Drug dealing game "Hustle Life" launching soon!

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abdelkabir's avatar
abdelkabir

  • Hi, I'm working on this mobile game called "Hustle Life" for almost two years now. I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out to look. It has been a process with a lot of disappointment. Apple, for example, didn't want to approve the game because of the references made in it. Their guidelines didn't point out anything clearly, and I'm still mad about it.

    You have to make as much money as possible without getting killed. Most of the time it’s easy to make a bunch of money quickly, this isn’t without risk though. Hustle Life isn’t just about making money with selling drugs but also by doing other criminal things. Think of robbing a store or kidnapping a businessman. Every once in a while cops or rivals will bother you. They will come at random times. And you're never quite prepared.

    dropbox.com/s/3cyzasgadac1v9m/Screenshot_20180911-171305.jpg

    dropbox.com/s/d9xonet8nfygq3t/Screenshot_20180911-171326.jpg

    dropbox.com/s/8mkxu49y43ifm03/Screenshot_20180903-155951.jpg

    I like to know your first impressions of the screenshots I have provided. I still want to improve on the game before I release it. Even though it's already finished with some minor bugs, I'm currently fixing.

  • Two years! I like your dedication, what made it take so long, im just curious?

  • Thank you for your reply. It took me so long because I was redesigning the UI constantly. I also regularly made changes to the way the game works. I had already finished an event sheet of over 900 events so making those changes took a long time too.

    I wanted to make the best game of this type out there. Most games of this type look like they were put together in a day. My first version looked the same, and I started over from scratch in Construct 3. I wanted to post the game about three months ago, but the inner perfectionist in me still wasn't very satisfied.

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  • Hi Vultwo.

    Personally I was expecting a more 'visual' game. This looks more.. I don't know, text based? I always prefer to see some sort of 'world' in which it all happens. Heck, it would even be fun to see a vault increasingly being filled with stacks of bills! (A là Payday 2) Could be same for the goods.

    Anyway, you could improve the looks further. Currently - that's just my opinion - it doesn't look uniform. For instance, the graphics of each drug are pixelated, and a bit smoothed. And your actual text; is always smoothed. To make everything uniform, you should choose either a total pixel style or smooth style. (I'd recommend the latter)

    Shouldn't it be spelled 'illegal' by the way?

    Now I may only look at visuals (that's just my thing) and I know it's hard to make things, especially UIs look good, but you might still want to improve it even further. I mean, you got those outer borders, transparency, outer glows, it could still all be improved to look more clear and professional.

    The second screenshot you posted '-10 health' now that looks better than the other two. You didn't use any borders on the text, and the backgrounds made sure you were able to use one solid simple fill color. Of course it's got less going on on the screen so it looks a lot more clear, but there you did it better.

    You can always look for samples of UIs on Google images or Pinterest.

    Also regarding the Apple guidelines, well, it IS a game about drug dealing so I can totally understand why they didn't approve the game. I don't know Google (Play) their policy, but I *think* they will have a similar policy.

    I think to get approved you could use 'code names' for each drug (e.g. 'Blue Magic' - winks at a certain movie), and make sure you avoid the word 'drug' and 'dealing' in the first place. Perhaps use something along the way of 'goods' or 'commodities' and 'trading'. So that you know, everyone KNOWS what it is, and what the game is about, but you don't say it literally. Replace the word on the second item of the first screenshot also.

    Say.. 'hustle' isn't that more of a term used to you know.. sorta beg for money? I'm not sure though. Just trying to put 1 and 1 together (the name of the game and the game itself).

  • Hello —.

    Thank you so much for your detailed view of the game. Your suggestion to make it look more 'visual' and to have a 'world' just gave me a great idea. I know the looks aren't as good as they should be. Luckily I'm very excited to make it look a lot better.

    I think you're certainly right about making it look more uniform as a whole. I didn't even think about this yet. I will also search for some sample UIs. Making those honestly frustrates me sometimes.

    Yes, it should be spelled 'illegal' I have a tendency to miss these kinds of mistakes all the time.

    I'm not that worried about Apple not accepting my first version. I almost started to adjust it completely. However, when I started making the changes. I realized this wasn't the kind of game I wanted to make. I really wanted it to have those kinds of references. I now Google Play doesn't care a lot. There are already other games including the same sort of references.

    Again, thank you for your reply. Feedback like this really means a lot to me. It inspires me to make things look better.

  • Vultwo No problem!

    You certainly do indeed have a lot patience/persistence, my maximum concentration span is way less than yours.

    Anyway, I was wondering, will Apple allow you to revision the game or it just game over with the App store and won't they allow any more apps from you? Just wondering what their policy is like.

    I think Apple's requirements are quite hefty anyway, 99$ a year + a Mac computer. Do you own a Mac or..?

    So yeah, be careful with using patented names for your ingame goods.

    I'm curious as to how you will develop the game, keep us informed!

  • Hi —,

    Apple does allow me to revise the game. I was already almost finished with the revise. I changed everything to weed related items. I think the App Store is just so hypocritical when they allow weed but don't allow my game. It just didn't make sense to me. Their policy doesn't say anything about that. I tried to make that clear in a conversation I had with them. I think they were just trying to save themselves by not approving the game.

    GTA: Chinatown Wars which is on the App Store also contains a similar kind of feature. I think they were approved just because Rockstar has a lot of money. When I pointed this out, they asked me if I knew any more of these games. So they could 'investigate' them. Their reaction literally almost made me lose my mind.

    I do own a MacBook which I used with the Construct 3 export to Xcode option. Before that, I just used an emulator to upload it to iTunes connect. I don't want to have anything to do with Apple in the future. The price of publishing to the App Store didn't really bother me though. It's just their support that's crappy for the price you pay.

    I will definitely keep posting updates about the development! (and maybe some stuff about getting accepted into the store or not)

  • I will definitely keep posting updates about the development! (and maybe some stuff about getting accepted into the store or not)

    Please do post more updates especially if you get accepted to the apple store or not, my personal opinion you should get accepted because I'm fairly certain there's games just like yours or worse.

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