We're excited to share what our team's been working on this past week. Last week we couldn't share much with you because college work was piling up on us, but as we'd hoped we have a lot more to share with you this week. So without further ado, we'll start showing you.

Game Icon

Our artist Nico finally finished the icon that we're going to use for the game in the Google Play Store! It's also the same icon that's going to be used for the app.

Honestly, he (and the rest of us too) wasn't really sure what sort of an icon it should be. We considered using a smaller version of our logo (the big banner at the top of this page), but it was way too wide and too big anyway to the point where most people wouldn't be able to make out what it was. We also considered using a modified version of it, something along the lines of just the pyramid and the text.

But in the end, we decided to use our faithful main character, Henry Jones. By this point, we basically consider him the mascot of Pathfinders, so why not use his face? Of course, we were inspired by the many mobile games that do the same thing like Azur Lane, Greedy Cave 2, Elemental Dungeon, and Plants vs. Zombies to name a few.

Coins and Shopping

One of the new things that we had had no experience with before that we're working on in this game is in-app purchases. As it was something that we had never worked on before, we had absolutely no idea how to do it going in.

But this past week we've been working on it, and it's almost finished pending testing. The way it works is we have an in-game currency which we simply call "Coins". You can use these coins to purchase skins for the characters, changing their appearance, and also to remove ads (which we'll talk about more in this post). You can get these coins by finishing levels, collecting treasures and relics, beating the target time, and getting achievements. But you can also get them by purchasing them through our shop (and it's cheap too!).

Our artist hasn't finished the UI assets yet, so right now it's pretty bare bones. But here's how the shop'll look like:

Ads

Another thing we wanted to try was ads. For those who don't know, there are different types of ads for mobile apps. Most common one is probably the banner ad, which is an ad (that looks like a banner) that's always on your screen, usually at the bottom. We considered using that one, but decided against it because the way our game works, we thought it'd be pretty annoying to have it at the bottom of the screen like that. It's pretty distracting.

Banner Ads

So we decided to go with something called interstitial ads. If you've ever played a game or used an app where once in a while you get an ad that cover the whole screen, that's exactly it. We wanted ads that don't detract from the experience, ads that don't make you get (overly) frustrated or annoyed. One thing we noticed while doing research for this game (and yes, that means playing games) was that some games had this but often it came out just as we lost a level. And if you keep losing the level like it's a particularly hard level, it was really frustrating to get hit by an ad. It felt punishing, and that was something we didn't want to do. Interstitial ads give us that freedom to choose when to give it to the player, and we don't want it to feel punishing at all.

Ads can give you rewards too, so it's a win-win situation. Once per level, you can double the number of coins you get by watching an ad!

But what about Google Play?

Around two weeks ago, we announced that the game was going to go to the Google Play Store soon. This is our first time doing something like this, so we were totally blind. It turns out, the process wasn't as difficult as we thought, but it's certainly difficult to a certain extent. We've already set up our account and everything, but we're still pending a review from the Play Store on whether our game can go on there or not, so wait up and look forward to it!

That's about it for this week's devlog. If you've got any comments, suggestions, or just want to say hi, go and do so in the comments! We'd love to hear your thoughts, especially on the icon. If you want to be kept posted, don't forget to follow our social media accounts! Thanks for reading and look forward to the next devlog, next week.

- Phobez