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Pregnancy, Wisdom Tooth Pain, and Game Development: The Making of Glyph Quest

Posted by Jennifer Allen on February 4th, 2014
+ Universal App - Designed for iPhone and iPad
Our rating: starstarstarhalfstarblankstar :: SLOW BURNING RPG :: Read Review »

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.

It Came From Canada: Dungeon Keeper

Posted by Carter Dotson on October 21st, 2013
+ Universal App - Designed for iPhone and iPad
Our rating: starstarstarstarblankstar :: CLASH OF KEEPERS :: Read Review »

EA Mobile has decided to revive the famous Bullfrog Dungeon Keeper intellectual property for a new free-to-play mobile game. It's currently testing in Canada, so we hopped on a moose to bring you another episode of It Came From Canada with hands-on video below!

Dungeon Keeper is a two-fold game: one, there's the dungeon keeping. This involves getting imps to mine for materials and build traps to help keep out invaders. Imps can help expand the dungeon, though certain spots take more time to open up. Of course, these waits can be skipped with gems. The other half of the game is raising units to go in and raid other dungeons, trying to survive the traps that the opposing Keeper has laid down in order to get their stuff. It's a raid or get raided world.

Thus, in this modern incarnation, the game plays somewhat like a tower defense title: setting up a tricky dungeon with enough traps to keep invaders from getting much in the way of material is important, but so is amassing that army of creatures to go and get more gold and materials from opponents. There's both campaign missions versus computerized opponents, and more interestingly, dungeons of other players to go raid.

The game does have a sense of humor to it, even to the free-to-play aspects: the demon guiding players jokes about how gems may be controversial. At least it's somewhat self-aware for a game that would require a $99.99 in-app purchase to pay for three months of the game's premium service. Of course, that could change before the game's international launch. There's also stat boosts and raid protections available to buy to help make surviving this tricky dungeon world a bit easier.

The game seems to be in a fairly polished state at the moment, and EA's soft launches usually last less than a month, so there's a good chance that you'll have a fairly well-formed dungeon by the time Thanksgiving rolls around. Can't wait till the international launch? Check out our hands-on video below.