If you've got a 'click and run' version for OSX, I'll bite.

i believe cutting the users off completely from being able to try out the game is not a good market strategy.

ok the demo is a good idea but maybe if you were to have up to the big triangle boss playable then as soon as he appears have the AI take over, that would be a bit of a teaser.

you have to have the people crying out for more. Don't give them any to begin with and they dont know what they're missing.

The price is actually a special offer for Christmas. If it doesn't do anything for sales I'll put it back up in January.

Because of VAT wrangling you don't actually have any choice over what currency you pay in. If you live in the EU you actually end up paying about $11.69. This complication meant that I had to differentially price the game for the different currency markets. Unfortunately because of the psychological "9.95" factor this meant that the prices are a fraction uneven. We're only talking about £3 which is hardly a big deal though. Fun For A Tenner.

I've tried the demo strategy for 6 months now and it hasn't helped. I've tried giving away levels 1-5 and 1-10, but sales never changed. When I put the logging thingy in I discovered that a huge number of people - hundreds of people - played the game for well over an hour, until I put in a usage limit (6 goes or about 1.5 hours play time, whichever comes later). And still no-one is buying it, despite the fact they're obviously having a bloody good time. You don't play a game for an hour and a half if you don't like it! So I thought, let's see if we can show people what to expect but not give anything away, and get the impulse buyers to check it out. That's why the psychological factor of "9.95" was so important. I personally am reluctant to get my credit card out for anything much under a tenner.

Only time will tell.

Sales == 0 still as we speak...

Cas

with the java version at least there seem to be a few graphics issues:

the 50 point number that you see (and 100 200 etc) when you hit an ememy now only shows up every second or third enemies killed, the target scope for the homing missiles causes the green scope that shows the location of trapped fluffies to dissappear and vice versa. when 2 fluffies get caught at once it may alternate randomly between which scope it displays... seems like a lot of the display effects are not necessarily forgotten but seem to cancel each other out.

have you put a limit on the number of on screen 'target' things now? it worked fine in 1.4x

demo issue:
i think it's when a homing missle kills a baddie that the ship is trying to kill, the ship will start orbiting it's scope, but it also did it when the triangle boss appeared. dont know if it was intentional or not...?

edit:
Inspiron 1ghz
GeForce 2 go
256mb ram

will try in 16bit and see if it fixes it. will edit post if it does.

I can't buy it because I do not have a credit or debit card. Are'nt there alternatives? E.g. ShareIt allows me to pay directly from my bank account.

Anything planned for the future?

Oh, I should add - chequebooks are not only being phased out but they are being replaced by payment cards which will be acceptable online. And you will still be able to request a chequebook if you want but it won't be the default any more.

Cas

Yeah, you can still get it via swreg http://www.puppygames.net/purchase

Hope to phase that out one day...

Cas

Haha! Missed the offer! Actually you can play the demo. Not sure why you can't...? The latest 1.5b version gives you an hour and a half of play time.

Cas

@princec:

that to-be-phased-out 'swreg via paypal' just brought you one sold copy of alien flux

Just bought a copy. Now you can go get that take away and 6 pack

Yeah, I'm the same Viro.

Hmph!

I finally get a system that allows me to play Alien Flux, and then the vagaries of Switch cards don't allow me to buy the thing!

My switch card (from the Bank of Scotland) doesn't have an issue number, and so the in-game payment thingy doesn't let me proceed!

I suppose i can nag someone else with a different card into paying for it, but i thought you might want to know that some people are going to have this additional barrier between hand and wallet.

No joy I'm afraid, it complains of an internal error in your server, and advises me to contact support.

So here i am.

I'll take a look at my logs and try and sort the issue out with SWREG. They must have come across this problem by now.

Cas

Looks like swreg have sorted this out on their hosted payment screens, so I'll have to find out how to make my server-based one work properly as well.

Cas