I spent an evening at a post-party for a game developers conference in my home country. It was a good time, albeit super busy and since most of my dev is under the radar here I don’t know many of the players anymore. I spoke at the conference over 10 years ago, so it’s good to see how the industry here has changed.

I have been very busy making games, it’s always been the thing I do just about every night after work and when I’m getting serious it’s something I do in the mornings before work. I put out a great game a couple months and took some trials at advertising in different ways and have had pretty bad success and it’s costing a lot of money for me. However I see it as a learning curve, and hopefully gain some insights. Unfortunately for me making games is just the main focus, and selling / promoting is not. (As you can probably tell by this website and it’s infrequent updates).

While I wish I could be more successful at this business I’ve been running for over 20 years, I’m very happy with what I’ve done. I’ve independently published more games than the big studios in my country, and I’ve done it all on my own. I’m not comparing the games to others, mine are card puzzles, with some word puzzles and a quirky other games / apps mixed in for fun. So they are no AAA titles or quirky indie treats, just casual games I like to play. I do have well over 100 projects I’ve started, 20 of which are viable and I have 5 ideas that need starting.

For now, as the last game I put out less than 3 months ago ‘Tri Towers’ is probably the best looking game I’ve made. It isn’t reaching the market I wish it would, I know it’s a great game and the best of it’s type in it’s class. I can’t force people to find my games and I can’t afford paying $20 to unity for each install of a free app, so a bit of a rock and a hard place. Instead of burning myself out, I just started focussing on my next game a game that is the spiritual sequel to my first IOS game, ‘Mojo Video Poker’.

A short while ago I brought the original Mojo Video Poker back to life, after a single customer emailed me saying that they loved the game but it no longer ran on their device; I decided to take action. The game was written in the original cocos2d, and was stuck in 32-bit so it wouldn’t run on new devices. I spent a couple days trying to update and patch the code and sure enough I got it compiling in 64-bit! What a treat, I wrote the customer an email and said it’ll be back soon. I’m glad I made one person’s day, so while I’m not big and this customer probably paid .99 to me 10 years ago, I was happy I could help. Since the game was so old I decided to make it free, and add in some ads. Originally there were 2 flavours of the game a free and a paid one, this was before advertising or in app purchases. I like the idea of a free app, and if you run out of credits you can optionally view an ad to get more. This felt like a better mix than trying to get people to buy coins (even though that would be the most profitable according to the ‘insiders’) but that wasn’t my preferred approach.

So where’s that leave me today? I don’t know, I’m just about done with Mojo Video Poker 2 aka Video Poker Extravaganza aka Massive Video Poker aka Mojo Video Poker Deluxe… I don’t know but I’ll find a name one day soon as I’ve already sent it off to translation. So I hope to finish this game in the next couple weeks, just adding some sound fx and testing now. Maybe get it out in a 0.9.0 state, then add some lingering features and call it a 1.0.0 shortly after. I have a feeling this game will do nothing, so I don’t want to stress too much longer and just get it out. After all the time and hard work in Tri Towers, it’s a great game but not getting the traction I think I’ll focus on making more games and try not to go broke promoting them for the moment. Maybe if one gains steam like 11s up did I’ll go from there.

Projects in this space:

• Mojo Video Poker 2 – coming soon
• Clinactrac version 2 coming soon
• RJL – weird platformer concept
• B&B – A game mapped out on a whiteboard since 2014 in my garage I want to make a PvP
• Beat Bloxx Redux (I found the code to the original beat bloxx and made it 64 bit and re-released it, which inspired me to make an actual sequel I’ve started)
• T.I.E. – A puzzle platformer across dimensions…
• BTG – A game tied into my band, some ideas around an old scum style game.
• 1MB – pew pew pew
• CR – 4th in my series of card puzzle games following Tri Towers, 8s Wild, 11s Up
• Plus whatever I think of next

I may not be anyone that anyone’s ever heard of but I’m keeping busy and hoping that the folks out there playing my games have a good time doing it, as I love making them.

I have been on a release rush, but so many old projects have a lot of issues due to their age to get re-released. One hangup was on updating libraries for Retro Art Studio, and I couldn’t get the binding to work in XCode, but after too many hours for a quick update I finally found a solution I think. I’ll know shortly when I can test the build once published by Apple’s Testflight.

I released the first version of 8s Wild! on Android, updated 11s up with a bug fix, and did sdk udpates for Mahjong 3d, and Retro Art Studio.

What is next?

• IOS Release of 8s Wild
• Start the UI Updates to 11s up for version 3
• Get back to work on the word game
• Deep think about whether to do Video Poker or K-game next
• Think about follow up to Retro Art Studio
• Try to come up with a solution for free vs paid games going forward
  • Go back to ‘free / premium’ 2 versions to limit the privacy implications
  • Keep in-app purchases
  • Add more in-app purchase options beyond ‘remove ads’
• Above is hard but I want to find a way to make this a more sustainable pursuit (after 25 years, seems like I should be able to do something)

While I get ready to launch a new game (8s Wild) today, I have been going through my old games. Most of them have a bit of dust on them, but are still played by a handful of people. But they have outdated libraries, that needed updating to keep them fresh.

I went and revisited Mojo Mahjong 3d and Retro Art Studio. I updated the libraries and prepared new bundles for release. After a bit of fiddling around with these old projects (> 8 years!) I then get asked to re-upload images, and also now comply with Apple’s new privacy policy. The new policy is a whole world of questions that I really had no idea how to answer. The reality is I don’t collect any information of my users, I really just make games and put them out there. However I do use analytics and advertisements, which do use a bunch of permissions. I only use the big players such as Google AdMob and Unity Analytics / Ads.

Luckily searching around I was able to find what permissions they use, and when you type it all out it sounds intimidating and hopefully I don’t scare off my users. But to break it down, I need ads because let’s be honest no one pays for small games. I’ve tried but no one is interested in buying games at any price, so I need ads. I try to not over use them, but they are in there as that’s the only way I can fund this game company. I’m sorry but people just don’t buy games for mobile, especially casual games like this. There’s no micro-transactions, loot boxes, or any thing like that, just ads.

But that threw a loop into just doing a quick update, then came in all the new devices I need to get screen grabs for. So once again another running around gathering those, updating the stores and publishing. Then to find the certificates, etc. I think I’m close to getting them up on their respective stores, for about 5 different apps.

I will make note that I am sadly unable to update Mojo Video Poker anymore for IOS, that was my first mobile game and my favorite. It is filled with sweat and tears, and will always hold a spot in my heart. I do think I should do it justice and remake it properly (Something I’ve started many times) but just finish it, bring in some ui help and put it out there.

I also would love to do a paid game again, so I didn’t have to account for ads, or in-app purchases, just a game you bought it you own it you got it all… the way I like to buy things, but I think I’m in the minority now.

Well, in short I’m very busy and I don’t even know if anyone reads this website so it’s a bit cathartic to write about these things.

Thanks for playing, stay safe.

It’s been a long time that I’ve been too busy to even look at this site. So what have I been doing? Well like any indie developer I work a day job or two, I also have a family with a couple kids that take heaps of my time. But I do always program and make new things. I spent about a year and a half in hardware, working on MCU’s for a variety of things professionally and for hobbies. I really got into micro gaming consoles based on MCU hardware such as the pyCade, ArduinoBoy, etc. Microsofts Make Code Arcade was a bit of fun running that on some actual hardware. I love these devices for nostalgia but also to try to get my kids into some programming.

As far as games, a couple years back I made a game called 11s Up! It was based on an old tabletop bar game collection I used to love to play. When Lemmy from Motorhead passed away, I remember this being his favourite game as well so I cracked out a version of it from memory and released it in under a month. Life got in the way and I forgot about it for over a year. When I looked back I saw it had a little traction and following. I then started playing it and realized the rules weren’t arcade perfect and there was a lot to be tweaked. So like any good developer I started from scratch and re-wrote the whole game from ground up. It continues to do good for my size games grown a couple users every week, which I’m really happy with.

With that “success” I got re-invigorated to get back to making games, I have another game similar style bar-arcade card game I’m 99.99% done with, I even enlisted the help of a UI designer. That’s going to hopefully be wrapped up and announced in my next post. I also have asked the UI Designer to do a refresh on 11s up so that will get a major update soon.

I am trying to watch the comments on the app stores (I wish people would contact me directly, but app stores give that sense of anonymity I guess. ) But I try to fix issues or make enhancements customers request. Unfortunately I can’t get rid of the ads, because I need to pay for this somehow. (And I make probably .001c per ad so I’m not making much of anything, but it’s enough to pay my software license to keep building games each month). That’s another post for another day…

I also made a small word game, this is functionally done but needs some graphics. I have one more tile puzzle game that’s about 80% done, but would probably take 2 months to get 100%. And I have one of my classic games to revisit and make new again, and a brand spanking new game knocking around in my head. I wish I could do this full time, but I’m running late for work so fingers crossed I get another hour tonight. 🙂