Quiet Christmas

I came up with the idea of making a Christmas episode of "Quiet, Please!" about a week ago, and I've been madly working on it ever since. It is almost finished now, and I should be submitting it to the various mobile app stores soon.

Maybe an Xbox version, too, if I can think of a good way to make a trial work.

"Quiet, Please!" Released for iOS

"Quiet, Please!" is now available as a universal app for iPhone/iPad. You can find it here in the App Store.

Unfortunately, because Apple's policies prevent me from doing a free trial of the game, only a paid version ($.99) is available. I plan to do a web-playable trial at some point to work around this limitation.

iOS Releases Coming Soon

The lack of apple dev hardware is the only thing that has been holding me back from being able to develop for iOS. I finally took the plunge last week and bought the cheapest refurbished MacBook Pro and iPod Touch 4 that I could.

Given that I was already using Unity to deploy for Android, the additional work to get it running for iOS was pretty minimal. It took me a while to get used to working on a Mac for the first time in about 20 years, though. The verdict - I'm not a big fan. Usability is very much in the eye of the beholder...

Anyway, I've got my games mostly up and running. Ironically, it took me more time to figure out how to publish to the App Store than it did to get iOS ports running in the first place. I've got that pretty much sorted out now though, so expect to see my games on an iOS device near you soon.

"Quiet, Please!" Out Now For Android

I am happy to announce that "Quiet, Please!" is now available for Android devices.

You can get it from either the Amazon Appstore (US only) or Google Play.

Here are the marketplace links:

Amazon: Full Game or Free Trial

Google Play: Full Game or Free Trial

I also made a little trailer for the game. It is a mashup of clips from youtube videos people posted of themselves playing the Xbox version. The Android version is identical except for the addition of touch controls.

Potential New Game

So, the idea is to make an economic simulation and exploration game in the style of the Settlers or Anno games, but set in space.

I'm keeping the graphics simple - 2D with a pixelized style. I'm also focusing on a touch-friendly interface from the start, rather than adapting to it later.



It seems promising so far. We'll see...

"Quiet, Please!" Released on Xbox Indie Games

After an annoying day at school, you just want some peace and quiet. But everything at home is so noisy! Explore, interact with your environment and solve puzzles. 3 kittens included with every purchase! "Quiet, Please!" is now available on here in the Xbox Marketplace.

Android, cross-platform development and touch controls

Lately I've been working on getting my 2D game engine running in Android. I had been planning on giving Android a try for a while now, so when Unity released a free version for Android and iOS it got me to finally take the plunge.

I picked up a Kindle Fire, and had things mostly working after about a day. It helped a lot that I had already ported my engine to Unity. I did this mostly to use their web browser deployment for Ludum Dare releases - people are much more likely to play a game if they can run it in a browser rather than downloading an XNA binary. It also really helped that I had already done touch controls for Windows Phone versions of my games. Aside from getting the build and deployment process set up, porting to Android didn't really add many platform-specific development challenges.

"Quiet, Please!" is now running pretty well on the Kindle Fire. I have a few more little things to do, and then I'll release it on the Amazon Marketplace and Google Play.



I've also been working on a mobile version of "Ascent of Kings", a little platformer I made for Ludum Dare a while back. Good platforming touch controls are notoriously difficult to do. While I wouldn't say my controls are great, I now have a touch D-Pad that feels pretty good to use. The gameplay in "Ascent of Kings" isn't very twitch, so I think it will work well enough.

 Overall, I'm pretty happy right now with the state of my 2D game engine. With virtually no platform-specific game code, I can now deploy for Xbox, Windows Phone and Android. iOS should be an easy next step - except for the fact that I need to buy a Mac...