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Comment by jwcooper | Hacker News Reader

If you can get past maybe the top 50 or 100 grossing games there are a lot of really good games out there that aren't looking to leech money from you. I have plenty of games that have been worth every penny I spent with a lot of depth and strategy required in order to master them.

Letterpress, Spelltower, Hearthstone, Tiny Wings, Ticket to Ride, Strategery, GD Swarm, Ridiculous Fishing, Monument Valley...I could go on and on. These games were all priced probably too low for what they offered in time played.

This is almost a fluff piece to promote a developer coming up with 'something new for mobile'.

View on HN

If anybody's looking for a side project, I think there's a curation opportunity here. I'd subscribe to a newsletter focused on great, non-IAP-driven iOS games.

It could be weekly or monthly, with a mix of new games and classic gems that maybe aren't so well known. I'd tolerate a fair amount of advertising or sponsored content in the newsletter as long as it was clearly labeled.

The key thing for me is quality. I think that's true for many (extremely) casual phone gamers. I'd much rather get 1 outstanding recommendation per week/month than 10 of varying quality. And I know game enjoyment can be somewhat subjective, but there are still some games that are generally well-done and broadly appealing to fans of a genre. If the top recommendation is a racing game, I might skip it. That's okay. I don't need a new game every week or even every month. I just don't want to waste my time sifting through bad games or games that start fun but quickly ramp up the IAP pressure.

HumbleBundle kind of fits this niche, but I found their volume to be too high. And frankly, I don't want to buy a bunch of games at once. I think I'm less of a gamer than their target audience.

"The key thing for me is quality."

I wanted to say that I developed Rocket Renegade [1] for iOS. It's an 80s-inspired arcade shooter, with elements reminiscent of Space Invaders, Asteroids, Galaga... and, of course, it contains bosses.

I wrote all of the code, and I composed the soundtrack as well. The bitmap graphics were done by game designer Daniel Cook, who released them under a Creative Commons Attribution license.

I believe that it fits all of your requirements: the quality is high, the gameplay is fun, it runs rock-solid at 60 frames per second, the music is awesome, and it's a POP game (Pay Once to Play); no IAP, no ads.

It's essentially a straight-up, gun-for-your-highest-score-classic-arcade-shooter.

[1] https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/rocket-renegade/id955229059?...

Just purchased and played several times. Very solid gameplay, nice retro graphics, fun music. Congratulations.

I was kind of hoping for some power-ups, like a faster shot rate or scattershot. Those might be present, and I just didn't get to them yet, only made it to stage 3-x on first attempts. I also wish the stages had more variation, might feel too repetitive after a while – though that might happen later also.

Anyway, for $0.99, I'm definitely not complaining. It's a fun game and definitely an example of what I'm looking for. I'd personally be willing to pay more, in the $4.99 range, for a game like this, especially if it had some the variation features I mentioned above – but I might be unusual.

Well, first off, a massive THANK YOU for both the purchase, and for taking the time to provide feedback!

Unfortunately, there are no power-ups, and the levels do repeat after the boss level (although the game does become progressively more difficult). Those are definitely great ideas for the next iteration of the game.

Thank you, again. It means a lot to me.

More unsolicited advice: A prestige mechanic can be a good way to increase re-playability, whereby current progress can be traded for future boosts.

I play(ed) a game called Sky Force 2014 that would have benefitted from a prestige mechanic.

Fun game! (Sorry for your loss, indicated in the credits.) I'm not much of a gamer and I kept getting clipped by the rocks because I couldn't see my ship under my finger!

Thank you for your kindness.

As for your game-play issue, try off-setting your finger on the screen, away from the actual ship. That is to say, I made it so that you can actually have your finger anywhere on the screen to control the ship (i.e., you don't have to have your finger directly on the ship to control it). That will help you as you're trying to navigate through the asteroid field (and the other levels as well)!

Thanks again!

Hi,

Could you please take a look at my game:

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/drone-invaders/id1047158768

Powerups are there. :)

IAP were something he/she was specifically trying to avoid.

There are no IAPs in iOS version.

At 0.99 though, do you really make much money? Back of the envelop numbers seems that any game at that price point is so underpriced to never be profitable or more than a side project. Especially when an ad driven install costs more than that - relying on the pretty poor app store discovery mechanisms cant drive much traffic. (ive worked for free to play, so maybe we just saw a totally different thing)

The reason IAP became so big is because there was a huge race to the bottom in pricing in mobile, $1 isnt sustainable, so everyone was forced to find alternate revenue streams. If apple got rid of free and <$5, the average quality of the app store could be so much higher

Depends on what you define as 'much money'.

I spent 3 months building Hipster CEO and its made me approx $40-45k (as well as leading to other projects). Not a bad return for 3 months work.

I keep thinking that a virtual arcade model could work well... you get N plays per day for free, but if you want to buy more "coins" you pay like $5 and they carry over...

Each version improves existing games in the arcade and/or adds new ones... you can play your 20 coins/day first, then buy extra if you choose... there's no reason that model couldn't work quite well.

Isn't that exactly what P2P/IAP is?

This is the model most Facebook games use. They might call credits "energy", but whatever.

Piggy backing on this to plug our game as well: Fleet of One [1]. Retro 80s space shooter with an original soundtrack composed by a SAMA (South African Music Awards) nominated musician, original artwork by a professional artist, a lot of time spent on level design with classic bosses. Have a look, there's a free demo as well. No IAPs. Real love went into this.

We didn't even make the development cost back. We actively fought against the idea of IAPs and trying to hook whales, even though it would have been easy to introduce mechanisms to do it (on the hardest level it's almost impossible to beat).

[1] iOS: https://itunes.apple.com/za/app/fleet-of-one/id580453079?mt=... Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=za.co.polymorp...

Is this a Unity game? I built something similar (way worse I'm sure) based on the Space game tutorial:

https://unity3d.com/learn/tutorials/projects/space-shooter-t...

No, it's not Unity. I used Swift, along with SpriteKit [1] to develop the game.

[1] https://developer.apple.com/spritekit

Sweet, I love SpriteKit. It's really great to work with.

I just bought it and gave it a try. I have to say, it is not really my type of thing. After beating the boss, it just repeats, which is not really fun. I really liked the graphics and whatnot, but there was very little in ways of Replayability. It reminded me a lot of Xenon, but was basically over after the first boss. Still, great job! Hope it makes you rich.

Thank you for checking it out! Yes, your feedback is well-placed; it does need additional game-play elements (e.g., power-ups, shields, variation, etc.) that would give it a higher replay factor.

Again, thank you for taking the time to play and provide feedback. This was my first game, and it's clear that I have a lot to learn!

Welcome. And best of luck. This is an awesome start!

iOS only? It looks fun, but I don't have a working iOS device at the moment.

Thank you. It's iOS only.

I built a crowdsourced version of that general idea: http://www.slant.co/topics/3480/~ios-games-without-in-app-pu...

Ah yeah, that's pretty cool, definitely along the same lines I'm thinking. Thanks for sharing.

Pocket Tactics [http://www.pockettactics.com] is mostly what you want. This site should be stickied every time HN talks about mobile games.

Most of what they cover is buy-once. IAP in their covered games usually takes the form of optional DLC or as a way to buy the game outright after trying the initial levels. When they occasionally review a F2P game, they take the side of the average consumer and discuss how intrusive (or not) the IAP is.

Check out Curated, pretty much does what you're looking for: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.curated.an...

Last updated August 2015

Quality is also a key requirement for me. We developed our game Ellipsis for iOS with quality as the main driving factor. It's a minimalist action game of survival and dexterity, with zero text, no ads and no IAP. We've put a lot of effort crafting a polished experience that respects the player.

Please check it out, you're precisely the type of audience we are aiming for: http://playellipsis.com

Regarding curation, aside from places like TouchArcade, there are occasionally nicely curated video lists of best new premium games like these from Gameranx:

- January: https://youtu.be/Nuaj_ti5MtA

- February: https://youtu.be/aTQO0_bhuUI (disclaimer: we're in this list)

- March: https://youtu.be/oreE8YX5jQI

VSauce 3 used to have videos dedicated to apps. Some were games. I'd be lying if I said I tried all of the games, but I will say that most of their recommended games were of good quality.

They stopped making those videos sometime last year.

Here's a compiled list of their featured apps: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1cnARmaoMH-ZzAHCmaqkBus3r...

I'd just love to be able to search the respective stores being able to filter out stuff I'd never want.

If I could:

* Filter out any apps or games with microtransactions.

* Filter out any apps or games with ads.

* Filter down to apps with at least x downloads or ratings.

* Choose how the content is sorted.

I feel I could find things that I'm actually interested in. As it is at the moment it feels random whether I'll find something I'd actually want to download.

It's on hiatus right now, but I really recommend the @games_we_care twitter feed for this. The 1,041 recommendations in its archive are pretty great, and if/when it comes back, I'm sure the future will be good too.

There was a site that only listed no-IAP games for a while, but I think they "pivoted" into something less useful. http://www.slant.co/topics/1194/~android-games-without-in-ap... / http://www.slant.co/topics/3480/~ios-games-without-in-app-pu... is what's left.

Are you referring to honestandroidgames?

I was poised to post that site in this thread earlier on, but on googling I found not the site itself but this sadly relevant comment on Reddit from the site's former owner describing their eventual exhaustion in searching for the good stuff and disillusionment with the Android platform in general.

https://www.reddit.com/r/AndroidGaming/comments/2ggaqp/

Yes, thanks for reminding me.

Long time lurker, first time poster. I wrote and published a completely original puzzle game for android, got featured on google play a number of times.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.wp.wordbox

Curious how if I search for the exact name of the game on the Play store, I get it all the way on the bottom of the screen...

http://i.imgur.com/p8OnlG8.png

> I'd subscribe to a newsletter focused on great, non-IAP-driven iOS games.

I guess one would monetize that by soliciting advertisements and featuring particular games?

>This is almost a fluff piece to promote a developer

Clearly you do not know who is Nolan Bushnell

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nolan_Bushnell

Nolan Kay Bushnell (born February 5, 1943) is an American engineer and entrepreneur who founded both Atari, Inc. and the Chuck E. Cheese's Pizza-Time Theaters chain. Bushnell has been inducted into the Video Game Hall of Fame and the Consumer Electronics Association Hall of Fame, received the BAFTA Fellowship and the Nations Restaurant News “Innovator of the Year” award, and was named one of Newsweek's "50 Men Who Changed America." Bushnell has started more than twenty companies and is one of the founding fathers of the video game industry.

Clearly you do not know who is Nolan Bushnell

I would argue that he knows who Bushnell is better than you do. What you posted in no way invalidates what you quoted from the parent post. Yes, Bushnell started Atari. Since he sold, he's done...golly, I'd have to go look it up because all I remember is a string of forgettable (duh) games that he put his name on because "founder of Atari".

Yeah, I'm not on the bandwagon either.

Bushnell has started more than twenty companies and is one of the founding fathers of the video game industry.

Okay, sure. How many are still going, and how many didn't completely sink the money of the respective investors?

I get that Bushnell is a smart game guy, but IMO Atari was a lightning strike he's been trying to replicate ever since.

First I think the original parent is spot on about this being an ad spot for Bushnell's newest venture.

On the lighting only striking once though you are certainly off base. Chuck E Cheese was big in it's own right and I'm sure you have heard of at least one of the other companies he started; it's called Pixar.

The link between the Bushnell-founded Kadabrascope, sold to Lucas in 1984 in a fire sale to save Chuck E. Cheese, and the founding of Pixar in 1986 as a spin-off of Lucasfilm's Computer Division (which was founded in 1979) is hazy.

Yes, Bushnell created what probably became a part of Pixar, but calling him a founder is pushing it.

True enough; founder is stretching, but there is definitely a link there that as an outsider is difficult for us to really measure. If I had called it Kadabrascope though; most people wouldn't know what I'm referring to ;-)

No doubt though he is a smart business man with multiple ventures under his belt. I do believe he really has a passion for what he does as well; the fact that he is still doing this in his 70s when he surely has plenty of F-You money says something about his passion for this industry.

I'll give you half a point on CEC, but the founding of CEC was more about getting more Atari units into communities that wouldn't allow arcades.

And, no, Bushnell had nothing to do with Pixar, which had been around for 4-5 years at LucasFilm before CEC sold off Kadabrascope to Lucas in a fire sale. Pixar started with Ray and Catmull.

Atari wasn't even a 'good' company. The original Atari basically invented arcade games and the home console (2600 or VCS) but everything they did afterwards was a complete disaster. Including causing the video game crash, some home computers that never really competed, a bunch more flopped consoles, not to mention they drove incredible talent away that went on to create companies like Activision, and in the process only really created about 10 notable games.

Some of their home computers competed pretty well.

The Atari 8-bit series (400/800) had a significant chunk of market share in the early 80's. Not among the top three, but there were so many incompatible platforms in those days, and Atari 400/800 was one of the more common and well-supported ones for sure. http://arstechnica.com/features/2005/12/total-share/4/

Then, the ST didn't do so hot in the US, but here in Europe it was a well-known platform, nearly as popular as the Amiga. Roughly 75% of sold Atari ST's were sold in Europe.

Most famously, nearly every recording studio you'd care to name would have ST's in the control room well into the 90's and in some cases early 00's, due to their built-in MIDI capabilities.

My first gaming was done on my C64 and my bestie had an Atari 800 which we loved because cartridges meant fast load times, my C64 only had cassette tape. He then got an Atari ST which we also thought was a really good computer. This is in the UK. I was so jealous of that 800 back then, it was an impressive machine.

Edit: hey Ross, if you're out there, it's been 20 years, I still remember the good times!

I've had lunch with the guy. My point still stands - he's not just "some developer".

I envy you.

He tried to bring back cocktail cabinets as a 1v1 casual arcade machine for bars, talking about a celebration of in-person social gaming in an age of faceless online gaming and solo games. I loved the idea. Didn't pan out.

> I could go on and on

Please do!

The problem I've had with mobile games has been discoverability. The app store's recommendations have been useless and the featured/top grossing/most popular games are just the ones that make the most money via in app purchases.

And for some crazy reason, fewer and fewer games have actual screenshots in the screenshot section of their store page. Instead they opt to use that space for simple adverts ("best game ever!", "build 30 kinds of city!") and pictures of cartoon scantily clad women in armour. I'm sure there are many great games that I've just refused to play because of that crap

The frustrating thing is that I'm more than willing to pay $30+ for a game (up front, not in IAP to keep playing), but games that are worth that are rare and other players willing to pay it are rarer.

Some great games I've found (I mostly like RTS): Auralux, Mechcom, God of Light, Castle Raid, Anthill (so good!), Galcon, Plants vs Zombies (1, not 2), Swords and Soldiers, geoDefense.

If you like puzzle games, I personally think Threes is a masterpiece of the touch interface game form. And the original is worth far more than the $3 you'd save playing one of its clones.

You would LOVE Rymdkapsel ( http://rymdkapsel.com/ ) in my opinion.

I could just upvote, but I just liked Rymdkapsel so much I have to second the recommendation.

I also recommend Solarmax2.

I just tried this and it's as awesome as you say. I just bought it for two platforms

I'm becoming a fan of board / card game ports.

Ascension: Chronicle of the Godslayer Neuroshima Hex

Both play really well on small screens and the IAP for expansion packs have been worth it.

Ascension multiplayer can also be played over several days and you can multiple games going. So take a few turns, come back later when your opponent responds.

I believe NS hex is the same but I'm not very good yet and have not tried.

In addition to Threes, which you absolutely have to play, SPL-T is another great stylish puzzler, with a harder to grasp ruleset however.

Orbital, Spelltower and 80 Days are other favorites of mine.

How do you discover quality games? I've found the ability to discover apps outside the top 100 to be virtually non-existent with the current app store configuration.

>How do you discover quality games?

You can't because the discoverability is terrible and the various app stores just care about raw sales, not quality. So that means that devs who want to make quality games never get noticed and that's a major disincentive to produce such games. Mobile gaming doesn't have the tech press, steam-like reviews, etc other gaming has. Its a lot of impulsive buyers feeding a market that delivers crap because crap is good enough for them.

This is like asking where the chess table at a casino is. The casino and the people who go there have no interest in chess. They just want you to toss your money into a skinner box, which is what freemium games are.

Google and Apple could fix this, but prefer to lean towards the 'popular' discoverability than the 'quality' discoverability. I think they're wrong and have turned mobile into a ghetto in so many ways - its not just games, but obviously they prefer this method, which I imagine is more profitable. See the recent reports on how freemium games are powered by 'unicorns' who pay vast sums of money for in-game purchasing, all of which Google and Apple get 20-30% of.

> You can't

jwcooper did

> Mobile gaming doesn't have the tech press, steam-like reviews, etc other gaming has.

I was going to say [citation needed], but then I just literally googled "mobile game reviews" and hit two matches at the very top: http://www.polygon.com/games/mobile/reviewed and http://toucharcade.com/

> This is like asking where the chess table at a casino is.

Ballrooms A through C: http://www.vegaschessfestival.com/schedule/

Exceptions don't disprove the general trend. Its pretty disingenious to find small exceptions and pretend they're the standard.

The reality is that app store discoverability is terrible and p2w and other freemium games dominate sales. These types of sales demotivate devs and publishers from treating the mobile world like consoles or PC, where very good games exist and are easily found. This is a solved problem almost everywhere else? Why is it such a massive problem on mobile? When HN-level people are asking "Geez where are the good games," then you have a problem. If they're struggling then Joe User absolutely is.

Discoverability is terrible, but so was the "chess table in a casino" analogy. You don't look for a chess game by randomly wandering around a casino, and you don't look for quality games by randomly going through the app store.

You're right that there's a problem there, but while it's a problem that ideally needs solving, solutions do exist, and so do quality games.

Those aren't exceptions, though. Those are easily available. You're just too lazy to look for Touch Arcade.

By doing as we always did, reading game reviews by people that work doing only that.

THere's not going to be an exhaustive source, of course, but I've found TouchArcade's reviews to be of some value, as well as their forum.

Their weekly roundup of new releases, including trailers for each, is another avenue for being able to quickly peek through what's out there - any that pique my interest, I'll open in a new tab, and see what further screenshots or user sentiments are to be found.

http://toucharcade.com/

That website only covers videogames for iOS, do you have any other suggestion?

If you have any interest in PC games you can't get past Rock Paper Shotgun in my opinion. If you were expecting a site focused on Android gaming however, then I'm not of much help unfortunately.

This is the biggest problem for sure. So many of these games just get buried in either app store by the worst type of games and apps.

I've mostly discovered them over time by recommendations from people, or from discussion boards or sites that cover games, or even when they get featured by Apple in the app store.

It's amazing that app discovery is so difficult to solve for the big app stores.

There are so many stores on android, I will be surprised if there isn't any that only accepts games without IAP.

From your friends, just like always.

You Must Build a Boat and it's predecessor 10000000 are games I still play forever and a day later even though I've maxed out 10000000 forever and a day ago.

It was a unique game and worth the money, but the replay value is close to nil to me because it's more a game of luck rather than skill.

Is there a way to filter pay-to-win games? I can pay, but I want to have fun and progress with skill/practice instead of by paying.

Last week I spent 20 minutes on the google app store and at the end almost everything was "free" games with p2w

Try puzzles and dragons. It makes all of its money in IAP but so far I've felt no urge to purchase. Game is largely based on skill as far as I can tell. I'm sure there is a lot of grinding to get through at certain points, but I've been playing regularly for a couple of weeks and haven't run into it on the regular dungeons.

I've lost over 100 hours to Crashlands. The mobile app is only $5 with no iAP (and syncs with the PC/Steam save, though that's another $15) and is a very fun, complete game full of humor that's hard to describe. Adventure, action, crafting (with infinite auto-organizing inventory), secrets, and did I mention the humor? Between this, Punch Club, and You Must Build A Boat I've come close to swearing off non-premium gaming on iOS.

As a side note, I actually did throw my phone because of a F2P game. Expensive bad decision.

But how does one goes aboit looking at those? When you look at the top charts of Steam, the only true competitor to App store and Play store, you will mostly find games that are not trying to leech the user.

Of course the founder of Arcade games should remember that most arcade games were designed to take the maximum number of quarters from the users. There is nothing wron with designing around market conditions.

I'd like to take the opportunity to recommend this almost unknown gem for Android: I Am Level. A platformer with a retro spectrum feeling. Got me instantly hooked. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.SmilingBag...

For sure. Most of these have been in the Mobile Humble Bundle. I don't really buy mobile games outside of it.

I'd emphatically recommend Zen Bound and Zen Bound 2.

More than most other mobile games with good touch controls, the Zen Bound games really took advantage of the tactile nature of current mobile devices and their touch interfaces.

Aside from the mechanics, they were also pretty relaxing, while some of the levels managed to be simultaneously challenging while remaining completely passive. A very gentle and non-frustrating form of challenging that not many games manage to achieve.

I don't think Zen Bound gets enough praise as a game that is unique both from a gameplay perspective and how well it relies on the interface of the underlying device.

Don't forget Alto's Adventure. Although it's been somewhat polluted with IAP recently, it's still a gorgeous, well-designed game.

I think I bought nearly all of the games you mentioned via humble bundle deals, so that may be one way to access curated mobile games.

FTL on the iPad works really well, too.

Great post. I'd add Atomas to your short list of undervalued games.

I really like Ridiculous Fishing.

The guy who made Braid has similar talks, comparing mobile games, arcade games and 90s syndicated sitcoms. They only keep you entertained long enough to insert another coin or make it through a commercial break.

The good mobile games, like you've mentioned, focus on creating a good engaging game without micro-transactions. They earn less. Games with micro-transactions have like a 70% ~ 80% drop rate when you get to the point where you need to pay to make the progress non-painful. That remaining little group is their revenue. Occasionally you get a "whale" that will drop $500 ~ $1000 or more on a game!

I knew game developers who talked about this. It kinda makes me feel sick. Either they have a lot of money, or they're just compulsive. In the later, you're taking advantage of people in the same way casinos take advantage of gamblers. "Whale" is a term used by both industries.

Fuck in-game purchases.

At that point, you don't have fans, you've got addicts.

Known as whales in the industry I believe - they are actively targeted and it is a disgusting strategy :-(

It's a gambling term. Which gives you an idea about the ethos behind it :)

There was an article about the number 1 Clash of Clans player. He took two iPads in clear plastic bags into the shower with him to maintain this position.

He actually sounds like someone you'd meet on HN, he was lonely after moving to SF for a job, that's how be got into the game:

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2013/12/22/technology/master-of-hi...

The problem is, in most cases, you either do these kinds of things, or you don't make any money. Mobile users have been trained by the race to the bottom that games and apps should be free, and so they are highly reluctant to pay for stuff.

Game Dev Story is fun and has no micro-purchases. I was hooked for a couple weeks straight.

"These games were all priced probably too low for what they offered in time played."

The marketplace has pushed prices down so low (sub $5), in-game purchases or advertisements are the only way they can make a living.

If Google/Apple cared about their developers, they would force a minimum price. This way, it wasn't a race to the bottom. The end result is either large companies using the games as a loss leader, hobbyists that are releasing games and not getting compensated, or what we see now: games slapped with tons of advertising and in-game purchases. Personally, I would rather just see a higher priced game so I don't have to deal with the spammy tactics used now.

The race bottomed out before Google/Apple were even in the game. Zynga's burn n' churn strategy set precedents for both the gaming audience and game developers alike- pull users into turbo-charged Skinner boxes.

Now these platforms monetize from selling users to developers. Acquisition rates are as shady as they are exacting- you compete for the same users as the top 10 games, who have advertising budgets the size of small countries GDP.

Besides, if they put a minimum price in, they would have to start real curation of the platform. That goes against profiting off developers spending for users, and their percentage for users paying for the game.

Well the ease of entry and the fact developers from areas of the world with much lower costs of living is going to drop the price of any similar market. Similar being wholly digital which eliminates the majority of costs with regards to distribution.

I would not mind seeing a common micro transaction model that all such games could subscribe to so as to remove touch points to a persons credit but also give some assurance of trust and security.

You seem to have a low bar for what constitutes a great game. (EX: Tiny Wings) Which is not a bad thing. I would suggest you look into free flash games, there are some real gems out there.

However, IMO many people are simply have different expectations. Mobile has plenty of processing power, but poor controls which is a real limitation preventing a wide swath of what people think of as video games.

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