Board Horde Stats Update

Very useful info Dave Hailwood, thank you for sharing.

Blacksmith

Always a pleasure!

Some more info which might be of use: After having received 400 plays in the first weekend on Kongregate (which are trailing off now, and I expect my game will soon sink into obscurity due to its low rating) I have earnt 40 cents (once Kongregate has taken its share). Doing a quick bit of maths, this suggests that all games launched on Kongregate would need to get around 25,000 plays before the creator is actually paid anything (based on the rough estimate of $1 per 1,000 plays, a 35% profit share if a score api is added, and the fact that Kongregate only pay the creator once $25 revenue has been reached). There are also bonuses that you can earn, but your game has to do extremely well before making these.

I will continue exploring revenue options with Board Horde and posting my findings (I'm not expecting to make money from the game, just learn the best approach to the market). What I might do at some point is put an advert in the main game itself rather than just on the start menu (something I'd hoped to avoid doing, but since it's in the name of research, what the heck?) and see if a persistent ad raises the revenue, or lowers the play figures.

Hey Dave. I've been away from Construct for a couple of months, and perhaps you have too. I felt the need for a bit of a rest after Korelos, but the programming bug has hit again, so I'm starting on some new ideas.

How did Board Horde finish up? I've just played (and rated) it at Gamejolt, but I fear you may have suffered the same fate as Korelos - i.e it's dropped off the leaderboards and not getting many plays now?

After 6 months with 4 games on Clay.io, I'm still below $6 on revenue, so I don't think the ads are working out too well now.

I decided to whip Korelos and Jovian War up to Gamejolt, was a fairly painless experience but not seeing many plays so far.

Thanks for the info, I'm quite excited about a new idea I have, so marketing is going to be a problem (again) I suspect.

Dave Hailwood,

have you considered ios, chrome, android and amazon app stores?

i love this game, and i think others will too.

farflamex harrio   

Jolly nice to hear from you chaps!

I've been away from game making for a fair old while now, as I made it to the BBC finals with a sitcom I wrote with a friend and had to switch my priorities to Tv/Radio writing (which is where my main focus will lie in the new year).

Board Horde seems to actually be doing better now that it was before, with a sudden upsurge in plays mid-November (where it went from 5 or so a day to 80). I've only made $3.50 from Clay advertising revenue so far, but that's a lot more than I made anywhere else (almost all plays come from Clay, with the occassional one or two a week on Gamejolt/Newgrounds/Kongregate).

Although I've considered ios etc, I think it would probably take more time to convert than I can currently commit (especially since it was my first game and I was figuring things out as I went along. It was quite a few thousand events long, and probably didn't need to be). Also it seems that whenever technology changes slightly or web hosts alter their layout a bit, problems beyond me control start to arise (to list a few problems I've encountered: On Clay the adverts suddenly started obscuring parts of the game when viewed on PC, when there had been no problem before. On Newgrounds the delivery of games was changed so that they're in a frame, which stopped the game working on ipad (this has been fixed now). On ipad I recently updated to ios 7 and now lots of graphic elements from Board Horde are missing along with other new bugs.

On the plus side though I managed to make a complete game that I'm very happy with (and which you fine chaps enjoyed too, gawd bless yer!). Hopefully I'll manage to knock out a quick game at some point next year, though I'm going to be very busy with my writing and also putting out my own regular comic anthology (100% Biodegradable, which can be purchased here: comicsy.co.uk/biomekazoik/). I'm planning on making the comic free on the 24-26th December, so check it out then if you get the chance (and if you know of any mighty fine artists who might be interested in contributing, please send them my way).

Anyway, thanks Farflamex for supporting Board Horde on Gamejolt, and cheers Harrio for all the encouragement. I'll still be lurking around the forum in the new year, and will let you know if any new projects surface. Best of luck with your own games!

• Dave

I had the same results with Clay.io, I really don't think there's any money in this unless you get a major hit or something. Glad to hear your sitcom did well though, you'll have to let us know on here if it gets aired :)

I'm gonna carry on making my games, I have 2 on the go at the minute, both huge projects as usual. No money in it, but I can't help it, I have to make more :p

Dave Hailwood,

that is great news,

hope it works out with the tv show. would love to see a construct alumni make it to the big time.

farflamex I'm glad to hear you're going to carry on making the sort of games that you enjoy (otherwise what's the point of putting all that time and effort into it?). At the end of the day, as long as you've made something you're reasonably happy with that's what counts. And all it takes is one big success for all the other projects to fall into place.

harrio It's unlikely that the sitcom me and my writing partner wrote will actually get made at this stage, as we're just new writers with only a few credits to our names. But we have some useful contacts now and a huge surge of motivation to write like crazy folk! It's a very long road from BBC Finalist to BBC Showrunner, but I'm going to drag my asthmatic ass from one end of that road to the other and try not to get ploughed down by the Truck Of Obscurity along the way.

I look forward to seeing what new games the pair of you come up with in the new year. Now that Scirra's trying to make things easier to publish to Android I may give Board Horde another outing if I get the chance.

This is a tremendous game and i salute you

as with all try me stuff the learning curve was there, but i really enjoyed it

I really cannot find anything I would suggest, you could add so many little manoervers like mercenary to move monster 1 square or space swap with enemy

it really is a great game

Binkus

thanks for the kind words. Judging by your profile picture, you even dressed for the occassion!

There were a lot more features that I'd hoped to add (including a 3 player mode, event cards and more potion effects) but after having spent 8 solid months on the game I needed to get back to my writing. Hopefully I'll get the time to give it a mild overhaul next year.

Best of luck with your own projects.

I've just added a stats update to the front page of this post - I hope it's helpful to some people.

Have a fantastic New Year, folks!

• Dave