My GF and I finally completed our first ever game | Hacker News Reader

My GF and I finally completed our first ever game

17 pointssuavisapps14 comments

So my GF and I made an Android game in our free time. We wanted to keep it simple, since this was really our first big programming project ever. I'm a huge space nerd myself so I decided to make a space-themed rockety game. GF did the graphics, I did the programming (using Corona SDK). Despite it requiring knowledge of Lua and me having no experience with Lua, everything kinda went. In a couple of weeks we realised that we'd made something worth publishing, so we bit the bullet and bought a Google Developer Account ($25 is kind of a big deal when you are a student in a third world country). We would have uploaded it to the Apple store too, but their hardware requirements (and $99 for the account) are still 'a bit' beyond our reach.

It's no Kerbal Space Program, but it's ours and we like how it turned out. :)

It's up on Google Play for free, tell us what you think! https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.suavis.thyrocket

First congratulations on not only making a game, but making it with your mate. I trust it was a fun learning experience? Are you two planning on making another?

As for thoughts I would only recommend you make your ship 1/2 it's size. That will fix the difficulty problem. In my years of making games (vidya, board, and card) and puzzles Over and over again I stumbled into the fact that it is easy to make games/puzzles difficult. However it is difficult to make games/puzzles entertaining, that requires much testing and feedback with naive users. So, yes, I recommend listening to your users and making it a bit more fun and less frustrating.

Thanks! It sure was an entertaining experience for both of us, especially with an SDK that is so easy to work with. As for the difficulty, we've already reduced the size of the rocket quite a bit, but we will continue listening to suggestions for future updates! :)

Downloaded it and played it. It's almost Flappy Bird level of difficulty! Super fun though.

How long did it take to make?

Congratulations to both of you on finishing the game and releasing it to Google Play!

My high score after 50 attempts or so is 18... no way I'll unlock all those rockets :)

If I may ask, have you earned back the $25 fee from the app ads?

Thank you! That's not a bad score if you ask me :) Not nearly there, sadly, but a random guy contacted us and sent us $25 in Bitcoin so we are pretty much at awe at this point!

Hi, congrats, looks awesome (loved the look!! (and feel and sounds)), I would love it to be easier.

Thank you very much! It looks like we'll have to put an easy-hard slider in a future update!

Man, too hard to play. How do I "drive" the rocket?

Once the rocket launches, it will swerve to a random direction. Tapping the screen once will change its direction of horizontal movement. It will automatically go up as long as it doesn't hit anything.

In my opinion it is too hard. Maybe slower it down a little. On my Android phone there's no chance to play this....

We'll probably resort to implementing an easy-hard slider in a future update!

Looks cute! Congrats on the 500-1000 downloads!

Thanks! :)

Keep up the good work, nice that you are already in the 1000-5000 download range.

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