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I had to try this after seeing all those ads. It is pretty similar to what the ads were. The game itself also has an obnoxious number of ads. For example, I had to watch a thirty second ad (or pay 75 "coins") to unlock the second level. In the second level I had pull one of two pins, to either dump lava on myself or gold. I chose gold and won a flawless victory, on to the next ad!

The other annoying thing about the game is that every level it asks you to register some kind of account or sign in with your Google account. If I refused to do that at first, why would I want to be asked every level?

I guess it's kind of fitting that the game is annoying as the ads that inspired it are too. I'd pay 1 dollar for an ad free version of this game, assuming the levels eventually became challenging and the game didn't nag me all the time about creating accounts. I won't watch 30 seconds of ads every 30 seconds though.

Hello Guys, This is Dilip Sripuram. The developer of the TheActualGameRescue you are talking about. Just wanted to address the issues you mentioned. About the Ads, you don't need to watch an Ad. The whole game can be played without watching a single Ad. Each level gives you enough coins to unlock next and by the end of easy levels you will have enough coins to unlock 3 medium levels. The login issue is so that I can save the save file with Google Play services. I will recheck this and limit the number of times it asks to once. I recommend watching this video to better understand the gameplay.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksI3YVoMwnM&ab_channel=GeneM...

Thanks. P.S : Posting this to every mention here. First time here on Hacker News.

Welcome. But please don't post the same message multiple times like that. It makes the thread hard to read, and you should not feel like you need to address every comment separately if this response already covers all the points.

Sorry jsnell, this won't happen again.

I applaud you for creating the game that people clearly want to play based off of those ads. I think that's a creative idea and you executed it pretty well. I see those ads most frequently on twitter - do you have a twitter bot that just links to your thing whenever those ads get posted? Might get some traffic.

I admit I didn't check to see what the coins were. I just assumed it was some kind of microtransaction. If you don't need to watch ads - why would anyone choose to? Unless, like me, they mistakenly thought you had to (which I would think is just as bad)?

Regarding login, I would suggest just explaining why you need this service, what you get for it, and letting the user choose it or not.

Curious how many users you have and what you make from this game.

I have about 3.3k downloads as of now. Mobile games need over 5 million downloads and many daily active users to make anything. 98% of the mobile developers don't make more than 500$ for their entire project. So, all work is just to stand out. My only way is with good gameplay. I will increase the "Buy" button size and may be add an animation to it suggesting you to click it. Thanks.

Actually this is something that's been bugging me forever - maybe someone knows the answer? What's the incentive to advertise one game but sell another? There's clearly a market for the "pull the pin" kind of game, they don't seem to be particularly hard to make and these ads are by large game publishers. Why not just make the game that people actually want?

Larger total market.

The "pull the pin" game requires actual level design effort. You design 2000 puzzles and in 6 months the player's done with them all.

Taking Bejeweled and painting it a different colour can be done once and keep the user occupied indefinitely.

Wait... are those adverts not depicting an actual game??

On Twitter you can read the comments on the ads and the most frequent comments are from people complaining that the actual game apparently has nothing to do with those ads. I think I've read it's more like clash of clans.

Wow, TIL - I never click those ads because I assume the games are aggressively monetised nonsense but it didn't occur to me that the game might be completely different from the ad.

Hello Guys, This is Dilip Sripuram. The developer of the TheActualGameRescue you are talking about. Just wanted to address the issues you mentioned. About the Ads, you don't need to watch an Ad. The whole game can be played without watching a single Ad. Each level gives you enough coins to unlock next and by the end of easy levels you will have enough coins to unlock 3 medium levels. The login issue is so that I can save the save file with Google Play services. I will recheck this and limit the number of times it asks to once. I recommend watching this video to better understand the gameplay.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksI3YVoMwnM&ab_channel=GeneM...

Thanks. P.S : Posting this to every mention here. First time here on Hacker News.

This is very very often thr case with crappy chinese games in the play store. I get ads for so many games that look cool in the trailer but are apparently something completely different if you read the reviews. There's even one that uses some kind of really weird ripped off Age of Empires textures/models for their game. What they have in common is that theyre all pay-to-win chinese games where loot boxes cost up to $100.

They're probably also (digitally) malware in many cases, too.

Hello Guys, This is Dilip Sripuram. The developer of the TheActualGameRescue you are talking about. Just wanted to address the issues you mentioned. About the Ads, you don't need to watch an Ad. The whole game can be played without watching a single Ad. Each level gives you enough coins to unlock next and by the end of easy levels you will have enough coins to unlock 3 medium levels. The login issue is so that I can save the save file with Google Play services. I will recheck this and limit the number of times it asks to once. I recommend watching this video to better understand the gameplay.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksI3YVoMwnM&ab_channel=GeneM...

Thanks. P.S : Posting this to every mention here. First time here on Hacker News.

Hello Guys, This is Dilip Sripuram. The developer of the TheActualGameRescue you are talking about. Just wanted to address the issues you mentioned. About the Ads, you don't need to watch an Ad. The whole game can be played without watching a single Ad. Each level gives you enough coins to unlock next and by the end of easy levels you will have enough coins to unlock 3 medium levels. The login issue is so that I can save the save file with Google Play services. I will recheck this and limit the number of times it asks to once. I recommend watching this video to better understand the gameplay.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksI3YVoMwnM&ab_channel=GeneM...

Thanks. P.S : Posting this to every mention here. First time here on Hacker News.

That trailer is great, epic music, I have no idea if the game is playable, but I guess that's beside the point

Hello Guys, This is Dilip Sripuram. The developer of the TheActualGameRescue you are talking about. Just wanted to address the issues you mentioned. About the Ads, you don't need to watch an Ad. The whole game can be played without watching a single Ad. Each level gives you enough coins to unlock next and by the end of easy levels you will have enough coins to unlock 3 medium levels. The login issue is so that I can save the save file with Google Play services. I will recheck this and limit the number of times it asks to once. I recommend watching this video to better understand the gameplay.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksI3YVoMwnM&ab_channel=GeneM...

Thanks. P.S : Posting this to every mention here. First time here on Hacker News.