benolds

Interesting coincidence - I bumped into a game design article earlier today about balancing luck and skill in games. http://gamedevelopment.tutsplus.com/articles/when-i-win-its-...

The article discusses how different players prefer different ratios of luck vs skill, so making the most "fun" game in this regard really depends on who your target audience is. Similar to your thoughts on randomness. :)

Ah, that makes a lot of sense. Thanks :)

Thanks! I taught myself to code in high school, mostly by messing around with little Flash game experiments with Actionscript. In my senior year of high school I taught myself Objective-C and built an iPad app for a summer internship (https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/north-star-smart-stars-surve...). I didn't learn iOS game programming specifically until college, where I participated in a one-month class/competition that taught the Cocos2d game engine.

uh oh! Thanks for letting me know - I wasn't able to test it on iOS8 - I'll check it out and try to fix it ASAP.

I actually do explain the difference if you explore deep enough into the app (maybe it's too difficult to find) - if you click on the color reference button in the gameplay so that the color palette pops up, there's a button at the bottom called "Learn more about colors" that brings you to a multi-page explanation on the additive vs subtractive color models.

Thanks for the feedback! I agree 18 months is a very long time to be working on a project. A lot of the time was spent on level design, and I did learn so very much while developing it that I think it was worth the time put into it, even if sales don't turn out to be great. Next time I make a game it should go much, much more smoothly, though :)

Thank you! Before I released the game I started prepping myself for the inevitable negative reactions, but it can be hard not to take things personally. I appreciate your kind words :)

Wow, it means a lot to me that you still remember the game from back then - thanks! :)

Thanks for all the feedback and advice! I do appreciate everything everyone has to say about the game, and plan on incorporating ideas in a future update. I've given the color mixing a lot of thought, and I agree it can be unintuitive the first time you encounter it, but I think the additive color model is core to the gameplay. Perhaps my nerdy love of science is misleading me from what the average player would enjoy, but I'm trying to simulate the way light really does mix - because, well, it's a game about light. Perhaps I could add the option to play with a more traditional color mixing scheme?

No, it seems that Illume was released on Oct 22, 2013, more than ten months after I started development of my game. For reference, my game had already won a competition at MIT in February 2013; I wasn't aware of Illume until now.

Thank you! That means a lot :)

I developed the prototype of this game at MIT in January 2013, where MakeGamesWithUs was helping to teach a one month course / competition on iOS game development. After the course, they offered for me to publish the game with them in exchange for revenue sharing. It's come full circle, because now I'm working for MakeGamesWithUs as an instructor for their summer academy course. The course isn't discounted if you choose to publish with them, but they can provide their SDK, art, design advice, and help with publicity.