Mobile Game Prototype: Live On Google Play & Final Touch-Ups
Hello and welcome to what might be the final post of the mobile game prototype's journey!
It's been an equally quick and long year but now that we are in the winter break and classes are over for 2020, the lifecycle of this project is about to come to it's end. So, without further ado, let's get into the potentially final blog for this game!
LIVE On Google Play Store
It's official - Ice Slider is now up and live on the Google Play Store! The app isn't quite complete yet, but you can access it by searching for the game's name in the store or by using the link below:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.GreatMindsCreate.IceSliders
Our programmer and I are currently working on finalising some elements of the prototype so it feels a little more whole and complete, which we intend to launch as part of a big update. There's a few bugs in the live version which we are aware of and have logged, but hopefully with the big update we would have fixed them!
Additionally, I created a survey to get any play testers to complete so that we have some data to work with once we write up our report for this project. This can be found at the following link:
https://forms.gle/aEHd5pSfbHvCbEAK8
I've done a couple of small updates since the launch, so I'm now starting to get to grips with understanding how the developer console works. It'll be nice to take a little break and just worry about writing up the report once this last update is live!
Final Touch-Ups
As mentioned, I've already been doing a few small updates to the app to fix some bugs that would cause problems during playtime, but there have also been a few other things I've been working on.
One thing that came to mind was that we didn't have anything to explicitly teach the player how to play the game. To avoid there being too much text on the screen, I tried to create a graphic that tells the player to touch and swipe in a direction on their device to begin playing.
Had there been more time, I might have tried making a gif of the hand sliding downwards instead of having the arrow, but I think this gets the message across well enough.
Additionally, since we are working to implement a couple of extra screens that our level designer made for us, I decided we should have the name of the game on the main menu. This has already been shown previously as part of a previous post, but here's the title as a stand-alone image:
As mentioned already, we are aiming to do one final big update if we can. Between having Christmas plans and handling other assignments and so on, it might be difficult to get this update out. We'll do our best though, since it will be nice for our prototype to feel a little more polished and not so rough around the edges!
Closing Thoughts
Well, I think that's pretty much it. The project is almost done! Once we return in the new year, we'll be starting up a new prototype game but it will be designed for a console (although in actuality it will be for the PC / Mac, since we cannot access the PS4 dev kits easily).
The final hurdles are the report and seeing if we can get this big update out in time, which means this is likely to be the last blog post for this project. So, for the last time until 2021, thanks for reading, stay safe, and I will see you in the new year! Buh bye! :)