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...