Dead Run Beta release!

OK guys, unfortunately we were not able to get a beta iOS build out due to some performance and framerate or something issues (and time), but in the meantime, here’s a beta WEB build 🙂 It’s hosted on a different location than the previous one so do take note:

PLAY THE BETA HERE: http://tuism.com/deadrun/

  

Changes:

1. All the spiffy pretty day/night cycle stuff
2. Zombie head juice
3. Misc communicative juice
4. The swing is WAY faster
5. The game’s harder with the inclusion of… Something. You’ll see. But not much yet 😉
6. Delays and things work properly now
7. Basic instructions!
8. You’ll notice… decorative elements 🙂 They’ll be earned and have certain effects come the final game.
9. Various other things.
10. Player will use the bat unless there’s something to shoot, where it’ll attempt to use the gun.
11. Bat-spam removed.

Known issues:

1. Difficulty ramp is still to be tweaked, will get harder, at the same time give the shotgun a better reason to exist, hopefully. I’d talk about it but it feels like it’s better tested than talked about.
2. Pause causes crash in one scenario. Don’t find it 😉
3. Achievements still need to be added.
4. Sharing to be implemented (only works from iOS)
We’re almost there! Last mile is always the hardest, really… Thanks for all your input!

Enjoy the beta! 😀

One last thing:

As we’re nearing the finish line (last 90% of time spent on the 10% of the stuff), we want to ask you guys’ honest opinion on monetisation. Should this be a $0.99 paid app or a free with ads?

The original plan was to make something quick and toss it out as free with ads as an experiment. But with research and reading I find that there are two points of views to this all:

1. These days free apps fall into two categories - crazy IAP things or throwaway Flappy clones. That means the perception of free apps fall under those two categories too. The original intent with free with ads was never to “mint it”, but more to try and reach a big audience and gauge response. But if the impression of free apps are poor, then even before it gets into people’s handsets it’s already gonna be labelled as being an unworthy game. Thoughts on this?

2. If going as a paid app, we’ll drop the ads naturally, but the barrier to entry is higher. Even though a dollar is not a lot at all, we’re now competing against other dollar games like Cut the Rope, PVZ (even if IAP infested), Bad Piggies, etc, which obviously out-trump us. Obviously the app store doesn’t work like that, with only the top games getting all the attention, but is it worth trying to play in that arena with such a delicately small offering? I do think that going paid ups the perceived value of the game and may get it more attention than if it were free.

Overall, rather than a money-making exercise, this is more about learning how the market works, an experiment with real results, however it goes. We’d rather maximise it one way or another (exposure mostly), so it would be great if you could help us with valuable insights!

Thanks!