The Coffee Cellar Christmas update is out now. Featuring…
- Features 3 new festive icons
- Shake your phone for a random coffee
- Tap the name tag in your cupboard to view concise coffee details without leaving the cupboard
- Fixed the appearance of the name tags in the cupboard. No more names running off the end of the plaque!
I’m extremely happy right now. I just walked into my local newsagent to peruse the magazines and, totally by chance, stumbled across a written review for Coffee Cellar. Totally unexpected and awesome in equal measure. The magazine in question is Tap! – a UK iPhone & iPad print magazine. Here it is…
Pivotal moment in my App development career :)
In my last post I said that I would be sketching out ideas for my next game over a series of posts. This hasn’t happened and in addition to that I’ve missed an entire post. At the risk of turning this into another horrendous iDevBlogADay post about failed promises and lack of time – I’ll just say, I haven’t done that.
Instead, I’ve been fighting a bit of a battle in my head about what my next game should be. Not just in terms of idea but also in terms of monetisation. I recognise that lots of developers are going free in a bid to reduce the barrier to entry but at the same time this means monetising the game in some form other than a one-off purchase (in-game currency is becoming more and more popular). I also recognise that I should be jumping on this bandwagon. Whilst Freemium (that’s what the “cool” kids call it) probably won’t be THE future of gaming, it will almost certainly represent a large part of it.
The problem I have is that I kind of sigh when I see a freemium game in the App store. I rarely buy in-game currency or IAP of any kind (unless its additional content for a game I really like).
The dilemma I have is that I’m finding it difficult to come up with a concept for a freemium game where I myself would pay for the virtual currency. As a result I’m stuck between building a game for others (and maximum revenue) vs building it for myself (and others like me).
I’m not against freemium but I’ve decided to park it temporarily. Instead my next game will just simply be a game (the game its meant to be). Monetisation will not be part of my design process and I’ll decide what to charge once its built. That may be a one-off fee or it may be free. It won’t however be riddled with virtual currency.
With money removed from the equation it all starts to feel fun again – which is kind of why I’m doing it. I know its not that easy for a lot of you, especially those who do this full time. But for now I have the luxury of a full time job and this is a hobby.
So, I’ve thought a lot about the type of game I want to make. RPG’s have always been something that I’ve enjoyed. I like that they offer choice and exploration, along with a story that I can lose myself in.
More recently I’ve been enjoying the new-ish sub-genre (or perhaps genre mashup is a better name) that is the Puzzle RPG. This was popularised by Puzzle Quest but recently there has been a bit of an explosion creating equally enjoyable games such as Dungeon Raid and King Cashing.
I’d love to create a full RPG but I simply don’t yet have the skill or resource to complete it. The Puzzle RPG is the perfect fit for me because it could be much smaller in scope.
So, once again making a promise that I may not keep, that’s my next game – a puzzle RPG.
I haven’t decided on platform or the tech i’ll use to create it. I’m seriously considering targeting a desktop platform and also looking into cross-platform engines.
That said, I’m currently prototyping with cocos2d on iPhone because its what I know so its faster for me. I have a basic prototype (with the core gameplay mechanic). The problem is that it isn’t quite fun. My next challenge is to knock it into shape so that the core mechanic is enjoyable before I begin to design the additional layers of complexity.
I’m also going to start to play around with Art. I haven’t decided on a visual style for the game as yet and I may take this opportunity to delve into 3D modelling.
The remainder of this year will be about prototyping, sample visuals, and making that core gameplay mechanic fun. I want to start 2012 ready to go into full production mode. If all goes to plan, this will be THE game that I want to make with no monetisation concerns overshadowing its production.
I’ll aim to share bits and bobs from the prototyping phase this year so stay tuned for slightly more regular posts.
I thought I’d write a brief post to catch you up on what’s happening with Coffee Cellar. Its currently on sale at $1.99 (£1.49) so please grab a copy now!
I had a nice review from Tap! Magazine which you can read here – They awarded Coffee Cellar 4/5 stars and called it “An easy and pretty way for coffee connoisseurs to keep track of their favourite blends.” keep reading…
Foreword: Today, I, like the rest of the world, woke up to the sad news that Steve Jobs had passed away. It always takes you by surprise when you feel deep sadness at the passing of someone you didn’t know personally.
The thing is, for all of its millions of people, the world can feel very empty and lonely at times. We feel connections with people who impact our lives in significant ways no matter how little they know us (or we truly know them).
I nearly pulled my original iDevBlogADay post, instead writing a simple thank you post to Steve Jobs. The thing is thousands of people, much more eloquent than me, have said it better.
Wired’s post sums up the whole thing in a post that both mourns his passing and celebrates his life – Steve Jobs, 1955 – 2011.
Panic changed their homepage to reflect their feelings. Very touching.
@RobLoBue wrote a truly personal note in his post “A life without Steve Jobs“.
To wrap this up, and to explain why I’m still posting my original post below, in Mr Jobs’ own words “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life… have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become.”
6 months, 5,000 lines of code, 13 blog posts, 15,000 words and both the App and my blog series are finally finished. When I started this I planned on following a carefully designed and documented process to translate my App store idea into an actual product. Along the way my aim was to share all of the steps with you, along with the results.
This post intends to wrap-up the series. It also contains the final blog post, my Coffee Cellar postmortem. Whereas the postmortem covers the App itself, this post reviews the process and acts as a convenient hub to bring together all of the previous posts in the series (for future reference). keep reading…
Coffee Cellar has officially been in the App Store for 1 month now, you can check it out here. Now is the perfect time to examine what went right and what went wrong. This is the final post in my App development series. If you want to read about the process of creating Coffee Cellar you can do so here. keep reading…
My App Development series is nearly wrapped up. I want to spend the next two posts sharing some data with you and dissecting the project. For this post, we’ll focus on the results of my marketing efforts and I’ll share my sales data with you – warts and all!.
Launch day
Coffee Cellar has been available on the App store for 3 weeks now. This means I don’t have a huge amount of data to share, but still enough to give you a taste of the results I’m seeing.
My original plan was to go live with Coffee Cellar on Wednesday 17th August. As I approached that date, and with some promised coverage on launch day, I felt it was too risky to leave the launch until the morning. What I instead ended up doing was to soft launch Coffee Cellar on the Tuesday evening (16th August). keep reading…
I first heard about Composition No. 1 through another book, Twisty Little Passages, which examines the history and impact of Interactive Fiction (Including the humble text adventure).
Owing to it’s rarity I never expected to actually own a copy, but here it is – beautifully re-imagined, for a new audience, by Visual Editions.
The first thing that hits you upon opening the box, containing the 150 pages that comprise this piece of work, is bemusement. Composition No. 1 flies in the face of our conventional understanding of how to consume a piece of literature. The most obvious way that this manifests itself is through its unbound pages.
The idea is that you shuffle the pages to create your own story – a quick factorial calculation (150!) reveals 3.8089226376305687e+260 unique combinations (that’s a lot) or, as its more elegantly framed in the introduction, 150 different beginnings with 149 possible endings. keep reading…
Coffee Cellar is available to buy today in App stores around the world. It’s been a long journey and I hope the finished product reflects the time, energy, and passion I’ve invested in bringing it to life.
In the next few weeks I’ll write posts on sales figures and a postmortem. For now though, please support me and download Coffee Cellar here. If you feel particularly generous, rating or reviewing the App would also be very well received. keep reading…