Antair Games An independent game developer blog

Another week gone, productivity is just about back to normal, and I finally got around to doing my tax return… glad that’s over for another year.

This week the voting started for the Great Indie Bake Off. 148apps kindly offered to run the poll, and hopefully that’s created a bit more exposure for everyone who put in such hard work on their cakes. I put out a press release too, and the contest did get a few mentions around the web, including a nice article from Ars Technica. We also changed the terms of the contest with the consent of the developers who entered and donated prizes. We’re now giving all the prizes to a random voter, so if you haven’t voted yet, get over there and do it now!

Great Indie Bake Off Voting (148apps.com)

I also posted my impressions of the Zagg Invisible Shield here on the blog yesterday.

A couple of new Sneezies reviews worth sharing this week, one from iPhone Reviews, and a video review from iPhone App Podcast. Also, we’ve submitted a very minor update to Sneezies to the App Store queue.

—- IN DEVELOPMENT —-

Keeping up the development teaser each week slot, I decided to do things a little different this week and post one of Craig’s sketches.

Do you guys like sketches in general? I always enjoy seeing early concept sketches and behind the scenes artwork, but I don’t know if that’s just because I can’t draw well myself. I’d really like to know though, so hit up the comments section and let me know if you like sketches. These are the important questions of our time (and your answers will help me decide what to put in this this slot in future weeks).

This guy is in with a good chance of featuring in one of our next games, we’ve been enjoying playing with his world.

I picked up this regular development teaser thing from Evan at Veiled Games, who foolishly promised one a day and then couldn’t keep it going. This week Noel at GamesFromWithin picked up on the idea too. But don’t let it be said that Evan isn’t a man of his word, he offered to sing a showtune on Youtube if Up There was featured in the US App Store, and when it appeared in this week’s “New” list, he didn’t disappoint: Promise Kept. 

—- ELSEWHERE —-

I have a little web toolkit I use to help me obsess over Sneezies more easily. This week it got a new member, and I realized it might be handy to let everyone know about the other two:-

The Moopf App Store Review Scraper - shows reviews from all countries together.
Dave Frampton’s chart listing ruby script - gets the chart listing of an app in various countries and categories.
New: An alternate US App Store - a web site that duplicates the US App Store, very handy for those of us outside the US.

I hope some of you find those handy, then you too can be as obsessive as the Antair Games team.

Game Industry Tweet launched this week, and it rocks. Sam’s done a great job compiling a massive list of game industry people who are using Twitter. (I’m in there too, @antairgames)

I found it a bit disappointing to see the price of Rolando fall this week, I think all indie devs were hoping it would drag the base price up, rather than the other way around. Also pricing related, over at AppCubby they’re experimenting with 99c pricing and a donation box. It is a tricky marketplace, it’s no wonder so much experimentation goes on. Sneezies is 99c for the time being, but we didn’t conceive of it as a 99c game, and we didn’t develop it as a 99c game, it’s just down there trying to catch a break. I was hoping we wouldn’t have to release another game at that price point.

One indie who’s probably not worrying about all that though is Ethan Nicholas, who’s made a nice stack of cash from iShoot, and attracted a bit of press last week for leaving his full time job at Sun. Apparently some people gave him a hard time over it, and he felt the need to respond: Why I’m Leaving Sun. I couldn’t imagine why anyone would question his decision even before reading the post :), but I guess not everyone has the independent spirit. After reading the post, who could blame him!

I think that’s all from me this week… these weekly updates are getting a bit epic, I might look at breaking the sections down and posting more than once a week if this keeps up.