The title says it all. Finally, after 10 months in the App Store, I’ve decided to try out the infamous 99 cent iPhone price with Smiles. I sent an early pre-release note to some of the iPhone press, as well as my twitter. So far it’s been picked up by Touch Arcade which is always a good place to start. I’m hopeful. The new trailer is out there in the wild now, and-a… now we wait....
Yes yes, I’m awfully quiet. What else is new? Let me tell you. First things first, a brand new trailer for Smiles. Why does Smiles need a new trailer? I’ll tell you when you’re older. This ended up taking a couple weeks longer than I’d hoped it would (spontaneous summer vacation?), but it’s done. The new trailer combines the tidbits dropped in the last post (mushroom animation, new logo), some gameplay footage, and a nice audio track....
Been caught up with a number of things. Here’s one I’m rather proud of, an animated Smiles mushroom animation. Click for 400k animated gif Animated in ToonBoom Studio. Something else, an updated Sykhronics Logo animation. That one is me goofing off in Sony Vegas. Fun fun....
First on the agenda, the book is real. As you can see above, my three complimentary copies showed up in the mail today. Word from the Dread Pirate himself (i.e. Lead Author/Tech Reviewer) is the books should be en route, if not already arriving at book stores all over the place. After all, the guy in Canada got his. 😉 – – – – – Next, a Smiles update. Smiles 1....
Crawling out of bed early this morning, I made the weird decision that it’d be a blogging morning. It seems I’ve stockpiled a few interesting things to talk about. I’m nearly ready to start talking about the new project too, but as the title suggests, I’ll be talking about the other stuff today. First thing on the agenda, Ludum Dare. I wanted to follow up that prior post of mine with a brief finale post....
Wow! So, I have no idea what just happened, but Ludum Dare 14 was our biggest yet. With 121 entries from around the world, that’s a-lot!! From my quick check, the highest we’ve had to date was high 60’s (though I was pretty sure we did an 80 entry compo at one point). *shrugs* I started on an entry on Saturday, but didn’t get all that far. Friday (besides taxes), I was caught up administrating, making sure the whole thing actually happened....
Smiles has been available for nearly 6 months in the App Store now. From the stories you may have heard, not all iPhone titles necessarily do well. But if you consider that the game was developed by one person in 4 months, it lives under the charts, and has only 1 Apple mention to it’s name, it’s actually done alright. I’m hardly “rolling in the dough”, but I can make ends meet....
Just a quick note. Ludum Dare 14 is this Friday. It’s usually Phil and I that run the compo (with Mike and Seth, and our awesome community of regulars), but IGF Champion and Goat Owner Extreme Phil Hassey is off on his North American Tour next week, leaving me to see if I can remember how to use all his compo scripts. 😉 If you’re not familiar with Ludum Dare, we’re probably the oldest make a game in 48 hours competitions on the internet....
For GDC, I decided to make a special version of Smiles. On the surface it would look like the Lite version (Free Smiles), except I re-enabled statistic tracking and high scores. Here is how the visitors at my IGF kiosk did. General Statistics Total Time Played: 7 hours, 39 minutes Games Played: 131 Zen Statistics Total Time Playing: 4 hour, 12 minutes Games Played: 78 Games Won: 33 Total Moves: 2640...
Just a few hours ago I could barely move. Nearly crawling my way out of bed to attack the day (ahem… night), after the long flight home. I’ve since returned to my regular routine of pacing around my studio (i.e. basement), between moments of awe e-mailing and ranting everywhere it seems appropriate (forums, twitter). As I exhausted all those wonderful forms of communication, it seemed to be right time to start the required retrospective post....