Antair Games An independent game developer blog

This was our first full week with Sneezies Lite in the App Store, so a lot of time got wasted obsessing over how that was doing, but we made some good progress overall.

As I wrote in the blog post earlier in the week, the Lite version has so far resulted in a marginal increase in sales. We can’t really ask for any more than that. It also resulted in a few links and mentions in some of the blogs, including a nice one on Touch Arcade.

It’s also resulted in some bizarre stats. Like the fact that it’s currently the 2nd most popular free iPhone download in all of Russia. Not a particularly high sales territory though, so far at least :). It has been suggested that we need “Big in Russia” T-Shirts printed… maybe if it hits #1.

It’s also been interesting to see how the Lite players have been squeezing everything out of it. The two challenge mode levels are allowing for some insane high scores.

Now that the Lite version is out, we’ll be looking to end the sale pricing for the full version of Sneezies soon, the price will go up to $1.99. For those of you who already have Sneezies, we just posted a cute Valentine’s picture to the in-game News, if you want to check it out. Just the one new review this week I think, from App Reviews.

This week, we posted the inaugural installment of Craig’s Sketchbook Corner, this will now be the regular post we use to share either concept art from our archives, or teasers from upcoming games. We’ll still be aiming for one per week.

Finally, I got my first tangible evidence of our work in the form of a little magazine ad.

—- ELSEWHERE —-

I didn’t find a lot of cool stuff on the web this week, I guess I’ve been too pre-occupied with Sneezies navel-gazing, or with work on new projects. This Rolando interview was interesting (they have a new Lite version now too, Sneezies Lite is in good company), and the whole shakedown with Amazon and Reflexive and the PC/Mac casual game price war made for some good blogging.

But, one thing that is definitely worth talking about: Tim Haines is an evil genius. He’s managed to pull together a neat little BurnBall contest among 5 iPhone review/news, where they encourage their readers to join their tribe and compete for high scores. It’s all being coordinated from Tim’s facebook event page, but each of the participating sites have their own pages. I joined The Portable Gamer’s tribe (and wasted a lot of time trying to get a decent score), but Razorianfly are running away with the prizes so far. Come… Join us…

Oh, before I forget, if you’ve seen his videos, you’ll know that Seth Godin is a truly awesome speaker. Neil Davidson has a spare ticket for Seth’s upcoming London appearance, and is auctioning it off for charity.