One large game vs many snack sized games

Ninjadoodle

Hi guys

Just wondering what your experiences / opinions are regarding - One large game vs many small games.

I have a long running project planned (puzzle variety game) and I have the option to either release monthly episodes or have one app per year, which I keep adding episodes to.

This would either make 12 separate games (cross linked to each other) - all good for 10 to 20 min play-through, or having one large app with 12 episodes by the end of the year.

What do you think is the better option? Are there advantages to one or the other?

Thank you in advance for any advice

antix

It depends on the game really. I personally find it quite hard to manage large projects in Gideros. Using ZeroBrane helps with code management and having good tools for level editing and GUI editing, etc also lightens the load. I am getting better but do think sometimes that smaller games are a good way to go, especially for the newer Gideros coders.

In your case maybe 12 smaller games would be good. I think if you released something large after a load of effort (and time) and it was a fizzer (poorly received) then you would be really gutted. If you released the 1st episode as a small game and it went well then you could bang out one per month, and if it too was a fizzer then you didn't waste so much time.

Personally I'm hellbent on making something large in Gideros since I haven't seen any large scale game made with it yet (correct me if I'm wrong). ~:>

keszegh

i don't know what you call large scale, but i'm sure there are games made with gideros that offer a lot of value. e.g. sea of giants looks like a well polished one, although i've not played it. but there are many physics platformers too that have lot of content.

btw it's offtopic but having a look at the apps made with gideros, is this game really made with gideros? in 3d?:
http://giderosmobile.com/apps/willihard

Ninjadoodle

Hi @keszegh - I had a look at the willihard game, and it looks like a hidden object game with pre-rendered 3d backgrounds and not full 3d graphics.

I think Lost Caverns is a reasonably sized game (+ a very good one) - http://giderosmobile.com/forum/discussion/6019/new-game-lost-caverns-on-the-play-store-and-apple-app-store/p1

The way I thought about doing things is having an app that I start with 1 episode and I keep updating it for 12 months, until it contains 12 episodes. This way people who already downloaded it could get notifications, that there are updates for their game.

On the other hand - if I have 12 small games, I could cross promote them.

I'm not really too sure which way to go, and I would love to hear your experiences.

This also brings me to another question - paid 99c vs free supported with ads.

So many decisions, it feels a little bit daunting.