Neon Poly = Tetris + 1010! + Bombs 💥 - Now on iOS and Android!

[redninjacat]

@anon63346430

Android coming soon?

The Android release is planned for later this summer. I expect it to be done by end of August.

@Markus\_Ranner

Congrats, nice work!

Downloaded and tried it. Solid game, but I also have some feedback where I see room for improvements. Remember it’s just my 2 cents, so take it for whatever it’s worth, other players may not agree with me. 

1. Consider changing the font for a more “non-default” font that fits better with the rest of the graphics. It could help making the entire game look more polished and professional.

2. I felt that the gameplay was too slow to really get me hooked from the start. Maybe a smaller board would help? Or a time constraint of some sort? 

Anyway, well done and keep up the good work!

Markus, thank you for the feedback! We ran a small soft launch back in April with an earlier version of the game. At that time, we were using a different font, one that better fit with the theme of the game, in my opinion. Unfortunately, the overwhelming response to the font and was that it was not very legible. After several attempts at trying different fonts and sizes, and reducing/removing the neon glow from the text, the custom font was ultimately removed in favor of the current one. Readability won out over aesthetics.

In regards to the game play pace, I totally agree! The intent of the game is to be slow paced. That’s by design. However, again during the soft launch, several people gave the same feedback as you. I have come to agree that the game needs a timed version. That feature (along with other related features) is now planned for a later release!

[redninjacat]

Neon Poly just got it’s first major review and it’s REALLY good. AppAdvice did a front page write up entitled “Tetris Just met its Match in Neon Poly, a Great New Puzzle Game”. They gave it a score of 9.0!

[redninjacat]

@Sphere Game Studios and all other Android peeps, the Android version is out now on Google Play! https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.lobsterclawsoftware.neonpoly

We had not planned on getting it out so soon but we have been spending money on promoting the iOS version so it started to fill like a waste to not have the Android version out there too.

Due to the way Android handle textures, the Android version is not yet on par with the iOS version. (Keep reading for technical details below.) I am not terribly fond of the differences in the leaderboards between the two systems either.

In regards to the textures, in the iOS version of the game all graphics are generated each time the game is launched and they stay in memory from then on. On Android, this would cause significant problems since Android dumps all texture caches out of memory any time the game goes to the background! This forces me to refresh all of the texture caches every time the app is brought back to the foreground. This includes after viewing ads, viewing the leaderboard, and making IAPs. That would cause a HUGE lag to refresh all caches each time these things occur. Needless to say that on Android I have implemented a file-based caching system that handles about 70-80% of the graphics. The remaining ones still need to be refreshed each time. Over the next few weeks, I plan to pre-generate these remaining graphics and package them with the APK so that there will be no lag at all.