Bytesize Adventures

When I released the Christmas update for Coffee Cellar I thought “I know what would be cool. A mug icon with Rocket Santa on the front”. That’s how these things start.

For those of you who don’t know, Rocket Santa is a game I created in collaboration with a talented pixel artist in 2009. The aim was to test the Christmas market and… well… it kinda failed.

Back to my riveting anecdote. I went ahead and released Coffee Cellar with its cool Rocket Santa mug icon. I also thought, I haven’t played Rocket Santa in a while, I’ll download it. Well, I did and it crashed upon opening.

So, I thought I’d just fix the bug and update it. Cutting an overly long story short, my code was a mess and really out of date. I had a go at fixing it but ultimately settled on a better idea. I’d re-write the game for scratch with zero code re-use.

It turned into a bit of a challenge. Trying to re-write the whole game with superior gameplay and no new graphics (whilst trying to keep the dev time short). A few weeks later and that’s what I’ve done. The same awesome graphics with a new engine. Here’s what’s changed…

+ Brand new sound effects and music across the board.
+ New gameplay based on delivering as many presents as you can.
+ Cool particle effects including… Snow!
+ A more dynamic landscape.
+ Dynamic difficulty.
+ Game Center leaderboards.
+ Better performance.
+ Re-worked controls for smoother gameplay.
+ A new icon.

Oh yeh, the best bit. Its Free too. No Advertising. No IAP’s. No virtual currency. Just plain ol’ Free. A gift from me to you. Happy Christmas.

Grab it here.

By Chris | Posted in: Development Diary, Game Design, News | Tags: App Store, christmas, game development, release, rocket santa
1 Comment »

Star Fusion was the first game I created for the iPhone. It has been in the App store since June 2009 and has been downloaded a total of 1,619 times. It’s had some positive feedback and I’ve used it for experimenting with marketing and pricing as well as getting to know the ropes of the App store.

Rocket Santa was my second game. It had a troubled, slightly rushed development in order to make its release date of Christmas 2009. It’s been downloaded 768 times in total. I created it, with the help of a fantastic pixel artist, to test the Christmas market.

Today, both Star Fusion and Rocket Santa are going Free… forever. I’m also putting them live in all countries worldwide.

Why? – I’m still very much on a learning curve when it comes to creating games and, at this stage, it’s pointless for me to have paid games sitting in the App store with very few downloads. This decision does not affect the pricing of my future games (which may still be paid downloads).

You can grab both Star Fusion and Rocket Santa here.

By Chris | Posted in: News | Tags: free, rocket santa, Star Fusion
17 Comments »

This week i’ve been stripping my next game back to its core mechanics. I’m really evolving the core gameplay into something that I hope is easy to pick up and instantly enjoyable. Currently the core mechanic revolves around exploration and an element of risk vs reward.

As part of the evolved gameplay, the visuals are also changing on a daily basis. I’m still not happy with the basic style and thats something i’m working on. keep reading…

By Chris | Posted in: Development Diary, Weekly Update | Tags: Indie game mag, professional review, rocket santa
1 Comment »

Retro Dreamer are running their second annual App baking contest, The Great App Bake Off 2009. There are a huge list of prizes including various iTunes gift certificates and loads of promo codes. The closing date for entries is 4th January so you still have plenty of time to bake something.

In addition to being a sponsor for the competition, providing some promo codes for Star Fusion and Rocket Santa, I thought i’d also bake a Rocket Santa cake. Here are some photos of my entry.

The basic sponge cake base before being decorated

Unfortunately I had no blue food colouring so had to mix this grey instead

The final cake after decorating

By Chris | Posted in: Tangents | Tags: app cake, cake, rocket santa
No Comments »

Rocket Santa was approved by Apple on Thursday 3rd December at 11pm just 1 week after submission. However, this good news quickly turned sour as we found a major bug rendering the game unplayable. I removed the game from sale as soon as we found the bug so as to prevent people from paying for a broken game.

Oddly, the bug wasn’t present in my development build of the game and if I couldn’t replicate it then it would be very hard to fix. A suggestion from @frederictessier to create an Ad hoc build proved fruitful and allowed me to recreate the bug.

Solving the issue was relatively easy but I decided to rewrite a portion of the code to make it more robust anyway. I also fixed a number of minor bugs in the process to take advantage of the forced patch.

I submitted Rocket Santa 1.1 just moments ago (4.30pm on Sunday 6th December). Hopefully Apple are still taking submissions and will approve this within a week or two (in time for the Christmas period). Rocket Santa will be back on the App store once the patch is approved.

I don’t feel that we’ve lost too much since we plan on adding an interesting twist, as well as new features, to Rocket Santa to extend its life beyond Christmas.

By Chris | Posted in: Development Diary, News | Tags: patch, rocket santa, rocket santa 1.1
2 Comments »

I’m please to announce that my next iPhone game has been submitted to Apple. It was submitted on Wednesday 25th November at 3.30am (UK time), just in time to make the rumoured 24th November cut-off.

Rocket Santa is a collaboration with designer ClintonMc. We’ll be releasing some more details on the official Rocket Santa website very soon and I’m hoping that Apple will approve the game within a week or two.

In the mean time, here’s the synopsis and some pixel art of the game’s protagonist.

“On Christmas Eve, your reindeer fall ill without warning. Faced with the prospect of a Christmas without presents, and with hope all but lost, you turn to operation Santa Soars.”

By Chris | Posted in: Development Diary | Tags: app store submission, christmas, new game, rocket santa
No Comments »