So I had really wanted to have been blogging more but for some reason it just seems to always be harder than I think it's going to be. My excuse this time is having to deal with the start of classes. So now that we are pretty much two weeks into the semester I think I've gotten back into the swing of things and now it's time to put a little more focus not only on blogging but also on game development. So here's kinda what we've been up to the past couple of weeks.
Firstly, Block'd! v1.0.3 is live in the App Store, so go check that out and make sure you've downloaded the update if you haven't already. Basically, this should be the first version that's bug free. We had a few major bugs in our release version, followed by some more minor bugs up trough this version. The most notable bugs were the Facebook sharing button issues, the win animation timing issue on iPhone 5s, and then accidentally unlocking all the levels. All of those have been fixed with this version and right now we have a relatively stable game up on the App Store and it's time to focus on the next steps for Block'd!
There are two major things we are continuing to work on for Block'd! The first of which is trying to spread the word out there and get some more people playing the game. This has proved harder than we expected and we are still grappling with this crazy concept of marketing. I think what's making the marketing process difficult is that we are only two people who are trying to not only sell the game, but are also trying to keep working on development on the game and working on development of other games and not to mention school and jobs and everything else that people have to deal with to keep there lives running smoothly. So I think we just find ourselves spread a little thin and when it comes to marketing or developing I think we both lean toward developing (partly because we kinda know what we are doing on the dev side, and not so much on the marketing side)
But speaking of the dev side of things. . . we have a lot of new features planned for version 1.1. Not only are we adding some more levels and color packs, but we are also working on adding in some different mechanics to the overall way you play the game. The most notable (in my opinion) is we are going to add a star ranking system for completing the levels. Instead of having to beat the level in a certain number of moves to move on, you'll now be able to move on as long as you fill the board with color, in as many moves as possible. However, if you beat the board in the specified number of moves you'll earn a star for the level. Stars can then be used to unlock the next group or unlock different color schemes early or some other stuff. We haven't worked out all the details yet, but it should be a root roaring good time. We're also talking about adding some bonus levels that you would play every day and if you beat all of them (probably around 5 levels) you would earn some more stars. We are also going to add the ability to skip levels so hopefully if you've been frustrated that will ease some of the frustration.
This feels like a rather long blog post so I think I'll kinda wrap things up here. We are super excited that we've got a stable version of Block'd! up on the App Store and we'll be starting to ramp up our marketing a little more. We've also got a some major new features that we're going to be adding to hopefully make the game a little less frustrating and a little more fun to play on a daily basis. Additionally, we've also got the new colors, and some more levels coming your way which should make things even more super fun. So yeah. Hopefully I'll be blogging more because we really do have some exciting stuff I'm looking forward to sharing with you guys.
As always, thanks for reading
-Matt.