Fall 2015 Update

Greetings heathens, it's been some time. As usual I regret not entering in here more often, but I am just not too much of a journaly guy these days. Too busy. Ideally I'd still like to hit it like once a month but... ah well.. if anyone out there does read this stuff and wishes there were more frequent entries, pipe up and I will respond in kind. i mean, i see that I am still getting hits...! Someone out there looks at this site..

Well , first let's get the numbers out of the way. I've released 2 different apps this year, Jumpburger on iOS and Blast Rover on Android. Bother were in July I believe. Both were free, no IAP, ad-supported, and sporting little to no promotion on launch. Let's see how many lifetime downloads we've got for each.. in real-time..

Jump Burger (iOS) - 251 downloads worldwide (102 in America, 30 China, 12 Canada)

Blast Rover (Android - Google Play) - 112 (60 in America, 11 in Brazil, 5 in Russia)

According to admob (the only platform I use for ad revenue), I've earned $36.33 between all apps (including 180) since July 2014.

So there are some nice hard numbers for you, potential would-be fellow indie developers. Clearly I am not quitting my day job to do this stuff any time soon - but I have accepted my fate (for now) and happy, as a hobbyist anyway, to have some very fun games on the market. As for getting some more downloads? Well I would love that, and I am still sitting on some plans to enable that. To wit:

Blast Rover iOS will (possibly?) launch Q1 2016 or thereabouts. I've been sitting on my promotion of the game, in spite of the Android version being available for some time now, until that version is ready - however given circumstances, I might jump the gun and switch things up one way or another. I might do that before the year's end, but we will see. Also, I'd like to get this game released on the Nook, and I keep neglecting to discuss with the programmer, I should hit him up after I finish typing this. Nook actually generates more sales than anything else, at least in my previous experience.

Jump Burger - the iOS programmer gave a DL goal of 1,000 before agreeing to work on a patch (leaderboard support, at least) so I am expecting not to hit this goal for a very long time, if ever. However I am strongly considering to produce an Android port myself in the meantime. Hopefully by the end of the year, but I can't say how likely that is. But, I'd really like to.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Well there's the state of things as far as post-release and immediate plans to pursue in the coming months. Nothing super-terribly exciting, I agree, but considering it's been years since I've launched ANYthing and now I have 2 new (good) games out there, and looking into porting them both in the short term, I'd say that's not too shabby - development-wise, if not business-wise.

I've been awfully busy with my day job, and finally I have spent a lot of time tooling around in C# on a somewhat normal basis. I really wish I had started with that stuff years ago, it's not my favorite thing ever but I DO enjoy it and the feeling of building my own tools and seeing how to construct, fully, my own applications is a wonderful one. I'm a pretty heavy Unity head these days - in some form or other, I would very much like to release another app under the Headcase Games label that was put together by your truly. It makes me pretty psyched to say that. I think of my other unfinished projects out there and actually having the ability to build them as I see fit. That's pretty exciting to me, and I have a ton of ideas which are still waiting to be let out into the world. I have a long, lonnnnng way to go as a coder, but even at this early state I have the ability to make something half-decent (if laboriously and inefficiently constructed). So we will see. Like I said, porting JumpBurger by the year's end would seem a pretty solid goal for a first time project, so stay tuned.

I guess that's it for now, I have a billion other things to discuss (on-topic and off) but it's late and I have a lot of work due tomorrow, so off I go! Thanks for reading-