Even if you are developing a game as a hobby, for recreation or educational purposes you should release it at some point to others. Getting feedback on your game can be an exhilarating, humbling and even a disappointing experience. Don't be discouraged by criticism and pay attention to your tester's comments good or bad. Sending someone a screenshot or movie clip of your game for review is not enough.
The following is another set of guidelines that will improve the success of your game release, even if it is only to friends:
- Deploy and test the game on your target platforms. This can be difficult for a platform like Android, where there are so many variations of device. However, just testing on a single Android device could reveal multiple issues your players will encounter.
- Test with a small target audience, it is important that your testers match the audience you are releasing your game to. If you don't have any testers like that, then you need to go out and find some. Fortunately, there are numerous game development sites and forums where you can find very honest test candidates.
- Fix the bugs, this is typically the point where that initial tester feedback excites you to further complete your game or forget the project entirely. Just remember that criticism is good and don't be afraid to consider suggestions. Assess the project honestly and consider if you need to go back to development to fix any serious or critical bugs.
- Release to a larger target audience. If possible, do another release to a larger target audience. This may not always be practical and in some cases, it may just be better to do an actual release to a store.
- Release to an App Store. Depending on your target platform, this may or may not be a huge hurdle. Even if you release the game at an entry level price or free, this will be a great experience.
- Automate the process. If you are happy with your experience of deploying to the app store, then at some point you will want to update the game with new features and bug fixes. In order to minimize errors and delays in putting out updates, you will want to automate your release process. Automating the release will not only make you more responsive to change, but also free up your time for bug fixes and new features.
Now that we have discussed the skills, assets, and release guidelines, it is time to get into the dirty secrets of location-based games. In the next section, we will talk about the difficulties of building a location-based game.