Kotaku Loves Linden Lab's Creatorverse - How About You?

Creatorverse from Linden Lab is now available in the iTunes store here, for $4.99 (which is pretty steep in a world of free iOS games and in-app payments, but there you go), and hardcore gamer site Kotaku loves the 2D sandbox/physics-enabled sandbox building game, dubbing it "One Of the Coolest Things You Can Do With an iPad". So there's that. In an exquisite irony, I don't own an iPad at the moment, so my personal take will have to wait a month or two. If you get a hands-on look now, please share your take in Comments!

If you haven't seen it yet, trailer below:

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Comments

[Extropia DaSilva]

I downloaded it and, at first, I had absolutely no idea what anything did. I experimented a bit and I still have no idea what anything does. I guess the whole point is that you must tease out rules such as 'what makes one object connect to another' through a lot of trial and error.

[Extropia DaSilva]

Ok! Well now I have managed to get a ball to roll down a series of slopes, disappear into a portal, reappear out of another portal and repeat its journey. Torely has some instructional videos on Youtube which help. I remember a videogame where stick figures leapt from windows and you controlled firemen running left and right with a net to bounce them safely into the ambulance. I bet you could make a version of this game once you know what you are doing.

[Arcadia Codesmith]

Five bucks is not "pretty steep" for anything this side of a gumball. Code ain't free, bucko.

[W]

Icon looks like it could use a little love.

[Extropia DaSilva]

Ok, well I have had a day fiddling around with it. I have been building the most simplistic things like a ball on a pendulum so I can tease out the basic physical principles. Oo, I done something that made my pendulam turn elastic. Neat! But I want it stiff. Oh, it is still elastic. Darn, now it is stiff but not swinging when I push it. Uhoh, now it is swinging but all bouncy and elastic again. Start over... And on and on and on.

This physics sandbox is NOT simple but it is quite fun to mess around with it seeing what does what, and you can always instantly download fun, quirky stuff people have uploaded to the cloud.

[Dizzy Banjo]

I haven't had a chance to try it yet.

But I agree that the price point is ambitious. iPad apps do go for a bit higher price points, but in general the app store is filled with extremely under valued products. This makes developing for the app store extremely challenging financially.

However I think unless a very well designed in-app purchase system ( ie one which would really generate revenue ) is in place, the best strategy is probably to go for a higher price tier and hope to make more revenue with less sales. I think you certainly get a higher pecentage of very engaged users that way.

It can lead to difficulties introducing in-app purchases at a later stage - so its a significantly important choice.