Wayward Souls is a "true to the genre" rougelike. The music, controls, graphics all bring back so many nostalgic memories of being a kid and playing a great hack and slash RPG. Wayward Souls was competing for the top charts around the same time as ADR. It was one of the few games I felt were honorable (not your run of the mill novel/casual iOS game). The Rocketcat Games studio has both premium and free + IAP games (a lot like Philipp Stollenmayer).
Mind telling us a little bit about yourself and the team? Specifically age, professional, and educational background?
I was a pediatric nurse about 8 years ago. I decided to be a game developer one night. It was pretty arbitrary. I was 25 at the time. I made a team with a couple of friends, who were also game devs.
We got into iOS fairly early, but missed the "gold rush" by a little bit. The gold rush being when there weren't many games on the App Store, so there were lots of big hits. Our first game still made enough where we could go part time on our main jobs, and our second game did well enough to go full time.
With regards to Wayward Souls, Punch Quest, and Five Card Quest, what technologies/languages did you use to build the games? How large are the code bases? How long did they take you to make?
All custom engines. Usually a year or so of tech per game, then the rest of the design follows. Then further games reuse the same engine, usually with another year of tech development.
I like to be as transparent as possible with revenue, if that's something you can share, that would be awesome. What's the life time revenue for Punch Quest, Five Card Quest, and Wayward Souls?
Wayward made over 500k (vague number), the others made roughly half.
Between iOS and Android, which platform has brought in the most revenue? Percentage breakdown?
iOS makes the most. I think Android accounts to maybe 30%.
What were some of the happiest moments during the development of your games?
Well, lots of happy moments. Pretty much when any game succeeds and gets a lot of critical and fan success. We've been really lucky.
The saddest moments?
The first game was the worst because we had no guarantee at all that it would be successful. We also had very harsh hours, because we were working on it with our limited spare time. Just wasting weekends on it. Easily could have given up during the development, but we didn't.
What tips do you have for those that are just starting with programming and game development?
Save up money before going off on your own. That or do contract work.
We may have a couple of project managers reading this interview. Any tips for them with regards to managing a project/interacting with developers?
For me it's kind of dumb luck stumbling onto a team that are very independent and don't need to be closely watched. It's very important to get the right people on the team. As for knowing who the right people are instead of just stumbling onto them, I think that takes experience.
Also, we may have a couple of ad men reading this interview. Any tips for them with regards to marketing a game?
We always used the Toucharcade forums for mobile games. Especially the Upcoming Games Thread. The fans of the site read the forums. The reviewers on the site check the forums to see what the fans are responding to. I can't prove it, but I've always thought that Apple reads Toucharcade and the other major mobile sites.
Between Wayward Souls, Five Card Quest, and Punch Quest, you have games that are both premium and free to play with IAP. Do you have any insight with regards to when to choose premium vs free to play?
I'll go free-to-play if I'm designing an extremely mass market game. Punch Quest, our free game, probably wasn't even mass market enough to justify being free. You have to design your free to play game for the biggest audience possible, which means the most general mass market appeal possible. I'm thinking a game played with one finger or thumb is the ideal, especially ones that don't require finger dexterity. I think games like Temple Run started a trend of showing that arcade-style games with some finger dexterity can work, if they're still based around very simple controls. But something that doesn't require dexterity generally is safer for the "mass market" idea.
Otherwise I'd just go paid. All my games except Punch Quest are paid. I've been hearing bad things about paid recently, though soon I'll see how things are there for myself once we launch Death Road to Canada.
I think it was really cool that you released an early version of Wayward Souls, and told people that with every iOS update, you'd raise the price. How did the incremental development and pricing strategy work out for you?
It wasn't even really an early version. It was the full game, minus some extra stuff we had planned before the launch but didn't necessarily plan to get in for the release. We'd add tweaks based on feedback, along with major content updates like all new areas.
It worked very well. Every update was a warning to get the game before the price increase. The steady price increase as an "anti-sale"... instead of people waiting for the game to go on discount, they'd actually get it. And the game never went on sale, either.
Given hindsight is 20/20, would you have done anything differently with regards to building and selling your games?
I'd maybe have tried to get on PC about a year earlier.
Your games have been featured a number of times with Apple, any tips with regards to getting featured by Apple?
They've known I've made games for years now. Getting covered by major sites can help a lot there.
Any other tips with regards to getting featured by Apple? Any "must do this or don't come crying to me" kind of stuff?
Post on the Toucharcade "Upcoming Games" forums.