The most concise way of describing Ellipsis is that it's psychedelically beautiful. The control scheme/responsiveness is spot on and the game as a whole is just extremely polished (this kind of quality is what you should strive for).
How old are you? What's your professional and educational background?
I'm 35. I did a BSc in software engineering as a Bachelor's and a Master's in Games Programming (basically to help me break into the Games Industry...it worked :)). I've worked for Criterion Games (EA) on the Burnout Series, then at Evolution Studios (Sony) on Motorstorm and later at Havok on their physics and destruction team. I developed a strong core in physics and animation programming.
I should mention that we are a two-man team. My colleague Stefan Hell is a young graduate from the Technical University of Munich and is a talented programmer in his own right.
What technologies/frameworks did you use to build Ellipsis?
We used Unity, which was the simplest engine to quickly prototype with. We've had to enhance our solution with a lot of custom native plugins and shader code to achieve the visual performance required.
How long did it take to build?
We built it over two years, the first year being very part-time and roughly full-time the last 11 months. Much longer than you would want for a mobile game.
How big is the code base?
Roughly 40k lines of code, not including custom native plugins.
How much lifetime revenue (gross) has the game generated on iOS?
Roughly €20k so far.
How much lifetime revenue (gross) has the game generated on Android (if there is one)?
Roughly €2k so far.
During the sale and development of Ellipsis, what was one of your happiest moments?
Basically every time someone falls in love with the game and shares their experiences with us. It's a short, fleeting yet incredible burst of pleasure. Specifically:
- During public play tests when players can't seem to let go of the tablet.
- When Ron Carmel expressed his surprised delight at playing the Game. Ron is a huge inspiration and one of the reasons I got into games.
- When a 12-year old Brit started making fan videos of the game.
Your saddest moments?
Hmmm, seeing all the piracy? You eventually get over it and accept that you would never have those sales anyways, but it's a bit disheartening to what extent people will go to pirate games from indie developers.
What tips do you have for those that are just starting with programming and game development?
Don't focus on making a hit indie game or becoming successful. Focus on making games and releasing them and learning from your experiences and iterating. Try to create as many ideas as you can as quickly as you can. Release early and often. Don't be afraid of throwing away your work and starting again. I think this is the single most important way to become proficient in programming and game development. Do, Test, Analyze, Repeat.
We may have a couple of project managers reading this interview. Any tips for them with regards to managing a project/interacting with developers?
There entire books written on this subject that do it better justice, but I would boil it down to:
- Empower your developers to make decisions and feel ownership of the product.
- Focus on eliminating obstacles that prevent your developers from making progress.
- Include them in the planning and estimation of tasks.
- Double whatever time estimate your developers give you.
Also, we may have a couple of ad men reading this interview. Any tips for them with regards to marketing a game?
Focus on what makes your game unique, what makes it stand out from the rest. Try to sell your unique story and why players should pay attention to your game as opposed to the thousands of other great games that come out all the time.
You went for a premium game as opposed to a game that was free with IAP. Why?
Probably this was a mistake. Setting up IAP purchases required more work (doing a validation server) and we couldn't quite figure out how to present an IAP purchase without relying on text.
I also wanted to avoid the inevitable lower average ratings we would receive from having a 'free' version.
However, this is possibly just hubris and trying to post-hoc justify a decision. Doing a Free + IAP is probably the more sensible solution. And even now we are putting the final touches on a free demo version which redirects you to the full game once you've finished it. I call it "indie IAP".
Given hindsight is 20/20, would you have done anything differently with regards to building and selling Ellipsis?
Honestly, it's hard to say. I think I would have considered working with a publisher to maximize our marketing potential. We managed to get featured on our own both on iOS and Android so it is possible to achieve this as a small indie as long as you have a good game and you are persistent. But I think a good mobile publisher would have been able to multiply the amount of high profile reviews we could have gotten.
Potentially going ad-based may have been a better idea from the start but I still don't have enough data to fully justify it.
More than anything else, I would have tried to release Ellipsis earlier. Still I'm not sure how we could have done it faster and kept it to a high standard.