It was a good thing Bacons On A Boat got rejected by Apple.

In my last post ( almost a year ago ) I was in a marking mode, slowly drowning in social media metrics, rushing to finish a new piece of Bacons On A Boat just to have something to post on a regular schedule. I have since burned myself out on doing things that way because I don’t have as much new visual stuff to post about and my posts weren’t reaching as many people as I wanted. I also felt like there wasn’t a place I could post about the struggles of game development, but then I remembered I have this blog.

One of the struggles I have faced in mobile game development is getting feedback on the game from testers. Several months ago I switched my focus to open beta testing to get more people to play the game and point out things that could be improved. Sadly, I didn’t get any feedback after opening up the closed beta. Instead of wondering why that was happening, I focused on fixing lots of little issues with the game and pushed those changes to the testers.

I took the lack of feedback as a good thing, so I began to get ready to fully release the game. I updated screenshots, got gameplay clips ready for the Apple App Store, and made a new trailer for the game. A week ago I submitted my game to the App Store, it felt terrifying and exciting… until it didn’t.

My game was rejected. The reason sited was that their reviewers could not find the in-app-purchases I claimed to have in the game. DAMN YOU IN-APP PURCHASES! But seriously I was shocked and felt like blaming whoever was reviewing the game. Once I cooled down I noticed a place where I could upload images and videos to help the reviewers. I recorded my self playing through the game as a new player who just installed the game and realized how many things someone has to do in order to get to a place where they could use the in-game shop. I knew I would have to make some changes, maybe move some buttons around or highlight buttons.

Lucky for me, Thanksgiving happened and I was able to watch my cousin play the game. I watched him get confused about the tutorial and struggle to find the “Next” button to continue to the next part of the tutorial. He liked the game once he finally got to it, but getting there was a mess. I think this might have been how many people have experienced the game.

This was the reality check I needed. Now, I am redesigning the story intro and the tutorial.

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