ComboLine: My first game ever is now available on App Store =)

[Giselle79]

Hi everybody, I'm Giselle, I want to show you all the first video game that I did with other 4 friends, and now it's on the AppStore, where we have the Lite version and a full version =) I cannot be happier, in reality all five of us, it's incredible to see the result of hard work published by Apple and available for the whole world... Really emotional situation for me.

And now I would really appreciate your comments, thoughts and ideas.
First of all, Let me introduce you "ComboLine"

How it works:
ComboLine is an action puzzle that consist in sliding blocks of different colors, horizontally or vertically from a board to create a line of at least three squares of the same color to make it vanish. Once a line is formed all the adjacent squares of the same color will vanish with it. The more blocks together before a disappearance, the highest score you'll get.

Every time a line (or more pieces attached to it) vanish, they left an empty space that will be full with the pieces of different colors that were right above them on the board.

The Combo:
If the fall of this preexisting blocks in the board causes new disappearances, this will bust the Combo (value that appears on top to the right of the screen) which multiplies the points obtained after a disappearance the amount of times indicated by the number.
-To keep this value from falling the player must act as fast as possible to find a new tris.
-To make this value grow more and more the player will have to analyze which square would cause chain disappearances, simply by looking the surrounding square pieces.
-In ComboLine there is no such thing as "lucky" disappearances nor accidental: Every point is always a result of the player choices.

Quads:
The player can use four blocks of the same color to form a "Quad", bigger pieces that will move 2 lines and 2 columns. To make those vanish you have to put next to it at least one piece of the same color and you will get a lot of points.

ComboLine the game for everybody:
One of our most important goals was to create a game that could be played by every kind of person, casual gamers or experts. Our action puzzle starts very gently with just three colors, but every new level brings in a new color, making the challenge grow from level to level. The last color comes in after the player pass the 100 million points and its really hard to get to there.

Hi-Score:
There are three leader boards, one local (just for the device), then there is the classic "online Total", and one with the highest score of the last 24 hours ("online 24h").
To be able to upload your score is necessary to hit the "online Total" or the "online 24h" buttons in the Hi-Score Menu, otherwise your score will remain only in your device.

For further details, you can check all the albums, video, music, and news related to ComboLine on our Facebook page:
Please become fans!!!!

Thanks in advance

Giselle

 

[callmemike20]

At first glance, it looked like the name of the app was columbine...

 

[rdowns]

At first glance, it looked like the name of the app was columbine...

Same here. Unfortunate.

 

[Giselle79]

Hi callmemike20 and rdowns

Comboline comes from the juxtaposition of two words: COMBO and LINE. The two main things that you have to do while playing this action puzzle game.
Once you get the chance to try it (simply downloading the Lite version) you'll see how the word Comboline would be impossible to forget, being the very basis of the gameplay.

It's funny though, that the reason why seeing C-o-m-b-o-l-i-n-e and understanding columbine is not quite product of an "unfortunate" thing. In fact the human brain is train to "read" a word as a whole rather than going through every letter, and the "recognition" of a certain concept depends, in the end, mostly of the context.

That is why I think that once you get to try my game, you will get caught into its "mechanics" that won't have this issue again. Because your context would be different now, which -thinking about it- would'n be such a bad thing.

I really appreciate your honesty to tell me what impacted you guys at the first glance. Now I would really love to hear what you think after you get to try it, not exclusively regarding the name, but instead the whole game. What is it that makes you "tic" about it, what would you change about it, what doesn't make you crazy about it... anything would be a big help, since we are already working on updated versions

Now after thanking you again for your openness, I'm going to leave you with ths nice quote:

"Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe."

 

[rdowns]

For taking the time to write all that, I'll try your app. Good luck with it.

 

[DoFoT9]

Wirelessly posted (nokia e63: Mozilla/5.0 (iPad; U; CPU OS 4_3 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8F5153d Safari/6533.18.5)

Very impressive app! Is there a iPad based version available? If so, I shall try it

 

[Giselle79]

For taking the time to write all that, I'll try your app. Good luck with it.

ahahahahaha!! believe me rdowns if I write "that" it's because I care. This game for me it's like my first child!!
Thanks a lot for trying it... hey! let me give you a tip, once you finish to play, after you enter your username, your device will automatically save your score, but only locally. To upload your it you need to go to "Hi-score" and press either "online 24h" or "online Total". then I would able to recognize by watching the leader boards how you did!

 

[Giselle79]

Very impressive app! Is there a iPad based version available? If so, I shall try it

Thanks a LOT for saying so
To answer your question: ComboLine runs in iPad, you could try it from you iPad. BUT what runs in iPad is not a "iPad based version". Let me explain you:
We developed ComboLine thinking on iPhone and iPod Touch (480x320, 3:2 screen). We are a small group (me and 4 friends) we don't even have iPad YET
BUT we want to implement a ComboLine version specifically for iPad, taking advantage of its characteristics, I mean a 1024x768 or 4:3 screen sort of "demands" a different amount of colored squares, and a multiplayer version (and by multiplayer I mean 2 ).

HEY! One thing I wanted to asked you guys (this goes to everybody that had downloaded ComboLine, or are thinking about doing it) is to make someone that you know is not use to play video games to test it from your device.

We did ComboLine thinking in two different kind of users:
The hardcore player, and for him we crated the Combo challenge, and all the speed that it demands not only to be maintained but to be increased alone the different levels of gameplay, and
The casual gamer (or even that one that never play a video game in his life) and for him we have the simple task to slide the squares to form lines.

You see: We use both kind of people to test ComboLine and we were surprised, 'cause all those who never played before (mostly grannies and people not interested on video games) told us things like "Wow this is a simple thing to do", "I never thought It would be so easy" and "This is quite relaxing" of course they got low scores, but they were satisfied, they didn't even care on scores.

Instead the expert gamers compliment the fact that they needed to be extremely fast to make grow the combo, and the increasing level of challenge that make them experiment this adrenaline rush, and the possibility to play ad infinitum depending on how fast they were... and yes, of course they got scores above the 20 millions

 

[Reefbone]

It's funny though, that the reason why seeing C-o-m-b-o-l-i-n-e and understanding columbine is not quite product of an "unfortunate" thing. In fact the human brain is train to "read" a word as a whole rather than going through every letter, and the "recognition" of a certain concept depends, in the end, mostly of the context.

Are you french by chance? Just guessing given your name and apprent lack of understanding of the connection the previous rerspondents tried to point out.
The misunderstanding they are referring to could actually work to your advantage since it might catch peoples attention but just to let you knowthis is what they THOUGHT the saw

Good luck with the app

 

[Giselle79]

Are you french by chance? Just guessing given your name and apprent lack of understanding of the connection the previous rerspondents tried to point out.
The misunderstanding they are referring to could actually work to your advantage since it might catch peoples attention but just to let you knowthis is what they THOUGHT the saw

Good luck with the app

Hi Reefbone

To answer your question "no, I'm not french", BUT even if I was, my guess is that the whole world knows about what happened because of the mass media. In fact that is exactly why I mentioned how the humane brain works with the "recognition of a certain concept depending on the context", which means that if you find a word with a similar combination of letters of something you already know (and therefore is somehow part of your "context") you will read that same thing. And that is precisely why I explained the significance of the words COMBO and LINE in the gameplay of ComboLine.

That is as well the reason why I talked about changing the CONTEXT, in the sense of understanding a CONCEPT. Its funny how linguistics studied the paradox of a language composed by words, in fact arbitrary words, chosen by humans and at the same time affecting them depending on whether they remind them of something (that always will generate an specific reaction) positive or negative.

"If language were a set of names which applied to independently existing concepts, then one would expect to see the concepts remain stable over time. At the time of Saussure the question puzzling theorists was whether a word stands for something which independently exists in the world, or whether it stands for an idea in the mind? Saussure challenged the view that language is a nomenclature, a list of words standing for a list of things. He argued that this line of reasoning presupposes that ideas exist independently of words, that it does not clarify whether words are vocal or psychological and that it sees the connection between a name and a thing as essentially unproblematic."

I find it really interesting, because sometimes (I even dare to say most of the times) the words work in our minds in a intimate relationship with their emotional and psychological "echo" and is right here where what we call "Context" takes the lead to build what we understand or even what we feel where being "exposed" to something unknown, maybe a new concept, perhaps a new word, or even a new name, like in this case. That is why I talked about the relevance of letting the new concept to change a preexisting context, tainted of specific connotations.

That is why I think that once you get to try my game, you will get caught into its "mechanics" that won't have this issue again. Because your context would be different now, which -thinking about it- would'n be such a bad thing.

HAVING SAID THAT, let me repeat once more that the name of our action puzzle game is ComboLine, and its determined purely on its gameplay. Once you'll try it, you will understand

Finally I have to thank you all for pointing out this delicate issue in the memory of the whole world (including France ) and let me tell you that we are working on a new display of the name of our game, remarking the two words and sort of making "more visible" to prevent this kind of reaction. That of course I totally understand.

Good luck with the app

And about your last sentence, “Luck” is when different people dare to try out something new, and open themselves to experiencing something different even when they least expect to have fun. Which means that if you Reefbone download my ComboLine, I would consider myself lucky

 

[Giselle79]

Hi everyone
I have news maybe quite pleasant to hear. Considering that more than one of you had issues reading "ComboLine" we fixed the situation:

BUT since is necessary to make an update to go public with it, we used that opportunity to add new features to our game

We created a new gameplay mode, other than the Adrenalin/Relaxing one. We called it "Training". The Training mode let the user to set the speed of the game and choose the level to start with. Either combination (Speed and starting color) would have a record (the total and the daily one)

The Training Mode give the user the possibility to:

1. REHEARSE AND IMPROVE THEIR GAMEPLAY: For new users or those that haven't achieved a score as high as they would like.

This can be done by choosing the "slow" speed (which gives the players double as much time to play) so they can train themselves to "look" in different ways in order to be able to find the color matches every single time and never lose the Combo.

2. LEARN HOW TO BECOME EVEN BETTER AND FASTER: For those players that are good but arrived to a point in which can no longer break their own records.

This can be done by choosing the "normal" speed but starting from the level in which they find problems to go further. In this case they will have the opportunity to concentrate themselves and be fresh to respond better and be train to go beyond their usual highest score.

But not only that... We also thought about

3. PEOPLE WHOSE TIME DISPONIBILITY DEMAND A QUICK GAME: For those users that are waiting the bus, or those that want to play between classes, or right after lunch break at work and many cases that demands a short game, instead of starting to play in the Adrenalin Relaxing mode and having to pause it, ('cause if the player is good enough it can go forever)
For these cases we create the "1 minute" speed choice. In which the player can either start for the regular first level, or maybe if he wants to challenge himself he can choose a harder and more advanced level.

In the Training Menu picture you guys can see two "empty" spaces, that is because every new color will be unlocked once the user get to the proper level in the Adrenalin/Relaxing mode. So it won't spoil the surprise

As always any comment, doubt or anything just write.
Thanks in advance,

 

[1458279]

Ok, just downloaded to give it a try. Got the Comboline Lite and open the app. It comes to a main screen giving me option:Adrenalin Relaxin, Hi-Score, Options.

No matter what I click on, it just makes the clicking noise, the text re-draws and then nothing.

So basically it doesn't work.

Note: I have no wifi, iPT G4 32. Does this require internet connection after it's loaded?

Ok, never mind, it's a slide-to-play. I was expecting a tap-to-play.

Pretty cool game actually, was a bit surprised! I like the graphics, nice and smooth, cool transition after moving the blocks.
Did you use any game engines or did you hand code all the game logic in ObjC?
How long did this take you guys to write?
Was the game logic based on another game or did you come up with an entirely new game?

 

[Brereton55]

I would like to review this game for my college newspaper. Let me know if you can provide me a review code!


(http://www.bandersnatch.ca)

 

[Giselle79]

Ok, just downloaded to give it a try. Got the Comboline Lite and open the app. It comes to a main screen giving me option:Adrenalin Relaxin, Hi-Score, Options.

No matter what I click on, it just makes the clicking noise, the text re-draws and then nothing.

So basically it doesn't work.

Note: I have no wifi, iPT G4 32. Does this require internet connection after it's loaded?

Ok, never mind, it's a slide-to-play. I was expecting a tap-to-play.

Pretty cool game actually, was a bit surprised! I like the graphics, nice and smooth, cool transition after moving the blocks.
Did you use any game engines or did you hand code all the game logic in ObjC?
How long did this take you guys to write?
Was the game logic based on another game or did you come up with an entirely new game?

Hey KJ (if I can call you like that )

Gotta admit that YOUR FOUR FIRST LINES REALLY WORRIED ME for a bit . But yes, ComboLine it's a slide-to-play. We went for the slide even in the Main Menu because we thought would be helpful for the user to "learn" the very basis of ComboLine's gameplay just from the beginning. We also try to give it a sort of similar look of the rectangle that appears whenever you want to unlock your iPhone "Slide to unlock" (when turning it on, or simply when you want to use it again after a while)

Having said that, thank you very much for your comments and appreciations and of course for downloading ComboLine to check it. =)

Let's answer your questions now:

1.We didn't use any game engine, everything was "hand-made" so to speak.
2.It's hard to quantify the time, I can say one year but it's not completely true since we make lot of pauses in between (some of them quite long) and all the time was something to do in the "spare time", at the beginning nobody thought about earning nothing, so basically we were not in a hurry.
3.Well about other references for the game logic, I can tell you that Christian (the game designer) had fun playing "Zookeeper" (Nintendo DS) and that's it, he doesn't even recall to think about that when creating ComboLine.

And regarding the graphics, it's intentionally simple, being its main objective not to disturb or annoy the user, not even after a long game... as I told before, if the player is REALLY GOOD ComboLine becames a never ending game.

I would like to review this game for my college newspaper. Let me know if you can provide me a review code!


(http://www.bandersnatch.ca)

Hi Brereton55

I checked the link you sent me
I found really kind your offer, but we cannot give you the review-code for many reasons, being the most important that we are currently working on the updated version with the Training Mode, that hasn't been published yet. But I can suggest you to download the Lite version, testing the game will surely bring some questions, and comments, we are more than open to answer every question, if what matters is to know the game basics and the “backstage” of its development.
Please do keep me posted!

 

[Brereton55]

Hi Brereton55

I checked the link you sent me
I found really kind your offer, but we cannot give you the review-code for many reasons, being the most important that we are currently working on the updated version with the Training Mode, that hasn't been published yet. But I can suggest you to download the Lite version, testing the game will surely bring some questions, and comments, we are more than open to answer every question, if what matters is to know the game basics and the “backstage” of its development.
Please do keep me posted!

Will do!

 

[Giselle79]

We are currently working on the latest update for Comboline, in the mean time the Comboline FULL VERSION IS ON SALE! Get it for $0.99 just for this weekend!


App Store link

 

[Giselle79]

The ComboLine New Release it's ready to be download!
Now way faster and more challenging than ever
Try it now!
If you have not tested Comboline before take a chance with the Lite version and see what's all about!