One Week In

Rapture has been in the App Store for a week now, been a bit of a roller coaster for 7 days, but very enlightening, we’ve learnt a lot.

We submitted the game to Apple on the 1st September and looked happily at the “Waiting for Review” status. The time dragged on and the game remained seemed stuck with that status. Supposedly the average time is about 8 days, but that came and went and it became hard not to impatiently hit refresh on the browser. Our submission time may have been bad with the release of iOS 8 and the new iPhones possibly dominating Apple’s collective attention. On the 13th the email finally arrived switching us to “In Review” and a few hours later the approval email arrived. I’ll admit that I thought it might stay in review longer with Apple employees unable to put the game down 🙂 But in the end it quickly went through.

We had decided to do a “soft launch” – starting the game in a small english speaking territory to double check that it was all fully working – that there was nothing we had overlooked. So the game launched in New Zealand and we both nudged friends and family down under to buy and check the game. Most were asleep when the game appear on the NZ app store, but in the morning, it was successfully purchased and worked.

By the 15th there was nothing really holding us back. For me it was like sending your first child to school for the first time, letting them out into the wild world. Would they have the skills to cope out there? With a slightly shaky hand we pushed the game out to everyone.

The next day we were hitting refresh for figures. The downloads so far have been reasonable. We somehow managed to get featured on the US and Canadian New Games Chart, which helped give us a slight boost. Most of the start of the week was spent writing countless emails to journalists and websites. The response was surprisingly quiet – we had only a handful of responses. We did however get a news piece on Pocket Gamer and one on a new games list for IGN, both of which were great to see, though it’s hard to know whether that helped sales.

We also posted on several forums. The forums weren’t quite so much fun. We were knocked around a bit for having in-app purchases in a paid game. Hardcode gamers seem to take exception to IAPs, even though our title has very light coin pack style IAPs, which don’t affect the game at all. After reading and discussing with people, it seems as though many hardcode gamers feel that IAPs are having a damaging effect on gaming, and that they somehow “dirty” a game. There’s possibly a grain of truth in that, but it stung to have that charge levelled at Rapture.

On Thursday we uploaded an update to the game with a few bug fixes and a small change to try and add some balance to the coins you get in game. We also added a new Scottish Civilization to commemorate Scotland’s independence referendum. Perhaps the new civilization will be some consolidation to the Yes voters. We had hoped that it might get picked up by the press, but no luck.

Currently the sales are starting to dip down, whether this is after a weekend, we shall see. We’re still hoping for some big reviews to appear and we’re starting work on translating the game into French, German and Spanish (to start with). We’re also looking at Multiplayer and Android in the near future. The initial euphoria is starting to wear off now and it’s heads down again to push some updates.

Thanks again for the support we’ve had. And please get in touch if you have any thoughts or feedback.

iOS game Rapture World Conquest adds new Scottish Civilization

September 19th 2014 – Oxford, UK – Tundra Games Ltd. announces the first update for “Rapture – World Conquest” now with a new Scottish civilization. The new playable civ has been added to commemorate the result of the Scottish referendum. Players can now play as the Scots in this god game about civilizations, miracles and destruction.

Rapture World Conquest is a real time strategy a god game, where you play a jealous god, intent on wiping out enemy civilizations with devastating miracles and carrying your followers to the heavens.

Rapture World Conquest has climbed high in the charts since it’s release on Monday 15th September, reaching the top 5 in the US strategy iPad chart.

“Unlike other strategy games it gets your mind racing, reacting to what’s happening, and before you realise it’s all over and you’re raring to go again.” – Pocket Gamer

“Like Sid Meier’s Civilization on a sugar rush, Rapture: World Conquest accelerates centuries of global conflict into mere minutes for a super-fast strategy experience the likes of which I’ve never seen.” – IGN.com

The game is now available on the app store here: https://itunes.apple.com/app/rapture-world-conquest/id912227668?mt=8  Our trailer can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZAEmztaUqs and also via our website – www.tundragames.com. We have promo codes available to journalists, please email dan.c@tundragames.com.

Tundra Games is a independent studio based in Oxford UK, made up of industry veterans Andrew Weinkove and Dan Collier. Andy and Dan having worked on many AAA titles including Skate It, Sims 3, FIFA, Madden, Angry Birds Star Wars, Angry Birds Go and Need for Speed. Their detailed bios can be found on the website and in the press kit.

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Press Contact

Name:      Daniel Collier

Mobile:     07714765616

Twitter:    @TundraGames

Email:      dan.c@tundragames.com

Press Kit:  https://www.tundragames.com/press/

The Rapture of the Apple App Store!

We’ve arrived! Rapture is now available across the globe. Here’s the link:

Eat Hot Rapture, Apple

We’re finally at Apple! Yay! Hopefully Apple will like it and it won’t take too long to be approved; they say 5-10 days.

It’s a strange feeling sending off our little game into the big world. It’s been 3 years in development (on and off) and has been through dozens of iterations in the process. It’s going to be crazy seeing the game being played by other people and seeing how they react.

We also have the updated version of our trailer video for your enjoyment, updated with the new graphics and spacescapes:

What do you think? – feedback@tundragames.com

Hoping Rapture will be out mid September, watch this space.

Beta Testers – A Call to Arms!

Lots of frenetic activity in the Tundra Towers these past few weeks.

We’ve been away to the Develop conference catching up with old friends and meeting new ones. Had a great time, drank too much and played some awesome games. (Nidhogg is fantastic) Also finally got a chance to play Mario Kart 8 multiplayer – back to uni days screaming insults at one another.

Rapture is having the final polish put to it – lots of tweaking and tuning. We’re going to be Beta testing in the next few weeks and we’re looking for about 10 of you lovely people to have a go and let us know what you think. Anyone is welcome from beginners to gaming veterans. All we ask is you play the game and give us some honest feedback.

If you fancy playing and you have an iPhone or iPad then message us on Facebook, Twitter or email info@tundragames.com. We’ll send you an invite and get you signed up.

If you haven’t already seen them on Facebook or Twitter here’s some new artwork for the game.

This will be used as a parallax background for the main menu:

Dead landscape – used in the main menu

Our new app icon. Hopefully stand out nicely in the app store:

Our main game logo, which will also feature on the main menu and on the loading screen:

The Long Slog to Beta

Been a very busy couple of weeks here at Tundra. Rapture is really getting close to Beta and playing well. Here’s a few of the areas that have been worked on.

Tutorial
We now have a complete tutorial in place that will hopefully make the game easier for people to understand. The initial version of the tutorial was quite in-depth. It’s been a difficult balance to keep the tutorial friendly enough so as not to put off new players and at the same time provide enough detail to allow players to appreciate the depth of the game. In the end we decided to strip back a little, make sure the basics are shown first. We’ve then added a tips system at load, so players can get useful, but not essential, help each time they go into the game.

Play Testing
We’ve had a couple of people trying out the game and got some great feedback; mostly to do with understanding how the game plays. We’re hoping the tutorial will help with that. We’re also rearranging some of the in game HUD to make it easier to understand what everything does and also make it a little more polished.

SpaceScapes
We’ve spend some time improving the various unlockable SpaceScapes. There’s 28 scapes to unlock – there’s a good variety with some fun novelty ones thrown in.

Difficulty and Game options
The game was getting much too easy, especially for Tundra peeps who have obviously been playing for a while now. The AI has been substantially beefed up and will now jump on you if you leave regions unprotected. And there are also customisation options available going into game.

We’re hoping this will be the last round of changes required before we’re at Beta. At which point we hope to get more people testing the game and giving us feedback. This will focus mostly on the AI and controls, which might have some further tweaking

If you haven’t seen it yet please take a look at our preview trailer!

A Civilization/Counter-Strike Cocktail?

Here’s a bit of detail about how the idea of the game came about. The concept of the game was originally conceived between sessions of Counter-Strike and Civilization, two very addictive, but very different games. Could a game combine the high-stakes, short-round-times of Counter-Strike into a world conquering game like Civilization? Could Civ be sped up and pushed into a quick throwaway 5 minute round?

Games of Civilization can take many hours to complete, and whilst this is part of the game’s appeal and charm, it can drain time and put a strain on relationships with loved ones. We wanted to create a game with the essence of Civilization, but boiled down for quick 5 minute blasts of gameplay, especially appealing on mobile while you’re out and about. In the same way you can jump in and play a quick game of Counter-Strike. As well as the length of games there’s also the endless clicking and micro-management in Civ, which while fun on PC, doesn’t always work as well for fast, intense games. We wanted a more fluid, strategic game, which focuses on the bigger picture.

We started off by implementing many of the features found in the original game (at least in a simplified form) on a smaller globe. With settlers and units running around, founding cities and attacking enemies. From the start we wanted the gameplay to be in realtime, rather than turn based, to push along play, and most resource management is automated, so the player doesn’t have to micromanage.

Initially the game was difficult to play, with too much to monitor at any one time and still far too long. Elements were then stripped out and simplified. Eventually we arrived at a good balance between the detail of the original and the quick play we were hoping for. For a while attacks were between individual cities, and regions shifted around these cities, but this was found to be awkward and confusing, so the idea of static regions was added. The gameplay naturally became more arcade, but we have attempted to balance this against keeping the strategic feel. In fact a lot of the original elements are still in play behind the scenes – Settling, Terrain bonuses, Detailed attack calculation etc.

Miracles were added later as a way of directly intervening in the affairs of the planet and preventing Civilizations dominating too quickly. They are inspired by the miracles in another classic – Populous. At a similar time, the game became more themed on the idea of vengeful gods and rapture.

We’re hoping to get a beta version out in the next few months, so we can get some feedback on whether you feel we’ve got the balance right. If anyone that would like to get involved with the beta and give us feedback, please keep an eye on our facebook and twitter pages for upcoming details.

Counter-Strike by Valve
Civilization by Sid Meier
Populous by Bullfrog

Rapture Game Play

We thought we’d give you an overview of how the gameplay works in Rapture – World Conquest. Please note the graphics are a work in progress. Let us know if you have any thoughts, ideas or comments. Thanks

Overview

The game focuses on you as a god battling other gods indirectly for souls and land on a fertile planet. Your ultimate aim is to take over all regions of the planet and wipe out your enemies.

Starting screen

At the start you have the choice of your starting region; taking into account its strategic position and its production value. High production regions will be quicker to increase their armies. You can choose a small island and enemies will not be able to reach you until their technology is sufficient, but you may limit the space you can spread into.

Initial Starting Positions

Armies and battles

Once settled, your armies will start to increase and allow you to direct units to attack neighbouring regions. Initially a lot of the game regions will be neutral and simple to conquer. But as civs run out of space, they will increasingly attack each other. Attacking is a case of tapping a region and tapping where you wish to attack. Armies will be sent out to the selected region and battle will ensue! If you are able to reduce the defending armies to zero that region becomes part of your civilization and will start producing friendly armies.

Taking over regions with your armies

Your scientists are constantly at work to produce bigger and better technology. As you progress through each technological age your armies become increasingly more powerful.

Miracles

Miracle Being Dropped

Across the bottom of the screen is the mana bar. Mana allows you to unleash miracles on the planet, the more mana you have, the more miracles available. More destructive miracles require more mana. As the bar fills the miracle icons will become available to drag onto the planet. The bar fills faster the more followers you have praising you. Most miracles are destructive natural events – such as earthquakes, hurricanes and volcanoes. The meteor strike is the most destructive and will wipe out most armies in its impact zone. Other miracles will affect regions through cowardice, disease and famine.

Production

The right bar is the production balance options. You have the choice of directing production to one of four options – religion to boost your mana creation, military to concentrate on army strength, science to advance quicker in technology or food to increase the number of armies being produced. With nothing selected production will be balanced across all four.

The left bar gives further game options – power-ups to boost your powers, as well as a button to balance your armies across all regions and another to choose how many units you want to deploy each time you attack. Finally the top bar provides game information to see how you are progressing in your world conquest.

End game

Your game progresses as you battle for regions; directing your armies and raining down miracles. Your armies may be overwhelmed in which case your remaining followers will be vanquished to hell. If you overcome your enemies and dominate the globe you can then rapture your followers up to your heavenly realm in beams of warm light blue.

Armies Raptured