The Barbarian (iOS)
How “The Barbarian” Came to Be
In 2012 I decided I wanted to make a game with Unity. A full RPG game. Good idea! After a couple smaller projects to get used to the platform and teach myself some coding skills with UnityScript, I was ready, thanks to the community and the Asset Store. I knew that for my game, the main character had to be male or female with modular wardrobe, so that when it was equipped, players could see it on the character. Bonus if the wardrobe was physical so that it would display in an inventory screen as such, rather than an icon.
I had much of the art from the Asset Store, and began the process of hiring someone to make my main characters, as there was nothing on the store at the time that fit what I needed. After spending 4-5 months dancing around the fact that I had no main character, the person I hired disappeared with my money after receiving the first installment payment. I was left with a grey humanoid-like model with no normals, and no way to do anything with it.
Damn.
Around that time, someone on the forums wrote to another dev something like, “Work with what you have to day, not what you hope to have tomorrow.” Good advice!
I grabbed Fantasy Horde - Barbarians from the Asset Store. It didn’t have females, and the wardrobe was strictly “barbarian” in nature, but it was modular, and had some ready-to-use skin tones, so the main character could be non-white. And I named my game The Barbarian. (Seriously, that’s how the name was formed!)
Someone made a video of the gameplay when the game was launched. This is the first version — the current version got some good updates.
The game took over 2 years to make. During that time I was “fun-employed” and burning through my savings, while also starting to produce some small packs on the Asset Store.
After release, I was excited for some early traction, before I realized that all the data was from China. Within 4 hours of release, someone had already ripped the game and distributed it in China for free. That sucked.
Once the game was released, it was clear that it wasn’t doing so well, and needed updates. So I started fixing issues that players brought to my attention, while also starting work on the Infinity PBR series of models.
I still wanted a female main character, and I wanted more control over the monsters, the animations, the wardrobe — everything. I worked with modelers and animators, composers and more to produce assets that I would want to buy, had they been available when I first started.
I updated the game, and replaced the monsters in the game with new versions, often completely different monsters, as they became available. Unfortunately, sales never picked up. Maybe it was priced too high. Maybe there wasn’t a market for a full, non-casual game on mobile. Most likely it just wasn’t as exciting as all the competition. It was my first major game, after all!
The Barbarian still sells some every week, and has had at least one positive review in the recent past. It actually plays really well on iPhones and iPads from the past 4 years, with full shadows and lighting and what not.
The game is still kind of good. Maybe I’m biased, of course. But I still play it from time to time, and it’s fun — it’s challenging.
The bad guys are pretty smart, and the game doesn’t reward button mashing, but smart, timed attacks and spell-casting. You may actually like this game!
Did I mention I used UnityScript? And did I mention that this was my first major game? Turns out, while the game runs just fine and crashes no more than other games, it was not well coded. And when Unity 5 came out, there were thousands of bugs that made zero sense to me.
It was clear the game wasn’t going to be a huge hit, not without a lot more work, and money wasn’t going to last forever. So I made the decision to focus on publishing high quality 3D models on the Asset Store. That was something I did well.
Today, Infinity PBR is one of the top 3D model publishers on the Asset Store, with over 40 packs and more coming all the time.
I think about one day redoing The Barbarian. I’ve learned C# now, and am produce much more clean, strong code. I also dabble, from time to time, on another RPG I’d love to make.
Here’s a video of the game being played on iPad at a trade show. I even had shot glasses as swag!