Specimen: A Game About Color

Wow I love this game - it's really G.O.O.D. - fun and exciting challenges, gorgeous design and melodic sound effects. Brain-tingling and a soothing sensory experience unlike any other. Can't stop playing!

Why no Game Center support? Would like to compete with my friends, but sorry, not going to use Facebook for that.

2) Any thoughts on how to best stand out in the crowded mobile space? There’s so many different kinds of derivative work. Some of it “ugh” and some of it is really super creative. More like an awesome remix. I think digging deep and trying to find a genuinely original spin on anything, helps. We’re not the only color game out there (and we won’t be the last), but hopefully Specimen doesn’t feel like any other color game you’ve played. Also, if I see a game that obviously has a lot of heart and soul when it comes to design -- Alto’s Adventure, anything by Vectorpark or Zach Gage, Dots / Two Dots, Ready Steady Bang -- I *will* download it, pretty much without thinking. Design is mega important to me (duh). If you have amazing animation, then I’m over the moon.

Some questions for the team: 1) What were some of the struggles you went through when deciding on how to price the game / monetization? 2) Any thoughts on how to best stand out in the crowded mobile space? 3) What are your future plans for the game?

3) What are your future plans for the game? We’ve got a lot of small tweaks and bug fixes to do. I want to make leaderboards more prominent. I think sharing a score that reflects something about the people around you, is deeply interesting. By the way, I hate when games spam, so while we are using facebook connect, we will never post on your behalf. In a 2.0 we want to give you back data about how you see color. Are you improving? We already have an algorithm that looks at strengths/weaknesses across red, yellow, green and blue. So I’d love to get that back in and link them to achievements so that there’s a greater sense of “moving forward” in the game. I suspect we’ll learn a lot over the next few weeks, too.

1) What were some of the struggles you went through when deciding on how to price the game / monetization? Our priority was having as many people play Specimen as possible. We aimed to make something super casual. I am not a really even much of a gamer but casual games on my subway ride really appeal to me. Early on I saw a graph that showed the difference between charging 99 cents and 0 and was pretty convinced we had to go free. I personally don’t blink when it comes to paying a few bucks for something that looks potentially beautiful, but there’s a reality there... we didn’t want to live in denial of that. We decided to go for ads/rewarded ads at a much later point. As someone who plays iPhone games, I think I’ve become quite used to them, for better or worse. Ads felt like the best option in an imperfect, ever evolving economy. Frankly we were also really impressed with how Crossy Road used them. Our hope is the ads aren’t so totally aggressive, but that we aren’t precluded from seeing a return. It’s a balance we’re actively seeking.

Hi! My name is Erica. I'm the designer on Team Specimen. We wanted to make something quick to pick up and beautiful. Happy to answer any questions. Thank you for playing!