Hey, long time no see! It's been a while since I've shamelessly plugged on these forums so I figured now would be the perfect opportunity, as I've recently released a new game.

In the spirit of my old iJewels-thread, I wanted to announce Jewels 2, the sequel to the old Jewels / iJewels game. It's available for both Android and iOS (and this time both version are equal instead of Android-version being way crappier and older).

So, go ahead and try the game if you've got some time to burn! And hopefully Matthew finds this one less boring than iJewels (see the older thread).. TIP: If you have both iOS and Android devices, you can sign in with Google to sync the game progress across your devices, cross-platform style!

Links:
Jewels 2 on App Store
Jewels 2 on Google Play
More info here.

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(More screenshots on the actual store pages!)

Thanks for the interest! Comments, reviews and ratings much appreciated!

Installing now. Does it use Allegro?

Ah, sorry! Got me there! It does not use Allegro but a custom GLES 2 framework written in C++ (with as little Java and Objective-C as possible ). I figured it was alright to post anyway, as the previous game didn't use Allegro either. (But feel free to move or remove if it's not ok.)

And I take it you can use Allegro for mobile these days, then? That's cool actually! I haven't been following Android development much these last years.

Works great on my Nexus 7. Looks nice and runs smooth as silk. Not much to say about the gameplay that hasn't already been said about other games of this type. I've only played Classic mode so far. I might post a review on the Play store after I've played it more thoroughly.

One thing I noticed with the interface is if you push Back while in the game, it brings up the menu instead of asking if you want to quit and then giving you abort and save options if you opt to quit. It's not that big of a deal, but I did notice it since it doesn't work the same way as other games I've played.

One nice thing is the music toggle is on the main screen. Perfect for this kind of game where I might want to listen to my own music while playing.

I'll try it out later and tell you how it rates on the boring-o-meter.

How many downloads do you get? Seems like you've got a lot of reviews on Google Play.

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I saw that and got excited because I thought it was going to let me play Simon.

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Thanks Todd! The Classic mode is about basic as it gets (but still more complex than the first game), other game types might be better.

Yeah it gives you the same pause-menu no matter if you press Back, Menu or the on-screen menu-button. I suppose it would be slightly quicker to quit if it would confirm abandoning the game when pressed Back. Then again some people would probably miss the menu and complain when they cannot save..

Looking forward to your rating on the scale of boring-as-hell to slightly-boring! So far I've got a bit over 140k downloads on Android, much much less on iOS (don't know the actual sum in fact). Good number of reviews on Play Store (yay!), but only a couple on the App Store (boo!).

Funny thing is that I thought it'd be quite easy to advertise the sequel in the old game, and thus convert at least 2/3 of the players over to the new game, but somehow that didn't work out. I guess people don't want to switch, which is very odd considering how sucky the first game is on Android (where most of my players are). Of course it's only been a couple of weeks but still a strange thing.

About the Simon-thingy; I was actually considering leaving that type of game as an Easter-egg somewhere in the game, but didn't do it since I wanted to get the game out there. Also reminds me of the Chrome logo. I might add the Easter-egg in future, never say never!

I tested it out on my Galaxy Nexus and it plays nicely. I haven't played any other games of this sort so don't know how it compares gameplay wise.

I played the basic mode, which I don't think could hold my attention for long. I'll give the other modes a try as well so see if they interest me more (I'm generally a RTS/Tower Defense/ARPG player).

Thanks for trying though! I recommend timed/quick modes, I find those much better than normal. Many people seem to prefer infinite mode, something I don't understand myself.

I have one more nitpick. During the game when you run out of moves, a message pops up but that message disappears quickly. I don't know for sure, but it seems like sometimes it just didn't appear and I wasted a lot of time looking for another move. I think the "out of moves" message should remain on the screen any time you are out of moves.

It's a great game, though not one I'll be playing a lot myself. It's not really my kind of game, mostly due to its luck-based nature. My wife loves it, though.

The message is shown three times, I figured some people might find it annoying if it popped up constantly. In case of no-more-moves -situations either the "remove color"-bonuses below (if available) or the shuffle-gem in top-right will be flashing. And if there are no shuffles, well, game over. The flashing is quite subtle so I can see how one could miss it (in fact, that was the reason of adding the popup message in the first place).

Yep, it can be quite random at times (one reason I prefer the timed games, where some skill is required). But all in all it's a casual game not meant to be very challenging. Interestingly, according to the Facebook stats (people who have logged in using FB) the majority of players are women.

I played it for 10 minutes before never playing it again. But I can see how other people could play longer. It is polished, very nice looking, easy to play. Very fancy game, good job!

Cheers, thanks for trying it!

I've found it to be a very effective way to fall asleep. I don't know how people can play games like this.

The number of downloads you get for these games is impressive though. Do you have an idea of how many people it would take to make, say, $50,000 in a year?

It's kind of like that calculation for how many planets in the universe have intelligent life.
Let's say there are 50000000 people with smart phones.
Assume 1 in 1000 see an ad or blurb for a given app, now we're down to 50000.
Now if it's "pretty" or otherwise presented well, maybe 1 in 100 will download a demo, so we're down to 500.
If 1 in 5 like it enough to fork over the money, you've sold 100 instances.

Well if you have 5 million downloads and can get 1 penny from everybody, you've got $50,000.

I'm curious because I work with clients (or potential clients) who often have some idea with little to no business model. I try to explain that it's very, very hard to get millions of users, and it's even harder to monetize that.

Well the game has some merits, then.

Difficult to say, the ad supported model is very strange: varies a lot and it's difficult to estimate how long it is able to make revenue. But if I had to guess, I'd say you'd need millions of players (less than 1% of those people click ads) to make 50k a year. Maybe 2-4 million semi-active players, I don't know.

It also depends on the eCPMs you get, and the types of the ads. I'm only using banners; personally I hate interstitials, video ads and whatnot so I have not used them (even if they get much higher eCPMS, I'm told).

You could also earn much more by spamming ads during game play (maybe score some accidental clicks as well) but I don't do that either. Many games do that, though. I can tolerate banners in menus but anything more than that, no thanks.

Ads in the middle of your game? What is this, network television? Why would I want to play a game with ads, never mind the fact I don't like Jewel games to begin with...?

As I said, I don't have ads in the middle of game. And luckily for you, nobody is forcing you to play this game -- feel free to pass and never look at it again.

Do the in-game purchases generate more revenue than ads? (Does the Android version have them?)

Hell no, 99% of my revenue is from ads. (Although this is first time I'm trying IAP, just checking how it goes.) I guess it depends on the game though, if a game has been designed from the start to be IAP driven then it might be a different story.