Yesterday I started working on porting Noms the Fish over to Android. Most of the work I am doing will speed along the port to iOS (iPad/iPhone) devices, which will come later. The general mechanics of the game make for a rather smooth transition. There are some things that need(ed) to be changed. While the equivalence of a “mouse hover feature” does technically work on mobile devices, it really is not ideal. Therefore everything is being translated over to screen tap interaction instead. Fortunately, that is a rather easy task to accomplish. As you can see in some of the screenshots below (which were taken from an Android phone), there are a lot of things that need to be changed to make the game presentable on a mobile device. Text/font is a real big deal, and you can see that a lot of it is difficult to view even on this higher resolution screenshot. Imagine it at half that screen size and you can see where this can be a problem.
I originally thought that perhaps this game was only appropriate for tablets, but after testing on a smaller phone I am reconsidering that decision. The higher resolution so far seems to scale appropriately without loss of quality or performance. It may be too early to tell however as the menu system is all I have been able to test at this point. Over the next week I hope to get the levels into testing and later the aquariums. Controls for moving Noms will have to be looked at. I considered adding a virtual joystick in the bottom left hand corner, but that may be difficult on smaller phones. The alternative is to move Noms by holding down/swiping the finger across the screen. Ultimately I will just have to test both and see which method leads for a better user experience.
This is driving up to be an interesting project, and I believe that Noms the Fish will make an excellent mobile game. With a lot of coffee and determination, you should see Noms the Fish on the Google Play Store in the near future. Feel free leave feedback on what you would like to see.
Achievements Menu
Help Menu
Aquarium Store
Level Select
Level Preview
SEP
About the Author:
Brian is the Founder and Lead Developer of Alien Octopus Studio. He has a history of game design and reporting that spans almost two decades.