Iron Cube reborn
After a 9-month break from my old pet project (I joined a new company), I have finally launched it properly on Google Play. I spent 2 weeks of my Christmas staycation getting it ready for release. It was at least something to take my mind off what is going on around us. My 12-year-old son made the music for the trailer and the game in GarageBand, and my 8-year-old daughter was head of QA.
The game is here: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.yak32_games.iron_cube. It has a staggering zero downloads so far, since it launched today and I have no idea how to promote it.
It’s written in C++ on my old custom game engine and uses:
- greedy voxel meshing
- a dynamic voxel world built from 32x32x32 clusters
- simple AI with state machines
- Minecraft-style precalculated ambient lighting
- dynamic water that fills connected areas (still glitchy)
- real physics with Bullet
- pathfinding with Recast
All of this runs on 7-year-old phones.
That part was relatively easy. Now comes the most terrifying part: promoting the game on Google Play somehow.
Things are very different from 2014, when I launched my first game and it somehow reached 40 thousand downloads organically, without any marketing.