There are loads of survival games these days on the App Store but you may have never played one that looks arcade-ish. Scarekeepers will make you really nostalgic with the retro graphics and get you addicted to the various facets of the game instantly. We spoke to the creator of the game, Adam Konig, who spoke in depth about the game and also on the challenges faced on the App Store.
1. Scarekeeper looks like an old-school arcade game. Why have you gone with retro graphics?
So the pixel artwork is a new thing for me. If you check out my instagram @koing.games you’ll see for a few months before I even started Scarekeepers I was learning how to do pixel art and animation. Doing it for Scarekeepers was a great first real project to apply the skills I was working on. That, and I just love the retro aesthetic. I’m currently playing Enter the Gungeon and I just finished Celeste both of which are indie games that use the retro pixel art style and I wanted it to look and feel like those games.
2. Have you hit 1,000 users yet? If not, how do you plan to do so?
No, we’re currently at 205 users according to my app analytics. I hope to get to 1000 by continuing to use social media to get the word out and have people play it!
3. Can you tell us more about this game and features?
Scarekeepers is a pretty basic zombie survival game at its core. Fight waves of zombies, get health packs, power ups, and ammo to stay alive. What makes it unique is that the entire level and game is based off a famous bar in Ann Arbor where I live called Scorekeepers. The zombies are the frat boys that roam the bar, the bouncer is this one guy who wears black gloves when he checks your ID, there’s the upper level and the lower level and of course the iconic block M people take pictures infront of. The game features two modes: Main Game and Endless. The Endless mode will continue to shoot waves of zombies at you for as long as you can stand them and you can rack up a high score but you’ll never “win” so to speak, which is why there’s a main game mode which is only 10 waves of zombies and if you can defeat the final wave you’re rewarded with a victory screen and an 8-bit version of the Michigan fight song “Hail to the Victors” which I composed.
4. What’s the current scenario for game developers on the App Store? Isn’t it very hard to be successful?
It’s hard to say from personal experience. The most downloads any of my apps have is ~300 and it was my first one that’s been out there for over a year. I’ve only used social media as an advertising tool so it’s hard to say how “easy” it would be to be successful if I had a real marketing team.
5. Do you have any other games lined up for release?
I’m actually taking a break right now as I’m finishing school but I hope to hop on a new project this summer before I start working full time. My new objective now that I have a grasp on pixel art is to learn 3D modeling with blender, so we’ll see how that goes and hopefully I’ll have a 3D game coming out soon!
6. Which App marketing tools do you use now? How do you track reviews and what do you think about ReviewsCollect?
I currently just use social media (facebook and instagram) to advertise and I tell friends and family about my games. I use the app store app analytics to track reviews. I think ReviewsCollect is extraordinarily cool from what I’ve read so far from your site. It’s really great that ReviewsCollect highlights small and solo developers like myself as we don’t get much coverage otherwise.