Youngest Y Combinator Founders Launch MinoMonsters, The Pokemon Of Social Games
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I am ok with constructive criticisms and asking meaningful questions, but pointing out other competitors and implying that this product is a waste of everyone's time is just mean.
Josh and team, I am extremely proud of you (never having met you). Do what you love doing, and keep doing it. Don't listen to the haters.
I also wouldn't consider pointing out other competitors mean. I'm sure the person leaving that comment, and the numerous votes for him, are just wondering what the difference is (and another comment hit it: it's the team).
Don't attribute to malice what mere stupidity can explain. Stupidity is a bit strong in this case, but you get what I mean. I don't really observe a lot of hate here, just a broad spectrum of responses.
If you make a positive comment, you might get some friends, but if you make a negative comment, you are much more likely to make enemies just for saying what's on your mind. That is why TechCrunch comments are now nothing but a sea of sycophancy.
The value of an anonymous forum is that the truth gets told.
I agree that downvoting is a harsh punishment, but it's also my opinion that this "noise" should be differentiated from the above cases, so I don't see any way around.
- Quest completion progress doesn't update until I manually click through into the details.
- A retreating pet is referred to as {{pet_name}} (problem in the template layer?)
- Using just about any special character when naming a pet <, &, \, ', (, will make the AJAX call fail and a pet will end up with untitled<hash> name instead
- A blank name will be accepted (I expected it to revert to the default name) and used as such.
-- "What would you like to call this monster?" alert box message is about as descriptive as "Would you like to perform this action?" (The offending part being just "this")
- If I'm allowed to try to use a capture card just once, this mechanic is not apparent. It just looks like the inventory disappears.
- switch pets screen appears to be cached on first view of the battle. Subsequent switches will not show damage to HP of any party members.
- sometimes the battle will just stop at "You have chosen to use Bash" message. Presumably the client has missed a response from the server and there is no retry logic?
- at some point it would start refreshing the page after every battle move is executed
- is successful escape (run away) supposed to be titled "you lost this battle"? (it also seems to have killed the in-play pet that escaped)
- after the battle, the pet graphics are always fixed, but the experience bars are sometimes re-ordered.
Some other observations:
- it's annoying to go to the dashboard after every single battle.
- the "weak bash" (0 energy move) is not available unless a pet has little energy (what if I want to just tap a wild pet , in a capture attempt?). At that point the UI is very un-intuitive, as regular bash becomes weak, and all the moves (including weak bash!) are greyed out.
- I wasn't able to figure out where pets beyond the 4th captured one are at. No apparent way to select or re-order the party.
-- as such the game quickly becomes nothing but a low-level grind, as first weak pets take up all the available slots and make it impossible to move further into the game.
- do I _have_ to explicitly click on "aquire[sic] reward" if it's only gold (presumably this is always wanted)
It would be nice if I could view the site and learn something about the game without having to authorize it to access my facebook account and email.
edit: Mailinator's alternate addresses occasionally aren't blocked, but I haven't yet successfully received a confirm email :/
Test accounts can't interact with real Facebook users, but they can be used to log in to sites.
Also congratulations on the success :-)
Zynga started with "Just another Texas Hold'em" game and followed that with an exact clone of Farm Town[1] which it iterated on quickly and marketed well.
Angry Birds is thought to be inspired by Crush the Castle[2] but with a better control mechanism and friendlier targets.
Minecraft was a fork/clone of Infiniminer[3] which focused on the community aspects of the game rather than the competitive nature of the original.
What starts as a clone today, could be something unique tomorrow.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FarmVille#Originality [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angry_Birds#Development [3] http://www.minecraftwiki.net/wiki/Infiniminer
aww, that's cute!
You start by selecting one of three monsters (they even resemble the starting three from the orignal game). The battle screen and fight dynamic looks almost identical.
Am I missing something?
Meaningful is in the eye of the beholder.
Pokemon is not making a social web game, this is a big difference to the Groupon situation in my opinion as they are different things. I wouldn't say it's a copy just the story/theme is inspired by Pokemon.
His first and only other "company" was a Gaia online type website.
Nintendo protects the Pokemon brand very aggressively.
You suggest hate as a primary motivator. Hate is based on repressed anger, and anger is the archetypal emotive of rules that have been broken. What rules do you suggest that he feels have been broken? Perhaps some kind of rule that the things that are valuable are those that are unique and not derivative? What would you suggest is the causative agency of such a feedback based rules paradigm?
I suggest the "causative agency" is the voice that says "I am supposed to be getting all the attention. Why is he? He didn't even do anything amazing!"
The interface is very confusing. I was only able to navigate it since I was familiar with Pokemon.
It's dumbed down. There is no walking around towns, just battles.
Also, congrats to Josh and team! I'm totally jealous and proud of a fellow young dude.
It isn't just "[one] guy", and I think your insult of "him" is a little bit counterproductive. I honestly don't think it's because they're congratulatory, and I think you're going after someone needlessly -- I don't see any systematic assault on good will in this thread, as a couple people have.
Consider it weird and move on.
Platform quibbles aside, I imagine it's the fastest/cheapest way to get tens/hundreds of thousands of users to test their gameplay. It's easier to develop for Facebook than mobile, doesn't have the approval nonsense for rapid iteration, has a built in viral channel, etc.
I think it's a smart move.
There's a list.
How many millions of active users do you think it'd take to make meaningful income?
Still, it used to be that you get to examine the merchandise before you buy it.
And: a) touch interaction would feel way more immediate b) constant updates to these apps would allow the dev to constantly change / add to pet behavior
7 figures?
1. Get people addicted to Pokemon game 2. Add in-app purchases 3. Start gaming empire
For those who haven't seen the game, it's incredibly well executed. Good sounds and graphics.
You mean, like Farmville is sophisticated?
As for iTouch devices-- that sounds like a reasonable idea, but first things first. If they get some traction with the Facebook app, there's plenty of further opportunities for them to explore.