I made Word Nazi, which is essentially just a dirty version of Taboo (in the same way that Cards Against Humanity is a dirty version of Apples to Apples) in app form.
Lessons learned:
* I should've paid someone to do some decent graphics, turns out "minimalist aesthetic" is not the same as "no effort put in to design"
* Making it a free demo, with the full game available as an in-app-purchase, sounds like a good deal for the user but in actuality sets off peoples' "IAP == crapware" alarm
On the upside, I also made a fake corporate website (http://ineptech.com) to promote it and that was so much fun that I'd probably waste all that time again.
For those checking out the ineptech site, please don't miss the poetry compiler joke! It's the bit I'm the most proud of. It's in an unlinkable modal so actually I'll just paste it here:
Upon a stack of bits, about so tall, // Boolean[] isprime = new Boolean[n];
just think, O traveller, what we could do // Arrays.fill(isprime, true);
if every other bit was set to false // for (int i = 4; i < n; i+=2)
beginning with (but not including) two? // isprime[i] = false;
Now take two lowly numbers, A and B // for (int a = 3; a < n; a += 2)
that equal three and two. What would happen // {
if they, by twos and ones respectively, // for (int b = 2; a*b < n; b++)
were incremented in a nested fashion, // {
And if we falsified, at every turn, // isprime[a*b] = false;
the value offset by A groups of Bs? // }
Then to the aether let those bits return, // }
to fly back home to Eratosthenes! // return isprime;
(You may have figured out that I put a lot more time in to the silly programmer jokes in the fake site than in to the app. Wonder why it never took off...)
The fact that you made it a poem, reminds me of some extempore poems that I made up as a kid - inspired by reading a book that my uncle bought me as a gift - The Golden Book of Fun and Nonsense [2]. It had a lot of funny poems, limericks, etc. in it.
Here are two I made up at the time:
Poem 1:
Mr. Jolly had a brolly [1]
Its handle was made of silver, and its body was made of gold.
And Mr. Jolly used the brolly when it was very cold.
[1] Brolly is a Brit term for umbrella.
Poem 2:
I climbed up a mountain.
There I saw a fountain.
One, two, three, four, five!
In it I'd like to dive.
Go ahead, laugh. It's meant to be funny and silly.
I'll also mention a few good ones I read in that book:
Thank you! I had a ton of fun with that, so there are a lot of cute details to find. (For example, check out where the social media "share" buttons on the blog posts go)
I'll second you've got a potential second career in comedy writing, my coworkers and I are currently nearly in tears reading this. Thanks for the Friday laughs.
I'm with you on that. The author is doing some great parodies. They should look into how people monetize such humor since it's the strong point. Only if author can keep it going, though.
Congratulations on making this awesome fake website. I had a shit ton of fun going through it. You'd be a rockstar copywriter, if you are not one already.
I'm a QA guy, which may come out in some of the jokes, e.g.:
Ineptech CEO Dick Hallerson wishes to apologize for describing the Quality Assurance group as a "necessary evil." Mr. Hallerson did not mean to imply that QA is necessary.
Whoops! Did not expect just being in the comments of a post to /. it that bad. It's hosted with a friend on a not-so-modern platform so the bandwidth limit is not that high.
Back up now, and I broke the path to the silly stock photos, should help keep it up.
Lessons learned:
* I should've paid someone to do some decent graphics, turns out "minimalist aesthetic" is not the same as "no effort put in to design"
* Making it a free demo, with the full game available as an in-app-purchase, sounds like a good deal for the user but in actuality sets off peoples' "IAP == crapware" alarm
On the upside, I also made a fake corporate website (http://ineptech.com) to promote it and that was so much fun that I'd probably waste all that time again.