You should check out Kamcord: http://kamcord.com. It allows your users to record and share a video of their gameplay. If you have any questions, just get in touch with me: matt@kamcord.com
It's more of a resume builder than anything else. The more downloads it gets, the better it'll sound to prospective employees and potential clients. If it did "take off", we'd then look at a way to monetize it - perhaps with an in app upgrade to a new game play type.
And thank you! I'm glad you enjoyed the blog post.
Right. I can understand wanting to get away from poker. What I meant was, I'm surprised your whole focus is on getting a job - as opposed to remaining self-employed. Surely you enjoyed setting your own schedule and not having a boss. It's certainly possible to keep those perks as a developer.
I suppose wife+baby+parents changes things. Anyway, good luck!
Actually I technically still am self employed. I'm doing contract work as a freelancer. Thankfully I haven't had any problem finding enough work to keep me busy. In any case, I do love the freedom of setting my own hours but the priority is providing stability for my family.
The game is enjoyable; thanks for making it. Would you please change to using system-mutable sound that doesn't play when the phone is set to vibrate? You're using the un-mutable sound that is supposed to be for alarms, video and things like that.
From the Human Interface Guidelines[1]:
Users switch their devices to silent when they want to [...]
- Avoid hearing sounds that are the byproducts of user actions, such as keyboard or other feedback sounds, incidental sounds, or app startup sounds
- Avoid hearing game sounds that are not essential to using the game, such as incidental sounds and soundtracks
Ah. Good tip. We'll look into it and try to provide a fix in the first upgrade. For now you can press the mute button in the upper left hand of the screen. Your sound preference will be saved in the user defaults so you should only ever have to mute the game once.
I think The dialog after finishing a game would be better as "title screen" and "play again" directly on the buttons, or "play again?" should be more prominent.
Another thought: a lot of puzzle games have a way to "chain", which mastering is the most addictive element.
Wihout that element, this game has a little of the problem that randomly tapping is no less effective than playing "properly"... Good puzzle games are really tough to make, given that they rely on a sweet spot between entertaining and frustrating. Good luck!
Randomly tapping won't get you very far actually. You get time bonuses for clearing more than 6 blocks at once. You really need to play patiently to keep the game going. Score bonuses are also a lot better when you clear a lot of blocks at once so again it pays to play strategically.
Thank you! You're probably right. My poker career is a bit of a bell curve with the center being of the curve being the year before the UIGEA.
That's a good link but it leaves out a lot of information, like how many tournaments I entered but didn't cash in as well as online earnings. And it doesn't include the tournaments in the Bahamas where I had a great run.
I really enjoy this game. I love a new take on the classic block game. Lumines is a personal favorite.
There is no music in this game and that would be fine if you could listen to iTunes or Spotify while playing it but that currently doesn't seem to work. Any plans on adding this feature? The gameplay does not need to "sync" to the music in any way, it's just that I would love to be able to listen to music in the background.
Once again, very well done. It's a visually appealing, fun game. I also like the animation on the info page.
Thank you, and yeah, I think music of some sort will be added in the future. I don't know if we'll add in our own tracks, allow you to select from your own library, or both. But we will almost certainly add music sometime in the near future.
I think it's much harder to make music that will appeal to everyone that plays the game. If you get the music wrong it can be a detriment instead of a positive so that's why I suggest allowing players to use iTunes/Spotify.
If you do want to have your own music I have a good friend who specializes in audio for interactive media. He mostly works on games and would probably be very interested in this project. My email is in my profile if you'd like to discuss this more.
If you can look at the left-most column, you'll see that the game ended because that column overflowed; however, no 3-block of the same colour was available in that column and its neighbour (and so forth), so eventually I had no possibility of being able to reduce that column and save the game. I'd consider that a level-generation problem. What do you think?
Some tweaking could definitely be done, especially on unlimited. That being said, there shouldn't always be a 3-block combo to clear. If there were, the game would be too easy and would likely go on forever. Instead, the challenge is to be patient and think ahead. Ex. If I clear these 3 blocks now, how will it line up the others? Will it create more clearable blocks or less?
But even when you think ahead and play as strategic as possible, I think the unlimited mode is probably a bit too hard right now.
I didn't read the story at first (tl;dr) I just scrolled down to the bottom to see what the game looked like. Blocks game, so I rushed to try it out.
Two hours later, and officially being hooked on Trifecta, I had to come back to at least upvote. Glad I read the story this time. Thank you for sharing and thanks for the game!
You might want to do something to help users find you in the App Store more easily. I searched for "Trifecta" and was shown the game Trifecta. You were the sixth result, behind betting and other games. Just FYI!
In retrospect, we probably should have changed our name to something else entirely. I wonder how many people have accidentally downloaded the wrong game already.
Going forward, we have two choices: we can still change the game's name or we can do a hard marketing push to get our game to be the first result for Trifecta. So far the latter has been our game plan. When Trifecta Blocks Challenge first launched, it was 14/14 for the term Trifecta. It's now 6/14 so it's definitely on the rise.
37 comments
[ 14.5 ms ] story [ 994 ms ] threadhttp://www.randklabs.com/trifecta/
Thanks!
Good story by the way, way to push yourself to accomplish things.
And thank you! I'm glad you enjoyed the blog post.
I suppose wife+baby+parents changes things. Anyway, good luck!
From the Human Interface Guidelines[1]:
Users switch their devices to silent when they want to [...]
- Avoid hearing sounds that are the byproducts of user actions, such as keyboard or other feedback sounds, incidental sounds, or app startup sounds
- Avoid hearing game sounds that are not essential to using the game, such as incidental sounds and soundtracks
[1] http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/userexp... ("Sounds")
I think The dialog after finishing a game would be better as "title screen" and "play again" directly on the buttons, or "play again?" should be more prominent.
Another thought: a lot of puzzle games have a way to "chain", which mastering is the most addictive element.
Wihout that element, this game has a little of the problem that randomly tapping is no less effective than playing "properly"... Good puzzle games are really tough to make, given that they rely on a sweet spot between entertaining and frustrating. Good luck!
Randomly tapping won't get you very far actually. You get time bonuses for clearing more than 6 blocks at once. You really need to play patiently to keep the game going. Score bonuses are also a lot better when you clear a lot of blocks at once so again it pays to play strategically.
What's the pixel font? One of the '04b' series?
I found your earnings online which I found interesting. I'm thinking your poker career might resemble that of many other professional poker players: http://www.pokerpages.com/player-profile/kris-fields.htm
But data that isn't including the cost of buy ins to events.
That's a good link but it leaves out a lot of information, like how many tournaments I entered but didn't cash in as well as online earnings. And it doesn't include the tournaments in the Bahamas where I had a great run.
There is no music in this game and that would be fine if you could listen to iTunes or Spotify while playing it but that currently doesn't seem to work. Any plans on adding this feature? The gameplay does not need to "sync" to the music in any way, it's just that I would love to be able to listen to music in the background.
Once again, very well done. It's a visually appealing, fun game. I also like the animation on the info page.
If you do want to have your own music I have a good friend who specializes in audio for interactive media. He mostly works on games and would probably be very interested in this project. My email is in my profile if you'd like to discuss this more.
If you can look at the left-most column, you'll see that the game ended because that column overflowed; however, no 3-block of the same colour was available in that column and its neighbour (and so forth), so eventually I had no possibility of being able to reduce that column and save the game. I'd consider that a level-generation problem. What do you think?
But even when you think ahead and play as strategic as possible, I think the unlimited mode is probably a bit too hard right now.
How do you choose which colour block to insert next? Uniformly random?
Two hours later, and officially being hooked on Trifecta, I had to come back to at least upvote. Glad I read the story this time. Thank you for sharing and thanks for the game!
Going forward, we have two choices: we can still change the game's name or we can do a hard marketing push to get our game to be the first result for Trifecta. So far the latter has been our game plan. When Trifecta Blocks Challenge first launched, it was 14/14 for the term Trifecta. It's now 6/14 so it's definitely on the rise.