My new project, Horizon Shift

Some pointless back story
I still vividly remember the first time I came in contact with video games, it was around 1987 or 1988 in the tiny, Smokey, sticky floored arcade room of Butlins in Bognor Regis.

I was given £1 to leave my parents alone, which somehow lasted me about an hour.

The cacophony of 8 bit noise and the intense flashing lights were irresistible to a 7 year old boy.

I wandered around that small room for about 20 minutes before I settle on my first game, 1942 (I had chosen pole position but the steering wheel was buggered).

I didn’t last particularly long, but it was awesome! It wouldn't have mattered what game I was playing, I would have loved it. The clicking sound of the joystick and the feel of mashing buttons with my middle finger had me hooked, admittedly it probably helped that 1942 is amazing.

About a year later I was passed down an Amstrad CPC 464 from my older sister, such a good day!

After spending about a six months of playing any game I could get my hands on I decided I wanted to make my own games.

I think I was 9 when I started coding,  just making little adventure games and countless attempts at football management sims, but what I really wanted to do was replicate that feeling I had when I first played 1942 in that Smokey  room in Bogner.

Well that feeling never really went away and that brings me onto my new project, Horizon Shift.

I’ve made a couple of arcade shooters in the past but I really want this game to feel authentic, like it’s a re-master of an old 80’s arcade game but still have original gameplay and feel new.

So I figured the best way to keep an authentic feel was to make my own bartop arcade cabinet and using that as my lead platform.

Of course there will be concession for gamepad and keyboard players but the game will really be developed with arcade control in mind.

I’m hoping when the game is complete that I will be able to consider ‘Mini Arcade Cabinet’ as an available format, admittedly it will be about £800 more than the PC version but still there as an option.

About the actual game

As mentioned above Horizon Shift will be a new take on the classic arcade shooter, it’s not a bullet hell or twin stick shooter but more an uppey downey shooty thing.

Basically your ship will patrol a line in the middle of the screen whilst enemies attack from the top and bottom of the screen. You have to switch between shooting up and shooting down to protect your line.

The enemies are divided into 3 groups, the Runners (Red), the destroyers (Blue) and the Shooters (Green).

The runners are the most useful enemies; if they reach your line they will run up and down it and destroy you if you are hit. However the more runners that are on your line the higher your score multiplier. Higher score = extra lives.

Destroyers should be your priority, they will smash up your line on contact, giving you less room to move and more chance to fall into oblivion. There are also rare SOLID Destroyers which will destroy your line with one hit.

The shooter is just that, enemies that shoot…the end.

I’m looking to have about 50 waves in total, plus boss battles and bonus levels.

Similar to my earlier game, Pester, there will be a selection unlockable game modes, such as arcade, survival, time attack, etc…

As for the music I’m very happy to have Jason Heine on board, his thumping upbeat chiptune style really feel right for the game. The OST will be available separately.

I’ve got a good feeling about this game, so far nothing I’ve made before has come together quite as well as Horizon Shift is. So far everything is clicking nicely into place, now I’ve just got to make sure I don’t f**k it up!

I will hopefully be returning shortly to add a gameplay vid more news 
Thanks for reading!

Super Killer Hornet Resurrection Postmortem

Well it’s been one hell of a ride, that’s for sure!

Super Killer Hornet Resurrection has been out for a few months now and I think it’s safe to say things are starting to settle down.

The release of SKH-R has been the biggest education in game design and the games industry I could have hoped for; sometimes euphoric, sometime crushingly painful.

So what happened?

The development

Originally SKH-R started out as a 48 hour jam project I started with a new artist acquaintance of mine, Dylan Barry. The idea was to test out some of his art and music on a new project, it started to come together nicely so I decided to stick with it and it just grew and grew.

Overall the project took around 9 months to complete, all work on SKHR was part time; game dev has always been a hobby for me.  Development halted a bit when my son decided to come into the world on the 26^thof May last year.

About a month before the end of development I decided to put out a load screenshots, trailers and promo stuff and got a really terrific response. A lot of great feedback on the maths idea, I was also fortunate enough to catch the eye of a fantastic indie publisher called KISS.

SKH-R was being developed solely with Xbox live indie in mind, with a view to convert to the OUYA soon after. However fate had other ideas and about 2 weeks before release I found out that SKH-R would be going on Steam! This was good news, very good news.

However, it wasn't something I was prepared for. Steam’s a scary place!

Looking back now, I think I really nailed the Xblig and OUYA release but fluffed it when it came to Steam.

I was playing with the big boys now and I had no idea what I was doing.
The original PC version was a straight conversion of the XBOX version, I didn’t really think about what the PC users really look for - Different resolutions, trading cards, achievements etc…
(Although it’s getting there now after a few updates, with trading cards being added soon)

The price was (and still is) way off! Although this isn't something I have complete control over I think I should have been more firm over the pricing as ultimately the high price point of $9.99 (£7) hurt reviews.

This stuff seams really obvious to me now but when you’re a part time, lone, hobbyist game developer and you've just been told you’re going to be on Steam, it’s hard to get perspective.

In the end though, it did alright.

Sales

So how did it do?  Well… Compared to Minecraft, pretty badly but compared to my other Flump projects amazingly well.

I can’t really go into sales too much but I’m happy to say it’s sold more than all my other games combined … and then some!

A lot of people think that being on steam will make you instantly rich, although I can’t confirm sales, I can confirm this has not been the case for me. It has however allowed me to start working part time. This gives me more time to concentrate on Flump and most importantly more time with my son.

So overall I feel blessed and can’t thank KISS enough for helping me achieve one of my biggest dev dreams!

Reception

So what did people think of my little math shooter I hear you ask?
Well, overall the response was fantastic, especially on Xbox and OUYA.
The steam version fared a little worse, which is to be expected given the far higher price point.

Currently the steam user reviews sit at 16 thumbs up and 6 thumbs down. Which to be fair is pretty good for a £7 game made on a budget of £60

So here’s a rundown of the good, bad and average.

The Good:

9/10 “Maths can't be more fun. This is a shooter that also uses maths in a clever way and lets use your brains!” –XBLA rankings

A- “Here’s to Super Killer Hornet Resurrection for being one of the titles that keeps XBLIG relevant.” – 30 Plus gamer

8.5/10 “Love the idea to combine a traditional Japanese shmup with small mathematical operations.” – Day of the Ouya

8.5 - “The gameplay is fantastic with its different take on multipliers and is definitely a must try for someone who is interested in a shooter with a difference” - ReviewOUYA

32/40 “Flump Studios made an absolute masterpiece with this game” – Press start to begin

8/10 “I have to highly recommend this game to any indie game lover” - XBLA gamer hub

8/10 “I wouldn't hesitate to recommend picking it up if you're a fan of the genre.” – The games den

8/10 “This is definitely a recommended play and for the price cannot be overlooked.” – Retro game geeks

“The true manifestation of the rather brilliant idea conceived in the original game” – the xblig

“If you are looking for a quality shmup at an affordable price you CANNOT go wrong with Super Killer Hornet Resurrection” – otaku gaming inferno

“This significantly improved sequel sports a $2.99 cost and earns every penny of it. Recommended." -Writingsofmassdeduction.com

“Without mincing words, I had a lot of fun with the game and if you ever enjoyed this genre of gaming then I don’t hesitate to recommend it as well.” - Tekyu.com

The average:

7.3   “In the background is a game that implements all the concepts you would expect quite competently and mixing some originality that works and these are the elements for a good indie.” (Translated from Portuguese)  - combocaster.com

6.0 – “An above average game but the maths feels out of place and the $9.99 seem too high” – The overshield

The Bad
4/10 “€ 9 on Steam, really excessive in a market like today ruled by independent product sold at ridiculous prices” (translated from Italian) - spaziogames.

3/10 “We've always got time for eccentric craziness, but Super Killer Hornet: Resurrection doesn't have anywhere near the quality to back up its price point.” – Deal Respawn

Overall

Sometimes it’s hard not to dwell on the negative comments and missteps that have been made, but overall I would call SKH-R a success.

As I said at the beginning of this postmortem, making and releasing SKH-R has been a massive education, lots of things done right but lots of things done very wrong.

It definitely has its rough edges and is inarguably niche, but it’s a game that I will always be proud of and will always be the game that took me to the next level.

Thanks

I would like to thank all the people below for their help and support during the making and release of Super Killer Hornet Resurrection.

Dylan Barry – Sprite Artist and musician on SKH-R
Paul Norris
Nick Osborne
Khris Golder
Diego Siqueira
Michael Zack
Steve Redmond
Jeremy Peeples from Hardcore gamer magazine
The sixty fours for letting me use their awesome music
Ollie, Steve, Alex and Everyone at the creative arches in Leamington

Extra huge thanks to Darryl Still and James Deputy from KISS

And of course my beautiful wife Liz and wonderful son Jacob

And of course to anyone who has help support Flump by buying one of my games.

I'm happy to announce the arrival of my new game, Pressured, on the WP8 store!

Here's a the synopsis:
"Pressured is a unique and intense number puzzler.

Hit your targets to unlock pieces of the dark story, all told via the poetry of Nicholas Gordon.

Created by Paul Marrable With music from Matt Mcfarland."

I'm really happy with the way the game has turned out. I had so much fun making it and it's been nice to make something a little different.

If you have a windows phone check it out on the store here:

It's FREE so why not!!!

There is an expanded windows version on the way, I will keep this page updated with news about it's impending release.

Why you wait for it to download why not check out the trailer? :)

SUPER KILLER HORNET RESURRECTION IS HERE!!!

I can hardly believe it, my little baby's out in the wild! Not literally, literally he's in the bath.
But today is the day that Super Killer Hornet is released on steam!

It's just too exciting!!!

If you're interested in taking a look there will be a 30% discount until the 13th of February.

You can buy it here: <a title="Super Killer Hornet Steam page" href="http://store.steampowered.com/app/271860/">http://store.steampowered.com/app/271860/</a>

Thanks everyone involved for making this happen.
I  will do a full thank you list but at the moment I'm late for work!!!

We're on Steam!

So the massive news is that we’re going to be on Steam! The other news is we have a solid release date. Super Killer Hornet Resurrection will be available to purchase from steam on the 6th of February 2014.
Pretty short notice I know, but things seemed to have been moving really fast recently.

I can’t confirm the price yet but there will be a 30% launch discount.

As for the Xbox live indie version we’re hoping for a March release.
No news on any other ports yet but will update this page when there is.

So why not check out these delightful screenshots and trailer while you wait :)

Super Killer Hornet Resurrection is nearly here!

At last!!!

 

It seems like ages since we started working on the Sequel to Super Killer Hornet but it’s now finally at a stage we’re really happy with.

Super Killer Hornet Resurrection, like its predecessor, blends classic shooter action with a mathy twist but this time on a far bigger scale.

 

Gone is the endless nature of the first game, replaced with a classic level structure, multiple  game modes and epic boss battles.

One big standout feature for us is the soundtrack, it’s not exactly traditional for this type of game but we have been lucky enough to be able to work with one of my truly favourite UK rock hiphop bands, the Sixty Fours. Check out their stuff here www.sixtyfours.co.uk. However if you do favor a more traditional score we also have a classic soundtrack from a very talented musician, Mr Dylan Barry...both are equally awesome!

We are hoping the soundtrack will be available separately and in two parts shortly after release.

 

We are aiming for an early 2014 release, probably mid to late Jan, we will update with a solid release date when we know more.  

 Right now we are entering the Beta testing phase which will probably last a couple of weeks.

If you are interested in being a tester for SKH-Resurrection email us at FlumpStudios@gmail.com

There’s not much more to tell you that the trailer won’t explain. So here it is…look at it!!!!!Please.

For more information please like our facebook page https://www.facebook.com/FlumpStudios?ref=hl or follow us on twitter@FlumpStudios

Well, Pester is finally available for PC!

It's had a few tweaks here and there and is now compatible with Keyboard or a 360 controller

For those of you who missed the XBOX indie version, Pester is a bullet hell shoot 'em up with an old school feel, tough but addictive gameplay and a hell of a lot of game modes. Here's the official blurb

“Prepare to be Pestered, in a good way!" Pester is a vertical shoot em' up which blends the old school with the new creating a frantic and fun shooter experience. With over 100 combinations of play, a thumping techno soundtrack, 6 trophies to unlock and a unique old school-new school graphic style Pester is a game for both shooter enthusiasts and anyone up for a good challenge."

BUY PESTER HERE $1(63p)

Or check out the trial here

Pester Review Round-up

16/04/2013

So it’s been 3 months since the release of out little indie shooter, Pester, and I think we can safely say that the last of the reviews are in. So how did we do???? Well, actually pretty awesome to be honest.
Out of 15 review I would only class one of them as negative, that’s not bad. We even got a seal of approval from the indie gamer chick who is notorious for her dislike of Shoot em’ ups.
So here’s a run through of the scores, starting with the best obviously

The good:

‘A’ Rating – “It grabs you and keeps you interested because it is a game that pulls you in and then chews you up along with a line from The Rock saying, “come get some” to which you will oblige.”
Video Game Attack

9/10 – “Overall, this is a really smart, well presented little game for both retro fans and shmup fans alike. The game has a serious ‘just one more go’ factor to it, and can’t be faulted on its customisation and value for money. It’s hard, but not so hard that it’s a turn off. It’s only 80 Microsoft Points – my advice is to buy it now!”
Gamer Score Addicts

9/10 – “Pester is great for bringing the retro feel, I had so much fun playing this game”
The Overshield

[No Score] – I freaking LOVE it!!! The challenge gives me something to look forward to and the rising difficulty curve is always there to test me when I think I’ve aced the game.
Tekyu

8.7/10 – “I really liked Pester. It is safe to say that this is currently my favorite Xbox Live Indie Game. Flump Studios incorporated some good ideas and paid homage to one of the most known space shooters, Galaga. The controls are tight and responsive while the graphics make you feel like you’re moving through space. Enemies are nicely designed and diverse.”

8.5/10 – “It’s one heck of a fast paced shooting frenzy.”
Geeks Respawn

[No Score] – “Quite frankly, I just couldn’t stop playing the arcade mode! Each time I died, I wanted to get back and start again. lol Pester really is that entertaining.”
Metall Man

4/5 – “Freaking fun!”
Gamer Vets

8/10 – “Overall, Pester is a great successor to Killer Hornet and really creates a more rounded and polished product. The game is crisp and the controls are very fluid and responsive. If you enjoy shooters, Pester is easily one of the better ones available on the XBLIG market right now.”
Clearance Bin Review

The Avarage

3.5/4 – It’s fast, furious and addictive in that ‘just once more’ way.
Xboxer 360

Approved – “Congratulations to the team at Flump Studios for doing as good as you could do with this genre in relationship to me.”
Indie Gamer Chick

3.5/5 – Pester is the classic arcade homage with a few extras and a handful of unlocks to keep a gamer busy for at least a few hours. It’s simply a throwback title that fits in nicely on the XBLIG.
Gamer Cheese

The bad 
Poison – “The graphics attempt to evoke a nostalgic feeling by mimicking the extremely simplistic look of most Atari 2600 games, but not only does it not look good, it just doesn’t work too well.”
1UP or Poison

summary
Really sorry if I missed anyone out, I’m pretty sure there’s a few more floating around.
All in all I couldn’t be happier with the feedback. I’m really proud of Pester and I’m just so glad that others can see what I was trying to do.

Pester is also sitting quite comfortable at 31st in the UK user ratings charts after having spent a short spell in the top ten and an even shorter spell at number 1.

It’s been a great ride for me and now I have to go through it all with the PC version 
Oh yeah, that should be out in time for summer.

Thanks for reading…

COMPETITION TIME!!!!

The first gamer to post a picture of the Pester award screen with all trophies unlocked will receive 400 MSP.
Check out our facebook page here:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Flump-Studios/256473597756346?ref=hl


Of course you have to own the game so if you haven't picked it yet get it here:
http://marketplace.xbox.com/en-US/Product/Pester/66acd000-77fe-1000-9115-d80258550c96


IT'S ON!!!

Pester Released on XBLIG Today!!!!

At last we can present our newest creation to the world!
After months of no sleep and burned retinas Pester is finally finished and has successfully completed peer review.

You can download here for only 80MSP($1 or about 68p)
http://marketplace.xbox.com/en-US/Product/Pester/66acd000-77fe-1000-9115-d80258550c96?noSplash=1

This is our second Xbox indie title after Super Killer Hornet which reviewed well but to be honest slacked a bit in the sales department. In my opinion the biggest draw back super killer hornet was the graphics and presentation. We've spent a bit more time concentrating on these issues with pester,the main improvement, for me, being the implementation of particle physics to take care of the explosions and fire trails.


We're really happy with the way pester has turned out because it's the type of game we've wanted to see made for a while. We've tried to mix the old with the new to make something a little unique.
We're also happy with the way we've implemented the game modes, by mixing modes with modifiers we have managed to make 96 combinations of play, which hopefully will make the 80MSP worth while.

Check out the trailer here.

It's such a great feeling knowing your game is out there for the world to see, we know it's not going to set the world on fire or make enough money that we can quit our day jobs but it really is nice to know that something you've made is out there for the world to try, play and judge (not too harshly I hope).

PS. Some of you may notice a slight spelling mistake (quite massive actually) within the game.
This comes from deciding to have one last decode session at 4 in the morning just 10 minutes before sending it for review. An update is ready to go and should be up this time next week. So annoying though and yes I feel like a dick!


Massive thanks to these guys for being awesome!

NortyGames (Thanks for the peer review Steve)
Mettalman

Xclann

IRBgamer

Retro games mag

The Overshield

The /./ xblig

xblig.co.uk

GameCity Nights

ssdm

Clearence Bin

Gamepress

Blues news

indietheory

Gameplayeselv

the blog de sinad

Playground podcast

Blue ray authority

Indie ocean

Short and sweet review

extra play

Clear channel

Also Nick,Scott, Rish, Matt(even though it's been a while), Lee and Ryan(Can't have them feeling left out) and of course my beautiful wife Liz.

Our new game

 Things have been a bit quite on the Flump Side recently as we’ve been ferreting away on our new Xblig game, Pester.

For pester we’ve tried to take our favorite elements of the newer CAVE style bullet hell games and our favorite elements from the more classic old school shooters to make a game that we hope will appeal to both camps. The screen still fills with bullets and your ship has a small hit point but every play is different as we have used random bullet patterns and sprite positioning. The randomization has been delicately handled as to ensure the game is never unfair.

 

Our official blurb is:

“Prepare to be Pestered, in a good way!

Pester is a new vertical shmup from Flump Studios and is due for release on xbox live indie in early 2013.

With over ten different game modes, including: Classic, Reverse, Duo, Old school and Tempus mode. A unique blend of Old School pixel art
combined with particle physics and stunning backdrops, Pester is the perfect for both shooter enthusiasts and anyone up for a good challenge.

For a real challenge try our new duo mode, where two ships are controlled by a single game pad using the analog sticks. 

In other news it looks like super killer hornet maybe heading for the PC, we’ll keep you posted.

XBLIG vs Windows phone- How'd we get on?

It’s been a while since I’ve updated this blog, things have been crazy busy.

Five months on from out first Window Phone 7 release and just over 3 months since our first Xbox indie release. How’d we do???

Windows Phone 7

Retro Wars 1999

Developing for the windows phone is a bit of a double edged sword, with far less competition than Android and iOS it’s far easier to get your game spotted but with far less users it’s hard to make decent money.

We currently have 5 games in the market place with 3 due for release this week. Download wise we’re doing pretty well (Currently sitting at just over 60,000), but revenue has been very poor. Currently all of our Windows phone games generate revenue via adverts supplied by Microsofts own ad provider, Pubcenter.

Retro Racer: Combat

To say Pubcenters eCPM is a bit up and down is a massive understatement, swinging from £0.01 per thousand for some days up to £4.50 per thousand on other. The £4.50 days are nice but are, unfortunately, hugely outnumbered buy the £0.01 days. It’s like flying through massive turbulence on an easyjet flight, sat next to an obese man with hiccups, who’s just finished a particularly strong in flight curry and instead of landing in sunny Spain your destination is Glasgow in January (which would account for the obese man)

Ok, it’s not that bad, in fact we’ve probably earned more through pubcenter than if we would have sold our games at the minimum price of £0.69, but it’s just so frustrating when you see a thousand people have played your game today and you’ve earned £0.01 from it!

Xbox Live Indie Games

I’ll start but saying I love Xbox Live Indie almost as much as I love my own legs. It’s a fantastic service for both developers and consumers and doesn’t nearly get enough respect it deserves.

I went into developing for Xblig with some degree of hesitation (mainly due to the bad press it seems to get ALL THE TIME!!!) But as soon as I put Super Killer Hornet up for peer review my worries dissolved, I have never been involved with such a wonderful, warm community as the Xbox indie community. Pretty much as soon as the game went up for peer review, messages of support and advice poured in.

Super Killer Hornet

Revenue wise we faired far better on the Xbox than on windows phone (approx 3x more at the moment) and as of last month we actually moved into profit territory, just. But what I’ll take away most from this experience is the reception our game received. I had people from Japan, France and Canada tweeting me telling me they loved the game. Some guys in the US mentioned us in their pod cast, SKH was reviewed on around 10 different sites with mostly positive feedback(7/10 average), but the real jewel in the crown was when I got a call from Nick to say we’d been mentioned in Retro Game Magazine, A REAL LIFE MAGAZINE!!! If I wasn’t so drunk when he told me I could have cried.

Future

Since the release of Super Killer Hornet a few months ago I’ve pretty much been working solidly on our next Xblig/PC game, working title ‘Our next game with guns and explosions in it’.

I can’t say too much about it as I still don’t know 100% where we’re gonna go with it. All I can say is ‘It’ll be a horizontal shooter with heavy references to gaming culture old and new’. God, that makes it sound so generic. Here's a couple of screen shots from the first level.

Lee Vs Jose the worm

Me just dodging some bullets

Nick Vs Stinky the retired ghost

We’re looking at a release date early next year and hopefully we’ll be showing it at the GameCity Nights tour on the 5^th Of February at the MAC.

Also Nick would probably slap me if I didn't mention that he has started work on our first 3D project.

Can't say much other than it's a survival horror FPS and looks to be shaping up pretty nicely.

Will have more info soon.

As for the nearer future we have 3 games due out on windows phone next Wednesday , Plane Crazy and Retro Racer: Combat please download and have a look if you own a windows phone device.

Cheers

Paul

Our First Xblig Game!!!

We are proud to announce that our first game, Super Killer Hornet, is released today on XBOX live indie.

A frantic bullet hell shooter with a strong Japanese influence and a strong emphasis on difficulty, Super Killer Hornet is the type of game we’ve always wanted to make.

At only 80 Xbox’s points ($1/69p) why not have a look and support a poor defenceless little indie developer.

 

To celebrate the release of the aforementioned Super Killer Hornet we are running a little contest. The first person to post a picture on the flump facebook page ( http://www.facebook.com/pages/Flump-Studios/256473597756346 ) of the unlocked ‘Score King’ trophy will receive 400 xbox points.

Not the biggest prize I know but we are as small as a game studio could be.

 

I have no idea how we will perform on the Xbox indie network but all I can say is so far my experience with using Xblig as a publishing format has been fantastic, such a wonderful and creative community that I am genuinely proud to be a part of.

 

I would Just like to say a big thank you to - sixth floor games, Halcyon Softworks, Peter Schraut, Golconda, Sparkelsoft, Maxminus and Monster Bite Games for peer reviewing and passing SKH, to Toby Harris for sorting the website out for us, to Scott Benbow for playtesting and annoying me with his unbeatable high score, to Nick Osborne for being my business partner and forcing me to get off ass and get something made and a special thank you to my wife for putting up with my endless nonsensical game speak for the last 7 months

So, How’d we do???

So it’s been nearly 2 weeks since we released our first creations on to the WP7 marketplace and as you may have noticed the world has been visibly shaken by their release.
Emergency meetings between David Cameron, François Hollande and Barack Obama were called in a bid to find a solution to breaking the 1000 point mark on the Retro racer.
Natwest and RBS were brought to their knees as 90% of their IT team tirelessly worked to get all the Trophies unlocked on Super Killer Hornet.
England were painfully knocked out of the Euros after Ashley Cole decided to f**k up a penalty so he could return home to grab some more stars on Badly Draw Box.
I’m pretty sure we can all agree the world will never be the same, but how did the launch actually go? Well good and bad.


The Good!
We got downloaded! And that’s the main thing. We were downloaded over 10,000 times in our first week which we’re more than happy with. For me this confirms that free apps with advertising on the Windows phone is a viable format to turn a profit, it might not be the quickest way to make your first million but it defiantly has potential.
It’s a strange feeling knowing that that many people have played something you’ve made and by most accounts have liked; this brings me on to our next positive, reviews.
It’s almost impossible to guess how a game is going to be received but I must say I was surprised by the responses, reviews range from 1 star L to 5 stars J but overall we faired very well.
Currently (and this really surprised me) Retro Racer is on 5/5 in the, Super Killer Hornet is on 4.5/5 and Badly Drawn Box is on 4.
Here’s a few responses.
(5 stars)“Works fine on my HTC… J Good Game – Krashload on Super Killer Hornet
(4 Stars) “Not Bad” – Faziotech on Super Killer Hornet
(5 Stars) “Can’t stop playing Retro games. This one’s great” -  F4llen monk on Retro Racer
(4 Stars) “Not a bad little game” – Rez1976 on Badly Drawn Box
Pretty satisfied with these results considering we’ve only been making games for 6 months. But it’s not all good L


The Bad!
Yeah, not all good I’m afraid, made some classic school boy errors which I think really hurt our downloads and potential profit.


Big mistake number 1
Our first mistake was to submit all three games at once, the idea behind this was so we could compare how different styles of game would perform on the format and this backfired somewhat for us.
We always knew how important it was to have your game show under the ‘New’ section on the main Market place but (stupidly) didn’t think about the fact that because we were releasing 3 games at once the very games we were putting up knocked the other 2 off, only Super Killer Hornet made it to the New section on the front page :o(  judging by first day download figures we believe that we lost between 3000 and 5000 download due to this.


Big mistake number 2
Second mistake we made was assuming that using the smaller advert size in pubcenter would be just as profitable as the larger format, turns out we were wrong.
Super Killer Hornet, which uses larger adverts, was downloaded 3000 times in the first two days and received 2900 ad impressions; Retro Racer, which uses the smaller adverts, was downloaded 4000 times in two days and received fewer than 100.
That’s over 30 times more revenue from just using bigger adverts. My advice to anyone planning on releasing ad based WP7 apps/games is to squeeze in the larger ads somehow otherwise it’ll be barley worth it. Combined with big mistake number one we would guess we made only around 10% of our potential profit.


Big mistake number 3
I can barely bring myself to write this bit as it’s such a classic misstep and what I consider to be our biggest mistake, what is it?  ‘Not lending enough weight to the importance of the game icon’, that’s what!
The game Icon is your cover art, the window to the soul of you game and probably 90% of the reason that people will be downloading your game.
We always knew this was important but after seeing the download results it’s easy to see that it’s by far and away the most important marketing tool at your disposal.
I was initially happy with the icon art for Super Killer Hornet until I started trying to look for it on the market place and missed it over and over again, I now realise a bit of yellow on a sea of grey is not exactly eye catching. In contrast, Retro Racer which has a far clearer and colourful icon has started to overtake Super Killer Hornet in downloads despite it being a far more basic game and not having the initial boost of being on the new section of the marketplace.


Big mistake number 4
To complete this checklist of idiocy I will conclude with the father of all errors and that’s assumption.
I’ve always been a massive fan of old school SHUPS (shoot ‘em ups) and especially anything by CAVE, anyone who is acquainted with CAVE’s style of manic bullet dodging, small hit points and ultra complex combo systems would instantly recognise that Super Killer Hornet is massively influenced by these Japanese masters of the genre. Unfortunately I forgot to remember that Japanese style bullet hell shooters are a little bit of a niche market in the west.  My mistake was assuming that people would just ‘get’ my game the instance they played it, not so.
Not including a basic tutorial in any of our games was a big mistake, when people play phone games they don’t want to spend 20 minutes working out how a combo system works or figuring out what does what. People want to pick up, play, smile and get on with their day. Advert based games depend on strong replay value and anyone who picks up a game and doesn’t understand it will never play it again.


Lesson leaned…


Summary
At a glance it may seem that the bad outweighs the good but all in all we’re happy with the launch. Even if it wasn't a massive financial success, was a lot of hard work and a Chinese person called our game ‘garbage’ the lessons learned are invaluable and more importantly it’s been fun.
With super Killer Hornet being releases on XBOX Live Indie next month I really hope we can take our own advice and avoid as many pitfalls as possible. Of course it’s a completely different medium so I’m pretty sure we’ll f**k it up somewhere down the line. 
We'll keep you posted...

At Last

5 Months, 2 weeks and 3 days have passed since Flump Studios was formed over a nice friendly (if there is such a thing) game of Fifa 12 and now, finally, we are ready to release the fruits of our labour upon the digital world.

The development side has been a bit of a double edged sword to be honest, it’s been way harder than I originally thought but, at the same time, far more fun. First of all I’m knackered, pretty sure I’ve been averaging about 4 hours sleep a night since January. Secondly, I almost literally haven’t been thinking about anything else; every meal, every film, even every bowl movement is accompanied by 

an orchestra of code based internal thoughts and self directed murmurings. Even worse, I’m pretty sure I haven’t been talking about anything else either, unfortunately my wife has taken the brunt of this self indulgent gaming chatter and I think she might be getting a little board now; but what fashionable, self respecting 27 year old woman wouldn’t want to hear about Bounding boxes and 3 dimensional arrays?

But having said all that, I have enjoyed every second of the last insomnia drenched, monofocused months and wouldn’t change it for the world. For me, the most important product to come out of the development process is the realisation this is what I want to do with my life.

We are planning to release 4 games over the next month and a half, all free and all exclusive to windows phone 7(at the moment). First up is our 8-bit love letter, ‘Retro Racer’, which is due out this Friday (01/06/2012), then on Monday (04/06/2012) our little brain trainer ‘Pressure’ will be hitting the market place, with Badly Drawn Box and Super Killer Hornethopefully following shortly after.

If you have a windows phone please download and have a look, they’re all free and every play puts money into funding our next project. I don’t want to sound like an Oxfam advert but please support the, far from endangered, indie developer because we really love what we do and all we want is to carry on making games and dreaming in code. Here’s to the future...

Great time to be an indie!!!

Man I love making games! It's been nearly 5 months since Flump studios created its very first line of code (public Texture2D PlayerTexture; if you must know) and I have thought of little else since, in a good way, a very good way.

For as long as I can remember I've had a passion for video games, in fact one of my earliest memories is playing Roland In The Caves on my sisters Amstrad CPC. As the years go by my passion has matured into more than just a love for playing games but a love for the industry. An industry that I truly believe is the most interesting, exciting and creatively diverse currently in existence and I'm just happy to be part of it.

Starting up a game studio (however small) has been one of the most rewarding things I have ever done and it's exciting that the industry has come back to a point where a team as small as ours (2 guys and a gal) could potentially make an impact on the market, we probably wont, we might not even make a single penny but the potential is there and this is what makes the industry great. It's because of this potential that we have such great indie games like Limbo, Dear Esther, super meat boy, Fez etc....

But it's not all good news, although the indie scene is flourishing it feels like the mainstream developers are becoming,well, dickish. DRM, On disc DLC, Online codes and if rumors are to be believed account locking to kill the preowned market (so wrong) none of which screams customer first.

So basically what I'm trying to say is, it's a great time to be an indie. With the indie scene creating so much great content and the mainstream punishing the consumer with anti piracy, anti-preowned measure and greed, more and more consumers will flock to the indie scene. Maybe we do have a chance after all...

By the way we have a game coming out soon!! Check out the trailer for Super Killer Hornet Black Label....

Hello again,

It's been ages since our last post but here I am again.
it's all been a bit hectic the last few weeks and this little blog had completely slipped my mind.
'So what have we been up to?' I hear all 7 of our followers cry in unison. We'll lots actually, Retro Racer our first project has been completed (more of a Windows 7 phone experiment than a game) and will be hopefully available for download soon, absolutely free!. This was supposed to have been up ages ago but we figured before we pay developer fees we might as well have a few programs to put up.


That brings me to our next and newest project, 'Super Killer Hornet Special Black Label' started of the back of 'Little White Box' from our last post(Hopefully also will be available soon) it's a frantic SHMUP(Shoot 'em up) this title pay homage to the great bullet hell shooters of Japan.

Pretty much since I started playing video games my favorite genre has been the humble horizontal SHMUP  just the raw energy and sweaty palms you get from blowing the crap out of everything just cannot be beaten.

Killer hornet pays tribute to probably the greatest SHMUP of all DonPachi in both name and content. A horizontal bullet hell experience with a slight twist, in arcade mode you get your multiplier up (and big scores) by answering simple sums and catching the falling numbers. This may sound slightly dull but it works really well and makes for a real challenge when trying to thread the needle between a hundred bullets.

If this mode really does sound like too much hard work, there will be an arrange mode, specifically designed to be 100% focused on dodging and destroying.

This project is nearing completion but I'm guessing it will be a summer release as we're still adding polish and are hoping for a simultaneous Windows phone 7 and XBOX 360 release.

Watch this space :0)