Category: Interviews »

Sometimes it doesn't feel that great to have made a correct prediction. One of those times is last month when I questioned just how the developers of cute endless runner, Tanuki Forest, expected to make any money given its very friendly nature towards encouraging one to buy any in-app purchases.

While the folks at Mighty Mill explained how they thought going freemium without hassling players would "maximize potential users and only those that would love it would pay something", they've found themselves in an awkward situation. Last week, the developer announced that Tanuki Forest in its free guise had achieved 8.72k downloads but a mere $65.52 before Apple took its cut. With not much chance of being able to survive on such low earnings, the firm took the difficult decision to increase the asking price for the game to $1.99, I chatted more to Jake Gumbleton to see just how they felt about how things have turned out.

148Apps: What do you wish you'd done differently with Tanuki Forest's initial release?
Jake Gumbleton (JG): If we were doing things over we would research F2P a lot more carefully and had a more informed decision about the relative merits of indie premium vs F2P monetisation. As you (and a few others) pointed out in your review of TF, the game was very unaggressive with its freemium monetisation. It basically never asks you for money and everything in it can very easily be acquired without ever spending actual money. We went free so that we would have no barrier to entry and achieve the largest possible amount of players. We hoped those players who loved the game would buy the currency doubler as a thanks. This behaviour is true of forum users etc. but maybe not so true of the wider, more casual games player.

148Apps: Did you consider adding more intrusive in-app purchases at any point?
JG: Not pre-release, no. We really did not want to taint the experience of Tanuki Forest. The game has an immersive, absorbing style and we did not want to harass players to make purchases. After the hard truth of seeing that the game was basically only going to make enough money to buy us lunch we, of course, discussed potential changes and improvements to the in app purchasing.

We would never want to take our games to a very aggressive place with monetization but I do think there is a lot of potential to improve the ‘retention game’ of Tanuki Forest. We have consulted a few F2P experts and have a list of things that we would love to implement in TF that would give the players much more reason to return to the game for more from one play session to the next.

148Apps: Do you think going on sale upon first release would have helped?
JG: I think it might have made us slightly more money but not enough to really change our circumstances. The only real potential benefit would have been that the game would have been perceived as more premium than it was? I think the same elephant in the room is still there whichever way a small indie dev chooses to go, free or paid: Getting meaningful amounts of visibility with the App Store players is extremely difficult indeed.

148Apps: Why did you opt for $1.99 rather than $0.99?
JG: Two reasons: to give us room to go on sale if we want to at a later date and also, in my reading up of F2P monetisation since release, I have read a few times that at the low end of price points it makes very little difference to the number of purchases that get made. The difference in units bought at $0.99 or 1.99$ is pretty negligible. $0.99 does not have the relevance that it did before the dominance of free games since there are so many free games now.

148Apps: Have things improved financially yet?
JG: We are making more money than we were as a free app but still virtually nothing. The big problem now is that Tanuki Forest has dipped in to obscurity just like all apps do after a few weeks on the app store if they don’t go viral. All of our coverage through reviews etc. happened while we were paid. Once an app dips in the charts it submerges in the million other apps and that’s pretty much that!

148Apps: Has there been any kind of backlash?
JG: None at all. People have been incredibly supportive. Ultimately, gamers can’t really be angry for being early adopters and getting the game for free. If it was the other way around I can see reasons for people to be annoyed.

148Apps: What do you think you've learned for future titles?
JG: To push ourselves to have enough originality and content to ensure we can confidently go indie premium up at $5 or so. If Tanuki Forest had been something bigger than a runner we would have just gone the indie premium route straight off the bat. Our next game will be more original and idiosyncratic of us as developers and we will ensure it has enough content to be a real premium indie app like Sword & Sworcery et al.

148Apps: What do you think of the App Store economy? Does it work for developers or is it a consumers' market?
JG: It works just fine if you are Supercell! As a small developer unless you go viral or make a masterpiece then you are in a pretty impossible position. Obviously the guys at the App Store submissions department must face a deluge of content every day. From their point of view I can see why they go for more known quantities. The only games that break the trend and get the features are pretty much the very best games. So my rather obvious advice to indie devs out there is to make sure your game is utter brilliance.

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Thanks to Jake Gumbleton for taking the time to answer our questions. Remember folks, if you love playing a free game, sometimes it's a good move to buy an in-app purchase or two from it. Not all games are so desperate for your money that they'll push you into it. That doesn't mean that the developers behind it don't need to be able to eat!

To learn more about the making of Tanuki Forest, check out our earlier interview with the team.

Game creation is not easy. Edmund Koh and Personae Studios want to change that with the upcoming PICS Tower of Defense - a way for players to make their own tower defense levels, and eventually their own tower defense games, as a way to lower the barrier that comes between having an idea for a game, and actually creating it.

The app's concept was born from his studio's previous game MechWarrior: Tactical Command. Koh says "People were asking for more missions after we released [the game]... so we realized that with all the suggestions on what we should do, we should just open it up and let people make their own games... basically facilitate people to make games in their own genres. The intention with PICS Towers of Defense is that it would be the first in a series of game creation tools."

The plan for PICS Towers of Defense is to start the game off with level creation only, but eventually, the idea is to let people create full-fledged games with narratives and progression that they define. However, it will be possible to customize all sorts of details, such as attack power of towers and enemies, and even whether the game will be a standard mazing game or an open-field one like Fieldrunners.

Koh says that, "With game development, essentially what you're doing, most of the time, you're just guessing what the audience wants... the approach that we're taking is that we're gonna ask people what do you want, and let them do it."

One of the features for creation that they're working on is to be able to modify levels that other players have created. Koh puts it like this: "If I gave you a clean sheet of paper and asked you to design a car, the chances are, very few people are able to do it. Whereas, if I ask you, what's wrong with your car and what would you want to change on it, I'm sure you can come up with a lot of things." So, powered by this philosophy, Personae is aiming to make attributable changes to levels, and to help make creation easier for people.

The way that PICS Towers of Defense intends on making money right now is through theme packs for levels and towers: the game is expected to be a free download, but additional theme packs will be available as in-app purchases, and there is talk of crossovers with other games to get theme packs into this creation tool. Koh says, "We want this to be more of a community-driven platform where people could write in suggestions on what kind of theme packs that they would want to see, and we'll try to create it for them."

The plan is for the game to release at some point in the second quarter of 2014, though the initial release will not be the be-all end-all of the game, with more features down the road. And perhaps if the game does well, then more genres could be added to the PICS brand. But for now, Koh and Personae have their hands full with this ambitious app, which in its current state definitely delivers on its promise. But making it widespread and accessible will be the key to the game's success.

We at 148Apps can't help but be fascinated by new developers - particularly new developers who have struck out alone, stepping away from their AAA development days. After all, it's a big risk so they deserve some attention, right? One of the latest teams to arise from such creative bravery is Mighty Mill: a UK based 2-man and a bit team made up of James Trubridge, director; and Jake Gumbleton, art director; with help from Leavon Archer for sound and music. With plenty of experience under their belts, they've just released their first title, Tanuki Forest, so we felt this was the ideal time to learn more. Jake was all too happy to answer our questions.

148Apps: What made you decide to go it alone and set up Mighty Mill?
Jake Gumbleton (JG): We launched Mighty Mill Games, after a decade each in the traditional game development world. There are two main driving forces behind this: Firstly is creative freedom. In larger organizations, the chain of approval is often daunting and you see so many great ideas get snipped away, particularly in the very conservative ideology that many big budget games are constrained by due to the money at stake on them. Working in a small team has always been our favorite work environment. It just breeds creativity and allows ideas to bounce around and grow.

We also wanted to be there to see our kids grow up. We read somewhere that most men’s dying wish is that they had spent more time with their kids when they were young. We both have children that have been born during [the] making [of] Tanuki Forest. Mighty Mill hopefully allows us to be with them when it matters the most in those early years. We get to play with our kids and experience all their firsts while still making our business work and grow for us.

148Apps: Where does the name Mighty Mill come from?
JG: We are based in Long Eaton near Nottingham, England, and the place used to be a big textiles town so it is full of mills. Naming a company is harder than making games. The mills in Long Eaton are not actually windmills, but shhhhhh!

148Apps: How did the idea for Tanuki Forest come about?
JG: Tanuki Forest has shifted a great deal since we began on it. It actually started as a brave experiment in asymmetrical multiplayer on the iPad but in the end it just was not fun enough. The aesthetic of the game comes from my fetish for Japan and Studio Ghibli in particular. A few years back I was lucky enough to go to Japan and visit both Nara and the Ghibli museum. It all had a big impact on me, which really came out in the aesthetic and feel of Tanuki Forest. Nara is so brilliant. The deer there have free reign. My wife and I had breakfast in our room one day with deer munching on the grass outside the open window. It was amazing.

I love character design and wanted to develop a main character who was super appealing. I still do not know what he is exactly.

148Apps: What are the most significant differences between working on an AAA project compared to something of Tanuki Forest's size?
JG: I think specialization is the single biggest factor. Working with a very small team, you just have to do everything so you are constantly forced outside of your area of expertise. There are bits that you love to do but there also lots that you would really prefer not to! Having so little manpower also forces you to make some pretty hard decisions about what you can attempt to do.

The thing we enjoyed the most is the speed that you can iterate at. During our prototyping phase you get to say "what if we do ‘x’?" and then just do it right away. It allows you to really iterate fast and is great fun.

148Apps: What challenges did you face during development?
JG: The hardest challenges are the decisions where you have little expertise but the results will make or break the success of the game. Our two hardest things to decide were: do we go with a publisher, and should the game be paid or free. We have opted for no publisher and to go free.

Tanuki Forest is very charming and quite understated for an infinite runner, and although our revenue will have to come from IAP we have nothing to aggressively drive this in the game. Our sincere hope is that people who love the game will spend a little money in the shop. This decision was so hard for us to make as F2P has a real stigma to it for an indie dev. I hate games that constantly bug me to buy stuff! In the end we felt that it was the right way to go for Tanuki Forest as it is an infinite runner. Larger future projects will probably be done on the paid model.

148Apps: What's next in the pipeline?
JG: We have piles of game concepts just waiting for us to add water and watch them grow. Some of these contain robots. We have our fingers crossed that Tanuki Forest will be a first step towards a very exciting future.

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Thanks to Jake for taking the time to answer our questions. Tanuki Forest is out now and is free to play. There really is no reason why it's not worth downloading, as it is rather charming.

Galaxy on Fire - Alliances and its developer, Fishlabs, have been through quite the tumult over the past few months. Fishlabs went through financial trouble and was eventually acquired by publisher Deep Silver, a rising force in the gaming industry known for publishing Saints Row IV and the Dead Island series. Throughout it all, Galaxy on Fire- Alliances has been chugging along: beta tested and released among these turbulent times, the game is now available worldwide and just received a big content update. Kai Hitzer, Marketing Director at Deep Silver Fishlabs took the time to answer some questions about the game's unique approach and development.

148Apps: Alliances seems to start up a lot slower than what many free-to-play games do: it has a very lengthy and involved tutorial, and doesn't get into the bulk of the game for some time. Was this a purposeful design decision?

Kai Hitzer (KH): Yes, that decision has been made on purpose. If you want it to be, Galaxy on Fire - Alliances can be a very complex game that really sucks you in and offers you a multitude of differing options and possibilities. But at the same time it also allows for a less challenging gaming experience for players who don’t want to get into the matter too deeply, but prefer to focus on the core features and basic actions only. No matter which way of playing you prefer, you always have to know your stuff and that’s why we settled for a rather lengthy and extensive tutorial. Once you’ve performed all the tasks asked for by your Personal Assistant, you will not only be familiar with the most basic gameplay mechanisms, but you will also have earned enough credits and experience points to be well prepared for the transition from your save home instance to the PVP space.

The save home system, which can neither be seen nor attacked by other players, constitutes another important element of the starting phase of Galaxy on Fire - Alliances. To make sure that all players have enough time to become acquainted with the game, we’ve made sure that everyone’s got a secure resort from where they can plan and execute their operations at whatever pace they prefer. Once you’ve mastered the first couple of steps successfully and feel well-prepared for the next round, all you need to do is open up your jump gate and start your endeavors in the “real” galaxy. But even then you will not abandon your home system, but you will still keep it so that you can continue to build it up and use it as the centre of your dealings and ventures.

148Apps: Alliances, with its complexity, feels very targeted to a core gamer audience. Did you feel like this segment was being underserved on iOS?
KH: As a company that’s always been eager to bring truly immersive gaming experiences to mobile – in terms of graphics as well as in regard to the depth of gameplay – we have been catering to a rather hardcore-oriented user base for years. And Galaxy on Fire - Alliances makes no exception here. We’ve always said that we wanted to show with GOFA that it is indeed possible to bring free-to-play and hardcore gameplay in accordance with one another. And we still stand by this claim as much as we did when we first proclaimed it.

With mobile devices becoming more and more powerful and capable month after month, we believe that the number of people who want to play demanding core games on their smartphones or tablets will continue to grow constantly. When you’ve got a device with you 24/7 that’s capable of running apps in current-gen console quality, why would you want to use it only to play titles that look and feel like browser or flash games from 10 years ago? Don’t get me wrong, pretty much everyone here at Fishlabs is totally enjoying their occasional dose of casual games as well, but we still believe that there’s more to the mobile platform than just endless runners, match-3s, and physics games.

148Apps: How casual-friendly do you consider this game to be, if at all?
KH: As said earlier, one of the beauties of Galaxy on Fire - Alliances lies in the fact that the players can decide for themselves how they want to play it. If they’re looking for a challenging, deeply engrossing hardcore gaming experience, they can join an ambitious alliance (or even form their own alliance) and closely interact with others to constantly widen their reach and fortify their dominion. When you choose to play the game like this, you will be able to coordinate large-scale attacks with dozens of fellow players, command backup troops to secure strategically important positions, carry out feint assaults to throw your enemies’ defense line off balance and actively participate in a vivid community of aspiring star base commanders.

But if you want play a bit more light-hearted and easy-going, you can also stay in your private instance a little longer and then, when you leave it, colonize a couple of planets outside of the areas of war and conflict. There you should be able to progress in a relaxed but steady manner and build up your empire without much interference from pushy players or hostile alliances. So at the end of the day, it’ll be entirely up to you - you can spend 10 hours a day, 10 minutes a day, or anything in between playing Galaxy on Fire - Alliances and you’ll always experience meaningful gaming sessions and make reasonable progress.

148Apps: By making a game that's complex – at least compared to many of the successful free-to-play games out there - were there any changes to the free-to-play and monetization structure that you felt had to be made because many core gamers are so vocal against free-to-play games, especially on mobile?
KH: Personally, I don’t think that F2P mechanics themselves bug the core players, but rather the bad implementation of said mechanics. A lot of games still focus on monetization first and gameplay second. For us, those two aspects have always been on par and we’ve tried our best to bring them in accordance with one another. There’s no denying that we have to sell in-app purchases at one point or another in order for GOFA to become a success. But at the same time, we also want the game to be fully accessible and fun to play regardless of the amount of money you invest.

The formula’s simple: on the one hand, players should be able to undergo a challenging, engrossing, and exciting gaming experience even if they never buy a single in-app purchase in Alliances. But on the other hand, they should also not become invincible overnight just because they spent a hundred or even a thousand dollars on credit packs and limit extenders. Therefore, we’ve set various rules and regulations that make sure that paying customers can indeed proceed faster than non-paying customers, but only to certain a extent. The general rule of thumb is that two non-paying players, who team up and support each in their attacks and defenses, will always be able to stand up to one heavy spender.

148Apps: What did the beta test help you change about the game to make it better? Were there any significant changes that you saw?
KH: Listening to our fans has always been at the heart of our efforts, and the closed beta has been of tremendous help for us, providing tons of useful and insightful user feedback over the months. From update to update, Galaxy on Fire - Alliances has gone through dozens of severe changes in all crucial areas, such as game design, balancing, usability, and performance. By evaluating data from the closed beta, we’ve not only been able to fine-tune important aspects such as structure building times, commander level-ups, and mission rewards, but we’ve also been inspired to add all-new features such as carrier names, leaderboards, and structure take-overs. And, of course, the closed beta has also helped us to locate and fix quite a lot of bugs and other issues as well.

Thanks to Kai Hitzer for his time.

148Apps Live's first episode kicked off with Team Chaos playing Dragon Trials, and now, they're back with a new title: Enigmo: Explore.

A spiritual successor to Pangea Software's Enigmo series, some of the members of Pangea have teamed up with Team Chaos to bring back the puzzler, and they'll be chatting with me, Carter Dotson, live on our Twitch channel at 2:00pm Eastern, 1:00pm Central, 11:00am Pacific, 8:00pm GMT. Watch the stream once it goes live below:

[twitchlive 148apps]

If you miss the show, be sure to catch the recap embedded here afterward to catch all the fun. Follow us on Twitch to be notified when we go live next!

One of the finest things about app development is how it opens things up to more than just major studios keen to develop an idea. In increasingly dicey times for those reliant upon others for employment, it's a particular boon to see and some great ideas can come out of tricky times.

One such game is the recently reviewed Glyph Quest, with its developer, industry veteran and one time lead designer at Bullfrog Alex Trowers, letting me know the background to its development. In his own words, "Leanne [Bayley] (the artist), was working in Plymouth, me in Brighton. We decided to move in together and she'd find a new job up this way. Then we found out she was pregnant and had become completely unemployable. Then I lost my job. Instead of finding a new one, we decided we'd try and make a game ourselves. Could we do it before Sproglet arrived? How hard is it for an 8-month pregnant lady to go through [development] crunch [time]?"

More is explained on Leanne's blog but Alex was also kind enough to take some time out of his busy schedule to answer a few questions.

148Apps: How did the idea for Glyph Quest come about?
Alex Trowers (AT): Glyph Quest was originally a side project for us to tinker about at home while Leanne was out of work. I was a big fan of Dungeon Raid's tactile dragging interface (and, more recently, Puzzle & Dragons). Also, I enjoyed the RPG-esque trappings of 10000000. So we kinda threw the rest together. We're both firm believers in emergent and evolutionary gameplay rather than designing something up front and just implementing it, so a lot of the features we added were very much developed on the fly.

148Apps: How different did you find it going from working as part of a team to a much smaller operation?
AT: The amount of freedom afforded to you as part of a tiny team is fantastic. We put whatever we wanted in to the game as there were no people further up the chain with the power of veto. That's why you'll find plenty of references to all sorts of things scattered throughout and it's those little touches that i think help us to stand out. In addition we really didn't take ourselves or the genre too seriously. Of course the downside is the lack of resources. Glyph Quest was nowhere near as polished as it could have been come launch and things like our lack of config test or thorough QA were easy to call out. Another thing to consider is that while it's great to have all of that power and control, it does rather mean that the buck stops with you and if it all goes horribly wrong, there's no-one else to blame. It's exciting stuff really.

148Apps: What challenges did you come across?
AT: Our main challenge was logistics to do with the pregnancy as well as all of the other things that went wrong in real life. For example, it's not the easiest thing in the world for a heavily pregnant woman to sit at a desk all day. We also had many sleepless nights - either Sproglet would kick Leanne awake or this wisdom tooth (that I'm still waiting to get fixed) would decide that I wouldn't be allowed to sleep. Then there was the roof falling off in the storms and the landlord serving us notice. And we had to have it all done and dusted before Sproglet was born.

148apps: You've written extensively about issues with the iTunes submission process [as well as the development process]. How would you improve it?
AT: The iTunes side of things was always pretty simple. Convoluted in places, I guess - particularly when it came to IAPs - but the level of documentation and support available went a long way to mitigating that. The main place where things fell over were with XCode and my own complete lack of knowledge about it. Knowing which menu to find the relevant option to enable or disable some game-breaking feature was an exercise in the arcane. A friend and old Bullfrog buddy of mine postulated that you need this barrier to entry in order to ensure that the platform is secure and I kinda agree with him.

148Apps: What do you plan to do next? Besides enjoy fatherhood!
AT: Next? Well, the success of Glyph Quest has taken us completely by surprise so we're coming under increasing pressure to 'fix' issues with the first one or perhaps start looking in to a sequel. The plan was always to make Glyph Quest in order to fund a Kickstarter campaign for something much bigger. I'd still very much like to do that, but another Glyph Quest game makes an awful lot of sense. Then again, Sproglet was born at midday today, so I guess all bets are off and the thing I'd like to do next is sleep.

Huge thanks to Alex for taking the time to answer my questions and congratulations to him and Leanne on the arrival of their baby. Proving to be quite the inspiration given how much they've overcome in recent times, it's the ideal time to try out Glyph Quest, available now on the App Store.

Following the surprise release of TowerMadness 2 last week we thought it was the ideal time to find out more about Limbic Software's latest title, learn about some of the design process behind it, and discover just how it came to be. What better font of knowledge than that of Co-Founder and CEO, Arash Kesmirian? We caught up with him to find the answers to our questions and more.

148Apps: What made you decide to release a whole new game rather than update the original TowerMadness?
Arash Keshmirian (AK): We’ve been building on the original TowerMadness for nearly five years now; it went from having only four simple maps to over a hundred. There were 20 updates, and tons of towers, enemies, environments, and features added. I think this was a big part of why that game was a success – we kept it alive, listened to fans, and added more and more. At some point though, we had to draw the line. We wanted to do significant new things and had to completely overhaul the platform in order to evolve to the next step. A revolutionary new 3D engine, brand new art, sound; I don’t really think anything carried over from the original. Oh, just two things – the muzzle flashes and the lock icons are the same. They were too perfect to toss out!

Another big departure from the original was our emphasis on adding characters to the game. So far there are two – Bo, a brave ram that defends your sheep against the first intruders into the flock and helps beginning players, and Xen, an old, wise, friendly alien that runs the tower laboratory to help you defeat the evil aliens. His motivations are unclear. We spent a lot of time making them come to life with dialogue and sophisticated animation. Our hope is to connect players with the game’s world in a deeper way than before, and we added some little surprises to this effect too, like funny descriptions for all the alien types:

148Apps: It's been 3 and a half years since the first title was released, how come there was such a significant gap between the releases?
AK: Well, because of the constant updates to TowerMadness 1 we didn’t really feel like there was a “gap” for players. But in terms of releases, we had to go explore other ideas and grow creatively before we were ready to come back to TowerMadness and make a proper sequel. In the years that went by, we developed and released Nuts! and Zombie Gunship. We’ve been fortunate to see them grow into massive franchises of their own, and each appeals to a different group of players with different expectations from games.

We did have a few “false starts” with TowerMadness 2, though. We’ve gone through a fair number of rejected design doc ideas that we ultimately decided would be too different, hard to play, or just not that fun. It took a long time to find a vision that worked. About nine months ago we cracked it, and set to work building TowerMadness 2.

148Apps: How has the evolution of iOS since the first game changed the development of TowerMadness 2?
AK: The Apple Xcode tools we use to develop our games have been consistently improving over the years – but specifically for iOS, we’ve enjoyed leveraging a lot of new iOS features in TowerMadness 2. For one, we’re making full use of iCloud to let players carry their progress with them from device to device, and ensure nothing is ever lost. Since people tend to invest a lot of time in TowerMadness, this was really important to us. A bit more on the technical side, we’re leveraging a lot of new “under-the-hood” iOS features to provide the graphics and animation you see in the game.

Tower defense games in general are a challenge performance-wise because you have a lot of characters on screen that need to be drawn, animated, and run AI. Our custom engine leverages a lot of iOS optimizations to make this fast and keep framerates solidly at 60fps on modern devices. It screams on A7. As far as experimental features go, I really like playing on the TV with Apple TV and Airplay, so we added iOS controller integration to the game. It seems a bit odd for a tower defense to do this, since it’s quite well-suited to touch, but I think it’s a neat experience on a big screen with a controller and a few friends watching.

148Apps: TowerMadness 2 has been a surprise release on the App Store. Why the secrecy rather than building up hype beforehand?
AK: Limbic has always been about experimenting. Back in 2009 we were one of the first free apps on the App Store with TowerMadness Zero, and we’ve innovated in other areas by doing things like split-screen multiplayer, Airplay, and other “tests” well ahead of the curve. Our marketing is no different – we wanted to see what would happen if we dazzled our fans with the release they’d been hoping for, without a tortuous tease beforehand. We’re in an age of game development now where the entire process is laid out for fans, from concept to alpha to beta to release, and we wanted to try the polar opposite for a change. When I was a kid I remember one day coming home from school and finding a brand new SNES game lying on my bed, a totally unexpected gift from my parents. Those were the best kinds of surprises, and I wanted our fans to experience that kind of joy too.

148Apps: Tower Defense games run the risk of being samey, what makes TowerMadness 2 stand out from its predecessor?
AK: There are a few things that make TowerMadness and TowerMadness 2 unique. The first major aspect is the free-grid style of tower defense gameplay, which really opens the game up to strategic placement of towers and sophisticated tactics. We combine this with a vast array of tower types and alien types, making each level and each round really different in terms of how the waves play out. We’ve added some interesting gameplay mechanics when it comes to environments, with towers overheating and freezing in different climates. I hope to expand on that in future versions.

Another core aspect of the original TowerMadness was the competitive leaderboards. In TowerMadness 2, we’ve streamlined the score dynamic into a simple level time. If players can send and defeat waves more quickly, they’ll finish the level with a shorter time. We use Game Center challenges to facilitate grudge matches, and this has been a big hit with our team internally.

148Apps: How did the idea of using sheep in both games come about?
AK: When Volker, Iman, and I created the first TowerMadness, we originally had concepted it as being cows. I have some limited 3dsmax skills [and] was responsible for all of that game's artwork. The problem was, I had no idea how to make cute-looking cows. I did have some theories about making cute sheep, though. So I built this guy, and he stuck:

Today, with the talents of our Art Director, Lee, we have a much nicer-looking flock...

Plus, I think it makes a much better story that the aliens are trying to abduct the sheep to knit their emperor a sweater (it was a scarf in TM1). What would they do with a cow? Milk? Steaks? The aliens don’t have mouths, and invade completely unarmed... For all we know, they might be vegetarian pacifists!

148Apps: Thanks for your help and time in answering these questions
AK: Thanks for having me. We’re really excited to finally get this out in the hands of players, and we can’t wait to see how the game grows as it evolves.

TowerMadness 2 is out now, and on sale at $2.99 (usually priced at $4.99). The original TowerMadness is also available for those keen to catch up on past hits.

Unsung Story, Playdek's upcoming tactical RPG, seems to be moving along quite nicely. The Kickstarter project, which only started last week, is already past the halfway point with 24 days to go. I think it's safe to assume that a fair number of people want to play it, yeah?

Playdek CEO Joel Goodman was gracious enough to answer a few of our burning questions regarding Unsung Story. Specifically questions about the game itself, the Kickstarter project, and the involvement of Yasumi Matsuno.

148Apps: Playdek has one heck of a repertoire filled with a TON of great ports of some classic games. Do you think the mechanics of any of those games, or what you've learned while creating them, may have had an influence on what you've done with Unsung Story?
Joel Goodman (JG): The AI system we have created as well as our asynchronous gameplay mechanics will most definitely have an influence on what we will be able to do for Unsung Story. We also maintain a high quality level for all of our games.

148Apps: A tactical RPG seems like a fairly big change in genre from Playdek's typical work. Was it a challenge to start developing something so different or was it an idea who's time has come?
JG: It was a ripe opportunity that just sort of happened. When the opportunity came, we jumped at it. Plus tactics gaming fits our wheel house.

148Apps: Was Yasumi Matsuno a part of the project from the start or did you have the basic idea for Unsung Story in place first?
JG: Yasumi Matsuno developed the concept entirely from the start. We only asked for a tactics game and he took that request and hit the ground running. It is amazing to see the concepts and ideas he is able to come up with when given creative freedom.

148Apps: Will there be any form of multiplayer mode or is it being designed as an entirely single-player affair? Personally I wouldn't mind the latter in the slightest.
JG: There will be multi-player, but the core experience for the story is single player.

148Apps: It must have been difficult deciding where to place stretch goals for the Kickstarter project. Were there any goals you would shift around if given the opportunity? Any that you wish you could have included in the base game? Are you finding that backers are generally being receptive to them or has there been some pushback?
JG: The response has been incredible, and our backers are giving us tremendous feedback on the rewards and goals. We will be making modifications to those as we go based off of the suggestions we are seeing come in.

148Apps: Regardless of how the Kickstarter campaign goes (I'm guessing very well based on how much it's made so far) Unsung Story will still be coming to mobile, right?
JG: Yes, however we hope to get the game into as many player's hands as possible on their platforms of choice.

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We'd like to thank Joel Goodman for answering our questions, and are anxiously looking forward to getting our hands on Unsung Story.

Comic book fans are probably familiar with the work of creator and artist Steve Uy; his work is featured in acclaimed Marvel and DC titles such as Uncanny Xmen, Avengers: The Initiative, and JSA Classified and he's the artist behind the strikingly beautiful upcoming SRPG World Without End. At the end of last year the rather interesting and visually creative Oasis: Path to Redemption was finally released for iOS and Android platforms, and I caught up with Steve Uy to discuss his new game.

148Apps:You’re an artist for a large variety of comic books titles; what made you decide to venture into video game design and has it been an eye-opening experience from what you are used to?
Steve Uy (SU): I believe every comic book creator, at one point or another, wants to make a video game, and every video game guy, if they could, wants to try out comic books. At least that's always been my experience when I talk to the two groups in conventions, so I’m not really unique in this desire, just in the fact that I actually did it. Everyone has the grass is greener attitude when it comes to the medium.
With comic books, I'm in charge of everything, and the end result is limited only to my deficiencies as an artist. I've created worlds for over a decade in a sequential medium, and Oasis is the first step in allowing people to be an active participant in a world I have created. With games, however, the size of the world is limited by things such as budgets so there are still restrictions to what I can do.

As for eye-opening experiences, absolutely! I originally thought Oasis would take 3-4 months to complete, but it took us 9 months and still counting with the android build coming! The game may look small in size, but getting every bit of code right, making sure every single animation frame played at the right tenth of a second, making sure the jump arc and knock back animation and dash speed was right to the exact pixel - those are things that I have always taken for granted. I can't say enough what a great job my programmer, John Garrison, did to make everything as polished as it came out to be. Oasis turned out to be much deeper than I ever expected and I'm still learning new combat tricks with every new update.

148Apps:Where did the idea behind Oasis: Path to Redemption come from and what is the story behind it?
SU: When I was working on World Without End (which I put on hiatus so we could get Oasis out first), all I could think of was that I really wanted to do a side-scroller. If I were to do an RPG, I imagine it would be something like The Adventure of Link; a game that had a traditional overworld but with side-scrolling dungeons. I had an overworld with WWoE but I needed to figure out how to do side-scrollers, and that's where Oasis came from.

Oasis may be called a runner because the main character runs automatically, but that's just a game design decision I made to simplify controls, much like how SHMUPS have auto-fire built in. Take everything Oasis has to offer and it's more similar to a side-scrolling console fighter - albeit far more simplified of course - complete with counters, footsies, and combo delay attacks.

148Apps: When it comes to writing and creating a game, what or who are your influences and was there anything in particular that had a large impact on the idea of Oasis?
SU I think the first thing people will notice with Oasis is that it has an ending. All games that have a main character should have an ending.

The first thing I thought of when coming up with a story for Oasis was that I didn't want it to be like everything else out there, full of in-your-face fun and joy and awesomeness. This game, from start to finish, is bittersweet, melancholic. Every stage shows a little piece of the story in illustrated cutscenes. But those scenes had to be concise and to the point; they had to MATTER to the player without preaching to them. They had to be worth fighting for. This is the story of the last man left in the world trying to revive it just so he can see his lost love again.

If I were to describe Oasis, I’d say it was a cross between Journey, Shadow of the Colossus, and Ninja Gaiden.

148Apps: Are there still plans for the release of World Without End? Can we look forward to this beautiful game gracing our iOS and Android devices anytime soon?
SU: To be on the safe side, I can't make any promises for sure until we know how Oasis fares in the market and we see if we have money to pay the bills. But it's definitely on the top of me and my programmer’s list of priorities.

148Apps: Is there anything you can take from this experience so far that you would say has prepared you for any future or on-going projects?
SU: I definitely overdid it with the parallax layers in the final stage! I didn't realize that 512 MB of memory would still get eaten up with all the hand drawn art I did for the game! Plus, I did looping worlds with seamless transitions, which meant that all the parallax layers had to end and transition at exactly the right spot on the map. That took months to perfect, and I don't think the end result looks as good as if I had just drawn non looping worlds with no limitations to my art.

For the future, I would like to be able to make a Metroid-style game someday but touch controls right now are the biggest limitation, and directional onscreen controls used simultaneously with onscreen buttons are definitely not good enough for me.

That said, the engine for Oasis opens up a whole new world for us. If we were to make sequels it would be redesigned in structure. No more looping worlds, probably permanent checkpoints, bosses, air combos - it would be more of an adventure game than a battle runner. I would use everything we made to release a more polished, deeper game, but I have no desire to make the same thing twice.

148Apps: Can we expect more of your beautiful handiwork on our iOS devices again anytime soon?
SU: We're still working on the android versions of Oasis right now, and we'll probably release a Lite version for iOS later down the line. There are definitely things I want to continue with so it comes down to either Oasis or World Without End depending on how sales go. Obviously, the best way to help make that happen is to buy the game, or my comic books in ComiXology. And of course, keep tabs on my website for any updates.

Ever watch your favorite sports team's season go down the drain due to injuries? What if I told you a video-editing app for iPad could someday be the reason why your team wins a championship? That's just what Spark Motion Pro could do, if Dave Gottfeld has his way.

See, what Spark Motion Pro does functionally is to allow its users to shoot videos, then easily annotate them and add commentary. In this case the annotations can include things like stopwatches, a ruler to measure lengths of objects, set to the scale of a control object, an angle measurement tool, and even transparent overlays of another video. Users can easily import videos, rearrange clips, and add their commentary to them, then uploading them to a cloud-based service for others to view. It's all functionality that - by itself - is perhaps technically solid, but not necessarily revolutionary in and of itself.

But see, sometimes the power of an app is not so much in what it does, but what it allows the user to do. And what it allows trainers and physicians to do is to be able to easily capture video of someone they're working with, say, an athlete recovering from a knee injury, as Gottfeld demoed to me when I spoke to him. When one client he worked with who suffered an ACL injury, he was able to show using the app's grid and transparent overlay how a one-leg balance test showed that the person's non-injured leg was having balance issues during their recovery with the other leg. Using Spark Motion, Gottfeld could easily quantify to his client using the video overlay of the exact problem.

Baseball and golf are two extremely mechanical sports, and Spark Motion is perfect for them. The angle overlay can help a golfer analyze where the angle of their swing is, informing them of what they need to focus on to improve. Gottfeld in particular showed how he was able to detect how a certain hip movement was causing knee stress in a baseball batter's swing. Pitchers are an obvious application for this app: delivery flaws could be detected and improvement over time could be shown as well.

Spark Motion Pro takes full advantage of the convenience of modern technology: as an iPad app, this means that its users can easily shoot and analyze video from wherever. The app's subscription service comes with cloud storage (which is HIPAA compliant for patient confidentiality) that can allow trainers and practitioners to work remotely with clients who can shoot and upload their own video, which theSpark Motion user can then provide their analysis of and send back. Users can even link up a PayPal account and charge for their services in the app on a per-video basis. This can happen anywhere wi-fi is available.

The more powerful hardware of the latest iOS devices only makes Spark Motion better: the iPad Air can render video with annotations much faster than previous generations, at what Gottfeld reports as a 1:1 ratio of video time to rendering time. Videos can be imported from sources besides the iPad, so video could be shot with a high-end camera on a stable setup, for example. Or for those who want to shoot high framerate video with the iPhone 5s, that is compatible with Spark Motion Pro as well. Perhaps those additional frames could reveal information in the body's movements that could help prevent a catastrophic injury, or provide dramatic performance improvements.

The app has tons of potential, but it's already in use in some cases: Gottfeld reports working with the New England Patriots using Spark Motion, and former NFL kicker Matt Stover helps train kickers using the app. And at the recent MLB Winter Meetings, among the headlines of big deals and big fights, Gottfeld got to meet with all the teams in a speed-pitching scenario, and several teams were reportedly interested in the app. They might just be the ones that keep their players healthy on the field, or get the injured ones back sooner, and win more games.

The Spark Motion Pro app is a free download from the App Store, but it requires a subscription account to use, with signups available at Spark Motion's website.

Steadily evolving over the years, Get Set Games' Mega Run and Mega Jump have seen quite significant changes. Mega Jump was initially released in 2010 as a premium title, before being made free to play in 2011, alongside the release of similarly free to play Mega Run. Now it seems that things have come full circle with the renamed and remodeled premium titles, Mega Run Plus and Mega Jump Plus.

Given the change of strategy from Get Set Games, we took the time to talk to Derek van Vliet, one of the co-founders of the company, to find out more about the thought process.

148Apps: In the past few years you've jumped between premium pricing and free to play, resulting in both varieties catered for on the App Store. How come? Why the change in pricing model?
Derek van Vliet (DV): That’s true. Mega Jump started as a paid app in May 2010. Shortly thereafter we ran a couple of “free game of the day” promotions which showed us that the game could earn more as a free app with in-app purchases than it could as a paid app. So in August 2010 we switched it to Free permanently.

Since then we’ve added a number of new monetization features that make it hard to go back to being a premium game (primarily interstitial advertising). At the same time, we heard from lots of players that they would like to be able to buy the game up front and get all of the content in the game and not have to deal with the ads. These new paid versions of Mega Jump and Mega Run serve that demand. They are the same awesome games, but free of ads and all of the additional level packs are available to unlock for free.

148Apps: Do you regret going down the free to play route before?
DV: Not at all. We’ve been able to grow a fantastic company in large part due to that decision. We’re going to continue to release games that make people say “I can’t believe this is free”.

148Apps: Have such models affected how games are developed?
DV: Indeed they have. It has caused us to have to focus a lot of resources on systems that increase engagement, monetization, and virality. Things like Facebook-connected leaderboards and consumable power-ups. The player-facing components of these systems most often take the form of UI and as such, a lot of our development resources have been focused on enabling us to design and present large amounts of user interface in our games.

It also puts a large emphasis on the importance of being able to change the content of our games at a moment’s notice. So a considerable amount of the effort we put into making games goes into making the experience configurable over the air.

148Apps: What do you think works best between free to play and premium?
DV: Regardless of free to play or premium, what works best is delivering a high quality experience to the player. We've always strived to produce games that are brimming with fun and humor and we find that resonates with people in both the free to play and premium markets.

148Apps: What do you think the future is for the iOS pricing model?
DV: I think we're going to continue to see free games dominate the top grossing charts for the foreseeable future. That being said, as iOS heads towards 1 billion users, even if only 10% of the money that is spent goes towards paid apps, that will continue to be a large opportunity for premium games.

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Thanks to Derek for taking the time to answer our questions. Mega Jump Plus and Mega Run Plus are available on the App Store now, priced at $0.99 each.

Approaching things differently from the rest is always good, right? That's what the folks at Little Bit Games are clearly thinking, too. Having previously covered their efforts earlier in the year, my interest was piqued thanks to a new Kickstarter campaign they've recently launched.

EchoChamber is the title hoping to be funded by it. It's described as a rhythm game with a "unique twist." It's a free-to-play local multiplayer title that uses positional audio to get players to follow various cues and perform gestures in time with the music. I took the time to learn more from Cody Lee, co-founder and developer at Little bit Games.

148Apps: How did the idea for echoChamber come about?
Cody Lee (CL): The idea for echoChamber came about after playing the game SpaceTeam with friends. It seemed like such a unique and original idea and utilized your phone for multiplayer in a way that I’d never seen before. It kinda blew my mind and I started to think of other ways we could use mobile devices for multiplayer experiences that you couldn’t get on any other platform. I spent a lot of time picturing people physically standing around with friends, trying to come up with games that required that physical space, and that used the capabilities of modern cell phones.

148Apps: Why the decision to be free to play?
CL: echoChamber is a multiplayer only game, and is more fun the more people you are playing with. It seemed natural for us to release the game as a free download so people can start playing it as easily as possible with their friends without requiring everybody to commit to purchasing it. We’ll be releasing additional tracks as paid DLC for people who want to extend their experience beyond the base tracks.

148Apps: How hard has it been to implement the positional sound effects?
CL: Doing the positional audio itself isn’t too bad. It’s really just a matter of adjusting volume for the different devices to get the desired effect we want. The hardest part has been synching the playback of the track on all of the devices while accounting for network latency. If the sound is out of sync at all, the positional effect is lost, and you get more of an echo. If it’s REALLY out of sync it just sounds like garbage!

148Apps: What other challenges have you faced?
CL: echoChamber started out as more of a Pong-like game where sound would move around and players would have to tap their screens to hit the “ball” away. The problem is it’s hard to know when the ball has reached you. It get’s louder so you know it’s closer, but how loud is the “loudest” and “closest”. That’s why we ended up going the rhythm game route. When there’s a set beat, and the ball moves to the beat, it’s easier to know when the sound will “hit”. We’ve since moved away from the Pong aspect of the game and are focusing more on an overall fun musical experience instead.

148Apps: When do you hope to release echoChamber?
CL: If the Kickstarter goes well, we hope to release some time early next year. If it doesn’t go well... we’re not sure.

The Kickstarter campaign runs until December 27, with a wide selection of backer rewards to cover everyone's budget.

Thanks to Cody for taking the time to answer our questions. We'll be sure to keep an eye on echoChamber's progress.

Arguably the most anticipated puzzle game of the year thanks to the runaway success of its predecessor, The Room Two is set for release on December 12. In the buildup to this very exciting time, I had the chance to go hands-on with the game to see exactly what's to come next week.

Only having had the chance to play the early stages of the game and not wishing to spoil too much, The Room Two is immediately enticing. There's an easy-to-follow tutorial for those who haven't yet enjoyed the original (and if so, why not? There's still plenty of time to lose one's self to it!), and a gentle introduction to what to expect. As before, puzzles are set to be as tactile as they are logical with a layering of conundrums to keep players busy. The eerie music continues to add plenty of tension to what's going on. This time there's set to be a wider variety of rooms to tackle too, which should prove quite enthralling.

The Room Two is set to be the kind of experience where it's best to go in cold, but it's looking pretty positive so far. We'll be sure to bring you a full review next week. For now, we've shared a few words with Barry Meade, commercial director at Fireproof Studios, about how development has gone and just how the success of The Room helped pave the way.

148Apps: The first game was commercially and critically very successful. Have you found this adding to the pressure to get the second game right?
Barry Meade (BM): Not really, we're honestly just delighted to get the chance to work on our own games full stop. Having said that I think we'd all be disappointed if the second game doesn't do better than the first as we've put a lot more work into it this time around. But we do honestly feel that if The Room Two is good enough and deserves to do well, it will do well, and that if it fails its because we failed. And so, if the game's fate is in our hands alone then there's no point in worrying unduly about outside pressures or expectations. We'll do the best we can and see how that flies with our audience.

148Apps: How has that success helped with the development of the sequel?
BM: Hugely. Whereas The Room had only 1 programmer and 1 or 2 artists on it at one time, The Room Two has had up to 4 programmers and 8-10 artists on it during the course of development. We made The Room Two in the time frame that the design required rather than hurried because we needed to make money by X date or whatever, and we were only able to decide that because of The Room's success. But frankly we can't think of any better way to spend the money we earn than to reinvest it in our creative process. For us financial success means freedom - freedom to do what we think is necessary to make the best version of the game we want to make - not to have to work for or make decisions for somebody else's benefit.

For instance if we had to work with a publisher, The Room would never have been created at all - it's a rare publisher that wants to push things forward for gamers and they generally look down on games and developers who do that. No, we needed to listen to ourselves for The Room to happen and thankfully that's what we did, and put our own savings on the line to do it. Now that it has paid off for us, we're even less likely to listen to others. We're in an ideal creative place but we're very aware that this position depends on us genuinely making novel, new, interesting games that deserve audience attention. I hope we live up to it.

148Apps: How will The Room Two be different from its predecessor?
BM: We were all very happy with how The Room turned out as our first game, though the very limited money we had to spend on its development made the game smaller than it deserved to be. So this time around we wanted to give the concept what it deserved in terms of development time, resources, manpower etc. to see where we could take it. In almost every way The Room Two is a more fully-featured game than the first one - taking what worked and building on it, making it deeper, larger and even a bit more complicated. The environments are a lot more interesting, the objects more intricate and interactive.

So it was a harder project to make this time, it had more moving parts, testing it was a bit more fraught etc. but we knew all that going into it - we just wanted to make it bigger and better across the board. Fireproof may never be a flashy AAA developer but as long as we are working on something we are going to make the best damn version of it that we possibly can. It was that attitude which helped us make The Room in the first place and this time is no different. We think its better in every way than the first, let's hope the audience agrees.

148Apps: After the success of the original, was there the temptation to simplify the game to appeal to a more casual market?
BM: Nah. We're amazingly happy with the audience we have, we have no interest in trying to squeeze squillion$ of dollars from The Room. It would be great to pick up more users with The Room Two as we've worked hard to make it as good to play and value-for-money as possible. But for us its very important to make our work with our own sensibilities at the forefront and not to worry too much about what others expect or think. Our audience bought into the love we put in the first game and if we want to please anyone else then it's those who enjoyed the first game. They will be our toughest critics and rightly so.

As gamers we've always believed that if we pleased our own sensibilities and standards first, others will pick up on the care and attention we put into it, whereas if we obviously attempt to chase what other people want or expect, the audience will see through it, smell the desperation and move onto something more honest and interesting. As in a lot of things in life, chasing something indirectly is often the way to catch it, so concentrating on our own wishes for the game and by extension our current audience seems the most reliable and sensible way to attract brand new users into the game.

148Apps: Many players wished they had more time with The Room, will its sequel be longer?
BM: Yes, quite a bit longer. A lot of people who played The Room thought it was a bit short but well worth the money they paid, in fact the user ratings are amazingly high for it so we're hoping that adding a bit of length and depth will keep them just as pleased and perhaps tickle them even more. The curious thing about puzzle games is how mistaken everybody can be about other players experiences. Some player who is a freak for puzzle games generally will play the game and complete it in 1.5 hours and will be convinced the game is actually short. But for every one of those Ninja players we know there's 5-10 other players who took 3-5 hours to play it, and they have a very different view on the length - any longer and they would feel overwhelmed.

Puzzle games are very different to other games in that sense - the experience they give players depends very much on the personality and brain of those who are playing it. It's this engagement of the brain that makes them so beloved I think - people's own imagination takes a very active part in the playing. It might explain all the love the game gets - we're not the biggest selling game by any stretch but people who have played it really really love the game. We are super thankful for that, I can tell you it makes us sleep well at night knowing it.

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Many thanks to Barry for taking the time to answer our questions.

Set for release December 12, we'll have a full review of The Room 2 that day. In the meantime, why not get reacquainted with The Room?

Cornfox & Bros. and publisher FDG Entertainment's Oceanhorn has been an anomaly in the rise of free-to-play games on the App Store: it's one of the few attempts at making a grand-scale game on iOS and priced at an $8.99 cost that few others have dared to try. The game's launch saw it rocket to #1 in the paid app charts and in the top 10 of the top grossing apps, bolstered not just by its App Store Editor's Choice but by a pre-release hype cycle that's rarely seen for mobile games.

Oceanhorn's price risk has paid off: the game recouped its production cost in less than a week, seemingly showing that the kind of games with high production values and premium price points can succeed on the App Store. Thomas Kern, Executive Producer of Oceanhorn at FDG Entertainment, spoke to me about the game's success at its price point.

148Apps: Why launch at $8.99, and that price point specifically? $6.99 has been a more typical "high" price for games on the App Store, and $9.99 is a more "round" number - so why $8.99? Was launching at a premium price point the plan all throughout development?
Thomas Kern (TK): We’re not setting prices on trends or from a psychological “round number” point of view. The launch price is related to the production cost and quality of the game. We got lots of emails and feedback about the price and it was all positive. People felt it was the right price and the game has done tremendously well at $8.99. We’re very happy about the success of the game.

148Apps: Was there ever any thought to making the game free-to-play, or incorporating a hybrid model like what Infinity Blade uses?
TK:The plan for this game was always to go the traditional premium route, something players are used to from game consoles or handhelds. Oceanhorn is a loving tribute to games we enjoyed in our childhood and we see it as a fan-service to offer the full experience without additional costs.

148Apps: The game was bolstered by Apple's featuring of Oceanhorn as an Editor's Choice - do you feel like the game would have done as well without this?
TK: When we launched the game it immediately shot up the charts, before Apple even featured it. It was great to see that Apple agreed with many happy users that this game is a milestone in iOS gaming so they featured it very prominently and supported the game's launch the best way they could. It seems Apple really appreciates efforts like this, after all, Oceanhorn's development time was over 2 years!

148Apps: What about the long-term prospects of the game? Can the game continue to succeed at $8.99?
TK: It does! We see very healthy sales and we’ve recouped the investment in less than a week. For us and the development team, the game is already a great success.

There is no sale to be expected, Oceanhorn will stay at $8.99 but we’ll add more content to it in 2014 so the value will become even better.

148Apps: Do you think that other games can succeed at high price points? Do you believe that Oceanhorn changed anything with the market?
TK: We’ve been contacted by many people in the industry and they’ve been surprised about the success despite the high price point. Especially because the production cost was recouped really quickly. Oceanhorn definitely proves that premium games are not dead and it’s a viable business. We can’t beat some insanely successful Free2Play game revenues, but that was not our plan. Healthy revenues don’t require a position in Top 10 Grossing.

Thanks to Thomas Kern for his time.

Papa Sangre II is different from other horror games. Recently released for the iPhone, it makes use of gyro and binaural technology in order to create the most atmospheric and chilling experience possible. Featuring the voice of Sean Bean, it’s being talked about as being one of the most remarkable works of art produced for iOS. I caught up with Nicky Birch, Head of Products at Somethin’ Else and executive producer of Papa Sangre II, to discuss their new game.

148 Apps: You’re obviously a company who work with a great variety of media. Was there anything you learned from the development of the original Papa Sangre that you took on board in order to create the greatest user experience possible for Papa Sangre II? 
Nicky Birch (NB): The two Papa Sangre games are similar but also hugely different. The first was a piece of magic; we wanted a 3D sound game and realized there was no technology to help us, so we had to build it. It was beautiful and a real technical ground breaker. For the sequel we wanted to use more sounds and add to the dramatic narrative feel of the game. We began to think about how we can make a game with more advanced gameplay, have a returning game (achievements) and crucially use the gyro controls system for much more immersive play.

148 Apps: What does the term ‘truly innovative’ mean to you as a developer? Do you feel that Papa Sangre II has paved the way for other developers to really branch out and try new things?
NB: Fundamentally it means being bold and investing in R&D. Merging creative game designers with adept technologists. Pushing the devices to the limits of what they can do. We have had to reinvent  a bunch of game known design archetypes - what is a puzzler without graphics? Or a first person shooter without defined visual clues?  It doesn't come without challenges; our developers and producers are under pressure to deliver and learn at the same time, which is hard but ultimately rewarding work to do.

Producer Tom Green after playing too much Papa Sangre II.148 Apps: The Papa Engine is a most impressive piece of audio technology. How did the idea come about and how long does it take to put together such an ambitious project as Papa Sangre II? How difficult a process was it to combine the technology of the Papa Engine and the Gyro technology of the iPhone?
NB: Papa Sangre II was a huge project which took close to two years to make. The game itself took about a year from early conception to delivery and it was a labour of love for the team of writers, producers, sound designers, developers, and illustrators involved. The other substantial piece of work was the entire overhaul of the 3D engine (Papa Engine) that powers the game. This is what allows you to hear sounds 360 degrees around your head - sounds which can move towards or away from you as designated by the game's producer.

The Papa Engine is a powerful spatial audio engine that uses sophisticated HRTF processing to produce a binaural audio-scape in your headphones. HRTF processing has been around for years, but doing this on a mobile platform is a new innovation. I am proud to say our audio engineers are true geniuses who have now wrapped this engine up into a reusable API for other devs to use on their games. With regards to the gyro, right at the start of the game design process after Papa 1, it was always our intention for our next game to connect more to the environment the player was in. So the gyro tool was the obvious first addition to add in. Allowing us to augment reality in a clever and possibly more authentic way than games that use cameras and visuals because it lets your mind fill in the blanks. That's why we always say your mind has the best graphics.

Benedict Cumberbatch did the voice-work for Somethin' Else's second game The Nightjar.148 Apps: Papa Sangre is obviously a game that must be experienced to be understood. Considering how newfangled and unique of an idea it is, was it originally tough to get others on board?
NB: We were lucky because of the success of Papa Sangre and our follow up game The Nightjar with Benedict Cumberbatch. We had won some awards and had an audience of players who followed our games as well as lots of support from within the blind gaming community. So we didn't have to explain the idea to many people; they trusted us to deliver.

148 Apps: What feedback have you received for Papa Sangre II? Do you feel the involvement of Sean Bean as narrator has made a huge difference to the success of the game?
NB: We have been overwhelmed with the response for Papa Sangre II - both in blog reviews and also player reviews. At the time of this interview, Papa Sangre II is the highest rated British iOS game of all time (and also the highest rated across the world this year). So that is a real honor and a fantastic response to our team's passion and commitment to pushing creative and technical boundaries. Having Sean on board has helped that to an extent as he has fans across the world who know him from his movie work and Game of Thrones. Also when you play the game you can hear how great Sean plays his role and his first class performance adds a real edge to the drama.

Sean Bean is the narrator and guide for recent release Papa Sangre II.148 Apps: What’s the next step for Somethin’ Else? Will the Papa formula be extended for use in any of your other upcoming ideas and can we expect more from Papa Sangre in the future?
NB: Having built and refined the Papa Engine that powers Papa Sangre II, we want to experiment with more audio games and see where we can push the technology. Only we hope it won't take 2 years for the next one - so expect more 3D audio games to come early next year. Wearing our client hat we also make games for brands and broadcasters...but to find out which games are ours may take a spot of detective work.

Many thanks to Nicky Birch for the interview. We can't wait to see just what Somethin' Else has in store for the future.