Zombie Pinball (iPhone)

Chunkypixels · October 2011

My latest game is now Waiting for Review, and should hopefully be on the Appstore just in time for Halloween.

The game wasnt actually intended to be an Halloween specific release, and originally started life way back in March of this year, as a 48hr game development challenge. Needless to say, I failed miserably at the 48hr part, and now, months later, I just about have the Pinball game Im happy with.

I have to say.... Pinball games sound like they should be easy, but its been a bit of a slog to get a half decent, polished one together. But at least I now have a solid Pinball framework that i can build on for future game releases

LumpApps · October 2011

I can see the work you have put in this game. It looks awesome.
Did you do the artwork yourself? Then big Kudos to you.
It is made in game salad? Very good job!

quantumsheep · October 2011

Looks very nice, mate! Best of luck!

QS

Jugger · October 2011

awesome! Cool idea

keweworkshop · October 2011

Who doesn't like pinball? Great job!

Valan · October 2011

Good luck.
The video shows a fun game and The graphics look great.

clike · October 2011

Great job!, looks awesome graphics and fun gameplay.
There are thousands of possibilities to create a pinball game. Waiting to play.
Good luck

JPickard · October 2011

This looks monstrously fun. Will get.

Chunkypixels · October 2011

Thanks for the comments

The game has just been approved after 3 days in waiting, then only 4 hours in review.... so should be live on the Appstore over the coming hours...

Oh the excitement of a newly released project!... I get to watch Appstore rankings feverishly for the next week

oh well... back to finishing my reworking of one of my other projects "Impact Earth", after I had to remove it from the Appstore recently, after receiving legal threats from Atari!

quantumsheep · October 2011

Chunkypixels said:
oh well... back to finishing my reworking of one of my other projects "Impact Earth", after I had to remove it from the Appstore recently, after receiving legal threats from Atari!

I'll be keeping my 'rogue' copy then!

CannonFodder · October 2011

Looks great! Hopefully it will be a hit all over Halloween for you.
Good luck with sales!

TheMenOfHonor · October 2011

Looks very professional, I wish more people using GameSalad were as good as you so the engine could get a better name :P

guilleface · October 2011

i have never see a better pinball game like this, i really like those zombie moving around and being killed lol of apple don't put this on n&w they are dumb.

LumpApps · October 2011

Downloading now. Will give you your stars later

Chunkypixels · October 2011

Thanks again for the kind words guys...

Spent the day working on an update to fix a few small issues, and to reduce the download size, thanks to Waynes superb image optimisation tool.

I thought I'd already been quite thorough on optimising my images, but Waynes tool managed to shave an extra 5mb from my images folder, with no visible difference to the quality... so definately worth using... and great thanks to him for his funky coding skills and for making the tool free to use!

David_GryphonsRealm · October 2011

You should def make an iPad version !! A bigger screen for this game would be amazing !!

quantumsheep · October 2011

Bought this today!

I'm enjoying it! As with your other games, it looks very very polished!

I posted on the TA thread that I thought you could do with enlarging the areas that the user presses to activate the flippers.

Currently it's a little finicky trying to hit the buttons, and I sometimes miss, which is a tad frustrating.

Maybe make the button actors bigger? (while keeping the graphics the same size).

Cheers, and good luck with it!

QS

Chunkypixels · October 2011

@David_GryphonsRealm ...yup... iPad version should be getting sent for approval next week, so on the Appstore in a couple of weeks.

@Sheepy... glad your enjoying it, and yup, I'll make sure to increase the touch area for the paddles in the update I'll be submitting later tomorrow.

Sales are currently poor after the initial 3 days on sale... but thats nothing new, and is the story with all my apps.... but Im expecting it to be a steady trickle over time.

Although the game is polished, Ive been reluctant to really promote it, as, to be honest, Im my own worst critic, and feel that the game is possibly a little light on content, and could have done with a couple more tables to really make it stand as a fully fledged game. So Im afraid others might feel the same and rate it down...

I think Im just crap at promotion too.... as I always seem to leave it til last minute, and then get caught out when my apps fly through approval....

tenrdrmer · October 2011

Looks freaking awesome. Great trailer. Id say if you don't wanna promote like crazy at the very least run a pr mac press release. Might just do the trick.

butterbean · October 2011

@Chunky: I bought the game and enjoyed it! Love the extra polish, and the way you set up the table was great!

I think adding an additional table in a future update would be good, but I know pinball games aren't easy to make, and polish up the way you did...

Great work!

quantumsheep · October 2011

Scores seem to be posting to GameCenter no problem - can I assume it's safe to publish a game now even though you can't test them in Sandbox mode a la iOS5?

Chunkypixels said:

@Sheepy... glad your enjoying it, and yup, I'll make sure to increase the touch area for the paddles in the update I'll be submitting later tomorrow.

Sales are currently poor after the initial 3 days on sale... but thats nothing new, and is the story with all my apps.... but Im expecting it to be a steady trickle over time.

Although the game is polished, Ive been reluctant to really promote it, as, to be honest, Im my own worst critic, and feel that the game is possibly a little light on content, and could have done with a couple more tables to really make it stand as a fully fledged game. So Im afraid others might feel the same and rate it down...

I think Im just crap at promotion too.... as I always seem to leave it til last minute, and then get caught out when my apps fly through approval....

I'll be honest and say 'yeah, you're crap at promotion!' :O

It just seems like you make a lovely game, then just release it. 'Build it and they will come' hasn't really worked for a while now.

I'd do as Ten says, and at the very least do a PRmac press release, especially coming up to Halloween.

Then just send a promo to every site you can think of!

I think you need a slight attitude adjustment

I'm my own worst critic, and I did exactly what you're doing now.

TWO YEARS AGO.

But my games were really bad, and not even in the same league quality wise as this! At least you can objectively look at your game and think:

If I liked Pinball games, I'd like this.
If I like Zombies, I'd like this
If I liked beautifully presented games, I'd like this.
If I liked funny games, I'd like this.

Put aside the negative thoughts - you can always add more tables later, which your players will appreciate.

The trick is to get enough players to justify spending the huge amounts of time it obviously took to get the one table done to get another one done.

And to do that you need to push it!

OR:

"We will not go quietly into the night!

We will not vanish without a fight!

We're going to live on!

We're going to survive!"

Today, we celebrate our Independence Day!

Etc...

QS

butterbean · October 2011

Good advice Sheepy!!

Promoting your app is the hardest thing, and 80% of the battle!

Some game genres seem to require little promotion, if done well, but I think this one in particular should get as much promotion as you can! I know there are a ton of Zombie games out there, but very little Pinball ones, with the exception of Undead Attack! (I think that's the name of another pinball zombie game)

Another thing you could consider for the future if all else fails is....

Make this game free, then do iAP and offer additional tables for .99 cents each, or all tables unlocked for .99 cents... (when iAP becomes available)

I know some people are skeptical on iAP, but utilizing it to unlock all pinball tables wouldn't be a bad thing, and at least they'd get to test drive one table...

It's a very well polished game, and the icon is very cool

LumpApps · October 2011

I have been playing with Zombie Pinball for a while and it is awesome.
I pm'd Chunky pixels about lag I had but that was only in the first few times I played it.
Strange! It was really bad. But that's gone now. (perhaps because I'm on iOS 5 now.)
It crashed one time when clicking on the sound button.

I hope for you this takes of.
Hope your marketing skills approve.
I am bad at this too.

Chunkypixels · November 2011

iPad version submitted, along with update for iphone that should hopefully bring the app under 20mb..

Heres a bag of promo codes for the current iPhone version 1.1

If you take one, a review would be appreciated. cheers

9H79WXPKEFKY
H6T64N93NLRH
KY4963AKM63L
6EFAALXYE4YM
XLPAPKFAA3AA
XY64KAAHRNRF
TNMWKWKTRJ9M
JP9NNJNMFYTR
RYFAKF7NY77E
RH4JML7AFPEF
7TNWRKJH6FKX
4TWRAN3WLRHF
KEPFN9K76WMJ
LE9R7WW7JRFJ
X4Y74NTPMWF6
JKKHLX7TRHAK
7EJX6JL3RN7F
HHLP7HFRMNHH
W46W7THTX4KK
JPYKRMAFEPRL

Rob2 · November 2011

9H79WXPKEFKY - great thanks - looks , sounds, and original table ideas A+++ excellent but rather spoilt by very slow flipper response [3gs, ipad]

debugdesign · November 2011

taken the last one - JPYKRMAFEPRL (will review soon)

JPickard · November 2011

snagged LE9R7WW7JRFJ

Thanks. Review after playtime!

tenrdrmer · November 2011

Review Left.

Thanks and Great Work.

quantumsheep · November 2011

tenrdrmer said:
Review Left.

Thanks and Great Work.

It *is* isn't it? Certainly the best GS made Pinball game I'd say. I certainly enjoy playing it, and would love to do an Air Supply version at some point for free

codemates · November 2011

Gave it 5 star. Great graphics, sound and gameplay!

Presentation was nice but it can use a better description.

perfectanswer · November 2011

used this one: HHLP7HFRMNHH
This game is absolute eye candy. Everything looks well composed and the soundtrack and the sfx sounds great. I didn't test it on a iPhone, only on iPad (1) and there works the flippers with a little lag. I believe this is more a problem with the game engine. tomorrow I check it out with my iPhone.
Fantastic art, I am really impressed

Zombie Pinball (iPhone)

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