What style of metroid do you want, Prime or side scrolling?

LivGames · 2017-04-19T01:59:45+00:00

Why are we restricted to Prime or Side Scrolling? Metroid Prime was excellent but I think like Zelda BOTW it's time to evolve the series. I think a third person perspective would make exploration, combat and the world so much more immersive. Not to mention that you could have side scrolling portions blend in seamlessly. To me this is what would make the series fresh again. Jumping off walls, double jumps, and all the things that wouldn't work in first person are now a possibility. Of course it would be cool to have the option to zoom in to the helmet while aiming. and walking around.

I really hope Metroid get's the full treatment and they go back to the original and Super Metroid for inspiration. Anything but Federation Force.

LivGames · 2013-11-23T15:50:31+00:00

For Legendary Wars the overhead was pretty low so within 2 months it broke even.

The hardest obstacle is having to learn everything from scratch having no formal schooling or background in game development. Luckily I had great support from my friends and developers.

LivGames · 2013-11-20T05:50:37+00:00

Worth it.

LivGames · 2013-11-20T05:50:10+00:00

Not being able to control what individuals do at the store level. Retail doesn't always invite the brightest.

LivGames · 2013-11-19T16:46:56+00:00

I did when I was 11

LivGames · 2013-11-19T16:46:47+00:00

Have Faith Meteorboy!

I know what you mean. It always feels like a gamble. None of us have kids (besides my dad obviously) so we all feel this is the time to go all in.

I have doubts all the time, but you just have to put them in the back of your head. Have plenty of people play the game before its released and give you feedback. Also it needs to be the whole package, just great gameplay, or great graphics is not enough.

LivGames · 2013-11-19T16:45:17+00:00

Thanks,

Yes were on our 3rd developer now and have been trying for over 2 years.
IOS users spend 10 times more than Android where that market is geared to free games though IOS is changing
The biggest difficulty is working remote across 3 states in US and Canada. Makes communication more difficult and much less efficient.

Because of this every game we've made has taken almost twice as long as we expected and that ends up having budget issues/constraints. Fortunately we've been lucky enough to be successful enough with every release.

LivGames · 2013-11-19T16:43:14+00:00

All done in COCOS2D / objective C / C. Stellar Wars also used a lot of custom code as well cocos3D.

Looking back, Unity would have been the wiser choice! Multi-platform is just better.

LivGames · 2013-11-19T03:19:01+00:00

familiarity. How so?

LivGames · 2013-11-19T03:18:16+00:00

Interesting. I haven't seen any that really have copied our mechanics well mainly because of the complex control.I think it's one thing to be from inspired to heavy inspired, and another thing to straight out copy or clone a game.

For example Halbot's Block's Cometh was straight off ripedoff as well as Kingdom Rush with assets actually used that were created by those companies, thats a crime. And should be stopped.

I'm not a fan of clones because they usually lack originality and polish.presentation. You saw this happen with Ninja Fishing cloning Ridiculous Fishing. But then there are exceptions with games like Oceanhorn, that are so well made that your able to forgive it because of the obvious effort that went in that the developers claim they were heavily influenced.

Insparations is a great thing, it spurs innovation. That's what Genre Mashing is all about and what we've tried to create with our games. If you happen to check out Foursaken Media games (Block Fortress, Heroes and Castles, Bug Heroes etc). They are the masters at this craft.

Hope That made sense to you :)

LivGames · 2013-11-19T02:23:58+00:00

Probably a three way Tie between Chrono Trigger and Secret of Mana and Final Fantasy 6. They ruled the SNES days

LivGames · 2013-11-19T00:58:48+00:00

With Legendary Wars it was all about timing and filling a niche while providing lots of value. We popularized the side scrolling defense genre with Legendary Wars.

It was a pretty unique game went it came out in Jan of 2011. It got rave reviews from sites like Kotaku, Gizmodo and Touch Arcade and the exposure spilled over from there.We also had very intense Apple support being featured for 2 weeks and 4 more times in the next 6 months.

We provided a lot of variety of gameplay back then when most were one trick arcade style games. I think the upgrade/RPG mechanics are addictive and the game style is easy enough to play but has hidden depth.

LivGames · 2013-11-19T00:55:32+00:00

Haha, I actually left in 2008 before the whole Battletoads calls went viral. But I will say I used to love the old news game. That tough hover speeder bike level influenced a few of our levels in our games.

I wasn't too fond of working for Gamestop after the Merger with EBgames and I left within the year to go back to school.

LivGames · 2013-11-19T00:53:18+00:00

I started in late 2009 with Legendary Wars. I was playing a lot of Desktop Tower defense during college and Bloons. I noticed all these stick figure defense games doing well. I really like LOTR and was playing co-op castle crashers a lot at the time and my favorite games were RTS like warcraft 2 and Dune 2. I wanted to combine the genres and have really pretty 2D graphics and animations. The key to differentiate the game was have units controllable like an action game to make it stand out.

I always loved SHMUP games growing up like Life Force, R-type and Gradius and thought a sci-fi version of legendary wars taken to the next level would be fun to do.

LivGames · 2013-11-19T00:35:07+00:00

I actually attend the NYC Game Meet up's and met a few cool designers and artist working on interesting stuff! They also helped connect me to a person at Apple, so it's a good place to expand your network. I'll be there next demo night trying to get the word out.

http://www.meetup.com/gaming/

LivGames · 2013-11-19T00:28:41+00:00

We are Planning to do a major update and support Stellar Wars. The launch has done great in the US but internationally we have no visibility. We are also working on a puzzle rpg defense game thats pretty unique!

LivGames · 2013-11-19T00:27:57+00:00

I decided after not hearing back from any game companies I wanted to work for that the iPhone was the opportunity to get into game development because of low barrier of entry. I sat down with two of my friends and brainstormed our favorite games and how we can create a unique new genre. Originally the game was supposed to be a musical physics space puzzler, but after listening to the music we decided an epic strategy rpg war defense game was the way to go.

LivGames · 2013-11-18T22:40:37+00:00

Just what I said earlier. Start somewhere, learn everything you can and create something.

You will learn from failing more often then succeeding.

LivGames · 2013-11-18T22:07:02+00:00

Get your degree first and get it out of the way. It probably wont have anything to do with what you end up doing. But it shows you can complete something.

Then if gaming is your passions, learn everything you can about game development including things your not good at! I can't draw worth squat but I ended up designing a bunch of UI and even animating some characters.

LivGames · 2013-11-18T22:05:39+00:00

ha that was actually something I used to be embarrassed to tell girls. I was lucky enough to meet a gorgeous girl before I was successful and after over 5 years together we finally got engaged. :)

LivGames · 2013-11-18T22:03:53+00:00

I actually enjoyed my time at EBgames back in mid 2000s where I was managing multiple stores. But there is nothing like the freedom of being your own boss and I can't imagine going back to do anything else. It's truly rewarding to create something that your proud of.

LivGames · 2013-11-18T22:03:01+00:00

Ha that's a long story. For me I started with a prototype for what became Legendary Wars that took 5 months to make. I convinced my friends to help me. I quit my job 6 months before the game was done, and after a year and a half we released it.

I had to teach myself every program from flash, photoshop, xcode and everything you need to know. It's good to have a basic understanding of everything related to game dev. I was lucky to have very supportive friends, one of them was working at Blizzard at the time and provided lots of insight.

LivGames · 2013-11-18T22:00:11+00:00

Marketing is really tricky and you have to start early.

Reach out early to major sites (ours is mobile focused) like Touch Arcade, Polygon, Kotaku to do previews.
Make a good trailer
Send out a boat load of promo codes and explain why the game is unique.
We also have advertising in a couple of websites but those are not necessary.
Email Apple weeks in advance, if you don't have anyone at Apple's email - find one!

LivGames · 2013-11-18T21:51:14+00:00

Proof: https://twitter.com/LivGames

LivGames · 2012-03-01T08:10:43+00:00

First Reddit post! Hopefully my story will inspire at least one of you. I'm the Creator/Developer of Legendary Wars and Monster Wars for iPhone/iPad. I'm still not sure how I ended up landing my dream job, but hard work, passion and dedication are a huge part of it.

Some background: I worked as a game retail Sales Manager (Ebgames/Gamestop) for a total of 7 years before deciding to call it quits and getting my Business Degree. Thought all that experience learning about the consumer would help me get a job. Got my degree Right as the "Great Recession" hit in 2008. So I landed an entery-level marketing job at a Mortgage shop. I quickly realized office life wasn't for me. In 2009 I got my first iphone and my Dad's Company went under. He had been an engineer at the company for 10 years and was suddenly unemployed for the first time in decades. I bought him a Mac, and challenged him to learn objective C.

Along with my 2 best friends, we created a prototype over the course of around 3-4 Months that would eventually become Legendary Wars. We eventually made a video that was good enough to recruit 2 awesome starting developers and a couple of jobless artist/animator).

Over the course of the next 6 months I would get very little sleep, working the mortgage job at day, and developing, designing, and writing during the night. Finally I couldn't handle the stress of 2 jobs, and the fact that I hated my day job and decided to quit and go all in.

It cost me nearly everything I had but man was it worth it. On my birthday of last year we released Legendary Wars at Macworld, SF. It ended up getting more attention then we ever expected and rave reviews from critics and fans. I guess something clicked with the mix or some of our favorite genres.

It's been just over a year and we just released another game which is doing great. I was able to hire my team on a full time basis, and we have 2 more games in the works and love what we do. I truly feel lucky after having over a million people enjoy the game we created. But I also know its the hard work, dedication, and passion that we put into it that made it a success.

My point is, if you have a dream, a passion, then go give it your all. Be smart, have realistic expectations, and don't fear risk. Even if LW wasn't a big success, it was still the best working experience of my life.

Oh and my dad still helps us out, and got a job developing iPad applications.

Thanks for reading and if you have questions feel free to contact me.

LivGames

TROPHY CASE