

SQAR: Making a Game for Everyone - spedracrxx
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/sqar/id673403042?mt=8

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spedracrxx
When I set out to make SQAR, I had one goal: make a game that my 8 year old
could play, a game that my 60-something dad could play, and a game I could
enjoy. It wasn't an easy task.

In my house, we play a lot of block-and-dot based games. Flood it is popular,
as is dots. But the one thing I don't like about either of them is that there
is no longer-term strategy involved. I have no incentive to play more than one
game at a time; sometimes that is good, but sometimes I want more. So I took
the general ideas from those games and added a twist: the longer and better
you play, the more points you can get.

By saving up what I call multiplier blocks (x2 and x4 blocks) between games,
you can use strategy to score HUGE points. The average score, if you play
game-to-game, is in the high 100s. If you play fast and good, you can score
upwards of 300. But if you save multipliers and play for 10 minutes or so, the
average score jumps to 6,000 to 10,000. And in testing, I've even scored over
800,000 points in a single game!

I came up with the idea in an interesting way. I built a generic block engine
separate from a display engine, so I could easily swap out the game algorithm.
And swapped it out I did. I went through 10-15 different game algorithms over
a span of a couple of days until I found one that I didn't want to put down
right away. It was my own version of play-testing, and I think it worked out
ok.

In terms of design, the game at first appeared much more complex. There was
depth gained by shadows, more elaborate backgrounds, etc. But I slowly
stripped the extra stuff away until I was left with the basic GUI you see now.
I did that for two reasons: I wanted to get to the basic essence of the game
and not cloud it with anything extra just for the sake of doing it, and I also
think that all that extra stuff intimidates people over 50 that may otherwise
like the game. And at least according to the windows phone commercials, lots
of people over 50 own iphones.

So anyways, I'm interested in you guys feedback. Apple featured it on their
board and puzzle game pages, but I'm not seeing a huge bounce in sales because
of it. Do I have an interesting concept? I've been reading hacker news for a
long time, and respect the opinion of (most of) the community.

Thanks!

