Tongits

I just became a PayPal verified member. This will surely improve customer confidence in purchasing a license key for the game. Hope this helps the sales figures which is kinda dwindling lately.

Phil of The Air Games (formerly Adobe Air Games) has released their own Adobe® Air™ game, Traffic Jam. Traffic Jam is a simple but very challenging puzzle game. Your goal is to move around the other vehicles to free your own (red) car from the traffic jam. I finished the game’s 40 levels in 279 minutes while doing other stuff (alt+tabbing). I loved the game and would like to see more levels to solve in the future.

Play Traffic Jam

Update:

Re-played the game without alt+tabbing (closed the game instead to freeze the timer). Finished all 40 levels in 99 minutes. Well I did it once already so it was easier the 2nd time.

Congratulations to Carlos Nazareno and his team for winning Playyoo’s recent Flash Lite Game Development Contest! Their game, UFO Catcher: Barnyard Abduction, won in the Asia Pacific region.

Naz and his team (Team Fuchikoma) also won the recent Pinoy Indie Games Competition sponsored by Intel and GDAP, they each brought home core 2 quad PCs!

I asked Lavern of Pinoytek.net if he would like to do a short review of Tongits. He has this to say about the game:

When i received notice from Rico about Tong-its, i started to play it many times - many many times. I can’t remember the last time i played Tong-its, but when Rico’s own version came out, i feel i am bringing back the memories again. It’s really addicting!

My final say, Rico’s version of Filipino’s favorite game Tong-its is something that Filipinos should be proud of.

Thanks Lavern for the nice review! You can read the entire article here.

I am now releasing as freeware the J2ME Tongits mobile game I released back in 2006. I am also going to release the source code as soon as I find it among the pile of backup CDs I have. This game was sold for a brief period and sold a few copies. I had to discontinue it for lack of time to provide support for it and update it to the latest technology. The game will run best on phones with a 176×208 screen resolution. Your phone must have J2ME MIDP version 1.0. Most phones these days support this.

Note that I will not be able to provide any kind of support for this game. I also cannot guarantee that bugs will be fixed and features will be added in the future although I do have some plans for another mobile version of Tongits which will use Flash Lite but there is still no definite time table for this.

Download Mobile Tongits

To install the game, copy the .jar and .jad files to the “Games” folder of your phone and run the “Install Applications” program of your phone. Installation process may vary for each phone model but this is generally the most common way of performing it.

Robert Rozum, an avid Tongits player from Phoenix, Arizona sent me a picture of his truck’s new license plate featuring what else but the game itself! This is something really exciting, how many games out there do you know have a license plate named after them? Not many! I was so elated when Robert told me about this. Thanks Robert!

Tongits was recently featured on Tambayan.ph. Ryman has this to say about the game:

I would have posted this earlier today, but I got hooked playing the game for three hours. And I’m already loosing against both the computer, with current wins 30, 25, 23 (I have the 23 wins). I’m still playing (alt+tabbing) as I’m writing this article.

Thanks Ryman for the feature!

Tongits is the first to be featured on AdobeAirGames.com, a brand new blog focusing on games built on Adobe® AIR™. I’m sure more games will be coming out soon now that the official 1.0 of AIR has been released.

I have decided to use some of the revenue to buy ad space from popular Filipino blogs. The first of which is PinoyBlogero.com. I do not expect to convert much of the incoming traffic into sales, I only hope that this move helps increase awareness about the existence of the game and eventually lead to more traffic through word of mouth. I’m also looking into AdWords and similar services but it’s too expensive and premature for me right now to utilize it.

I am now earning a relatively significant (considering I live in a 3rd world country) amount from my Tongits game. Way higher than my job back in 2005 as a graphic designer working 8 hours a day 6 days a week.

I would like to attribute this early but still minor success to a few critical factors, aside from the obvious charm of the game itself:

1. PayPal. Without PayPal’s decision to fully support the Philippines, it would have been very difficult to sell the game online. Also I noticed that the Buy Now button with the logos of the supported major credit cards below is the most effective PayPal button. Potential buyers don’t want to Pay Now, they want to Buy. And besides, asking someone to Pay Now! seems rude. Plus the existence of the logos of the credit cards asserts the fact that PayPal supports them and avoids any potential confusion on the part of the buyer.
2. Blogs. Without the help from YugaTech.com, Technogra.ph, TechAtHand.net, PinoyTechBlog.com, CasualGamerChick.com and the other blogs that mentioned Tongits in one way or another, noone would have known the game exists.
3. Testimonials. Positive reviews from the early registrants of the game played a significant role as well in promoting and convincing potential buyers that the game is worth the 5 bucks. And displaying them near the Registration section of the site must have also affected the final decision of the potential buyer to click on the PayPal button.
4. Updates. Regular updates on the game including minor security fixes, optimizations, graphical improvements, etc. have a positive impact. Potential buyers may not care about the technical details of the updates but they are aware that the game is alive and being taken cared of. This gives them assurance that the game’s quality will remain high and will continuously improve over time.

I would have added Adobe® AIR™ to the list but it contributed both positive and negative. It contributed most to the development part of the game. It enabled me to rapidly program the game and release it in less than 3 months. Unfortunately having the game run on AIR means that large game distribution portals won’t accept the game since they only accept games with a traditional installation procedure.

But then having a game with an exe installer doesn’t really guarantee inclusion in these portals, quality and potential to become a hit is still what’s important. Still, one good thing with the AIR platform is it will enable me to easily modify the game to run on the browser and add multiplayer support to it in the future. I’m looking forward to that day.