Our friends at Hype4 shared some of the knowledge about how the development of HungrySquid went, and also some tips on what they did wrong in the App Store at the beginning.
First of all, normally – as a company a game like HungrySquid could’ve been done in about two months. Since Hype4 was working on it overtime, it took about 4 months to complete. The idea was born last summer, when Mike observed some water ripples while throwing pebbles at a pond. The story was written quickly (available as a free iBook) and the game design followed. It didn’t look like it does now though. The first idea was for the tentacles to grow, instead of fluorescent goo, but with many intersections and shapes it just looked weird and unnatural – even for a squid in space. The game was developed using Cocos2D (and Partially Kobold2d) and most of the graphics were drawn in 2048×1536 resolution, even though the new iPad was yet to be announced. It’s sometimes good to trust your instincts, because it would be really hard to make the Retina iPad version.
It's important to think ahead, trust your instincts and believe in the project!
There were some doubts at first – mostly with the gameplay – was it too hard? Or too easy? It turned out that it actually is a bit on the harder side for most people that are used to in-game tutorials that will show you where to put your finger exactly. But the tests on little children actually went incredibly well. 4 year old kids were able to grasp the idea of the game after just 3 levels and showed some skill that even we couldn’t match at times. What could be done different? Probably more testing on older subjects (there were 12 beta testers over 18) would’ve suggested a more detailed how to play section (there’s a how to play video on youtube now). So an advice to game developers out there – don’t think it’s easy enough – always explain everything, because the games of nowadays are played in a rush, casually and briefly.
App store failures
What we found out from Hype4’s experience is – never send the promo codes right away. Send a nicely designed JPG with some graphics from the game, and an iTunes url below, noting that promo codes will be available upon request. Most of the review sites don’t respond at all, so wasting promo codes is a bad idea. Also it’s important to do some giveaways, engage the community, and make the game free for a while to boost the downloads. Encouraging the ratings in the App Store also helps.
The game has now (2 weeks after launch) nearly 40,000 players worldwide and has a steady 4.5 stars rating in the US App Store.
Good luck Hype4!