Mini-Games and Pricing Model

So the ambitious programmers implemented a couple mini games that I think are pretty darn fun, and in its current state, might be more fun than the main game.

The idea of these mini games is two-fold. For eventual monetization, these games serve a way to make money while trying to keep the main game free. There are  a lot of free-to-play games out there and some of them have a friendlier model than others. I'd like to try to find a model that is friendly to the user, but will also allow us the revenue to continue to develop games. So my thoughts right now are (and they could change) to make the levels of Flux free to play all the way through. They're only unlocked when you beat the previous level. If you want to pay $1.99 to unlock all of them you can, otherwise, they're free.

Throughout the regular game there will be opportunities to enter a gate to play a mini game. Right now I'm thinking we'll make that gate available depending on the shape you are. So for level 36 for instance we determine that if you end the level as a triangle, then you get to enter a triangle gate that gives you access to that mini-game. The mini-game is a type of bonus level where you can get extra points, and play around with different rule sets. These mini-games would serve as an in-app purchase and would cost anywhere from $.99 to $1.99 depending on the complexity of the game.

Once purchased, you can play these mini games as stand-alone games that you can access through the main menu, or as games that you play through in the regular game to increase your score.

These mini games would offer the similar functionality and mechanics as the regular game, but with different rules and objectives.

The two mini games are:

Trax came from an original idea for a bonus level that originally looked like this:

Skyler programmed this game and made a few changes now it looks like this:

In Trax, the shapes come at you on four separate tracks, the target shapes are behind the player. You have to shoot them and change their shape to match the target shape behind you before they get to the wall. There's a time limit for this. As the game progresses, the shapes get faster and you score as many points as you can in the time given.  If I were to iterate on this, I would take away the timer, and just have them come at you faster and faster until you couldn't shoot them anymore. 

Flux HiJax was designed and programmed by David Onken, this was an original concept that he came up with, and I think there's a ton of potential here. In HiJax you have flags throughout the level that you'r trying to grab and bring back to a flag drop area. You can only pick up the flags of the same color as you. Meanwhile, turrets are shooting at you and changing your colors. Sometimes this is a good thing, and sometimes it's bad. If you're a triangle for example, and you're carrying a green flag and get hit with a green bullet, you change into a square and can no longer carry the green flag. It's a really fun game, I'll post a video of the gameplay in some later posts.