Review: Radiangames' Monthly Xbox Live Indie Games Series

1 Guy (Radiangames), develop 7 games in 11 months for Xbox Live Indie Games (sadly still not enough to make a living).



What went Right?

1. Scope Control: hard to keep a game simple, smaller and more focused the original idea the better, avoided hard technical problems (2D, no multiplayer, single platform, one resolution, fixed-step framerate), safe design, design similar games for reusability
2. Playtesting: get new players and observe, feedbacks
3. Restricted Art Style
4. Upgrades: certain changes are required to make the game better, even it means more time.
5. Passion vs. Innovation: Build the game you like to play equal more motivation to play, improve and finish

What Went Wrong

1. Pricing Indecision: set niche game at higher pricepoint
2. Mental Beatdown: hard to work all the time knowing you're slowly losing money and will have to give up on your dream if things don't go better
3. Minimal Personality: read this 
4. Branding Baggage: don't include company name as prefix, use box art logo instead
5. Too Many Modes

Conclusion: XBLIG is not really financially rewarding, relegated by Microsoft and gaming community; tools are fantastic though.

Review: Casey's Contraptions

Casey's Contraptions is an Indie game developed by Noel Llopis (industry veteran) and Miguel Ángel Friginal (web developer, artist) for iPad




What went Right?

1. Strong Theme and Style - Character Personality, use toys and household items (instead of industry looking item), enable imaginary goal (rescue explorer from jungle with hotair balloon), strong outline and solid colors.
2. Social Features: share solutions with friends, level editor (allow download levels created by others)
3. Iterative Development: add features iteratively
4. Strong launch: announce 6 months before release (25% into development), followed by twitter and blog, showing at GDC (developer feedback, game press), set release date 3 weeks after submission to Apple, featured as iPad Game of the Week, priced $2.99 (not $4.99) for volume reaching top 10 sales
5. Enough Development Time: 8 months, early availability of level editor, change game's star rating system, time for polishing

What went Wrong

1. No simultaneous iPhone Launch: lack of critical mass for game relies on social element, planning 2nd release with lots of new content
2. Butting Heads Too Much: aesthetics vs. usability, performance vs. gameplay, simplicity vs. interest, uniqueness vs. familiarity, or tea vs. coffee; it is a good thing, but too much debating (than actual implementation) as well, hashing problem due to working remotely
3. Unnecessary Rework: revision does make it better, problem when looping doesn't converge into a better design (shifting around), iteration testing of UI would help
4. Not Enough Unit-Testing
5. Fixed Price Model: Fall off chart after a few week, Microtransaction take more time to implement, selling more content, need larger play base for Microtransaction (2-5% would by extra content)