Cally’s Caves 3 Free Expansion “Melvin’s Prototype Factory” Coming Next Week!

After a busy couple of months, we’ve just submitted a huge new content update for Cally’s Caves 3, “Melvin’s Prototype Factory.”  The update should be out for iOS and Android next week.

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This is the biggest update we’ve ever done for a game, and will include a bunch of new features:
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Massive New Zone:
We’ve added a whole new 34-level zone, with all-new art, a fully functional map and lots of Checkpoints.

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New Weapons: 3 new weapons and their final forms can be found in the new Levels!  Try using the power of the Slimes for your own benefit with the Slimegun, trap enemies and prevent them from hurting you with the Web Shooters, or use the Bow and Arrow from Cally’s Caves 2 to pepper enemies with arrows.  All of the new weapons have 4 evolution tiers, and can be used throughout all of the other game modes.

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New Enemies: Melvin has been creating bosses in his prototype lab for years, and to destroy him, you’ll have to defeat them all!  5 new enemy classes with unique behaviors mix up the combat and test your skills.

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Beyond all of the new content, we will have a ton of bug fixes and optimizations including the following:

iOS

  • fixed issue where Final Bladegun isn’t being awarded for beating Survival Mode
  • fixed issue where Bera would sometimes transform into Cally in “Bera: the Long Way Home”

Android

  • greatly reduced frequency of video ads
  • fixed missing Sniper Rifle issue – find it in level 101
  • fixed rating message in pause menu
  • fixed several small resolution bugs
  • several new tracks on the soundtrack

We are also happy to announce that the expansion is totally free and is not an in-app purchase or anything like that.  We wanted to find a way to thank all the people that have downloaded and supported Cally’s Caves 3.  We will have at least one more free expansion out before Christmas, and an announcement of our next project shortly after.

melvinszone

Development Diary # 10: Implementing Feedback from the Beta

Sorry it’s been a while since our last update! It’s crunch time for Cally’s Caves 2, which means we are spending a ton of time polishing, bug fixing, and getting ready to submit to Apple. In our last post we detailed how we hoped our Beta test would go, and at this point we have wrapped up the testing phase.  It didn’t last the 8 weeks we planned on, it actually only took about 2 weeks to receive feedback from all of our testers.  We thought it would be a good time to discuss the feedback we received, and how we are using it to make our game a lot more user-friendly and fun.

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The Testers

We ended up having 15 people beta test Cally’s Caves 2, which doesn’t seem like a lot, but for an indie developer like us, it was a gold mine of useful information.  I put a post up on my personal Facebook and Twitter pages, and the testers all volunteered from there.  Of all the testers, only 2 people tested the game on iPad, 5 people used iPhone 5 or 5s, and the rest were on the older iPhone 4 or 4s models.  We were lucky to have a wide range of devices testing the game, and that’s mostly just due to luck with who signed up.  We also (as detailed in our pre-beta dev diary), sent out an introduction package and survey with the beta files, which most of the people filled out.  It also helped to have my phone near me, as testers would often text me the bugs, which I would then add to my to-do list.  We did have people report quite a few bugs, which was amazing because we may have never found them if we were testing the game ourselves. Continue reading