In May I set myself a goal to release 50 SKUs this year. By SKUs (Stock Keeping Unit) I mean different versions of games, which could mean brand new games, games on a new platform, or localised versions of a game for example.

By May I had already shipped 17 SKUs (11 of which were different versions of Spring Bonus). The main plan for reaching 50 SKUs was to ship my existing games on mobile platforms and also to make localised versions as well as make some new games. Some things worked out and some didn’t.

Here’s a breakdown of what I did since May:

1) Spring Bonus came out on Windows Phone 7! It hasn’t sold very well though due to crappy download numbers on that platform. Downloads are converting to sales a good percentage of the time though, which is positive.

2) Spring Bonus did not come out for iOS. I was working with a local company to get it ported to iOS but they just got too busy with other work and it became a lower priority for them. However, it will definitely be coming out in 2012, perhaps via Big Fish Games if they will publish it.

3) Spring Bonus was not translated to Japanese. Well it was actually, I just didn’t plug the translations into the game. I’ll do it for next Spring though.

4) Holiday Bonus was translated to 8 languages and is doing quite well on Big Fish Games’ localised sites right now.

5) Holiday Bonus came out on iOS/Android/WP7/Internet! There were HD and Standard versions on iOS/Android and also Lite and HD Lite versions. In total 10 different versions were shipped in the space of a single week! I’m beginning to learn how useful Unity is as a cross-platform language. Damien Sturdy did a fantastic job of the iOS/Android/Web ports and James Mintram did a great Windows Phone 7 port.

6) I didn’t convert my framework to Linux and so did not release any Linux ports

7) I never finished my Ludum Dare #20 minigame although I may still finish it in 2012.

8 ) I did finish a Ludum Dare #22 minigame called Always Alone. I used the Monkey language so that I could release this as a Flash game to be played online.

9) In the Summer I organised a Full Indie 48-hour game jam and made Metal Spawn for PC/Mac.

10) One person I helped as a design consultant shipped their game, but my role was very small so I won’t count it. Other games I’m helping with, such as Eets Munchies with Klei Entertainment, won’t ship until 2012.

11) I didn’t get any of my games ported to Flash. The web version of Holiday Bonus was in Unity, although with Unity’s new Flash export, we should be able to make a Flash version for next year.

12) I didn’t make any brand new games although I’ve had a number of cool ideas and talked to other people about collaborating with them. Let’s see what 2012 brings.

13) Oz has been localised to 4 languages by Big Fish Games and will be coming out in early 2012, then will be localised to some more languages later on by another big portal. If Holiday Bonus hadn’t taken so much time (shipping on mobile was a big learning experience for me), then maybe the Oz localised versions would have made it out this year instead.

14) I made a youtube adventure game with my boys called Death Dungeon.

So a mixed bag of success there. If you read my 2011 Review you’ll know that I had a tough summer in terms of family illness and depression, and I’ve no doubt that those things were a factor in me not quite shipping as many SKUs as I had planned.

Total SKUs shipped

So adding up all of the above we have:

- SKUs shipped up to may = 17
- Spring Bonus WP7 = 1
- Holiday Bonus localised = 8
- Holiday Bonus iOS/Android/WP7/Web = 10
- Always Alone minigame = 1
- Metal Spawn minigame = 1
- Death Dungeon youtube game = 1

Total = 39

Not quite 50, but still a number to be proud of I believe. Not sure I’ll be shipping that many next year, but who knows?

How many SKUs did you ship in 2011? Let me know in the comments.

Holiday Bonus is FREE until Jan 1st so get it while you can and please tell your friends and family about this charming game. Thanks!

Holiday Bonus HD (for iPad)
Holiday Bonus (for iPhone)

Enjoy!

You can now try out our popular match-3 game, Holiday Bonus, for free!

We’ve just released a Lite version on multiple platforms as follows:

iPhone (Lite)
iPad (HD Lite)
Android phone (Lite)
Android tablet (HD Lite)
Windows Phone 7 (Lite)
Online Version (contains HD levels)

Of course you can still try out the classic game for PC/Mac too:

PC Demo
Mac Demo

Please tell your friends and family about this delightful relaxing Christmas-themed game. Thanks!

I’m proud to announce that Holiday Bonus is now available for iPhone and iPad as well as Android smartphones and tablets!

It feels really good to play the game with your fingers on a touchscreen whilst sitting in a cosy chair by the fireplace.

There are two versions: one has smaller levels suitable for phones, and the HD version for iPad and Android tablets has larger levels like the PC/Mac versions.

You can get the phone version from here:

iPhone
Android phone

And the HD version with larger levels from here:

iPad
Android tablet

I really hope that you enjoy playing Holiday Bonus on your mobile device. Please tell you friends and family. Many thanks.

Grey Alien Games is having a Thanksgiving sale with up to 70% discount on our match-3 games.

http://www.greyaliengames.com/

There are also some awesome bundle deals for PC and Mac including:

Holiday Bundle (2 games):
Holiday Bonus and Xmas Bonus (60% discount. Only $6.76)

Mega Bundle (3 games):
Holiday Bonus, Spring Bonus and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (65% discount. Only $10.44)

Giant Bundle (5 games):
Holiday Bonus, Spring Bonus. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Xmas Bonus and Easter Bonus (70% discount. Only $13.15)

Please take a look and tell you friends. Thanks! Note that you can gift purchases to other people as well by using the “Purchase is for someone else” box on the shopping cart.

We’ve never run a sale before so this is an experiment for us. If it goes well, we’ll do more sales in the future too.

Happy Thanksgiving!

I’m very proud to announce Spring Bonus is out on the Windows Phone 7 Marketplace: Applist Link

James Mintram of Mintratech ported the game to XNA using his existing engine and my Blitz Code as a guide, and he did a really fantastic job! It’s basically the same game as on the PC except that some of the levels are smaller so that they fit on the phone screen.

Description:

Spring is in the air! Journey through the Spring countryside with your cute animal friends. Help the Easter Bunny light the magic rainbow by melting away the cold grip of Winter. Featuring fluffy chicks, frolicking lambs and bouncy rabbits, this adorable match-3 game is bursting with bonuses and fun for all the family.

Features:

* Smooth, fun match-3 gameplay
* Cute Spring-themed graphics
* Relaxed or Timed game modes
* Awesome Rainbow-powered Bonus items
* 50 unique levels
* Specially composed spring music

Videos:

Gameplay 1
Gameplay 2

Please try out the trial game and tell your friends with Windows 7 Phones. Thanks!

image by Justus Thane

Yes it’s a bold goal I know, but first let me clarify: by “game” I really mean SKU – so every time I ship a game on a different platform or localize it, that’s a different SKU.

Previous Years

Here’s how many SKUs I’ve made in previous years since I went indie in 2005:

2005: 4 mini-games and Xmas Bonus (PC) = 5
2006: Easter Bonus, Oz, Oz retail, Holiday Bonus, 3 framework minigames (all PC) = 7
2007: Fairway Solitaire (PC) = 1
2008: Fairway Solitaire (Mac + localized versions x 3), Oz (Mac), Holiday Bonus (Mac) = 6
2009: Unwell Mel (PC/Mac + localized versions x 4) = 6
2010: My Tribe (Facebook game – I was part of a team at BFG), Fairway/Mel retail, 3x mini games (PC/Mac) = 9

That’s a total of 34 over 6 years.

2011 So Far

So how can I hope to ship more games this year than in the last 6 years combined? Well, these days it’s a lot easier to ship games on different platforms, and I’ve teamed up with other people who are porting my IP to some other platforms for me. Plus I’m used to localizing games now, so that’s no longer a big challenge. So far this year I’ve already shipped 17 SKUs as follows:

- Holiday Bonus on XBLIG
- Attack of the Giant Planet Eating Bacteria From Outer Space (Flash game made with a team at the GGJ 2010)
- Holiday Bonus (Mac App Store buld)
- Oz (Mac App Store build)
- Berry Blast (Facebook minigame in My Tribe, made whilst still at BFG)
- Fruitola (My original match-3 prototype for PC)
- Spring Bonus (PC/Mac + Mac App Store build + 8 localized versions)

And there’s more…

When I was at GDC I bumped into Arthur Humphrey (Last Day of Work) who said that he believed a good business strategy for indies was to ship many SKUs on different platforms and see which were most profitable. This gave me more confidence in what I was planning to do.

So here’s how I plan to ship 50+ this year:

- Very soon Spring Bonus will be out on Windows Phone 7 and iPad and soon after hopefully on iPhone and XBLIG = 4 SKUs
- Also I’m getting Spring Bonus translated to Japanese = 1 SKU
- If Spring Bonus does well on those platforms, the engine will be reused to ship Oz on all iPad/iPhone/WP7/XBLIG, plus I’m planning to localize it to 8 or 9 languages = 12 SKUs
- Then at the end of the year Holiday Bonus will ship on iPad/iPhone/WP7, and will also be localized to 8+ languages = 11 SKUs
- I’m planning on converting my framework to Linux so that I can ship Oz, Holiday bonus and Spring Bonus on Linux = 3 SKUs
- I started a mini-game for the recent Ludum Dare, but failed to finish it due to nice weather So I’ll ship that soon on PC/Mac = 2 SKUs
- I’m planning a Vancouver game jam in the summer, so that’ll be another mini-game on PC/Mac = 2 SKUs
- I’m working with a number of people as a design consultant/producer that will result in a bunch of shipped games on multiple platforms.
- I’d like to get some of my games ported to Flash, but that might not happen, we’ll see.
- I’ll definitely be making some brand new games and shipping on multiple platforms as well as localizing them.
- I’ll probably make some more mini-games

And that, my friends, is how I’ll do it! That’s another 35 planned SKUs plus some more in the pipeline.

I’ll keep reporting on my progress and will do a post-mortem at the end of the year, so stay tuned folks. Wish me luck!

Hi all, my latest BlitzMax game, Spring Bonus, is now available for PC and Mac! Please try out the demo and tell your mums/moms, partners and friends

Click here to get the demo. (This game is DRM free!)

After leaving Big Fish Games in January I had an idea to convert my old Easter Bonus game to Mac so I could get it on the Mac App Store. But as I thought about it more, I realised that the game needed a complete overhaul in order to sell well in the modern casual market. So I embarked on a crazy mission to make Spring Bonus before Easter Sunday (April 24th). I hired an artist in Mexico, an art team in the Ukraine and a musician in Holland. Then I got my old Holiday Bonus code and completely upgraded it, made new Grey Alien Framework additions, and then crunched like crazy over the last month to get it made (last week I worked 85 hours, 70 the week before and so on).

Anyway, it actually got done on time (and has been localized into 8 non-English languages) and has been sent off to all the big portals, plus it will soon be coming out on iPad and Windows Phone 7 with the help of some people who are porting it for me.

I’m very proud of this game because it took such a mighty effort to get it done and I think it turned out well. The beta testers liked it a lot and I hope you do too. I also hope it sells well because it’s very important to my family.

Let me know what you think!

I’m proud to announce my next game – Spring Bonus! I’m already working on it and it will launch on 15 April 2011 on several different platforms including PC, Mac, iPad, iPhone, XBox Live Indie Games and Windows Phone 7 (and maybe even Linux).

It’s a match-3 game with a Spring/Easter theme. I’m reusing my Holiday Bonus match-3 code and updating it with some new features and changing all the graphics and music, plus there will be 100 levels.

The idea

It’s funny how this game came about because I wasn’t planning to make it when I went Indie again in January. However, when I was uploading two of my games to the new Mac App Store, I thought it was a shame that I couldn’t upload my old Easter Bonus game because it is PC only. Then I thought that maybe I could do a quick conversion of it from BlitzPlus into BlitzMax so that I could make a Mac version. But after some consideration I realised that I needed a whole bunch of new UI graphics and in fact I should probably update the game graphics too in order for it to stand a better chance in the modern casual marketplace.

I even had some cool ideas about adding a neat meta-game but since then I’ve de-scoped back to a simpler idea because there’s a ton of work to do in just updating the code, working with the artists to reskin the whole thing, contacting all the portals, and working with the teams that are porting it to other platforms. I made a spreadsheet of the tasks to complete with time estimates and the numbers were a bit scary, but I know I can do it because I’ve done it before!

Artists

I knew I needed great art for the backgrounds and also quality game pieces and UI etc. So I put the word out on some forums and Twitter/Facebook that I was looking and I got over 20 different candidates. Some weren’t suitable at all and others were excellent. I reduced the list down to the best candidates and asked them to do some art tests of a Spring scene. Eventually I made a tough choice between the two most suitable background artists and I also contacted RetroStyle Games, an experienced casual game art company, to do the game pieces and UI art.

My background artist is Claudia Patron Perez and she is doing a great job as you can see by this example art. You can check out her stuff on DeviantArt and her twitter is @madmoiselleclau.

Anyway I’ll try to post about progress as I go along, but really I should be focusing all my effort on finishing the game and getting it published on the portals and other platforms. Wish me luck!

Hi, I’m revamping my old match-3 game Easter Bonus to release it on a bunch of platforms in April (XBLIG, Flash, iPhone/iPad, PC/Mac/Linux, Android).

I already have a developer for the XBLIG version and I’m handling the PC/Mac/Linux versions.

I’m looking for developers who ALREADY HAVE A MATCH-3 ENGINE on Flash, or iOS, or Android. I will supply the graphics, sound and music and will design and produce the game, and you will convert your existing engine to run my game design. I’ll publish the game and will include your logo as a splash screen and you’ll be in the credits of course. We’ll split the revenue 50/50.

I need to get started on this right away and the project will last about 4-6 weeks.

If you are interested please email me with details about your previously published games and the working match-3 engine that you have. Thanks!

I look forward to hearing from you soon.