Today I sit down with Academy Member Chris Trudeau of Boston Trudeau Studios, who landed himself a Voodoo publishing deal with his latest game title Twenty48 Solitaire, so huge congrats to Chris, super excited at such an awesome success story.   Download: Twenty48 Solitaire   In our conversation, we discuss how Chris made the leap from being a professional finish carpenter, dabbling with selling print on demand t-shirts from his 2 Etsy shops as a side hustle, to stumbling across Buildbox...

After our Academy Anniversary month of July, we took some time for a lot of soul searching about what is next on the agenda for us as a Indie Game Studio and the company in general. The fact is, it has been way too many months since the production of our last game, and this has long been an itch that badly needs scratching! We love doing the podcast and it’s been a lot of fun, but it has surprised us at just how long a process it is.   We’ve come to the difficult decision to take a short...

Hyper Casual games are dominating the App Store Top Charts. In early in 2017, we saw the rise of Hyper-Casual games going main stream with publishers like Voodoo.io leading the way with their smash hit paper.io. These usually lightweight games, consisting of nothing much more than an addictive core loop on launch, are typically a few steps ahead of a MVP ( minimal viable product ) or prototype. Pushed heavily via social media campaigns ( Snapchat / Instagram / Facebook ) publishers can...

To finish up our devlog style episodes for this month, we look ahead to what we’ll be working on for the 2nd half of 2018. With the imminent release of Buildbox 3 ( Beta ) in the coming weeks, we're super pumped to get back into our favourite game creation software and take a look at the next generation of Buildbox. Whilst of course it’s very exciting to have new tools to play with and finally get to play around in 3D, it’s also worth remembering that the Arcade Style Hyper Casual games...

More of a general chit chat this week as we’re on holiday, or at least we were supposed to be.   Following an impromptu decision to take some time out as I was approaching burnout, it soon became apparent that our schedule was completely shot and there was no podcast ready, oops.   We made a commitment to show up each and every week, and not wanting to break our run so far, we came in, sat down and recorded.   As a small business owner, there’s never enough time in the day and there’s...

As July marks the one year Anniversary of our Game Dev Training Academy, we decided it would be nice to sit down and have a chat about our journey so far, and revisit the reasons behind why we decided to set up the Rising High Academy.   Website: RisingHighAcademy.com   We truly do appreciate you taking time out of your day to listen and hope you got some value. If you enjoyed today’s show, it would go such along way if you hit that Subscribe button. We’d also be forever grateful if...

For all you seasoned game developers out there, when September time rolls around and Apple releases new devices and iOS versions, more often than not we need to update something to ensure our old games still work correctly.   Whilst this can be a pain the you know what, it can actually be turned into a positive, and a time to revisit our old games, breathe some life back into them and bring them up to date. Visit us for the Full Show Notes & Links to all the Resources: Website:...

Working under constraints, especially in a creative field, can be a challenging but highly effective way to build up your inventiveness. Often when starting out a project, setting some kind of constraint can force you into action and get your brain thinking in a different way.   For instance, it’s time to start a new game project. “Let’s now build a game.”   You’re at your workspace.. Cool… erm… yeah… so… yeah… erm…   Now, let’s imagine you put some constraints on the project:   ...

We had an interesting question come in this week from Podcast listener Stuart, so we decided to have a chat about just how essential having a website and press kit is for your games.   Stuart says:   “I’m half way through building my game and I’m starting to have a think about marketing. Do I need a website and press kit for my game and is it something worth doing anyway?”   Great question! We answer this and more... Visit us for the Full Show Notes & Links to all the Resources: ...

Browsing around on the App Store has been part of our daily routine pretty much ever since we first started building our games. The App Store is the playground we play in, and thus it’s super important to keep a keen eye on the market. With the Store refreshing each Thursday, it’s always a bit of a buzz to have a good look around at just who the movers and shakers are, and what’s working right now. Visit us for the Full Show Notes & Links to all the Resources: Website:...

This week we discuss our Top 5 hacks to ensure you stay motivated during your game development cycle. Keeping energised and focussed is critical to meeting those deadlines, however loose they may actually be. We all struggle with motivation from time to time, it's inevitable, however you can definitely influence your own motivation if you can actually figure out what you want, set and commit to your goals and try and push through those difficult phases.   Visit us for the Full Show Notes...

Defining success for any mobile game can come in many forms. You may be just starting out in the business, and, by the very fact that you have built a game and released it on the App Store, can be in of itself defined as a great success.   Visit us for the Full Show Notes & Links to all the Resources: Website: RisingHighAcademy.com   We truly do appreciate you taking time out of your day to listen and hope you got some value. If you enjoyed today’s show, it would go such along way...

As game developers, shipping your finished game, whether you’re a hobbyist or part of a professional studio team, the goal you should always be heading for is to finish. We all know that at times, life just gets in the way, but there are a certain number of pitfalls you can fall into very easily, and often unknowingly, and this can  hinder you releasing your game and often stop dead your project dead in its tracks.   Visit us for the Full Show Notes & Links to all the Resources: ...

So what exactly is game polish? It’s all in the details, details, details. It’s all about mastering the art of fine tuning and learning to be slightly obsessive. Mix this with a sprinkle of OCD thrown in for good measure and you’re on your way to becoming a polishing Jedi. The truth is, polishing your game could in theory go on forever, and the urge to tweak details over and over can seriously impact on you actually releasing your game. So, as game designers / game developers, just when do...

So you’ve built your game, spent countless hours crafting each and every pixel, polished it to the end degree and now you’re ready to launch it to the world! But, just how are you going to make money from your brand new mobile game? You should be thinking about monetising your mobile game from the moment you start to build, and this can have a big effect on how you actually end up constructing your projects. As game designers and builders, it would be absolutely fantastic to serve up our...

Your icon is arguably one of your most important assets when it comes to your App Store presence. It is usually the first opportunity to impress potential customers and therefore makes it critical to your overall branding.

Defining Fun is certainly and tricky one for sure. What is fun for me, could quite possibly not be particularly fun for you. So how do we define fun when it comes to our games?  Rather than thinking of the word "Fun" in the traditional sense, we should be thinking about our Games as being an experience, to which fun is an aspect.

Simply put, a Mood Board is a collection of images that you find inspirational, aspirational and aesthetically pleasing all collated into 1 central document that you can refer back to throughout your game development. Using Mood Boards are an essential part of Game Development and for us, have become the very first starting point when building our Mobile games and all parts of the Game Dev Process.

With just a few precious seconds to grab players attention, your screenshots need to pack a punch and convince them to hit that get button. As the old adage goes, " A picture is worth a thousand words" and for your App Store screenshots, this is most certainly true. Our Top 10 best practices for designing your killer visuals will guide you through all the do's and don'ts when it comes to creating App Store screenshots.

This week we discuss the plans and goals any Indie Game Developer should follow when making games for the mobile platforms. Be it the Apple App Store, GooglePlay or Amazon, our advice is always the same whether you're an absolute beginner or have been making games for a while, head for that Publishing Deal.

In today's show, we answered Podcast listener Brad's question on should we add a Game Trailer to our Appstore product page. With this in mind, we put together our Top 7 reasons for adding an App Preview on the Appstore and the 1 reason why you shouldn't. Generally speaking, adding a game trailer, or App Preview Video, to your Appstore Store pages is a positive move. Although screenshots allow you to showcase your games best moments, there's really no substitute for seeing the game in action...

In this episode, we compiled our Top 10 ways to add Surprise and Wonder moments into your games to create emotional reactions from your players. We all want our players to fall in love with our games, but what elements are you actually creating within your game to delight them? Are you making them smile? Are you making them jump out of their skin? Are you creating instances of "Wow?". Here's our Top 10 key elements you can think about implementing to really hook them in and secure your games...

In this special Spotlight episode, Kevin sits down with Buildbox CEO and Founder, Trey Smith. Trey began his game building journey back in 2011 with the launch of Kolo’s Journey where he met and hired now Buildbox CTO Nik Rudenko. This was the beginning of the hugely popular Game Building company that is now Buildbox, along with a wildly successful Mobile Gaming business which has now amassed well over 65 Million downloads. Securing multiple publishing deals with the Giant...

In this episode, we compiled our Top 16 mistakes that we see many new game developers make when first starting out. We break down each part we identified and discuss what to look out for and how avoid these common game development pitfalls when you’re learning how to build, design and structure your games.   Highlights, Quick Wins & Takeaways:   Cloning existing games way too closely Buying stock and mix and matching artwork / styles Making your game too big & too complicated...