Dune Veteran
Member
Hi everyone,
a month ago, I left my regular job and decided to try my luck as a solo game dev - and now I finally have a first simple game live on the Google Play Store which I would like to share with you:
Lawn Mower Tycoon (Android)
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.brusgames.lawnmowertycoon
In the game, your task is to cut grass on various lawns, get paid for it, and use the money you earn to buy upgrades such as:
When you unlock all upgrades on a map, you can also start again on a new, different map - now there are 3 of them, with increasing level rewards.
Here's a couple screenshots in-game:
Rough gameplay video: Gameplay video on YouTube
(sorry, didn't really spend much time on this one, and the game is only in portrait mode while Google Play requires landscape, so it's kind of hacked too)
I wanted to start with something I can finish and release in a reasonable time (~1 month) to see what it takes to make a free-to-play game with basic ad monetization - and learn as much as possible in the process, which I did a lot more than expected Fixing bugs, re-doing clumsy code, investigating why things don't work - that was definitely at least 50% of the whole time. And of course, some things are just hacked together, because I found the right way to do them too late (e.g. too many rooms, too many global variables etc.).
It was a great learning experience and I wouldn't get anywhere without tons of advice and guides found not only in this forum, for which I would like to thank all those who help people here - things such as save / load mechanics, how to do offline progression, pathfinding, screen resolutions, Android SDKs, builds, Google Ads integration... For every problem I encountered, there was an already tried solution that worked. I would do a lot of things differently now and some still need to be done (e.g. I just used the default font), but I didn't want to spend too much time on details, except for bugs, and decided to just give it a shot and go live now.
Thank you for any feedback, comments, or tips on what to improve / change!
a month ago, I left my regular job and decided to try my luck as a solo game dev - and now I finally have a first simple game live on the Google Play Store which I would like to share with you:
Lawn Mower Tycoon (Android)
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.brusgames.lawnmowertycoon
In the game, your task is to cut grass on various lawns, get paid for it, and use the money you earn to buy upgrades such as:
- Bigger lawn mower
- Faster engine
- Automatic robo-mowers to help you with cutting
- Higher level rewards
- Idle offline income
When you unlock all upgrades on a map, you can also start again on a new, different map - now there are 3 of them, with increasing level rewards.
Here's a couple screenshots in-game:
Rough gameplay video: Gameplay video on YouTube
(sorry, didn't really spend much time on this one, and the game is only in portrait mode while Google Play requires landscape, so it's kind of hacked too)
I wanted to start with something I can finish and release in a reasonable time (~1 month) to see what it takes to make a free-to-play game with basic ad monetization - and learn as much as possible in the process, which I did a lot more than expected Fixing bugs, re-doing clumsy code, investigating why things don't work - that was definitely at least 50% of the whole time. And of course, some things are just hacked together, because I found the right way to do them too late (e.g. too many rooms, too many global variables etc.).
It was a great learning experience and I wouldn't get anywhere without tons of advice and guides found not only in this forum, for which I would like to thank all those who help people here - things such as save / load mechanics, how to do offline progression, pathfinding, screen resolutions, Android SDKs, builds, Google Ads integration... For every problem I encountered, there was an already tried solution that worked. I would do a lot of things differently now and some still need to be done (e.g. I just used the default font), but I didn't want to spend too much time on details, except for bugs, and decided to just give it a shot and go live now.
Thank you for any feedback, comments, or tips on what to improve / change!