Thank you for believing in this project! I can’t wait to see you all on the leaderboards!
Tappy Lander is now available on the App Store for free!
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Tag Archives: retro
Tappy Lander Dev Diary #7: Achievements and Collectibles
As the developer, I wanted to add something a little mysterious to flesh out the atmosphere of Tappy Lander and I have always enjoyed collecting things and striving for 100% completion in games.
As such, I have added collectables and achievements
Collectables
In the world of Tappy Lander you may find floppy disks floating around in space. These disks are numbered and contain data that can be read-if you know where to look. We don’t know who wrote these tidbits of information and they can be random. From time to time however, they can provide hints, tips and even insights into the Tappy Lander backstory.
This disk idea started as simple tips that would appear on the title screen to teach you how to play-but evolved into a full blown collectable. This means no in-your-face tutorials. I want to preserve the sense of discovery in this game and I think you will enjoy figuring it out on your own.
Collecting all the disks is one of the 14 achievements.
Achievements
There are 14 achievements in Tappy Lander. I don’t want to give them away, but I will say that some are easy and some are very difficult. It will take some practice to master the skills necessary to get them all. Skill and a little luck that is-you’ll definitely need the universe to throw you bone for some of them.
That’s the short and sweet story behind collectables and achievements. I’m writing this before the game is released and I don’t want to spoil the fun of discovering things on your own.
I’m not sure what the next entry will be. The game is coming very soon and I’m so excited to see you on the leaderboards.
Thanks for reading and be sure to like and follow Tappy Lander on Facebook and Twitter for daily updates.
Tappy Lander Dev Diary #6: Scoring, Risk & Reward
I love going for a high score! I first tried back in the arcade days and again when home consoles were in their infancy, but as they grew, the tech grew, and soon visual storytelling trumped scores and they nearly disappeared.
Then games grew even further. The market expanded, the internet came, and Microsoft tried something crazy with achievements and gamerscore, little indies threw out the rules out and started making games about everything, and arcade experiences made a comeback on our telephones of all places!
So scoring is back, thank goodness. Both Apple and Android platforms are great places to challenge your friends, again.
Scoring
Tappy Lander is all about scoring. A successful landing on a each pad nets you points (based on the precision of your landing) and, if you’re feeling dangerous, you can grab a data disk for 1000, pop a buggy for 1000 or rescue tomatoes for 1000, apples for 2000, bananas for 4000 and the ultra rare carrot for 8000!
Disks, buggies, fruit and veggies are rare and may not appear at all. If they do appear, they are in hard to reach areas or places where going for them may put you in danger, so don’t get too greedy!
Oh, who am I kiddin’? Get greedy! Get reeaal greedy! Beating your friends will not be easy because of the risk reward system.
Risk & Reward
If you successfully land your rocket you will be given two choices. You can either “Cash In” to cash in your points to level up and submit your high score to the game network or you can “Risk It” and go on another random run, adding to your current score but risking losing everything. Tappy Lander is a game of permadeath. If you blow up, you lose everything, no matter how big your score is. Getting to the next landing pad is ALL that matters.
Leaderboards
There are four leaderboards:
- Biggest Bounce (See dev diary #5)
- Longest Slide (See dev diary #5)
- Best Run (Best score in a single run including pickups, pops, tricks and accuracy)
- High Score (The mother of all leaderboards)
The Big Picture, Your High Score!
At the end of your run, danger points are tallied for your pickups and buggy pops along with points for bounce, slide and accuracy. Once added together, a risk percentage is thrown in to boot! The more you “Risk It” the higher your risk percentage gets which can make or break your placement on the High Score leaderboard!
Next I will discuss achievements and the data disk collectables.
Thanks for reading and be sure to like and follow Tappy Lander on Facebook and Twitter for daily updates.
Tappy Lander! Tricks, Traps, Trailer!
Tappy Lander Dev Diary #4: Control
I love the mechanics of lander games and the fun, to me, is maneuvering your rocket through a series of subtle movements into a good position and a soft landing. It’s difficult but rewarding.
Traditionally these types of games had a variety of buttons: rotate, left, rotate right, thrust, etc.
However, on the target devices I have one button, the touch screen; and I refuse to clutter the screen with complex controls just so it plays exactly like the originals (see my last post about UI.)
In order to simplify, I ask my favorite question: “What makes it fun?” and my cat looks at me like “Who are you talking to?!”
What I came up with…
- Gravity – yes, still fun after all these years!
- Rotating – a little frustrating to manage and even time consuming
- Thrusting – absolutely, compensating for a force like gravity or your last thrust, in order to change direction, is fun.
- Managing fuel – no way, maybe its just me, but I don’t like time limits. I don’t want to tell a player “You know this fun little playground I made?, well you can only play here for THIS long.”
- Avoiding an obstacle or flying to collect an object – yes! an opportunity to test your flying skill.
- Landing – yes, slow down and center yourself over the target for a soft, safe landing.
The Redesign
I immediately wanted to remove the fuel consumption issue. This is in essence, a time limit. It makes sense for quarter munching coin-ops, but doesn’t in a free mobile game. The gameplay is not made more fun by adding a time limit and removing it allows you to focus on manuvering even if you need to take your time.
Most classic gravity and lander games allow you to rotate your ship so that you can thrust in any direction. Again, this is something that I felt I could remove. With a simple up, left or right control scheme, I can move in any direction by timing my taps (except down, and gravity takes care of that.)
A Prototype
The prototype allowed me full control over my ship and maintained the fun of using your skill and instinct to manage the physics of flying through space. It was fun but simple; easier for general audiences to pick up and play but very challenging at the same time.
…and so I moved ahead with development! The next post will be about game physics.
Thanks for reading and be sure to like and follow Tappy Lander on Facebook and Twitter for daily updates.
The Little Times 