Ads Suck

Let's face it. Ads suck. There's no other way to put it, they're obtrusive, they're annoying, they're flashy, and they just get in the way. However, to aspiring developers like Matt and I, or for any small hopeful start up, they serve a very important purpose. They afford us the ability to make a little bit of money to pay for things relating to our business: incorporation fees, lunch or drink meetings, the small things. Ads afford us the opportunity to move forward at a quicker pace.

So this is our plea, I want to ask you to turn off your ad blockers for this site and this site only. Matt and I have worked very hard to make ads as unobtrusive as we can on our site, and we will welcome feedback of any time. We want this site to feel as comfortable as possible, so if you do take the step to turn off your ad blocker for our site, we will happily work to make it comfortable for our guests.

That all being said, I want to thank those who have been visiting our links and checking our site regularly. It is more important to us that you are seeing our content than seeing our ads, so please continue checking back for new and interesting content!

Snail Bob: Starbucks App of the Week

Snail Bob is a fun little puzzle game where you move obstacles out of the way of a constant forward motion snail. At first it seemed like just another puzzle game, but after working through many levels, it becomes a test of reflexes as well as puzzle solving.

A quick Google search (to get the pricing on the App) shows that Snail Bob is not originally an iPhone game (http://bit.ly/17NmTbE follow this link to check this all out.) The game has a price sticker of $0.99, and with that you have access to 80 levels. 

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Even the In-App purchase requests are adorable.

The game offers In-App purchases, but they are not obtrusive, and they are not at all necessary. What you see is what you get for the $0.99 , and you get quite a lot. You get incredible graphics, cute story events to follow throughout the level series, awesome gameplay that feels native to the iOS devices, and an amazing series of extra pieces to each level.

The graphics will be visibly apparent as this post goes on, but this next picture will illustrate the story events that I think are pretty cool. 

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Not Snail Bob's home!

The first series of levels centers around a construction yard, where Snail Bob has lost his home to a (poorly scaled) wrecking ball, oh no! While I never noticed any resolution to the story (i.e. Bob did not save his home,) it was at least a fun lead in. I am also very fond of the dropping post card styled story telling form, which this is.

Where this game really shines is the game play though. The controls are flawless, the game play is self explanatory but challenging at times, and there is a true difficulty ramp up as the levels increase. My favorite part, however, is finding the three stars that are hidden throughout the level. Sometimes they are simple and right in your face, other times they are camouflaged within the environment and other times you have to perform a particular task in order to find the star.

All in all this game is definitely worth the $0.99 to pick up if you're not lucky enough to get ahold of a Starbucks App of the Week card. It's fun, and it's a game that I will be revisiting as time goes on. 

Here's a download link!

Austin

First

Well, it's gotten to that point where I just have to write something, even if it doesn't directly pertain to any grand scheme.  So here it goes, my post about what I hope to post about in the future.

I've had several ideas, but let me go through some of them, most of them are series. I'd like to do a Starbucks App of the Week series, where I download, play, and review the Apps that Starbucks sets little cards out for. I think that this would be a fun look into what different apps there are, and to get some ideas. 

I've mentioned this before, but I'll mention it again. I'd like to do an Objective-C tutorial focused around ColorGuess! recently I've been working on a small patch for our first game, and it has renewed my furor in it, and rekindled my desire to rewrite some of the code with better practices. Doing a tutorial series might just be the perfect way to do both of those things. 

Another things I would like to do would be based around the 6th generation of Pokemon games, X and Y. I have completely played through X, and I loved it. What I would like to do is play through Y using only Pokemon new to the game. Somewhere along the way I think that I would be able to find something unique and fun to blog about, who knows. 

These are the three main ideas I'm running with now. I have an App of the Week card somewhere in my personal affects, so I'll be getting started with that here in the next few days!