Review My First iPhone Game | Hacker News Reader

Review My First iPhone Game

itunes.apple.com

39 pointswushupork14 comments

Open articleView on HN

I played the free version, and here are my initial honest opinions:

First the good IMO:

1) The graphics are very nice.

2) It's simple in that you can just press Play and play. I like that a lot.

3) It's very smooth and feels polished.

4) The game idea itself is very interesting and made me want to play.

Here are the things I had a problem with:

1) I didn't know how to control my cards by dragging when I first started out. I tried tilting and touching in different spots. But got it figured.

2) It felt like it started super slow until I learned to drag the cards down into place.

3) The first time the dynamite showed, I was a little upset. I was playing a fun game, now there are these strange things happening. It would be nice to be able to turn this off.

4) It got super hard really fast. I started playing strictly based on symbols. Hearts, Spades, Clubs, Diamonds. I couldn't mentally chase down other poker hand possibilities once it stacked up a little.

5) The controls got tough because it was as if I could sometimes drag cards upwards, sometimes I could not.

6) I'm on a iPhone 3GS, and it crashed every time I tried to play the "Levels" mode. I would touch 1, and it would boot me out to my home screen.

=====================

In the end, number 4 above is what stopped me from buying the game. It just got so hard so fast that I couldn't find a way to get any form of long-term enjoyment out of the game. The Levels didn't work, so I didn't get an opportunity to try them, but hopefully I will someday.

I wish you the best of luck, I'm just one opinion, and the big thing to remember with these mobile games is not to jump to the code and graphics every time someone says something bad. I used to do that and it turned out that the loudest people were the biggest complainers and all the people that liked the game quietly like it. I now prefer to keep my happy customers happy because the unhappy people aren't coming back anyway - for me anyway.

Hi all,

My friend and I recently released our first iPhone game called Outlaw Poker. It's basically Tetris meets Poker. We would love your feedback and see what people like and don't like about the app.

The free version is linked here: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/outlaw-poker-free/id473306271...

If you happen to like the game, there's a paid version here: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/outlaw-poker/id473289162?mt=8

The difference being the free one is ad supported AND the ad takes up a row which means less playing area.

It's a good first go but gameplay could be better. It's hard to make five card hands and a bit slow moving. Maybe any hand over two cards should disapear. Also dragging cards down from the top I often hit the pulldown screen in iOS5.

The important feedback is about your launch. You are going to be better off not having a pro and free version. Ship one free version. Do in app purchases to remove ads and try and get some kind of other in app purchase in the game (levels, other/card games). Preferably try and get consumable in app purchases in there too. If people want to pay give them that opportunity.

Finally, you are leaving SEO juice on the table by not implementing game center and iPad view controllers. Both of those things get you in categories on the app store that are smaller overall than the general listing. Also, entertainment is usually the best category to publish in for these types of games. Always, always release on a friday - having the app in the new releases list over the weekend helps and it's hard out there for a pimp.

Order of things I would fix:

1) Add game center (very easy)

2) Make it a universal app (iPad view controllers) it's not as much work as you think.

3) In app purchase and dump the paid version. No one is going to download that in significant numbers anyway - when you have a large install base you can maybe promote a paid version but it's just not worth it most of the time.

Hope this helps.

Looks cool. I'm downloading now, but is there any chance of an ipad version? The art looks like it could be great with a big screen.

Edit to add comments on the game itself: Overall nice look and feel. The motions are nice, and the movement is very responsive.

A few suggestions: -I wasn't sure of the rules when I started. How good a hand did I need to create? Any five cards is technically a poker hand. -I'd suggest using the four color playing card system--diamonds are blue and clubs are green. Much easier to identify flushes that way. -The text on the main menu sign looks a little funny, like something is off with the anti-aliasing. It could just be an artifact of playing on an ipad in iphone mode.

I did like how the instructions popped up the first time each new playing piece appeared. That helped get me started. One sentence of text with each pop-up wouldn't hurt.

Overall this looks fun! Best of luck to you guys.

Congrats! How did you manage the graphics? Was it outsourced, did you hire someone? Can you give any details? I've built a few apps but I'm always lacking on the design side.

So I was the design guy. My partner Ben did all the coding. For the graphics, I didn't necessarily start from scratch. A lot of it was stock, but heavily modified to the point that you probably wouldn't recognize some of it.

I like the concept a lot, kind of like dr Mario for poker, however one interaction issue made it very difficult for me to keep playing:

In ios 5, swiping down brings down the notifications window. Half the time I was trying to drag the cards down from the top I ended up bringing down notifications instead. I know a few friends who are dealing with similar issues in their games. Perhaps just moving the cards down a little would help?

Yes, this was made pre iOS5. I think we will need to tweak it a bit to handle that.

Haven't had a chance to test it out, but how is it different than Poker Smash:

http://marketplace.xbox.com/en-US/Product/Poker-Smash/66acd0...

I did see Poker Smash after I came up with this. So Poker Smash cards seem to rise up and you switch positions of cards to make hands. My game is definitely more along the lines of Tetris or Dr Mario where stuff falls down and you have to rotate that specific set. I hope that makes sense.

Looks good. I like that the paid version has additional playing space as well as removing the ads. Seems to help make it more valuable.

i think my dreams came true. i love tetris and poker. now i get to play them both at the same time.

Looks cool, such a natural extension of the match-type games that I'm surprised this is the first time I've seen such a thing.

Yeah this came out of my desire to play such a game but couldn't find one. Definitely one of those scratch your own itch type projects. Now I can play it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com