This is my first post in these forums - so be gentle. I wish I had known these forums were here earlier than this week.

First, let me introduce myself very quickly. My name is Dave Myers and I am one of the owners of an indie game dev studio, 21-6 Productions (http://www.21-6.com). Earlier this year we released a small title on RealOne Arcade called Cyclone (http://games.real.com/game.php?gameid=89CA2CCC-975A-463A-9695-BFA77889A3EB&pageid=genre1-sort&src=rahome020630&mode=spnav). More recently we have launched our Torque-based multiplayer title Orbz (http://www.21-6.com/orbz.asp).

We had an exclusive deal with Real for Cyclone, but now we are reaching the end of that exclusivity and plan on putting Cyclone out elsewhere. What we plan on doing is giving it a facelift at the very least before we do so. Cyclone is a pretty interesting color-matching, bubble-popping type of game, but we think we can update it to be better. We were hoping that maybe some of you might have the time and inclination to download and install the game and possibly post some feedback here. Sorry - it's only on Real, so if you have a strong anti-Real bias and don't want to download their Arcade client we completely understand.

Peer review of our products in order to make sure they continue to sell the next few years seems like an important part of the game dev process, so any thoughts are greatly appreciated.

Dave Myers
Vice President
21-6 Productions, Inc. (http://www.21-6.com/)

I'm just curious if your game sells a certain amount, say 100 copies a month or not via Real Arcade and the people who might be viewing it via the connection... interesting to know figures for a puzzle game on Real..

Well, I don't want to really derail the thread, and I don't want to really give out numbers, but I can provide some info.

First, when we launched the game was mentioned as part of their newsletter and immediately got a pretty good number of initial downloads - over 20,000 in a week or so. Our conversion rate at this time was not terribly impressive, but not too bad.

Second, after that initial launch, Real did not push our game at all on their client, so the download count went down considerably. They do not push your game if the conversion rate is lower than 2% because they have a good number of games who convert at that rate or higher - sometimes much higher. This was not expressed in any way to us, and since we were an exclusive and the contract mentioned they would attempt to push our game as much as is possible, we were very disappointed. The upside is that our conversion rate went up by half a percentage point after the inital bull-rush we saw. Not 2%, but not bad, and something to build on.

Third, building the download numbers and raising the conversion rate is our task at hand. Which brings us full circle back to the point of the thread quite nicely. ;)

Dave Myers
Vice President
21-6 Productions, Inc. (http://www.21-6.com/)

Hi Dave and welcome to the Dexterity forums, it's always nice to see successful members of the Indie game community showing up on these forums.

I've been tempted to try Cyclone ever since I saw it listed as one of the top games of 2002 in Avault's best games of the year review, this is just the excuse I need to go play the game. Even if it means installing spyware on my machine and promptly un-installing it once i'm done playing ;)

...and congratulations on releasing Orbz, that game is a blast to play, definitely worth ever penny of the $14.99

The only thought I had while playing was that it's a little hard to tell when the level will be done. On the left hand side you have lines-left indicator. Consider making that a more graphical representation of how far along you are like a progress bar of sorts. It's easier to keep track of than a number.

Originally posted by svero
The only thought I had while playing was that it's a little hard to tell when the level will be done. On the left hand side you have lines-left indicator. Consider making that a more graphical representation of how far along you are like a progress bar of sorts. It's easier to keep track of than a number.

That is definitely spot-on. We chose to model Cyclone after Collapse when it came to this aspect, but there does seem to be a better way to make this more apparent.

Thanks for the input.

Originally posted by Dan MacDonald
I've been tempted to try Cyclone ever since I saw it listed as one of the top games of 2002 in Avault's best games of the year review, this is just the excuse I need to go play the game. Even if it means installing spyware on my machine and promptly un-installing it once i'm done playing ;)


Yes, the Avault award (http://www.avault.com/articles/getarticle.asp?name=topsw2k2&page=2) was great and unexpected - happened during the IGC in November. What was Real's response to this? Nada. They didn't care one whit. Very disappointing.

Honestly, when we put Cyclone on Real we had no idea how many people really did not want to install Real software. I usually consider myself pretty on top of this kind of stuff, but I was definitely caught off-guard on that.

Originally posted by Dan MacDonald
...and congratulations on releasing Orbz, that game is a blast to play, definitely worth ever penny of the $14.99

Thanks. We have all sorts of plans for Orbz, including:


Linux version
Mac version
one level demo (almost done)
more levels very soon now
some contests for level-building and orb creation and design
scheduled play sessions with other orbz gamers and 21-6 crew


Gonna be a fun year.

I think it's a cute variant. I liked that if you hit spacebar it would let you rotate the cyclone before it hit (that'll teach me to be impatient). I also tried to fool it by rotating it through a large pile but it prevented me. :) I liked the "ink drop" piece, but perhaps if you inked a block the same color it should backfire in some way. (Make a ayoooga noise and take away points.) I thought the explosive piece would be more intuitive if it took a localized chunk from the point it hit, but OTOH the strategic value of how it currently works is evident.

I think part of the problem with the "lines left" is there's no indication of how long before another line is inserted. Maybe you need an indicator for that as well. I agree that numeric information can be overdone, although I don't think it's so bad as is.

I noticed that if you hit Escape (a few times) when a level is complete and the bonus is being counted you can cause it to shoot out another ball prematurely.

Regarding Real Arcade, I can attest that there were a couple of games I decided to forego evaluation because I didn't want to install the thing. But now that it's installed it's pretty painless.

More thoughts - very cool. Thanks.

Originally posted by elund
I liked the "ink drop" piece, but perhaps if you inked a block the same color it should backfire in some way. (Make a ayoooga noise and take away points.) I thought the explosive piece would be more intuitive if it took a localized chunk from the point it hit, but OTOH the strategic value of how it currently works is evident.


The thought behind the Paintball ("ink drop" piece) is to make it simple - it paints whatever it hits that color, even if it hits something that is already that color. I think what might help here is to show the piece being painted - a little animation or something small to tell the player what is going on. Then it would be clear what is happening.

The Eliminator ("explosive" piece) originally did just what you mentioned about a local explosion. But in the end the strategy of it destroying ALL pieces of the color it hits made the most sense to us. We had considered an additional missile which would do a local explosion. Possibly that is something to consider. The downside is that the action gets pretty quick as you go up in levels, and having to quickly identify the missiles is challenging. Having to identify another missile type might be a little much for the casual gamer. I'd be interested in more thoughts along these lines in general, actually.

Originally posted by elund
I think part of the problem with the "lines left" is there's no indication of how long before another line is inserted. Maybe you need an indicator for that as well. I agree that numeric information can be overdone, although I don't think it's so bad as is.

That's what I meant when I spoke about showing the next line that will show up. Not just showing the pieces, but giving you an indication when they will pop to the inner row of the grid.

Originally posted by elund
I noticed that if you hit Escape (a few times) when a level is complete and the bonus is being counted you can cause it to shoot out another ball prematurely.


Don't do that. ;)

Seriously, that's an interesting little "feature" we'll have to investigate. One nice thing is that we have had no reported bugs with Cyclone (crosses fingers). If that is the worst one, we'd be pretty pleased.

Thanks again.

I played it, got to level 6 with 39k points. Unfortunately I don’t have anything really intelligent to add on how to improve it. I have one suggestion but this is really based on my own perception of the game. When I saw the logo for the game I assumed I’d be spinning this color wheel all over the place in sort of an analog manner, the longer I held the arrow key the faster it would spin etc. I was somewhat surprised when the "cyclone" rotated very discreetly in a fixed number of places.

I think it might add an interesting dynamic to the game if the angle of rotation was arbitrary, and the speed of the rotation was controlled by how much force you applied in each direction. Sort of like asteroids.

Also I found the music to be slightly tedious / repetitive and the UI was a little drab, it seemed like it needed more contrast, the white a grey of the UI elements made it seem a little washed out and I think it detracted from the professional appearance of the game.

It was a fun little game though, ran on my machine (which is notorious for revealing hardware compatibility problems) the first time and didn't crash.

Originally posted by Dan MacDonald
I played it, got to level 6 with 39k points.
New things are introduced until level 10 currently. After that it just gets more difficult. You can also start at levels 1,5,10,15 to skip the slower levels.

Originally posted by Dan MacDonald
Also I found the music to be slightly tedious / repetitive and the UI was a little drab, it seemed like it needed more contrast, the white a grey of the UI elements made it seem a little washed out and I think it detracted from the professional appearance of the game.


The UI is definitely drab, and the colors are flat in general. This is the facelift we want to put in.

I too was thinking that some of the SFX and the music might need to be tweaked some.

Thanks for the feedback.