hi,
I'm wondering what can I do to make more sales ... 2 weeks ago I released my new game "bumpex", it got about 400+ downloads and ONE sale only! this is less than 0.25% conversion rate... it is unfruitful.(one sale just looks like NO SALES)
Here is what I did:I submitted my game to many download sites (but not downloads.com yet) it got some high rates like (5/5 at topdownloads,fileheaven and sofotex) and it got some nice comments from users like "it's cool and original" and "very addictive".
I'm happy with these comments and rates but with 1 sale!?!?! :confused:
what can I do? I can not figure out what to do to make my game better, I redesigned my web site and it gets a new look now.
so any one can tell me what's wrong with the game/site?what pitfalls that terribly affect the game playability?
you can download bumpex from:
download mirror (ftp://ftp.demon.co.uk/pub/simtelnet/win95/arcade/Bumpex.exe)
or from my website:
http://ehbgamer.com/Bumpex.exe
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Ehbgamer

ACKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK!!!!!!!!!!!! I go to the dictionary to look up a word, and when I hit back all that I had typed is gone. :(

Ok, your going to get the short version of my impressions.

1. Make the instructions easier to find. In game would be best. As is I had to search your program directory.

2. Why am I smashing all these ships that aren't doing anything to me anyway? If I just sit in the middle and don't do anything - there don't seem to be any consequences.

3. The controls feel sluggish which appears to be part of the intertia system. I want to use the mouse and have a tighter control - not a .5 sec lag between me trying to move and it reacting.

3. It doesn't grab the players attention. I can just sit there safely until I get bored and knock an enemy ( I assume they're enemies - they never do anything to me ) into the wall - then I sometimes follow it in because I can't change direction fast enough.

4. To be honest, what I played was somewhat boring. After playing three levels I had no desire to play 97 more even if it was free. The levels looked the same and played about the same.

My suggestions:

1. Add in-game documentation.

2. Tighten the controls and make it playable with the mouse.

3. Have the enemies shoot at you. Slow bullets that start to clog up the screen when there is a lot. Not fatal - but maybe each hit should take 10-25% of the shield. This would demand the players attention and make them respond instead of being able to see how long they can not hit any keys and nothing bad happen.

You may be thinking "You only played three levels - there is so much more than what you saw!". Maybe. But after playing three levels I didn't want to play anymore. So my suggestion is to make the first levels a LOT more exciting.

Hope I didn't come off too hard - but I assume you want people's honest opinion.

Jack

Edit: You also need to have someone who knows English grammar well check the manual. It doesn't give a good impression.

i tried to go to your site to check out some screenshots before i downloaded the game but all i got was a "page not found" error

ehbgamer

I think JackNathan said most of what I'm going to say already so here goes.

1. Player dies when hitting the walls once.
You might want to just knock off 25-50% of the shield instead.

2. Slippery controls
But I got used to it and can see why the controls was done this way.

3. You need new graphics. I'm sorry but those graphics look like some photoshop filters gone bad.
Beg someone, show them the current game, make a big pitch on how improved graphics will bring in lots of money :). Then offer him a % of profit.

4. No tutorial? Player has no idea what is going on. Also no objectives? What am I suppose to do in the level? Just bump bump bump?
How about some instructions. Overview of new enemies in that level and new power ups.

5. Wierd graphical glitches when loading the level.
Maybe it is just me but when you start a game and the screen is doing that flip thing, there's some graphical glitches that scroll across my screen.

6. What is that meter above Shield?
Ok I know it's a progress bar, but you should put some text above it to say so.

7. When saving, you should just save the last stage, and not the amount of lives. I mean what's the point of saving if I get to last level and 1 life?

Over all the game is ok, I'm thinking the game will get more challenging/exciting later on, but it moves at a snails pace. The worst part of all is the graphics. Also you ask again why the game is not doing well but you already gotten some answers from a previous post.

http://www.dexterity.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=889

If you did all the marketing you can, made it as easy as possible to register and sales are still not comming in, then it might be the gameplay. I would tweak it some more. Or try allowing the player to play some of the later (more exciting levels) in the demo.

Hope that helps.

John

Heres my thoughts:

1)What resolution is this game running at? it seems very low, and I'd like the option of running it in a window

2)How do i play? what am I supposed to do? I couldnt work it out instantly, and expecting people to leave the game to find out is asking too much(they wont come back)

3)Why is this game 4MB? That seems very big considering the graphics. I'd try and shrink it down to around 1MB if you can. It doesnt look like a 4MB game.

4)Don't force people to enter their name as a high score, let them press escape to not bother. Escape key should always quit you out of everything.

At the end of the day, the reason you dont get the sales is because there are other games at least 10% better than yours that are similar(ish). Its like Steve has said before, if a game is just slightly better than yours, it won't get slightly more sales, it will get most of the sales. You have done very well to get a complete finished game, thats playable and for sale, but you have to keep working on it if you want it to actually generate any sales.

Originally posted by ehbgamer
it got some high rates like (5/5 at topdownloads,fileheaven and sofotex) Don't put any stock in these so called awards. The smaller shareware sites give out 5/5 ratings like free candy in the hopes that you will display it on your site and link back to them. I've seen things like a visual basic version of Pong get 5 star ratings.

I'm not saying your game isn't worthy of awards (I haven't seen it yet), just saying don't put much faith in these throwaway "awards".

I agree with John and Jack.

Additionally, I found the game great in many aspects. UI is very clear. Game play is nice, but you have to do a little tuning. The idea is original. Collision detection is great. Particle system is also nice. The game shows a lot of your talent. It shows that you have a great chance of future success. So, what is missing? I think the game does not give much fun to gamers. But as I can see you have great skills to make it much more fun. Also you have to lower the download size. Many people expect a lot from 4.2 mb. If I had a dial-up, I wound't even think of downloading.

Lastly, have you done annoucement?

Erkin

And I think you should be grateful for one sale. I'm not knocking your game, only that one sale in two weeks isn't bad. 400+ downloads in two weeks is pretty good if you ask me. It takes time for word to get around. Just having it on numerous download sites won't instantly mean everyone will download it. You can't just release one game and expect to make a small fortune. The only companies that are making a lot either have truly amazing games or have a lot of smaller games.

In the month that I have had sliders released, I have had just under 400 downloads and not one sale. I've had a few comments about how good it is, and other developers have given comments like "It's a good game and the sales will come in time" but no real interest in purchasing from the customers :(

* At least in the demo levels, it feels too easy. just sit in the middle of the screen and do nothing.
* It finally started to get a little bit interesting on the third level when the ship got a "bumper ball gun" or something like that.
* It's confusing to have to use the keyboard to control the ship, and the mouse to control the menus. Choose one device or always enable both :)
* When I get to a new level and find it looks exactly the same as the one before, I get a bit disappointed.
* The music.. not to be harsh, but well.. it sounds like me trying to use a MIDI sequencer back when I was 9.
* No sense of urgency in the game, it's way too laid-back for being a vertical scroller.
In short, the game needs more work. It has potential, but the demo gave zero incentive to make me interested in purchasing the whole game.

I tried this a couple of weeks ago before I went away and found an odd problem with it. If I recall correctly, after completing the first two levels (mostly just sitting in the middle and occasionally bumping a couple of ships into the edge) I got careless with the laggy controls and lost my lives. I then went back to level 1 (out of choice) and it was completely empty and never finished. I waited and waited and waited some more just to see if it was just that it seemed longer with no action going on, but alas.. I gave up after many minutes or seeing nothing happen. The only way I seemed to be able to get out of it was to deliberately crash into the walls myself.

The powerups do make the game more interesting, but getting to a stage where you might pick one up (in terms of getting used ot the controls and actually coming across one) is (i.m.o.) too far in to the game. It was a mild pick-me-up when I got my first, but I was by that time already fast losing interest in the game.

I dont know if there is variation in the shape of the course - which would prevent the sitting in the middle tactic, or even anything that fires at you, fast and heavy ships which will push you into the edges.. anything to add a little more danger and risk to the game.

Some kind of tutorial / instructions would be nice, and perhaps some brief story would help with relating to the setting and style. The graphics seemed awfully blurry and artefacted (but they have already been mentioned)

I will agree that there are some nice points to the game as Erkin points out, but I think that the overall appearance and seeming lack of gameplay outbalances these somewhat.

-Z-

Unique game but it has some fatal flaws.

1> graphics are terrible. I believe they're supposed to be ships of some kind, but they just look like orange turd.

2> absolutely no Game AI. THe opponents just stand there waiting to be pushed around. It's be a whole lot funner if the AI oppoents bumped me.

3> crashing into the firewall at the edges should lower shields, but not cause instantaneous death.

4> music is terrible. gives me a headache.

5> weird graphical glitches in intro screen.



Some questions for you please.

Overall I thought it was a cool game. Is this 2d or 3d only? Any way I can display the FPS ratings?

i won't repeat the suggestions already mentioned, but i concur with almost all of them.

however i have a suggestion which could make the game more fun. i don't know if this is already in (maybe in later levels?, but i haven't seen them yet):

fixed enemies on the ground. in most other scrollers there are cannons etc. sitting on the ground shooting at you.
they make the game more challenging because you have to evade them. (think about the huge battleships in "1942" on MAME).
especially in your game this could be funny because it will prevent the player from sitting in the middle, i.e. the cannons will force the player to move and to bump into lots of stuff in order to survive - and bump'ing is what the game should be all about (it currently is *not* because you *don't have to* bump into anything, well, except to score some points).
additionally, these enemies would make the level design more interesting and varied. different locations on each level, more cannons in later levels.

of course implementing this would be a huge update for you to make, but maybe it is worth considering (at least for a sequel).

I found this to be an interesting take on the old "bump n jump."

I think most of you are hitting the wrong nail in considering this a shooter. The goal is to bounce your enemies around, knocking them into the walls.

What's wrong with it? Speed it up. A lot. And make it feel like you're zooming past enemies, instead of them just drifting down the screen.

Now that Aspiral mentioned MAME, I have to mention DoDonPachi. Excellent incredibly frantic shooter, give it a try, preferably on the real thing but MAME works too..

What i don't like on Bump'n'Jump/Burnin'Rubber and your game is that there's no real reason to smash your enemies. It's better to just avoid them.

hi all,
Thanx alot for your valuable comments and ideas which will enlighten my way towards making a better game (and getting more sales:D ).
I really had a problem of finding out what points to be fixed or added and now you gave me those points to start with ... thanx to you all.

To JackNathan:
thanx jack all your comments will be added
2. Why am I smashing all these ships that aren't doing anything to me anyway? If I just sit in the middle and don't do anything - there don't seem to be any consequences.
I'll try to add somthing ... when those 'ENEMY SHIPS' reaches some point at the bottom they just mutate into another 'REAL ENEMY' that is harder

to wrfstudios:
We had a problem with the server, but it is fixed now try it again

To z3lda:
1. Player dies when hitting the walls once. You might want to just knock off 25-50% of the shield instead.
my point here is that hitting fire is fatal, as enemies crash in fire you too, also other fire sources like fiery enemies will be fatal for you and for other ships. I want to make it clear that any fiery object is a fatal that distinguish it from other objects like bombs which just reduce your shield by %5 when hit.
7. When saving, you should just save the last stage, and not the amount of lives. I mean what's the point of saving if I get to last level and 1 life?
I do not figure out what u mean ... just save the level without any lives! or do not show number of lives to players?

To cliffski
1)What resolution is this game running at? it seems very low, and I'd like the option of running it in a window
800*600 ... I my self do not like windowed mode when playing games, it may be adequate for puzzel games but I do not think it is ok for my game ... it is my point of view
3)Why is this game 4MB? That seems very big considering the graphics. I'd try and shrink it down to around 1MB if you can. It doesnt look like a 4MB game.
BMPs and WAVs are huge I'll try using other types...

To RedClaw
Don't put any stock in these so called awards.
I agree with you...
To ergas
Lastly, have you done annoucement?
not yet , I've no experience with that and I do not know where to make such announcements ...

To damocles
notice that 1/400 is .25% conversion rate which is lower than the average ... if I could get 4 or 5 sales it is ok but 1 sale is BAAAAD

To Henrik
It finally started to get a little bit interesting on the third level when the ship got a "bumper ball gun" or something like that.
you can get this "bumper ball gun" at any level ... it is a random event ... I just lowered the possibility of getting those guns just to make it a bumping game not a shooting game.

To sodasoft
2> absolutely no Game AI. THe opponents just stand there waiting to be pushed around. It's be a whole lot funner if the AI oppoents bumped me.
I tried to make them easier , in higher levels there are enemies that run around you and try to hit you in different forms
Overall I thought it was a cool game. Is this 2d or 3d only? Any way I can display the FPS ratings?
it is my 3rd game ...
if you want to display the FPS just email or PM me and I'll send you an exe file which display FPS.

To aspiral
nice idea, but this may look too hard for a beginner who just starts playing.

oh too long reply ... sorry

I got a papaer and a pencil and start writing TODO notes ... oh big list:
1- Graphics,Graphics,Graphics and Graphics.(I'll try to hire someone and give him % of the game as I currently do not have money to pay):(
2- Music,Music,Music ... and Music.(also I have to hire someone)
3- keyboard and mouse controls
4- increase exciteness specially in the first levels (I think if someone passes the first 5 levels without being bored he will continue to the 10th. Did you past this test??;) )
5- in game help
6- some minor comments that you mentioned

I think it may take 1 more month of hard working that makes it 15 months.:rolleyes:

thanx again and sorry for this tooooooo long reply

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Ehbgamer
http://ehbgamer.com

I was asking if your engine was 2-D or 3-D. Some of the graphics looks 3rd dimensional. Do you use HW accelaration?

I was asking if your engine was 2-D or 3-D. Some of the graphics looks 3rd dimensional. Do you use HW accelaration?

hi Sodasoft,
sorry didn't get it:confused:
anyway... my game is purely 2D and some alpha blending. I'm wondering what looks 3D in the game?

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Ehbgamer

the explosion particles look like they're rotating triangles...that's why I asked if your game was 3-d.

cool stuff. just improve the graphics, and i'm sure sales will pick up.

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7. When saving, you should just save the last stage, and not the amount of lives. I mean what's the point of saving if I get to last level and 1 life?
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I do not figure out what u mean ... just save the level without any lives! or do not show number of lives to players"

What I mean is save the level progress, and let the player start at that level, but give them 3 lives.

John

Yeah - but then couldnt the player just save and load to recieve 3 new lives anytime they wanted?

Originally posted by wrfstudios
Yeah - but then couldnt the player just save and load to recieve 3 new lives anytime they wanted?
If this makes the game less frustrating and/or more fun, what's wrong with that?

"Yeah - but then couldnt the player just save and load to recieve 3 new lives anytime they wanted?"

That's true, but they won't be able to rack up a high score like if they had started from level 1. So the trade off is you can beat the game easier, but it won't place you at the top of the score chart.

John

Thats cool - I vote for whatever makes the game more fun.

I was just pointing out a potential "bug" to get neverending lives.