Cosmoludo - a strategy puzzler with rogue-like elements

General (non-technical) New Apps / Works in Progress
#1

Hi everyone,

I’m happy to show you my game that I spent the best part of 6 months working on. 

Cosmoludoiphone5_3.jpg

Check out a game play trailer

It’s a game about connecting gems. Here are some of the key features

  • Randomised missions
  • Level system and magic system with cool down mechanic
  • Create chain reactions
  • Retina graphics
  • 30fps and 60 fps mode and a graphics slider
  • Try the game for free (20 missions), single IAP to buy all the features
  • No ads
  • 38 minutes of original music
  • 4 game modes, from easy to hardcore

So it’s kind of a rogue-like puzzler, with strategy thrown in. I hope you can download it and I’m looking to get some feedback.

I spent a ton of effort on this, so I have kinda lost perspective :slight_smile:

Hope you enjoy it,

Alex

#2

Google: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=lu.alfraprog.cosmoludo

iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/lu/app/cosmoludo/id888324250?mt=8&ign-mpt=uo%3D4

Alex,

First things first you forgot the links to your game :slight_smile:

Second, I got to be honest, at first by the screenshots I was thinking I wasn’t going to like the UI very much but once I opened the game I was surprised about how well it worked together :slight_smile:

The game is strangely fun and I mean that in a good way, gave you five stars as I think your implementation was very well done.

Some things I noticed.

I noticed the download was 68mb and for a game it is huge considering there is really not a lot of graphic stuff going on so you might want to try trimming that down.

On your permissions it set you wanted access to my media ie: camera, videos etc. not sure what that is about.

When you are drawing your lines you need to continue your path not create a newLine but rather just add another path to it, this way you will not see the overlap in the lines which I found myself looking at the break in the lines instead of focusing on the actual game play.

Other than that great job!

Christopher

#3

Thanks for adding the links! Really appreciate it! :slight_smile: Totally slipped my mind!

Also thanks a lot for the feedback! :slight_smile:

The biggest reason why the game has 68 megabytes is because of all of the music. It has 35 megabytes of music in form of mp3 at 128 bitrate. I have 38 minutes of music in this game. It’s pretty much a complete album.

There are 2 songs I use for game modes when you buy the game. They are 1 life modes (Like a survival mode, once you lose the game is over) I needed the music to be different for those modes, since they are continous, and the music would start really getting repeditive so I came up with a 10 minute track.

The rest of the game size comes from the graphics, and more specifically from the backgrounds. I seem to have a few of my retina backgrounds that are bigger than 1 megabyte. Is there something I’m doing wrong here? Overall, I could cut those out a little bit, but I guess then I’d not have the full retina resolution on high-end devices. I’m guessing that 1536 x 2048 takes up a lot of space.

In terms of permissions, I am asking the following on android:

android.permission.INTERNET

com.android.vending.BILLING

com.android.vending.CHECK_LICENSE

android.permission.WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE

It’s the last one that’s doing it! I’m seriously wondering why I put this in. I probably don’t need it, because I’m not really accessing any of the user’s pictures or media in my app. I’ll upload another build on google play as a beta and test it without the permission. I don’t think you need it to create databases and local files in the application’s documents folder, so that would be great if I could eliminate that. I always think it’s nicer to have less permissions than more! I think the main reason would be if you wanted  to share a highscore with a screenshot on twitter and on facebook but I’m not sharing images so right now it looks like I can take it out!

Finally, thanks for the feedback on the lines that look a bit weird around the edges. I can definately improve that, so that the line looks cleaner. I did notice it a while back and never did anything about it, so if you notice it I’ll make it look a bit better for version 2.

Have a great weekend,

Alex

#4

Alex,

You can use audacity to trim down the size on your mp3’s and 128 bitrate is high for a mobile app and very few devices can even take advantage of that unless they have earphones in etc. so you can drop it to 64k and still have the same type of quality :slight_smile:

http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

On your images you can drop them a lot just by using http://tinypng.org without losing quality on your graphics.

That should drop your overall install a bit, not a huge factor on “not” downloading your game but I have found that my games with smaller installs get twice as much downloads and I have nothing to back that up other than that (ie: might be the game or graphics that are doing it instead) lol…

I keep my db in documents directory but that is the “only” thing i keep there everything else I keep local or if it is something i download load like more level data then i just dump it into cache directory.

:slight_smile:

#5

Hey Christopher,

I thought about dropping to 64k but like you said, it’s all about the headphones. If people use them, the music would definitely sound better at 128 than it would at 64. Tinypng on the other hand works wonders on my relatively low colour count images. 90% reductions on my 1.2 megabyte images.

My rule is that if a game is bigger than 50 megabytes it definitely has to be worth it. So I tried stuffing in a lot of features for that size. I could probably squeeze it down to 40 but it depends if people actually complain about it I reckon. Some games are 400-500 megabytes, of the big names.

I was actually considering making my next project the opposite. Absolute minimalism, that takes up maximum 5 mega on the device :slight_smile: Just to mix things up a little. 

#6

I agree but I go the opposite for example Billy Blob https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=the.billyblob.saga is 22mb and is actually quite massive in resources and sound but using stuff like image sheets and what not dropped the size to almost nothing from about 72mb.

In any case I think you are on the right track you have nailed the game play thats for sure it is very quick paced which I love :slight_smile:

#7

Google: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=lu.alfraprog.cosmoludo

iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/lu/app/cosmoludo/id888324250?mt=8&ign-mpt=uo%3D4

Alex,

First things first you forgot the links to your game :slight_smile:

Second, I got to be honest, at first by the screenshots I was thinking I wasn’t going to like the UI very much but once I opened the game I was surprised about how well it worked together :slight_smile:

The game is strangely fun and I mean that in a good way, gave you five stars as I think your implementation was very well done.

Some things I noticed.

I noticed the download was 68mb and for a game it is huge considering there is really not a lot of graphic stuff going on so you might want to try trimming that down.

On your permissions it set you wanted access to my media ie: camera, videos etc. not sure what that is about.

When you are drawing your lines you need to continue your path not create a newLine but rather just add another path to it, this way you will not see the overlap in the lines which I found myself looking at the break in the lines instead of focusing on the actual game play.

Other than that great job!

Christopher

#8

Thanks for adding the links! Really appreciate it! :slight_smile: Totally slipped my mind!

Also thanks a lot for the feedback! :slight_smile:

The biggest reason why the game has 68 megabytes is because of all of the music. It has 35 megabytes of music in form of mp3 at 128 bitrate. I have 38 minutes of music in this game. It’s pretty much a complete album.

There are 2 songs I use for game modes when you buy the game. They are 1 life modes (Like a survival mode, once you lose the game is over) I needed the music to be different for those modes, since they are continous, and the music would start really getting repeditive so I came up with a 10 minute track.

The rest of the game size comes from the graphics, and more specifically from the backgrounds. I seem to have a few of my retina backgrounds that are bigger than 1 megabyte. Is there something I’m doing wrong here? Overall, I could cut those out a little bit, but I guess then I’d not have the full retina resolution on high-end devices. I’m guessing that 1536 x 2048 takes up a lot of space.

In terms of permissions, I am asking the following on android:

android.permission.INTERNET

com.android.vending.BILLING

com.android.vending.CHECK_LICENSE

android.permission.WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE

It’s the last one that’s doing it! I’m seriously wondering why I put this in. I probably don’t need it, because I’m not really accessing any of the user’s pictures or media in my app. I’ll upload another build on google play as a beta and test it without the permission. I don’t think you need it to create databases and local files in the application’s documents folder, so that would be great if I could eliminate that. I always think it’s nicer to have less permissions than more! I think the main reason would be if you wanted  to share a highscore with a screenshot on twitter and on facebook but I’m not sharing images so right now it looks like I can take it out!

Finally, thanks for the feedback on the lines that look a bit weird around the edges. I can definately improve that, so that the line looks cleaner. I did notice it a while back and never did anything about it, so if you notice it I’ll make it look a bit better for version 2.

Have a great weekend,

Alex

#9

Alex,

You can use audacity to trim down the size on your mp3’s and 128 bitrate is high for a mobile app and very few devices can even take advantage of that unless they have earphones in etc. so you can drop it to 64k and still have the same type of quality :slight_smile:

http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

On your images you can drop them a lot just by using http://tinypng.org without losing quality on your graphics.

That should drop your overall install a bit, not a huge factor on “not” downloading your game but I have found that my games with smaller installs get twice as much downloads and I have nothing to back that up other than that (ie: might be the game or graphics that are doing it instead) lol…

I keep my db in documents directory but that is the “only” thing i keep there everything else I keep local or if it is something i download load like more level data then i just dump it into cache directory.

:slight_smile:

#10

Hey Christopher,

I thought about dropping to 64k but like you said, it’s all about the headphones. If people use them, the music would definitely sound better at 128 than it would at 64. Tinypng on the other hand works wonders on my relatively low colour count images. 90% reductions on my 1.2 megabyte images.

My rule is that if a game is bigger than 50 megabytes it definitely has to be worth it. So I tried stuffing in a lot of features for that size. I could probably squeeze it down to 40 but it depends if people actually complain about it I reckon. Some games are 400-500 megabytes, of the big names.

I was actually considering making my next project the opposite. Absolute minimalism, that takes up maximum 5 mega on the device :slight_smile: Just to mix things up a little. 

#11

I agree but I go the opposite for example Billy Blob https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=the.billyblob.saga is 22mb and is actually quite massive in resources and sound but using stuff like image sheets and what not dropped the size to almost nothing from about 72mb.

In any case I think you are on the right track you have nailed the game play thats for sure it is very quick paced which I love :slight_smile: