Yay, Spring Bonus is finally out for mobile, and just in time for Easter!

Grey Alien Games partnered with Hot Head Games to publish it on multiple mobile devices as follows:

iPhone/iPad

Android

Barnes & Noble Nook

Kindle Fire

Windows Phone

Please tell your friends and family. Thanks!

I’ve been meaning to collate my most popular and important articles from 2011 into a list for a while but have been waylaid. Anyway, here it is. Enjoy!

January:

January was an important month for me because I quit Big Fish Games after working there for over 2 years to go indie AGAIN (I was indie for several years before I moved to Vancouver to work at Big Fish Games).

- My Indie plans for 2011 (I did a whole load of research into all the potential platforms I could make games for and whittled the list down into my main areas of interest.)

- My First Game is Live on Xbox Live Indie Games! (This was an important event for me because it was my first ever game on a console! Holiday Bonus didn’t sell that well due to low downloads (converts well though), so we never ported any other games to the XBLIG.)

- I’m Officially Indie (again) (Going indie again was very important to me. This post talks about a party I had to celebrate, Full Indie, and my plans for 2011.)

- Mac App Store Tutorials (At the start of 2011 I ported two of my existing games to the Mac App store and put together this article to help other devs through the pain of code signing etc.)

- Beans on Toast and other British toast-based snacks (This was a silly article that I had fun with that proved quite popular.)

-Check out my Old-skool PC Game Collection (Just in case you are interested, there’s a photo of my huge old-skool FPS collection and other games.)

March:

- What the Dog Saw: And Other Adventures (Some book recommendations.)

- 12 Tips for Making a Game Tutorial (This post generated some interesting debate.)

April:

- Spring Bonus is now available for PC and Mac (This was my first new game since going indie again. I’m very proud of Spring Bonus, it’s my best solo game to date)

May:

- I’m going to make 50 games this year! (This was a bold claim and I didn’t make it, but I did do pretty well because I shipped 39 games.)

- Spring Bonus is now available for Windows Phone 7 (A friend of mine in the UK ported Spring Bonus to Windows Phone 7. It was my first game on that particular phone, in fact it was my first mobile game release!)

- I am in control of my life (I was inspired to write this article to help people understand how many things in their life they are really in control of and can change if need be.)

June:

- My 10 simple tips for fitness and health (It was my birthday in June and I got my picture taken with two of the original Star Trek cast members. You can see the photo in this informative blog post.)

- Metal Spawn – New minigame! (I organised and ran a Full Indie game jam in June and made a minigame called Metal Spawn. Check it out!)

July:

Casual Connect Summary (I was on an indie panel at Casual Connect in Seattle and summarised my experience plus got another Star Trek cast member photo! Here’s the link to a video of the panel I was on.)

October:

I met William Shatner! (Meeting Shatner has been a geek dream of mine for years, and I finally got the chance in Vancouver. Check out the sweet photo!)

November:

Being indie is a long-term game (includes graphs!) (I’ve been running Grey Alien Games since 2005, and since then I’ve come to realise that games can keep on selling for a very long time and actually make most of their money after the first year. Read all about it in this very popular article!)

December:

- My Thanksgiving Sale Statistics (with graphs!) (Back in November I tried an experiment and ran a Thanksgiving sale on my website and tried to promote it via various means. It wasn’t super successful but I wrote up a full postmortem in this post.)

- Holiday Bonus is out for iPhone/iPad and Android! (This was an important date for me. A friend in the UK ported Holiday Bonus to Unity and we released no less than 9 different versions on iOS/Android/Web! Those versions included multiple FREE versions.)

- Always Alone – New Minigame (I participated in the Ludum Dare #22 Game Jam on the theme of “alone” and was pleased with this weird narrative-based game that I made. People seemed to think it was good.)

- My 2011 Indie Game Picks (I played some great indie games in 2011, though not as many as I’d have liked to. You can find a summary of the ones I enjoyed in this post.)

And that’s it! Wow, looks like I blogged quite a lot more than I thought I did

Previous Best of Lists:

Best Articles of 2008

My site has now had 2 Million hits! (by hits I mean pageviews as measured by some crappy counter code)

Back in July 2011 the site reached 1.5 Million hits. So that’s 500K hits in 9 months = approx. 55K hits per month. The previous monthly average was 45K hits per month, so it’s an improvement, but not a huge one. Probably just down to more bots

I had hoped to reach 2 Million hits by the end of 2011, but to be honest I didn’t do much to drive traffic to my site last year. Let’s see what happens this year and if I can reach 3 million hits (double my traffic) by the end of 2012!

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!

My site has now had 1.5 Million hits!

Back in August 2010 it reached 1 Million hits – that’s another 500K hits in 11 months. The previous monthly average was 28.5K hits per month, so leaping up to 45K hits per month is quite an achievement! Perhaps now there are just more bots scanning my site pushing up the hit counter

As I said last time, my site still has pretty low traffic compared to many, but now that I’ve been indie again (since January) one of my goals is to increase the traffic to my site and build a decent mailing list. I’ve relied way too much on the casual game portals for sales before and this year I want to try making different types of games and selling them direct.

So let’s see if I can reach 2 Million hits by the end of 2011! Wish me luck.

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!