Super Meebo's Epic 2D Platform Adventure Will Re-Write App Store History

Either there's something I'm not seeing, or you just ran into a hardass reviewer. I see games with absolutely pathetic graphics (worse than your screenshots) show up on the AppStore all the time.

 

Who are they to judge a game's art style and UI? I'd like to see them try to make a game and go through their own review process.

Well, I guess they are the curators of the store, after all, but it's such a shame they apply these standards so inconsistently.

As long as it's not against the rules, it should be given a fair shake and let the game rise or fall based on its merits.

Did you develop this game using Xcode, or was it some sort of cross-platform app generator?

 

This actually makes me very angry! So, Apple approves apps that scam people, and show something like one image, but they don't approve your app?! WTF! It seems like you actually put a lot of work into your game, and you were very creative with all your different level designs. Why doesn't apple let the people who are actually buying the game decide if it's good or not. How do they know that you wern't intending a certain graphic style. I feel very sorry for you... it seems like you put a lot into this game. You shouldn't just give up though, did Apple tell you in what way they want you to improve the graphics?

 

I am sorry that you were rejected
But don't just give up on your game!
Improve it's graphics, maybe change the art style, hire a graphic designer. Just try your best to make the graphics above and beyond apples standards.
And if apple just doesn't let you on the app store. Then submit it to the google play store. They don't have these restrictions.
Good luck.

 

Ask them more about the rejection. They have a resolution center in the app info screen for exactly this reason.

I would guess this is going to be about UI items or even the icons. They can be funny about those things.

Matthew

 

Thanks for the policy warning, but I wouldn't give up on this if I were you. I'm sure it won't take much to make the UI (score text, etc) look a bit better, certainly faster than doing a whole new game. Just make the text look nicer, align arrows and text a bit better and resubmit (I would also suggest removing the Xs after the coins and keys). It doesn't help to get annoyed and give up, just jump through the next hoop ...

 

I wouldn't give up. Spend a week or two, or three neating up the U.I. and resubmit.

 

Maybe Apple just wants higher-resolution graphics.
Because of the retina-screens in new Apple iOS-devices, Apple upped the minimal sizes for iBooks-covers a couple of weeks ago ("Cover images should now be 1400 pixels wide," etc). Could it be that they did something similar for apps, and your graphics are just smaller than the required size?

 

I think fundamentally the art isn't too bad, but you are making two really big errors with them that completely ruin the visuals:

1. Textures don't tile properly (you can see the seems in the background and foreground terrain and it looks terrible)
2. Nothing is rendered 1:1 (or sampled down). Not a single thing, OSD, fonts, coins, characters all look like they've been drawn in a random tiny resolution and scaled up. You need to author the art at or well above the res you want to render in.

Apple are doing you a favour by failing it for these reasons believe me. Don't be so offended by it, or by what I'm saying here, they just want to help you to make a more appealing and polished game. That way, everybody wins.

Ideally you should have Retina graphics too, so if your character is 40x50 on screen author it at 80x100 (at least) and scale it down to these two resolutions in the art package. At runtime use the hires ones on a Retina device and the regular ones on normal devices, all rendered 1:1. It will all look super crisp, render faster because it doesn't need to upscale, and Apple will pass it no problem.

 

Holycrap. 30,000 dollars? ATLEAST?
Do you realize apple takes 30% of all sales. Assuming you'd sell this game for 99c , you'd make approx 69c per sale. So you'd have to sell about 50,000 copies to make 30k
50,000 is a huge amount of copies to sell for this type of game.
There are already thousands of basic paltformers just like this one, and hundreds that are more polished by big companies.
You have to figure out a way to get consumers to buy YOUR game for 99c instead of buy a fully polished 3d mmorpg from gameloft on sale for 99c.
Even at your lowest price expectation, 2,000 ..it's still quite a effort.
Most games sell 3-4 copies a week. And a small bump at the beginning of the release to maybe 20 or 30 copies the first week (due to it showing up in recent lists - which apple has one removed from idevices so I'm not sure if recents even help with sales anymore, unless it shows up on featured, which is doubtful without throwing money at apple)
Not trying to be an ass, but there are many other games id buy before I'd buy this one.
It basically looks like a simple Mario clone, there are SO many of that type already in the AppStore.
You need to give that game a twist, something the other games DONT have, which will make people choose to buy it instead of buying another game.
And of course, polish is very important, if you want to appeal to the casual crowd..which you should do, as its the quickest way to sell games.

The basic game structure seems solid, just like others said, along with apple - graphics, and maybe a small twist.
I used to love the casino while playing pokemon, I'd buy a game in an instant if it had something cool like that. Think outside the box.something that could be the main selling point of the game.

 

Your game didn't get rejected for "poor graphics", but the pixelation. With the retina devices, they don't want you to scale up the images because that will cause pixelation and a lot of quality is lost.

It looks like your background images are pixelated and scaled to fit the screen. Theres even that new rule of App Store icons needing to be 1024x1024 to accommodate the New iPad, so you can't scale that up either. Start with a larger image and scale that down or use vector graphics. The graphics don't have to be "good", but they can't make it look like something is wrong with their phone because of pixelation.

The UI thing is kind of up in the air, I don't know how the rest of your game looks, all the menus, etc,. Rule of thumb though is try to make it intuitive and easy to understand.

I saw your gameplay and thought it's more than a game then most "games" on the app store. People will play it if it has depth, but unless its free don't count on a lot of people downloading it.

 

Apple has no rhyme nor reason for what they do. Suggest you simply re-submit.

 

It sounds a little bit like you have no belief in the game at all to give up on it so easily so near completion. If that assumption is wrong, I seriously recommend spending the few late nights or weeks needed to redo the graphics yourself. Why are you in such a rush, if it takes another two months to polish it up then so what? You don't even need to pay an artist up front, you could try and find an artist that is willing to revenue share.

You say you have no time for it but you do have time to knock up a new casual game? It sounds like you are only after the quick buck -- those days are gone on the App Store I'm afraid. You have to make an incredibly polished game to make anywhere decent money now (AND work out how to make people know about it).

Looking at the video it looks to have a decent platform mechanic in place, but it lacks that extra polish players demand, like particle effects or even basic sprite tweening (eg your coins just disappear when collected - make them spin up and fade away with a sparkle effect and a satisfying sound effect. You'd be amazed how much this sort of thing adds to people's enjoyment for very little coding effort). Good luck, but stick at it!

 

You appear to have completely ignored my idea about getting an artist to work for a share of the revenue. This probably really is the best way to go about this right now in your case, even if you do also manage to do some simple quick casual games that actually earn a decent amount.

I'm trying to help but by not listening and being overly defensive I feel like you don't really want any help or constructive criticism, just sympathy. You forget that many of us here are also in the exact same boat - you don't have to convince one single dev here how much effort it takes to actually make a complete game or how unfair it is that some seem to have it easy (good for them!). Anyway, I wish you all the best.