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Bloblocks for iPhone is sort of ready.

Sadly I don't have an iPhone or an iPod to fully test the game and my good friend François told me that he had to reboot it's iPod 4th generation to free memory so the game could start. It's not good at all…

Hence iPhone release is delayed until I can find more information about this problem.

On the android side (no phone to test too yet) I decided to create a lite version of the game containing only the Arcade mode and ads.

This free version is available now on Google Play store!

I hope it will be well received even if most people preferred the Puzzle mode until now :)

I try to test as much things as possible, to find out what can work for an indie developer.

I still have to contact the press and put the game on Kongregate but I would really like it to be ready for iPhone first…

As they don't have an iPad nor an Android tablet, My friends are pushing me to create an iPod/iPhone version of Bloblocks.

Since the tablets sales do not allow me to buy an iPod or iPhone yet I have to find a way to simulate how will Bloblocks behave on these small devices.

I'd like this version to be:

• easy to read,
• easy to control.

How can I achieve that without a real device?

I decided to experiment the "poor" man way.

I already have one iOS device: the iPad 3.

Let's just scale the app and constrain its proportions to what it would exactly looks on an iPhone (inch for inch and not pixel for pixel).

Dude, it's small!

Ok the result is not retina pixel perfect and I see what's out of the canvas (I'll have to mask what's outside) but it works and give me a real idea of what my players will experience on their phone.

Of course I can't test real device performances which is another thing which will surely break my heart later…

The good thing is I can test any DPI/resolution and it gives me the exact same real screen size on my laptop (but of course more blurry). No need to push on the iPad if I am just improving readability and I can test any device look and feel with the iPad (and not only iOS devices).

For instance the new iPhone which is a little bit longer:

Hey, I could use that space!

And when I'll want to ensure that images and fonts aren't too ugly on the device, I'll just have to remove the zoom to check on my computer that everything looks sharp enough.

In an ideal world I would create a separate version of the game with assets and layout adapted to each screen but we will keep that for when the game will have at least 100k users :)

Now let's work to improve this little game :)

Bloblocks continues to expand its list of supported devices.

It is now available for recent android tablets (7" minimum) on Google play store.

The game was tested on a Nexus 7. I hope it will work as well on other tablets.

I waited 8 days for Apple' store and two hours for Google's. It will be easier to push corrections.

I cut the leaderboard. I wanted to use Gree but the service is bloated, slow and don't please me at all. I am tired of intermediates too. I will put back a learderboard when Google will have opened its own GameCenter clone.

As a result I integrated the achievements inside the game.

Next steps:

• iPhone/iPod
• Kongregate (flash version for browsers)
• Android phones
• Free version with only the Arcade modes

The Kongregate version is already ready but I'd like to have the iPhone version before to maximize my chances of doing a few more sells :)

The day started with a bug report: the game crash on the old iPad 1. I will have quite a few things to do to fix this and no iPad 1 to test :/

The remaining of the day was quite bad, I fought with Gree (a GameCenter competitor which I wanted to use on Android). Finally it works but I felt the pain of cultural difference and in-adapted documentation. The test platform is slow, I miss some GameCenter features and I wonder if I shouldn't wait for Google's solution instead. Sadly Gree was the only platform supporting the system I use and I don't have much time to port other solutions.

In the end I saw on itunesconnect that I had my first player review coming for USA.

And I read this:

Fresh puzzle game ★★★★★
by Joeld42 - Version 1.0.0 - Oct 27, 2012
(USA)
Nice take on the matching game.
Really stylish and I like the puzzle mode a lot.
Nice variety of powers.

I felt relieved and my bad day was cleaned instantly.

Thousands thanks to you who played my little game, thank you for taking the time to make a review. I am trilled to know that the game pleased you.

I make games for people and my best reward is to know someone enjoy them. Not everybody of course but at least a few.

I am going to put your review on the promotional website right now!

We finally found a baby sitter in Barcelona! As a result I drank too much yesterday night and my head hurts a little.

By the way, Bloblocks was approved by apple during my sleep and is available for iPad!

http://itunes.com/apps/bloblocks

Promotional website updated, will be translated to french soon: http://bloblocks.labe.me.

I waited 9 days but it may count as 8 since I am not in USA.

I’ll have to push a minor cosmetic and improved controls (two step swap and slightly better rotate) update but the little game works quite well I think. I hope reviews won’t be too bad…

The game is nearly ready for Android tablets too. It wasn’t that easy since I had to support portrait orientation and scale things so the game would be playable on 7″ devices. The last thing in my todo list for Android is to integrate Gree (or some other competitor) to support the Leaderboard and achievements.

The game was made with haxe, starling-framework, air, a lill bit of haxenme, emacs, org-mode, inkscape, sketchbook pro (MacBook air and iPad), pixelmator, sunvox, bmglyph, elbow grease, tapas and love. Prototyped with processing. And pomodoro to kill laziness!

I am waiting for my first sells now, I think I will win the Ludum Dare October challenge too!