Monday, June 16, 2014

Space Trap I- My new game on Appstore

Space Trap I


After a long time and hard work, finally launched my new game space trap I. This game is departure from my earlier games which were social games and had to be played between to players turn by turn.

This game is played individually by clearing multi-levels and episodes.

Story begins …

Space Trap starts with aliens with sinister design steals the earth magnetic field. Earth is on brink of disaster with entire world turn upside down.  ROCKA the super –hero is called in to save the Earth. Earth is put on life support on the local magnet providing the magnetic need of the Earth. Now ROCKA must travel to fight aliens’ and get back the earth magnetic field.

Aliens have put in the maze of hindrances blocking the highway to their homeland. Now, ROCKA must solve each maze by aligning the planets in vertical line to clear the highway.
The matrix of the planets though shown in 2-dimension is spherical with space-warp; planet moved further down re-appears from top and like-wise for horizontal.
The aliens try to defeat ROCKA with multiple tricks –
  1. Blocks – These are blocks which block high way movement. And restricts the alignment by blocking the movement.
  2.  Space Warp- there is special worm-holes created by aliens in middle of highway which warps the planets and further wraps the planet in middle.
  3. Skulls- These are like asteroid bombs by the aliens which ROCKA has to move out of the highway for alignment.
  4.  Hidden Planets – These are hidden planets which are revealing only after ROCKA can solve the stage 1 problem.
  5. High Speed Lanes- these are special lanes which moves double the speed than the other lanes. 
 

Further up …. Many more challenges….


ROCKA Powers

ROCKA has some super powers up his sleeves to defeat few of these challenges posed by aliens-
  1. Transformer – a magic power to transform the asteroid bombs into normal planet which can then be aligned.
  2. Shape Shifter- a power to change shape according to its surrounding; align with majority of the planet.
  3. Space Bender- A special launcher which create space warp by bending the highway in middle.

And many more powers….

The challenge of getting the planets to align along highway is a challenge ... The difficulty level is slowly sets in ....

After 25 levels, game gets very difficult to solve. Even for game addicts of puzzle solvers are finding it difficult to solve unless  they realize the trick. 

After 3rd episode, game is a real challenge even puzzle master solvers.   

The Trick

But there is a small trick (a small little secret) where the planets are aligned column by column should be aligned but the last row/column (which are kept for free movement). 
On solving the matrix but last row, i.e. last row is solved by bringing the last planets of last row in row order as in first row. This could work by moving the planets up in last column and bringing it down on same order as first row. 

Mode of Play

Space Trap is played individually without going online.  The game is without any kind of advertising. Facebook login is provided if you want to compare your friend’s progress against your own. Facebook API are also used for allowing you to request for your friends for life, episode unlock and moves for helping you to solve the levels.

Game was introduced to for beta testing to few game addicts during its pre-launch but only hard-core puzzle solvers could reach its level 26. After which it gets really gets tough with new twist and turns introduced on each level.

It needs smartness of problem solving and pattern recognising.  The game starts with all aligned planets and randomly shaken to misarrange the planets with series of complex vertical and horizontal moves (in range of 25-35). So ideally, person can solve each level in less than 25 moves.

Technical

Space Trap I is built in Objective C using XCode. It has been built using storyboard.  Use the ARC for memory management.

The major component used are:
  1. Facebook iOS SDK : For integration with Facebook
  2. Bug Sense             : getting crash reports
  3. Localytics             :  For analytics
  4. Google Analytics    :  For analytics
  5. AFNetworking        :  Server connections (data sync with server behind the scenes)
  6. ObjectAL               : Audio 

When game is played as a facebook user, the game records are synced with server database behind the scenes. This is in case the game is deleted from the device; the data game is synced back to device on re-login from the same facebook account.

No advertising in the game but we however advertise Space Trap in other games so for that we have incorporate Mobile Advertisement Tracker , Tapjoy, Charboost etc.

For Notifications, we use only local notifications.  




Next blog ... On life cycle of developing a Appstore game ... 

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