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Comment by bobsgame | Hacker News Reader

I am sleeping in my Sebring convertible for 5 months now, which isn't too bad but it's getting a bit cold out. I want some money to upgrade to a van (and rig it with solar panels, etc), and to get a high resolution laptop to code on (my ThinkPad GPU died so I am using a crappy 2006 Macbook which is not ideal!)

I really believe in my puzzle game (better than Tetris!) and tried to do a modest and reasonable Kickstarter, especially considering the game is already there. Ouya will double the amount if the campaign is successful, and I think it's a good platform for my game.

Anyway, it's in the last hours of the campaign and I am going to keep trying to push it until the last second, I'm not giving up! All it will take is finding one person, or getting posted on a big blog or something for a couple of hours, since the target is so low.

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Man! What are you doing!

I was hoping this was "Bob's Game", the RPG, that maybe you'd started a kickstarter to finally finish the thing and publish it for PC instead of DS, but no, you bring us this.

It's my suspicion that if you were a bit ballsier and capitalized on the already substantial publicity from "Bob's Game" you'd make more money faster than with this apparently halfhearted attempt. Why would someone pay for what appears at a moment's glance to be yet another Tetris clone?

The life of an indie dev is hard and pointed towards failure or development hell by default, I wish you luck, but I think you're making mistakes with regards to your use of time and existing publicity.

Maybe you wanted to do a smaller project to make quick money to fix the bigger project, but this isn't really appealing, its just Tetris, even if that's not true, its what everyone thinks.

I thought I might comment rather than leaving you to wonder why you're getting pageviews and not donations.

It's not really "yet another Tetris clone," it is a puzzle game builder where the user can define custom puzzle modes, including any variation of existing puzzle games.

I can see why people would get that impression though. I unfortunately don't know a better way to get people to realize what it really is.

Why not link to videos of the game? After reading the copy, I still have a very incomplete idea of what the game is like.

There is a video of some raw gameplay on the Kickstarter page. That's about the best I can do with the resources I have at the moment, otherwise I would just work on the game and sell it on the OUYA without bothering with the Kickstarter.

My mistake, I didn't see the video on mobile.

No problem, glad you got to see it!

I don't really understand why you are kickstarting the puzzle game when there was way more interest in your RPG (even if most of it was a publicity stunt)? Is the idea that the puzzle game will help fund a larger project?

The game looks interesting in the footage you put on the Kickstarter page (would've been good to edit it down some, though, maybe make an effort to highlight the gameplay variety), but the actual description doesn't give much in the way of real specifics, and the screenshots are kind of undermined by the fact that the framing stage backdrop is there in every one.

Ultimately I wish you had made the effort to get this out there earlier. (Maybe you did and I never saw it?) Given that it's the last hours and you're so far from your goal, that will probably discourage a lot of people from backing who might have otherwise.

The puzzle game will help fund the rest of the RPG, yes. I am not too comfortable funding that using Kickstarter because it sets some hard limits that I might not be able to meet.

The RPG was definitely not a publicity stunt, I genuinely did work on it full time for five years (now 10). The publicity stunt I did sort of backfired in that the internet sort of forgot the legitimate work and focused entirely on the stunt, which damaged the credibility of the project.

Thanks, I didn't really have good enough equipment to edit on so that's a major factor. I actually had to borrow a machine to get that gameplay footage, as my Macbook can't really run and record it at a decent FPS.

I have been trying to make efforts to get it out there, but I just haven't gotten any traction.

Since you're here, I have to ask: whatever happened to the nD? If it failed, why did you just abandon the forums instead of letting people know? I mean, your credibility was already hurt because of Bob's Game's publicity stunt fiasco, why didn't you give any assurances to the community there? More importantly, after 2 projects which just vanished without any explanation from the author (you), how do you expect anyone to believe you'll deliver this product?

The nD is now the virtual console inside the "bob's game" RPG that you play the minigames on. It still exists, and I am developing a small SDK for others to create games for it.

I was genuinely talking to the Dingoo (Chinese handheld) manufacturers about making a custom handheld and had them agree to a very good price point, but I failed to get any traction trying to get investment since I had no idea what I was doing, and I was too early for Kickstarter at the time (I am glad, it would have been way too much responsibility!). Since then Android devices have improved so much so quickly I don't think it makes sense anymore to bother developing a Linux based handheld. I would rather see something like an OUYA handheld for $50, as developing for Android is a very pleasant process and there is already a great library.

This puzzle game was playable on bobsgame.com as a Java applet for 6 month in the context of playing it in the stadium by using the nD handheld.

I wouldn't waste my time on Ouya, it's basically dead in the water.

I think they might sell a bunch of them this Christmas, since they got in retail stores and pretty much everything sells out. I'm excited by the idea that I can get my game on there for the kids who get one and want something fun to play.

Either way, I like what they stand for and it really is a good little platform for indie development!

Ouya is a commercial flop, sorry. Even if you like the platform, there is no money to be made there and it seems you very much want to make some.

Also your kickstarter is horrible. Most people will decide within seconds whether to take a closer look at a project or not. And the first impression here is "glorified Tetris". That is all most people will see and thus move on.

I think it's too early to determine that. Either way, I'm not asking for very much, and I don't really need that much to live.

I am the type of person that needs to sell a "white box of quality" rather than a "flashy box of mediocrity," even if this causes me difficulty in marketing.

You need to accept that your definition of quality may be different from that of your customers. Consider: do you write games in order that they be enjoyed by people? Then why are you marketing it in a way that will ensure that far fewer people even give it a second glance?

Because I won't compromise on my vision or my integrity, because as soon as I do I may begin to compromise in other areas, perhaps tailoring the gameplay to the widest market instead of making something magical that I believe in.

Even it isn't the best way to market it, it is the right choice for me.

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