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Comment by erik | Hacker News Reader

A comment I posted a few days ago about the game got some interest, so I thought I would share it with the community.

The project started with a group of strangers meeting at a global gamejam event in 2012. The first prototype was super buggy, but our idea about sacrificing your character to solve puzzles and make progress was well received, so the four of us decided to keep working on the project as an evenings and weekends thing.

Sharing early prototypes with online communities provided a lot of feedback and encouragement. As the project progressed, more of the group started to focus on the game full time, working up to the release this month. The Steam page for the game is here: http://store.steampowered.com/app/250050/

If anyone has any questions about the process, or the game, I'd be happy to answer them.

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The game is really amazing. I for one will actually get a copy and support you. Keep it good work!

I have a question - this game seems to be possible to easily port to mobiles (it looks like it would run smoothly on tablets and newer mobiles) - do you guys have plan for that?

Thanks for the comment and the support, I hope you like the game!

The game is built with Unity, so on that side of things, a mobile port is pretty straightforward. There are some challenges though.

- Performance: The game uses physics simulation pretty heavily, with the ragdolls, ice cubes, and that sort of thing, which might take some rethinking to hit a mobile CPU budget. And while our graphics aren't that intense, they weren't built with a mobile GPU in mind, and would also likely take some work.

- Controls: Life Goes On doesn't require very much precision platforming, but the levels are designed for a player at a keyboard, or with a controller. We don't know how well this would transition to touch controls.

- Market: The biggest challenge for a game on mobile is finding an audience, and standing out from the crowd. Though if we can build enough fans on the PC, then we might have this hurdle overcome.

"The game is built with Unity" - which part of the game you implemented yourself and which you decided to get as components?

Unity provides the foundation, with the rendering, physics, and that sort of thing.

We purchased a few plugins to make GUI, input, and sound management easier.

We create all of our own assets, and implemented all of our own gameplay logic.

In a few months time would you be up for giving a financial report on how well sell on steam worked for you?

We haven't figured out our plan yet, but we've found it very helpful when teams have shared their data, and I'd like to contribute back to the community.

I always wonder how the puzzles for games like this are created.

Can this be done procedural? Or did you have people sitting there and come up with new puzzles one at a time?

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