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[sirleto]

i released EXCIT for android.
it has more than 2 million plays online (flash, for example on kongregate),
but there are not many sales on the android version.
PLZ try out the game and tell me your feedback!

android market link (free to play):
https://market.android.com/details?id=com.ludocrazy.excit_demo

video trailer:




screenshots:

[sirleto]

34 views of this thread (6 views of the trailer video)
...and nobody has a clue?

:-(

nor gives a damn?

[kamac]

Oh. Well. The trailer is nice  .

I wonder how would it look on my phone 

[woodpecker]

Well the trailer is nice. The gameplay looks good too, enough going on on-screen to make it seem interesting. I would love to play it on my pc, not sure what it would look like on a phone though. Also, it doesn't look like something I'd pay for. May I ask who your target audience is?

[Zaphos]

Maybe embed a link to the android version in the flash version?  Your flash audience probably doesn't know about the android version ...

[sirleto]

@kamac: i don't get your second sentence. what are you trying to say?

@woodpecker: well, it looks on your phone EXACTLY as you can see the screenshots above (they are taken from the (older) android phone i develop on).

thanks for your honest opinion about payment - can you clarify the point a little bit?

basically its for people who like puzzle games, so the somewhat boring look is okay. also more adults than teens, so the clean look might be seen as style (while younger people will most often find it bland) and also with adults excel could ring a bell (more than with teens).

@jimmy: yes, the link is an obvious idea. currently there is a link on the two major visited flash sites...

[PompiPompi]

Hmm, the second screenshot doesn't look so appealing visually, something about the font or whatever. I am not an artist though.
I know this is annoying, but I think visuals plays a big part in making people give attention for your game. Even here where people have more understanding of games. (I think I am like that as well, I judge a game by it's cover, at least at first glance).
So one thing is the visual.

From watching your video, it seems your game is a deterministic puzzle game(no reflex involved). Those are relly hard to make fun.
I am probably not one of the most puzzle loving gamers, although I did like games such as Chocolate Castle and Braid.
Anyway, what kind of thought process this puzzle require? Because I get bored quickly from puzzles that require long tedious solutions which are not necesseraly clever, just require from me to do a lot of "calculations" in the head.

I think your game might be interesting to a lot of people, not sure if for myself though.

[sirleto]

thanks for the reply.
well visuals can always be polished a lot, yet the question is where a style is "satisfied" enough and where it needs more work. i personally think its "okay" on that page - especially when i see what other puzzlers with crappier visuals get more attention.

gameplay wise, its pretty cleverly done to be somewhere between "experiment a lot" and "think a lot (in advance)", but that does only feel well for people that do actually like such puzzlesque gameplay.

i do also believe that the game should be interesting to a lot of people, but it either seems like they are not reached by the game. absolutely random coincidence? wrong platform? wrong visual style for that kind of people? (i dont think so for all three ... so, this is why i'm looking for answers ... and hoped to find some here.)

[PompiPompi]

Well, I think making people try a puzzle game is very hard. That is why visuals are even more important in a puzzle game than other games.
Maybe you should try work with an artist on the visuals for your game.
Think that the visuals will make people TRY your game. Will they like your game? That depends on actual gameplay.
As of now the visuals don't seem very appealing(to me).
Although I know visuals arn't everything, but as I said it's harder for me to enjoy puzzle games so I am not sure I would like this kind of game even if the visuals were superb. But that's just me.

[sirleto]

good point, so you take it inverted: even if it seems like the gameplay matters more and thus the visuals are not that necessary to be strongly appealing - you say that actually the visuals are to be needed to be perfectly appealing as without them even puzzle games may not be trying it out.

thanks for that pov.
and as for artist: yes, thinking about it. question is: work with him on new game, work with him on old game(s)? the usual question

[Zaphos]

I see you do link to the game from kong, but not where players are very likely to see it.

Anyway, I tried the demo just now on android.  My impressions are: Full version is weirdly priced.  The controls feel good.  It looks a bit worse on my phone than the pc, shrunken down, but not a big issue for me.  The puzzle mechanics are in pretty familiar territory, nothing I haven't seen before.  I played up to a point where there were levels with lots of teleporters and bouncy corners, then stopped.  The level designs just weren't interesting, especially as bouncers got introduced -- instead of doing anything conceptually interesting, they just added pointless complexity which didn't fundamentally change things but made it more tedious to work out where a move would take me.

[sirleto]

thanks for the input.

what about the price is weird?

you find it tedious and not interesting? i guess i then love completely different puzzling experience... hmmm, hard to argue here. (you could try out my other game, which gameplay i also like a lot. you could tell me if its also tedious for you - then atleast i could see the parallel.)

[cystem glitch]

I like it (played the kong version, don't have an android). It does seem to be kind of PC centric to me, a lot of the charm seems to come from the fact that you are used to an excel interface on your machine being work, and here it is made a toy. There's a real possibility you lose some of that charm when you put it on a phone. Maybe a PC release, where the player can make their own levels in excel and the game loads them as .csv files? Or a version that actually runs in excel (ok, probably a lot of work for not a lot of payoff but people have made tetris games and stuff in excel:

)

I dunno, I liked playing the game, it reminded me of some of the aspects of chip's challenge (which I like) and with a very cool presentation. None of the issues other people mentioned are problems for me (the addition of the turning pieces / the non-pixel graphics are great to me). But it seems more at home on PC, and I have still yet to pay more than 99 cents for a phone game.

[sirleto]

yes, the fact that a lot of appeal is lost when people (e.g. young teenagers) have never seen excel is something others mention often.
but to me, i just adore the way the puzzle mechanic works - and i find the minimalist level design so special (not only gameplaywise, but the fact that there is also a visual "style" to each level), that to me i would not miss the excel parallel. but i guess, without the excel "idea" in mind, the graphics will look not very polished.

chips challenge is a great comparison, as i think its perfectly sitting in the same boat, while i find the gameplay (difficulty) and visualization (animations) way greater than chips challenge. (which is something i would expect people to love on the phone, independant of the "old look").

99cents -> yes, thats a good point, its definitely not on the cheap side with 2 euros (~$2,60). the typical difficult decision.
the fact is: i could sell it for extremels cheap, would boost my sales i guess. but my problem is that i can see on princess nuriko that i have a good sales to demo percentage, compared with other major successfull (sold) titles. my problem is just, that there seems to be nobody to tell others about the game, as the demo download rate did not increase in the last 12 months. (i expect the download rate about 20 games every month to be purely from people searching for keywords my game has).

[sirleto]

i just wanted to shamelessly BUMP this thread to see if there is new interest in 2012

in other words: still interested on (more) feedback. also uploaded new version(s) till december 2011...

[SirNiko]

Loved the flash version, but I don't have a smart phone.

Any plans to monetize the game on PCs, eg, a retail version with more features?

[sirleto]

basically a pc version makes sense to me - but more features, has been discussed already years ago and resulted in the current (reduced) set of features as we thought that these make most sense for the game.

other games (roadblocks, etc.) use different features / gameplay elements and i can clearly tell that none of them are actually a) interesting or b) allowing for a better gameplay experience.

they just allow for a little bit more distraction but do not really add something to the puzzles.

so: pc (yes, in the (far) future its possible). more features (pc or smartphone) i do not think so... but i wouldnt rule it out (when someone or myself comes up with /good/ new features, its quite possible).

[eyeliner]

Anyone found strange the "x" and "i" in the logo?
The blue cells look out of place, because there's a blue cell hanging from the "T"...
Is the logo final?

[sirleto]

actually its just a screenshot from a level that does recreate the name.
the blue stuff is just a teleportation field.

the "logo" is this here:





these are the two puzzle levels from the game that use the games name to create a level (one more difficult that the other )





and the other one:

[eyeliner]

Can't see the last one. There's a popup asking for password and stuff.

I like the real logo much more, but it doesn't really relate to the game (at least from the images I've seen, I'm yet to test it). Are there overlapping cells?

Either way, good luck and I hope you have success.