It has been a month since ChessInvaders was published in the App Store! It has "sold" (for free) more than 10k copies, and has been engaged with (played through at least one level) almost 15k times. The download rate has slowed to about 10 a day, but about double that are playing every day! I'm pretty happy with that given that it's a pretty hard and definitely beta quality game experience.
There have even been some reviews!
“In this unique tower defense game, the battlefield is a Chess board and the warriors Chess pieces. You will control the courageous knight and fend off the waves of evil pawns. The game features three unlockable worlds, vibrant colored retro-style 3-D graphics, an electrifying soundtrack, and Game Center integration.
”
“Some people might be interested in chess but just find the typical game a bit too boring. […] Chess Invaders is poised to change all that for you.”
“Schach ist öde und nur was für Langweiler und Nerds?? Chess Invaders definitiv nicht! Bereits beim Start überzeugt das Spiel von Entwickler Tim Tregubov durch sensationelle 3D-Grafiken. Ein besonders cooles Feature ist auch, dass es sich zwar eindeutig um Schach handelt, das Spiel aber eigentlich an etwas ganz anderes erinnert. ”
“Anyone can play this colorful flashy game, but not everyone can beat it!”
“Love the concept and the art!”
Download it here: https://itunes.apple.com/app/chess-invaders/id575380345
People have been discovering some pretty cool bugs along the way: including floating pawns and exploding gui elements! The game turns out to be pretty hard, and especially hard on smaller screens. At the last minute, I added an option to slow the game down (under Settings), and made some tweaks to the spawn rate, but don't be disheartened if you can't beat it — only 32 people have so far.
All in all, I have had some great feedback and have learned a lot! I've started working on the next game, a color mixing puzzle game, which is coming along much faster, after which I hope to revisit ChessInvaders and give it a good reworking to make it more fun!