First steps

The first goal I have is to get something published on the App Store and Google Play. This means setting up the developer accounts, getting the right equipment and going through the full process on my own for the first time.

I'm not anticipating to get loads of users or moneys with this game, as its pure intention is to get familiar with the process so I can better adjust myself in the upcoming projects.

But still, I don't want to publish just pure shit.

So I've developed a game called Tim - the Unsatisfied Artist. It's about Tim not diggin' the current pieces of art he's seen and has set sail on a journey to find the best piece of art there is. He does his journey by flying through an art gallery browsing the paintings on the wall, while avoiding the spike fences built in front of him (for some reason).

The controls are a slight variation of Flappy Bird - instead of just taps you hold your finger on the screen to gain upwards force. Previously I had an Angry Birds-like control scheme but had to drop it due to the first non-me user playing the game had no idea how to control the character.

The game includes hats because all games need hats and that's just an universal rule. You get a new hat by playing 50 rounds, or by sitting through an ad. I wanted to get my first touch with ads too, so that it wouldn't remain a black box to me. I chose Unity Ads, which was super easy to implement; altogether ~10-20 lines of code to fully implement incentivized video ads.

I also wanted to try something totally different with the topic of art. In the game I suggest people to send their own art to me which I'd then expose as paintings on the wall in upcoming versions. Sharing can be done via email, FB or Twitter. Twitter-sharing then "ends the loop" where players can share a screenshot of the game - maybe at some point with their own art shown in the background.

I think it's a long shot to combine a game and an art gallery but it sounded fun so why not!

The development from start to finish took me about 1,5 weeks. Most time (~70%) was spent to meta-game stuff such as Twitter-share, hat-reward system, save states, etc. where as the core game design & programming took less than 10% of the time.