Javier Lázaro

I have been promoting the Android version of my game Steam Rocket 2 a bit, sending emails to some blogs and gaming websites. This is my “first” Android game, and I have no experience in mobile game promotion, so it has been an interesting and sad experience.

I say sad experience because I have found out how the mobile business works: You need to pay to get your game reviewed in most websites. Sucks…

Fortunately, there are some websites that don´t ask for money to get a game reviewed. They will review your game if they like it. El Jugon del Movil and IndieGameMag are two of them, and I would like to thank them for giving me a chance.

Review of Steam Rocket 2 at El Jugon del Movil.

Review of Steam Rocket 2 at IGM.

I even made a small interview at El Jugon del Movil! Read it here:

Interview at El Jugon del Movil.

Thanks guys!

The guys at FGL have made a way to export Flash games to Android. They also distribute the games through Amazon marketplace, Google Play, Nook and other small markets.

Their API includes ads, scores, a cross promotion system and a “unlock full game” feature (via payment). Unfortunately, their wrapper does not allow exporting to IOS… And this means losing a big part of the mobile market.

Anyway I wanted to try the system, so I decided to make an improved version of my old Steam Rocket game and publish it with FGL.

The API was very easy to use: When I finished the Flash version,  I had the working APK with ads and all features just with a bit of extra work. But (of course) everything has a price: FGL takes a part of the earnings (30%), the publisher takes another one (20%) and I get the remaining 50%. Let´s see if it really pays to use this system…

This is the Flash version:

Steam Rocket 2

And the Android versions:

Steam Rocket 2 at Google Play

Steam Rocket 2 at Amazon

Let´s see if FGL distribution works nicely…

About 2 years ago I contacted Bryan Devlin to sponsor The flood Runner 2. I also helped a bit with the final polishing of the game. The game was very succesful, and one year later I also sponsored Flood Runner 3: Armageddon.

I was checking the Mochibots today and I have found that both games have been played more than 10,5 million times, up to a total of 21 Million plays! (note that non exclusive versions of both games didn´t use Mochibot, so the total number of plays is higher)

Not bad…

Mochibots:  Flood Runner 2 Mochibot, Flood Runner 3 Mochibot .

I had an idea: Why not make a Canabalt with guns? (not extremely original, I suppose). A game with very simple controls, only mouse, but with a more complex gameplay. I wanted huge monsters, inspired in Lovecraft´tales and Mike Mignola´s “Hellboy”.

It took me a long time (I have a problem: I never know when to finish a game…), but here is the result:

Nightmare Runner

I hope that you´ll enjoy it!

Finally I have launched my own games site, Clockwork Monster I want to test if publishing my own games is really worth it, or if it is better to look for sponsors.

At least I can always publish my own games if I feel that sponsors are not paying enough for my work.

Apart from my own games, You can play a nice selection of flash games there.  Check it out!

I´ll get some cash from Adsense and from MochiAds. I highly recomend MochiAds if You are a game developer or publisher.

Feedback is invaluable for a game designer. It helps to know if the game is good or bad, what features rock and what needs to be improved. But, in most cases, those that provide feedback are people close to us (friends, family, or those we know from forums). That can affect feedback. Friends or family won´t probably tell You that your game sucks.

Now, how to get true and unforgiving feedback?

FlashGameLicense has a very interesting feature: It tracks the time people spend playing your game. You can clearly see if your game is good or bad, depending on that time: The more time, the better your game is. If nobody plays your game for one single minute, you´ll have to reconsider the quality of your work.

Apart from that, it has helped me to detect a serious flaw in my game. This is from my first game “Siris” :

Eight persons didn´t even play the game… Worst of all, four of them were sponsors!

Obviously, my splash screen sucks.

I have obtained a lot of feedback about the game, about its graphics, playability, bugs… but nobody has told me about the splash screen. I was proud of it, it was balanced and had a good design in terms of usability, but now I see that it was boring. A splash screen must attract players, and mine is repelling them.

All this invaluable feedback thanks to FlashGameLicense´s Game Views feature. It could be perfect if they provided the average time played for each game, it could be a good game quality thermometer.

(For those that don´t know about FlashGameLicense, it is a website to buy and sell flash games. Worth a try if You are a game developer or You want to sponsor games)