Free game that was “worth” making
Sunday, January 22nd, 2006I wanted to name this post “Life is nice if you are modest” because “worth” is very relative term and some successful gamedev will laugh at my standard for worthy….but anyway…
Work: I made little game Winter Break & Catch around 18. December. It was simple breakout with some changes. I made in 5 working days. I used demo version of Xara Xtreme to draw everything, PTK for game, irrXML for loading levels and that was it. Game had no real menu or other options you would expect from real game. I also bought 1 copy of OSAKit, so game could be played in IE browsers.
Promo: I made simple web-page and page for playing it in a browser. I made PAD file and my wife took some time and manually added game to shareware/freeware portals that took PADs (I am too cashless to buy Promosoft ATTM). I put a link on Otroski.net and mentioned game on few forums.
Results: Unique visitor number at bravekidgames almost doubled and still hasn’t fallen down (in a month) which is big deal, because it then improves everything else we do there. AdSense revenue on BKG doubled also and is now 0.95 per day on average (it was 0.4 before). And last week I was able to sell rights to publish this game on CD of Slovenian magazine for kids (BIM-BAM) for $80. I know, it’s small money but I wanted it to get published so I gave them the offer I knew they will accept. So all in all I am happy I made WB&C. Oh and I got really great feedback (that feed my ego for a month) and great ideas for serious version on some Slo. gaming forum.
Uh, and just for info 960 people played it online in a browser in this time.
