How to get people to play my free, finished game?

Started by
17 comments, last by Yidito 12 years, 8 months ago
Hi everyone,

I have made a little 2D arcade game over the past couple months. I drew inspiration from Centipede and Bomberman, but the gameplay is somewhat different. I have spent some time crafting nice graphics and polishing the interface so that it doesn't look like a half-baked game. I even made a little intro "cutscene" (although it's useless for that kind of game, but I thought it would be a plus).

Now, I don't pretend to have made the best game in the entire universe, but it's fun to play for 10 minutes every now and then if you like to blow up stuff.

Since it was a lot of work for me, I'd like to spread the word about it so that people can play it and tell me what they think about it. I don't want to charge anything for the game. This is the first game that I manage to complete, so it'd be really encouraging for me to know that people have tried it out.

So fellow programmers, how did you promote your free game?
Thanks for your time.




EDIT: here are links:

Advertisement
How about posting a link where we can play it?

My Oculus Rift Game: RaiderV

My Android VR games: Time-Rider& Dozer Driver

My browser game: Vitrage - A game of stained glass

My android games : Enemies of the Crown & Killer Bees


How about posting a link where we can play it?

Right. :) I posted links in the original post. I am open to any suggestions.

What did you use to do the animated UI?
Wow this game looks realy good!
Realy good job man! What langage did you use for this?

What did you use to do the animated UI?


You mean the main menu and all that? I use SFML for handling input, sound, and drawing sprites (saves me the hassle of messing with OpenGL). It's an excellent library.

I wrote my own UI code on top of that (SFML itself is pretty low-level, it leaves it up to you to do these things). There's still much room for improvement in the UI, it's pretty simplistic and could be made to run much faster. But, since the UI code isn't used in the actual game loop, I decided I wouldn't waste time optimizing something that runs well enough, outside of the speed-critical routines.




Wow this game looks realy good!
Realy good job man! What langage did you use for this?


Thank you! It's a mix of Python and C++. Most of the code is Python, it is a beautiful language in my opinion. Some critical portions of the code ran too slow when implemented in pure Python, so I re-wrote them in C++ for a very noticeable speed boost. If you're interested, you can download the source code (but be warned, it's pretty messy in some parts).
Do you have an english version?

Looks groovy. I will be honest that I have no idea what is going on in the video, but it looks sweet :P
Looks very nice, not something you can just jump into with out reading the controls :). Tried that, didn't work out well. I like the graphics and intro was a nice touch. Putting the control keys close together was a plus too.

Make sure you put a link to your game in the youtube video description, some people will play through there.

EDIT: FUN AS HECK, first time I saw the cow drop on the screen, HAHAHAAHAHAAHA though I just ladle the crap out of everything and drop bombs as I run around :) Don't really collect much unless I need health.

Sprite Creator 3 VX & XP

WARNING: I edit my posts constantly.

First off, congrats. To even finish a game is an impressive feat, but yours appears quite impressive.



As to getting people to play it, thats the tricky part... These days, casual free games are in one of two places... Flash or iPhone/Android. I just don't know what you would do otherwise... maybe upload it to a shareware download service like download.com?

Do you have an english version?

Looks groovy. I will be honest that I have no idea what is going on in the video, but it looks sweet :P

Thanks! and yup, the game lets you pick your language when you start it up for the first time. English is there, of course ;) I've translated the game to the languages I know, but if anyone wants to translate it to theirs, that would be awesome.

Basically, you play as Tux and you have to blow up the white and red antennas (circles) with your ladle/bombs/cows. The lemon and the hammer try to prevent you from doing so by spawning more antennas onto the field, or by 'nailing' them so that they are harder to destroy. You can also capture the antennas so that you get bonus points and free health. The game progressively explains what to do, you're not thrown into intense "omg wtf is happening"-action from the beginning.




This topic is closed to new replies.

Advertisement