S3 Games Dev Blog

Why so excited? Well, it’s my first game available for the iPhone and Touch and it marks the end of many months worth of hard hard work. All worth it of course!

Here is the direct link to it in iTunes.

I have also just finished making a demo version (or lite version) as people like calling them, that will be submitted to the App Store this weekend. It will have to go through the same 6-7 day Apple approval process, so look out for it end of next week.

One of the most enjoyable things about making games for me is hearing back from many of my customers about how much they and their families enjoy playing them.

Right from the start I made sure there was a live customer feedback area on my games website for customers to post their feedback. The feedback area is live, meaning I don’t pre-moderate any of the posts, and the only condition I place on the feedback area (where I will remove posts) is if it is used to post support questions (as we have a forum for that) and the amount of amazing feedback has been astounding.

Obviously this feedback area serves as a great sales tool, but as I said, I don’t moderate it, so it could go both ways and customers are able to post complaints or negative feedback too.

Every little while, if I am feeling a tad drained due to programming brain meltdown or maybe I am just having a design block, I will visit the customer feedback area on my website and read over some of the amazing comments that some of my customers have posted, and it gets me so excited and energized that I generally bounce back and get right into what I was doing with a renewed passion.

Sure I am in business to make money, for without an income, I cannot afford to make games for people to enjoy, but when all is said and done and the bills are paid, nothing beats the thrill of knowing that not only are people buying my games, but they are genuinely, truly enjoying playing them.

What does that mean exactly? It means that it if finished, and tested and most importantly, it’s been submitted to the Apple App Store for review and inclusion.

What an exciting time! CD for iPhone is almost 2 months worth of work and much of that has been frustrating and heated, trying to squeeze the desktop version of Circuit Defenders into a small enough package that it would (a) load on the iPhone and (b) run on the iPhone.

Well I am happy to say that I have accomplished what I set out to do, and it look and plays amazingly!

I am releasing TWO version of Circuit Defenders on the Apple / iTunes App Store.

There is the full version, that has 10 cool levels, 7 tower types and score saving into the global high scores ladder, that will hopefully be available for sale on Jan 30th.

There is also a demo version that has 2 levels, and 5 tower type, with no score saving, that will be released as soon as the full version goes live, and will give you a great game experience and I hope enough incentive to jump in and buy the full version.

This is a screen shot taken in XCode from my Touch of one of the levels included
in the full version of Circuit Defenders v1.0 for iPhone & Touch.

That’s right!  Circuit Defenders for iPhone and Touch has finally gone out of the Beta testing phase and into Release Candidate phase. This means that it will be hitting the Apple / iTunes App Store very very soon. Stay tuned for more info and release dates.