The first one was for iOS, and I couldn't continue to pay its yearly developer program so it got shut down. I made two mobile games before in 20 I think, both failed miserably (not counting mobile web games, cause I assume this is play/app store thing). I mean, we're indies, right? We take risks. I think it's challenging market that's worth to try. It might be the reason why games with low package size that is casual cute idle game, clicker game, and stupidly funny viral game is also and still popular, I'm not sure. Not to mention some parts of the world don't always have unlimited data. For example, there are some outliers where the players don't like it when they downloaded a 45 MB game just find out they have to download another 2 - 4 GB of data in-game. It's not as if we got to capture all audiences. but what I'm sure mobile market is vast and vary. Honestly I don't know how to make it in that battlefield either. You can tell that on how the two companies proudly brag on how many apps are in their play/app stores more than the quality of the apps. Don't forget to deal with the manifest file first too! Just saying that this is a challenge too to keep up with the OS and what the store wants.Īs for the market, as you said, mobile market is pretty much over-saturated that it is hard to break. I'm not even sure how that works yet.Īfter that you got the tedious store requirement and policy reviews, and it's A LOT to deal with icons, screenshot sizes and policy, privacy policy, permissions, internationalization, ratings, device selections, is it landscape/portrait, does it require internet or not, is it for ipad/iphone/both, review, and moreee. AAB is the latest, and likely Google may ditch APK distribution in the future, or I think it's already done, since 2021? I don't really check the news. For example for Android, there are these things called APK, OBB, and AAB. You can also check the difficulty in terms of distribution by looking on how to export Godot games for Android/iOS, compare to Windows. I think some indie devs simply refuse IAP monetization model due to its addictive vicious cycle it can provide (a.k.a compulsion loop), some just believe it's really that hard to incorporate them in, especially dealing with the after-sales (top up failures, failed ads that won't close, oh my god!). I believe, this means you can focus completely on the game itself without being bothered to balance your game over ads and in-app purchases, unless of course you decide to sell "premium" games to mobile. Certain PC market lets you publish a game with upfront sales, or at best, you add DLCs. Even if mobile can get more fancy features, battery, heat, and shared memory are still your biggest enemies, and I don't even get to frame synchronization/consistency and display with various refresh rates nowadays. Simply put, with PC, you're more focused on what you can deliver artistically than what you can't. I believe that the old or cheap PC nowadays is capable to run mostly on what Forward+ can offer. That issue alone is enough to tell how hard it is to develop for Android. Luckily it's still possible to run gl_compatibility, although with the least graphics feature available. Maybe I can share some possible reasons on why mobile is pretty much a beast to tame, or a thing some prefer to avoid, just my opinion though.Īs for technicalities, one example is, at the moment Godot 4 with "mobile" render method (Vulkan mobile, cough) has issue with black screen for some GPUs (you can look at it here). I'm not sure if it's rare, maybe just not talking much, I'm not sure either. Aren't those exactly the kind of games that lend themselves to a mobile device? Why is it that developing for mobile is so rare in the indie community? Have any of you developed and published mobile games? (I mean games you designed first and foremost with mobile in mind, not something you developed for PC and then ported). Why is that? Is it because the typical indie game dev is a hardcore gamer themself (himself much more often than anything else) and wouldn't touch a casual mobile game with a stick? Or is it really a market that is totally impossible to break into as an indie? It looks like everyone recommends that as an indie you should start with smaller, more manageable games like puzzle games. It's really hard to find any info (except the purely technical stuff like how to upload to an Android device etc.) on how to publish and market a game for the Google PlayStore and the Apple Store. on game development, every other indie developer seems to be developing for the PC market or maybe consoles and mostly market through either Steam or Itch.io. Yet whenever I search for stuff like articles, tutorials, YouTube videos etc. And that's what I plan to develop myself. I think I'm a bit of an outlier here, but I personally love casual mobile games.
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