App Store at last!

During the chasm of time since my last proper post, I finally got round to releasing the project that I had been working on on and off since Christmas – Brainz. For the uninitiated, Brainz is a rip of of slightly inspired by the numbers game from UK game-show Countdown, a staple of Channel 4′s schedule since it’s birth. The game involves using whatever operators you want to turn six small random numbers into one large random number, and it’s surprisingly fun for geeks.

Feature Creep

I guess Brainz originally started life in my Year 12 maths lessons. While I should have been listening to Mrs. Gill share here wisdom on partial differentiation, I was actually programming my CASIO fx-9750G PLUS (yeah, that’s right – I had the PLUS!), making a very primitive version of the numbers game. This was, in fact, the first programming I ever did, so it seems fitting that my first iPhone App is it’s descendant.

Once I’d decided to go ahead with this idea, and lay my previous project to rest, then the feature creep began. Soon it was 3D, featuring a friendly robot teacher and his pet cat living together in a country cottage. I have the .blend files to prove it! So basically I spent a few months faffing (this is all mixed in with freelancing, so time soon flies when you don’t have a clear direction to head in), up until five days before the iPad App Store launch deadline. I was chatting to a friend friend from Uni on iChat, who told me he had just finished his iPad App. Suddenly thoughts of “I could do that”, and “it’s gotta be worth a shot” came flooding to my mind, and so five days, a whole lot of feature culling and not a lot of sleep later, I submitted Brainz HD.

A couple of weeks later I ported back to the iPhone and released Brainz. Would I rather have made a game with cats and robots in? Well, yes, but given the choice between an unfinished complex 3D affair and a simple but released UI Kit implementation, I think I did the right thing.

Sales

Here comes the fun bit! Well, actually, not as fun as I’d hoped. The plan was always to test the App Store waters with Brainz (which is another reason feature culling was a must). I never expected to have a number one smash hit – it’s too niche for that, but in an ideal world it could cover my living costs so I could stop freelancing and focus on making great games.

“There’s gonna be a whole new gold-rush for App developers.” – Scott Forstall on the iPad

Let’s see what happened. Since it’s launch on April 3rd, Brainz HD has made $40.13. Brainz has done a bit better making $126.08, most of which has been in the UK, where’s it’s got into the top 10 in Educational Games. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining, but currently I’m a long way from even being Ramen Profitable.

Lessons Learnt

If nothing else, Brainz is a harsh wakeup call to the realities of the App Store. I don’t believe it to be a bad game at all, but in such a saturated market it seems you either need to be something really special, or really lucky. I also know that next time I need to approach things differently, particularly in how serious I take promotion and launch day.

The Future

There’s no way I’m giving up yet! So, I have to keep freelancing, maybe I’ll even need to get a real job again one day, but the future is bright. I’ve got plans to boost the sales of Brianz, an I’d love to hear any suggestions you have. And now I’m pouring my efforts into my next project, which is about as different from Brainz as you could get – a “proper” game with moving platforms and everything! I think it’s going to be something really special and exciting. There’s always the danger/paranoia, though, when talking about very incomplete projects that some oaf could pilfer your ideas, which is why I’ve set up the closed @rizerlabs Twitter account. I’ll be posting updates of development there, and eventually back here on this blog too.

Now if only I had an imminent Apple product launch to get my butt in gear…