SQNCR: My first mobile game

As an indie developer with no money, limited resources and limited skills, its a risky decision to leave uni and go “y’know what? I’m gunna make me some vidya gaems and make a million pounds” 

I’m so glad that’s exactly what I did.

Uni wasn’t working out (because they had no idea how to run an indie dev games course) so I said “fuck it, I’m not gaining anything from this, I’m bailing.”

It says a lot about a course when you have to teach yourself most of the stuff.

Anyway,

I sat at my desk, drew up a LOT of ideas and realised that they were all too complex for a single person to make. So I decided to make something as simple as possible, but still something people would want to play. I decided to make a mobile game. This game would have the most basic mechanic but still be addicting, similar to Flappy Bird. 

This game was going to be my Flappy Bird

Except without all the death threats.

Eventually I came up with SQNCR (pronounced as “sequencer”). There are 4 coloured buttons (or “sequences”) that have to be pressed in a certain order. Once this is done, the player gets a point. Press the wrong button, the game ends. What makes this difficult? Well mostly because it’s timed. The player has 30 seconds to complete as many of the sequences as possible, so they have to be quick. 

when playing, I found myself fucking up so many times it wasn’t even funny. Which is almost exactly what I wanted, I wanted to feel frustrated and compelled to keep playing to get a better score.

So I spent WAAAYY too long making this game, at least 2 months or something stupid. 

I played the final version and found that it was lacking something. I realised that theoretically, there is a maximum score you can get that is more or less impossible to surpass. And then I realised that I had missed an important element that is present in a lot of mobile games nowadays. They’re mostly endless runner types. They don’t really have an end. The game is more like a test of endurance.

So right now I’m in the process of changing the timer, so that instead of just counting down from 30, the player is given 5 seconds to complete a sequence, then the game becomes more of a marathon than a 100m sprint. 

If you want to play what I have now (which is basically a beta version) then go ahead, but remember:

IT’S REALLY SHITE

Have fun