing skill in order to land an accurate shot. The atmosphere is nice, and I was nervous and excited every time I make a high jump, trying to grab the ceiling!

One big problem I found is the scoring system. The scoring and the goal are against each other. You want to catch the flying head( is it a flying head? I based this on the title screen), but as soon as you catch it, the game's over. So the best way to get a score is to NOT shoot the head but keep running until you catch up to it. If that's the case, then the shooting feature is useless. It requires skill to shoot the target but the player don't get any reward in return.

There are many ways to improve this in the endurance running game, for example you could...
1.) Combo/Chain system : Collecting the score items consecutively will increase the score gained from the item.
2.) Give points to each successful shot
3.) Force player to shoot. Maybe the head can shoot something back and you can either jump over it or shoot your own energy ball to nullify his attack.

Good luck with the game!

Is this still gonna be Xbox exclusive? If it is, I'll be one very sad hedgehog.