To say 2010 has been a busy year would be an understatement. While we were all waiting for Apple to confirm the existence of the iPad, I was busy tweaking, improving, and porting my game Smiles to a bunch of new platforms. The most significant port by far was to Netbook PCs for Intel’s AppUp Center, a brand new App Store coming soon to Netbooks everywhere. To say Intel and AppUp have been good to me, that would be another understatement....
Wow! So that was iPad launch day. I’ll talk a little more about the “day 1 FREE” experiment after some results. Just before disappearing, the game was sitting at #60 in the Top FREE Apps (#13 Top FREE Games). Earlier today, I caught it at #55. Anyways, I said I wasn’t going to talk about this! Like many other developers, I shipped the game to Apple for launch day without actually testing it on a real device....
Alright! The iPad is coming soon, as is a brand new version of Smiles. As we speak I’m putting the finishing touches on Smiles HD, the all new higher resolution and slightly redesigned iPhone game coming soon to the iPad. Now, in the eyes of Apple I’m nobody special. So like many of you, I’ll be heading down to my local Apple store on launch day to pick me up an iPad… with one slight difference....
I figure there’s no reason not to share these. Smiles Zen‘s “FREE ZEN WEEKEND” download statistics: 1022 – Thursday October 29th (started at noon) 3544 – Friday October 30th 1826 – Saturday October 31st 1361 – Sunday November 1st 144 – Monday November 2nd (ended at 1 AM) The 29th was a fraction of a day. I flipped the switch roughly around noon, which kicked in about 4 hours later....
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....
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 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....
Friday was the short day. Wednesday and Thursday we exhibited 10-6, where Friday was 10-3. Went back to the hotel and vegged that day, before heading back out to hang with the Fantastic Contraption guys. My neighbors were the Secret Exit guys. I ended up spending a bulk of the show goofing off with Tuukka, an artist on Zen Bound. The Secret Exit guys refer to him as the “prankster” of the bunch....
First day of exhibiting. I have to say, I’m exhausted. Feet ached, and limped a bit throughout the day, but I loved it. Here’s a few photos of the completed setup. And a little closer. I’m sharing a hotel with Phil Hassey of Galcon fame, and he had an amusing idea about creating some cheap signage. Hilighers and posterboard. At his booth he has a nicely done caracture of his goat Cuzco with a very supermarket-like sign advertising his sale....
Live from San Fransisco, it’s… me. As you may or may not have heard, I didn’t win. But that’s alright, I’m still here to exhibit. We’re sharing booth space with the IGF main competition entrants, which is great. That way, when people come to see the cool IGF games, they’ll find us too. Here’s my slice. Other cool stuff, Apple put up a page of us IGF Mobile entries. Very awesome....