Fleafall Now Free… Fall

By: Derek Yu

On: August 22nd, 2006

Fleafall

Berbank Green wrote me to let you all know that his game Fleafall is now freeware (the game was originally being sold for the rather odd price of $23.95, I think). Fleafall is a pretty fun little action game where you play a flea competing against other fleas in a variety of orb-collecting challenges. It supports multiplayer via Internet or LAN.

So apparently Fleafall didn’t do to well in the shareware market. It’s kind of a shame, because the game has potential to be great. I’d say the number one problem with the game is the frustration factor, which sets in quickly as a result of some poor control and level design decisions. The inability to cling to the underside of things doesn’t make sense and is almost as annoying as having actual fleas… in your pubics. Add to this some pretty haphazard level design and you’ve got a pretty good reason not to spend… well let’s just say it’s $25, because it practically is.

Fleafall is a great freeware game, but it wasn’t a game worth paying ~$25 for!

  • failrate

    I thought the demo for FleaFall was great. I’m just a cheap bastard… probably would have paid a 10USD for it.

  • Berbank

    Hi, Thanks for posting the news Derek. FleaFall was never really completed in that there was so much more we (myself and Francis) wanted to do with it, but time and money didn’t allow. What I released I thought was a pretty good game and planned to add to it once the money started coming in. It never did. My theory for the commercial failure is that I made a game I’d want to play, but didn’t take into account how few independent games I buy – maybe 2 a year – even though I play a good deal of demos. As a market to sell to, I’m not a good one. I still play it and like it though so it wasn’t a complete loss.

  • Derek

    Berbank! Fleafall is a really nice game, but it’s not worth $23.95. If you had sold it for $10 it probably would have made enough money to justify adding to it. The frustration factor really hurts the game as well, as I mentioned in my post.

    All in all, I think the indie market is tough enough that you can’t really miss a beat. A “pretty good” game is not worth selling, I think. Everything, from presentation to controls to level design has to be tight for people to bite.

    It definitely is not a loss as you a) learned from the experience, and b) have created something that plenty of people can now enjoy. I honestly really enjoyed the game – it’s the ones I like that I spend the most time thinking and writing about. :)

  • Derek

    I don’t think a game has made me cuss this much in a long time…

    FUCK YOU BRUCE FLEA.

  • NO!

    This one’s got potential. What failed? I’ve seen worse stuff selling like pancakes at those casual game portals.

    I agree $23.81765 or whatever joke price that had is maybe too much, but $10 is going too low.

    Poor marketing perhaps, shit knows…

    You should’ve invested more time into trying to sell this, dude. I bet you gave up too early, some people is good at making games but suck at selling stuff, maybe too late, but next time look for help before giving up…

  • http://www.moonpod.com/diary Fost

    I played this when it came out, and thought it was a great concept, but that I really wanted better control over the jumping. I’d have done something where you drag the mouse to define direction and power maybe. The lack of any kind of indication like that makes if very difficult.

    Multiplayer in this game is great fun. I think it’s a real shame that it’s become a commercial failure. I could see different ways this could be taken to generate revenue if the straight up ‘buy the game as a one off purchase’ model doesn’t work, but of course everything takes time, and time is an indie developer’s greatest commodity.

  • ARelativelyHotGirl

    Why does Happy alway getting a fucking 4x bonus? GODDAMMIT! *smashes keyboard*

  • Berbank

    Hello again,

    I agree the first price was a little wierd, we did change that and lower it to $19.99. You got to Bruce Flea fast though, have you beaten him yet? He’s quite tough.

    I don’t regret doing the game, I learnt a lot from it, it’s just a pity it didn’t sell. I’m hoping that it will do much better as a freeware game and eventually get enough traffic so that it looks like it would be worth doing a DS or mobile version of it.

    I’ve not given up on it, I just think the PC version has run it’s course. It wasn’t wonderfully marketed true. But then Oberon launched it and very soon after that it was hacked because Oberon use an off the shelf protection system with an off the shelf work around. Quite a few people are playing it (far more than I’ve sold) and as it’s hacked already I may as well make it free for everyone to enjoy, hopefully.

    The controls are a contentious issue. The trend seems to be that all new players either get it or have trouble with it. In either case, if they persevere, they like it in the end, in the main. There always seem to be a few who never like it, but I stand by my design. Where I think I messed up is that I made it far to hard to start with which makes the controls even more of an issue than they really are (IMHumbleO).

    BTW: Fost, in the most recent version you can turn on helper indicators. These are turned off automatically in the last training level but can be turned on again in options. A feature I’m not so sure about, but bowed to public opinion on.

  • dave

    I can’t beat Bruce Flee!