What is Reddit's opinion of Horde Rush?

From 3.5 billion Reddit comments

Hello, /r/Unity3D, My game Horde Rush, is a casual hack 'n' slash that I released on Android and iOS:

• App Store: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/horde-rush/id1059851974?ls=1&mt=8
• Play Store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.UTW.GameHR&hl=en

Ward off an endless horde of monsters by taking down as many as you can with just a sword, a bow and arrow, and a shield. You can also use special attacks after you charge them up with monster take downs.

I wanted to try and get some feedback on what people think about my game. Thanks!

Hello, /r/indiegames,

I'm the developer of Horde Rush, and I probably should have given some context to the game. I just released the game on the Google Play Store about a week ago, and if there's anyone in this subreddit that would like to give the game a try, I would appreciate any feedback that you may have.

The link to the Play Store is here: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.UTW.GameHR

Thanks for any sort of feedback you have for this game!

Oh, and the game is currently in "Halloween" event mode, so there are some special masks available until this Saturday.

Thanks again!

Thanks for the advice. Not sure if you missed it, but my custom character system is already in production with my game Horde Rush. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.UTW.GameHR

It provides a basic character system that interested users may be able to leverage as a starting point for their own system, or again, if the demand is high enough, I'll add more features to it.

Everything you see in my game Horde Rush uses the system, from the Character Select menu, and loaded into the actual game session. The question I'm really asking is if there's a demand for it enough for me to generalize what I have to make available to everyone.

Regarding the Blender layers, each layer contains an accessory/costume that is weighted to a rig generated by Rigify on the rig layer, so that each layer is fully animated. I approached the solution this way because Blender's file Link functionality is not as reliable as I wanted it to be for a production environment. This way, you can just enable the rig layer, and whatever accessory/costume layer you are working on at a time.

EDIT:

Ah, also.. The layers in Blender are only for design time. In run-time, no layers are loaded. Instead, it uses Unity's Resources directory to load a character catalog "manifest", and loads the models appropriately, such that only one model/accessory(ies)/costume combination is loaded in the game at a time. I want to destroy the misconception that you may have that all layers are loaded in run-time, and that inactive costumes are simply disabled. This is not the case.

I might as well publish an unofficial post-mortem for my game Horde Rush (Android/iOS).

Youtube, Google Play, www.horderush.com

I spent about 4.5 months of full-time dev on Horde Rush. That's about 600-720 hours. Temple Run and Crossy Road were huge at the time, and I created Horde Rush as my own endless "runner" experiment. I'd say I had intermediate experience with Unity by then, and was also an experienced professional software developer by that time as well. One thing I hadn't had the opportunity to do in a long time was practice my art skills. I wanted to practice my Blender modeling skills, and this was the first time I rigorously dealt with Blender's rigging and animation. Texturing and mapping was pretty straightforward for me, and Blender's texture painting helped significantly.

The game is a simple tap-and-slash to rack up as many takedowns as you can, while passing your time on the bus, in line, or on the can. I wanted to add more weapons with different control variations, but it never panned out.

The idea is that a player can choose a character, like in Crossy Road, and play the game to collect more coins, to buy more cosmetic accessories for your characters, and unlock different characters, and the feedback loop continues.

Developing the core game mechanics was actually only a small fraction (~15%) of development. A majority of development was getting it to something of production quality, ancillary systems like custom characters and monsters and UI, integrating Play store services, insterstitial ads, and social media sharing. It felt odd that developing a "game" meant spending far more time developing and integrating systems around the core game, rather than implementing the core game itself.

The financial model was similar to Crossy Road, when interstitial ads were starting to catch on.

I finished dev in October of 2015. Today, it only has about 100+ downloads.

Even though it was a financial failure, I still consider it a project success. It was an experiment in catching lightning in a bottle, after all.

The gameplay is still pretty awkward, considering you have to move your hand over all 360 degress around the character, which obstructs the player's vision of the entire play field. The enemies are not varied enough, so it doesn't provide enough variety to keep players engaged. The Shield mechanic is still weak, even after my many attempts to get it to become a valuable, balanced item to the sword and bow.

This was definitely an MVP (minimum viable product), because I had planned to make more characters, accessories, and monsters with different mechanics for you to dodge and attack, but since there was literally no adoption of the game, I abandoned it.

This was also yet another victim of no marketing. I bet if I marketed it a bit better, I would at least be in the thousands of downloads. But I wasn't willing to invest in marketing, so it remains buried in the store.

I keep on putting off a full-blown post-mortem writeup. If this gains any traction, maybe I'll re-prioritize it.

I've been a C++ programmer at a large studio for about 10 years, and during my off time, I used to play with libgdx. Like you, I didn't like Unity's graphical way of gamedev. Several unfinished libgdx projects (and more unfinished projects from another indie engine) later, I decided to give Unity a try. The tutorials are all aimed for graphical development, and I despised a lot of it. But I wanted to know more. I wanted to know if I could create a game in Unity the traditional way. And several weeks/months later, you find out that yes, for the most part (just drop in an empty gameobject in the scene, and script everything else), you can develop strictly in C# script, and save yourself hours or even months of dev time for a lot of systems that are already implemented for you. The funny thing is, a lot of left-brained programming naysayers are turned off by the graphical development not realizing that they certainly can make a game without the GUI. But once they do realize it, they find that while you can implement everything in code, it doesn't mean it's the most efficient or time effective, development-wise. Essentially, Unity can give you a huge boost in the dev cycle, so that you can focus on the actual game development.

And I guess I can also give full disclosure, while I have programmed in C++, C#, and Action script professionally in the last 10 years and graduated with a BS in CmpE, I was all artist up to mid college, so I tend to think I have a balance of both ways of thinking, if this makes a difference for you.

But now, I can say I have actually finished 3 games in Unity, https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.UTW.GameHR (4 month dev cycle, full time) https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.UTW.GameNC&hl=en (2 month dev cycle, full time) https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.UTW.TicTacToe&hl=en (1-2 week dev cycle, full time)

and I doubt I could have done that in that time with any other engine available now. That said though, I did use a few assets from the Unity store, mainly sound effects and Android/iOS native support plugins, but again, that's bought time right there.

Hello, /r/Unity3D,

I'm trying to gauge interest in a Character Customization Asset that I was planning to implement. For convenience, the contents of the forum post is below. If you are interested, please consider voting on that forum post. Thanks!

Hello, Unity Community,

I am the developer of Horde Rush, a game that I released last month on Android. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.UTW.GameHR

As I was developing the game, I built a system to support custom characters, which allows swapping of accessory attachments, as well as full-body skinned mesh costumes. The custom character can then be loaded into a game with all of its animations run with the attached accessories and skinned costumes.

Anyway, I am going to refactor this code so that it is more generically usable, and I was planning to release it on the Unity Asset store. I’m asking the community if there is any interest for this sort of asset.

If needed, I’m willing to answer more questions before you consider responding with a vote. I look forward to everyone’s (anyone’s?) response! Thank you!

Here are more details about the system, and what I would provide:

• I’m using Blender, so the source files would be in .blend, but the export/import files would be .FBX files, so it’s probable that other DCCs will work, but I will not be able to support them.
• I may consider releasing the Python scripts for Blender that export the FBX files for Unity
• The system uses the Unity asset RigifyToUnity (free) which would be required for the pipeline.
• The system optionally uses an AssetPostProcessor script for reading in AnimationEvents from the FBX such as for footstep sounds, and other timed animation triggers.
• The system uses Blender layers for authoring accessories and costumes.
• Planned support for any number of rigs/animations
• Planned support for any number of characters
• Accessories and Costumes are currently limited to the character it is assigned to (i.e. characters cannot share accessories/costumes.) This was intentional since I expected characters to have different body types, but I am willing to change this if there is a demand for it.
• Supports modulated color tinting of hair/helmet, costume, and skin tone.
• I would provide all C# scripts for the system.
• I would provide full documentation for how to use all parts of the system.
• I do not plan on making this a drag-and-drop solution. I would expect some scripting to be involved in hookup to your own system. However, I am not averse to making it as much of a drag-and-drop solution as possible, if I find the system is suitable for it during my refactoring.
• I am not planning to provide a production-ready UI to drive the controls, as demonstrated in my game Horde Rush. Instead, it would contain placeholder UI, most likely using uGUI.
• I initially planned on just releasing this as a Tutorial, with loose scripts and some instructions, but if the demand is high enough, I would spend time to make it more production ready, but this would also mean I would be more likely to charge for it.

Thank you for any feedback! Please vote if you are interested (or not)!