The holidays are drawing to a close with the new year countdown. 2009 will go down in my history as the craziest year ever.
And, continuing the year-end wrap-ups, Drew Lacrois at the Appera wrote about 2009 and big developers. Now, in a follow up, talks about indie developers on the app store and mentions us as one example.
The above image was one of our twitter contest entries by LordSam...and what is that big red thing he's in? I have a vague memory of them but am drawing a blank. Although it reminds me of the "TARDIS" from Dr. Who!
Hope everyone had a great Christmas. I spent a bunch of time with family who I ignored all year, but am returning tomorrow to resume the next update which we will get on pronto (and perhaps picking back up on PG II even!). After all, Pocket God got the gift of returning to the top ten! Even temporarily, this was completely unexpected but awesome!
On another note, Chris Atkins of NerdismComics.com ( a site run by himself and Mike Lee) made this awesome Pocket God comic.
Click on the art to see their write up. The art is amazing and the humor is totally perfect. Being somewhat nerdy (or are we geeky? or maybe even spazzy?) ourselves, we are completely happy to be welcomed into the nerdism universe. Hopefully Chris Atkins make some more, but go to Nerdismcomics.com and check out his other stuff! And Mike Lee's blog, "the Daily Nerdgasm". Oh, and if you want more PG Comics be sure and tell them! Thanks, Chris and Mike!
I don't know about Dave but I am getting my last minute shopping in for Christmas. My nephews (7 and 9) are easy....iTunes cards. The more room the better. Lately they're addicted to Epic Pet Wars. And WOW. We have GOT to get in on that racket. I think they've spent 20 bucks each for EPW alone. When the 7 year old asked me if it was ok if he buys a 10 dollar EPW add-on, I fell out of my chair. Because really? 10 bucks? Good job coming up with that Miraphonic!
Anyway, with production for the next update impeded by holiday family obligations, we've found some holiday videos inspired by Pocket God!
A 17 month old named Kaya can't speak yet, but can work an iPhone! And is clearly a Pocket God fan! Thanks Kaya!
5Jusername Wishes You a Pocket God Christmas! Thanks 5J!
And Now For Something Completely Different: "Dave, Allan and Friends", A fan from the Forums is creating a series of animations somehow inspired by Pocket God. If you ask me exactly how it is inspired by Pocket God, I'm not totally sure. Except that the two fuzzy main characters are supposed to be Dave and I. And I've never been a fuzzy cartoon character beforel, So hey, we're flattered and am intrigued to see where its going!
Firstly, in case you've forgotten, Pocket God and Doodle Jump collaborated a few months ago. There is an easter egg in Doodle Jump to change the Doodler to a pygmy and Pocket God has a Doodle Jump-like minigame with the Doodler making a cameo in the clouds. Secondly, I'm sure everyone knows about how big Christmas day was last year for app sales. Everyone receiving iPhones and iPods and iTunes cards for Christmas flooded the app store with new sales, so we're trying to gear up to take advantage of that.
We've decided to team up with the guys of Doodle Jump fame to run a campaign that will hopefully raise our ranking and position both our apps to take advantage of the rush. We're running an advertising article in Kotaku.com and Gizmodo.com, starting the 22 & 23 (respectively) of this month! This is the first time we've actually paid for advertisement (we went halvsies), so this is a new experiment for us!
So, thanks to everyone who has basically helped us advertise for free on their twitter accounts, blogs, YouTube and the forums over the last year! And why stop now? Be sure to tweet/blog/etc. when this article comes out, or whenever. Hopefully this will be our last push for 2009 so we can get on with creating new 2010 content!
NEW NOTE: Dave just let me know that I completely misinterpreted how the contest worked. I must have come across someone else's nomination! At bestappever.com, you can nominate pocket God for any category you want. So it looks like I've managed to lock us for a Kids app. But, if feel like it, you might as well nominate us for a little more prestigious category! How about Most Innovative?
I know, I know. Santa doesn't like greed. But we might as well grab for all the accolades we can as this year wraps up. 148 apps is sponsoring a "2009 Best App Ever Awards" and put us under "Best Just For Fun Kids App" category. I love this category title since they probably considered calling it "Best Not Really A Game and Makes People Mad When You Call It One" but reconsidered because it was too long. Regardless, we want in!
I was working last night and had the G4 network in the background, and suddenly I think I hear "Pocket God" and turn around to see our game part of XPlay's list!
So, we're always getting asked, what's Pocket God's demographic? Who are the Pocket God fans? Well, we actually have a pretty good idea, but on the other hand...maybe we don't! So, we've put together this survey so we can start answering that question. And if you happen to frequent, or run a Pocket God fan site, pass this link on!
Hey guys, I (Allan) am back in SF. I had to run out of town for a family emergency and Dave has been holding the fort. But I am back and we're trying to get back to it.
While I was gone a few cool things happened! The first is we made it on the Apps Best Seller List on the 2009 Rewind Page on iTunes. And currently we are at 1.7 million downloads!
My personal issues got in the way of us beginning our next update, tentatively titled "Great Job, Ice Hole!"....and I say tentatively because of the latest delays might get us to rethink our strategy. But i will leave you to ponder what the title means.
Hey Guys, just stopping in for a sec. Allan is out of commision for a bit and I wanted to get this announcement out there. I will let him share with everyone when the time is right but please send all your best wishes to him in the meantime.
About the annoucement, Wired is runnng a best app of 2009 poll and it would be awesome if you can help support us by going over there and voting. It seems like the Words with Friends people are playing games with the voting by submitting multiple copies of their app so that people can vote on it more than once but hopefully we can beat them anyway.
Hey guys, Allan here. The blog is in need of updating. I had to run out of town for family reason...the second time this year... and Dave is manning the fort while I am gone.
I just approved a bunch of comments and saw "update the blog!". So I did a quick google search and found this super cool overview of the Pocket God world by swigo8 on the PocketGodsBlog. Sometimes I get the originators of this stuff wrong, so please feel free to correct me!
I have received so much feedback that the monster is hard to bring down (wouldn't it be lame if it were too easy?), so I was considering posting tips. Luckily Malcom Judd (also a Twitter Yer Picture winner) at Pocket Gods Blog beat me to it. He has a lot of tips even I didn't think of. One I would like to add to his list is that the snowballs cause you to lose pygmies (every pygmy squashed gets added to the pygmy count). So be careful to not have the island overloaded when he goes into "offensive mode"...which usually involves him power walking back and forth across the screen, and stopping to throw snow balls. I like to keep one pygmy and protect him from snow balls in case the monster opens his mouth during these parts.
James and his great site theAppera.com is always on top of the Pocket God updates, and I wanted to thank him for quickly writing the Pyg Chill up! We are always grateful for the publicity. Thanks James!
When it comes to the App Store I guess it pays to expect the unexpected. Turns out the 4-week approval time we were warned about didn't happen!
The Dave's state of the island linked in the last post went over the newest functionality so I won't go into a huge amount of detail here. But just in case you didn't know, the newest update has a new wintery location, the ice island. There, we will create several winter-based scenarios. The first major piece is the ice monster battle. All you need to do to kick it off is to flick a pygmy at the iceberg in the background. This game revamps the flicking function quite a bit and now you must figure out how to flick the pygmies in a controlled manner, and then beat the monster in as few flicks as possible. But watch out for falling snow balls!
There's a new structure for the pygmies to hang out in and it is the igloo. If a fish is dropped inside, a pygmy will enter (or you can just drop one in) and the pygmy will cook the fish inside. Only one pygmy can fit in at a time, but you can use it to your advantage in the battle as well! Try dropping a pygmy in when another pygmy is cooking a fish.
You'll also notice we've added a location map! Why? Well, there were a few reasons...but we think its a great way for you to get your bearings in the growing world. Also we were going to run out of room in the menu eventually anyway.
Finally, there's a new optional Christmas Pack for purchase. This will allow you to decorate the islands and change different things in the Pocket God world to a cheerful holiday version! The outhouse becomes the gingerbread outhouse...the dodo a toy bird, and the sand island statue, a nutcracker!
So, as usual, the update might take a while to show up on the app store, but it should be available tonight! Thanks for waiting everyone!
Even I was eagerly awaiting Dave's postmortem on the update. He talks about the new features/games, our mutual burn-out, and a bunch of the technical upgrades he had to to implement....
"We used to have a series of 6 1024x1024 texture atlases that contained all the graphics from the game, all mixed together in no particular order. I reorganized it so we have 4 main 1024x1024 atlases, 2 compressed, 2 16bit. Then assigned each island its own 512x512 atlas which I swap out when we load a new location. At first I wasn't sure how noticeable the load would be but it turns out that it only takes about a tenth of a second on a slow device to load it into memory."
Dave probably wouldn't approve, but I want to point out how much ass-busting he did to make this next update happen. We were up against a wall and he had to tear things apart and reprogram a bunch of stuff to make this update happen in time. So, for all the people that want to pit us against other apps they happen to like, 29 versions in, with tons of intertwining interactivity, I don't know anyone else who could have pulled this off. Thanks Dave!
So we hope everyone had a great thanksgiving. We've taken a couple days off to recuperate, but Dave's State of the Island should be coming, as will the icon preview. So I went back to youtube and found these and cracked up. I swear we haven't put anybody up to this.
By Vdogamez
By GongMoviesProduction
Thanks guys, the videos are hilarious!
P.S. The cool illustration above is by Tehauin from Deviant Art, go check out his page!
P.P.S. I am sorry I didn't warn people about some strong language in the video below! We don't condone bad language! Okay, actually we might sometimes, but hey kids, bad language is bad!
Where did we go???? Ugh. Sorry guys. Sometimes we all need a break. So I took a little break from the blog. We have been racing against the clock (and working 12-15 hour days) to make sure we got this next update in to be on time for the Christmas rush. Between now and the 25th, there will be hundreds of updates and new apps flooding into the app store and we caught wind that it might take 4 weeks for an update.
The first thing that needed to happen was Dave had to redo the graphics engine to be able to handle more art. The iphone has a limit to how much graphics can be loaded into memory at once, so he had to create a smart-loading solution. This is WAY complicated when you have a crazy app like pocket god with all these intertwining functions. But he did it in record time. Then when that was out of the way, we actually had to change our plan a little. We decided to make a mega-update rather than try to fit two updates in before christmas. So, we created a new ice island, created a new giant monster, a new structure for the pygmies to hang out, a new map function AND of course we created a purchasable Christmas-based custom pack which is a lot like the halloween pack, but wintery and holiday-ee. Let's just say, its the start of a cold, yet cheerful, winter for the pygmies. And regarding the monster game, it has a whole new game-play. We submitted it yesterday and should be in the approval queue.
Dave will go into more detail in his update, but we appreciate everyone's patience. I am a little frustrated that I don't have anything else major to announce, like I thought I would, by now. But we are getting close to lining up new projects....this time around we have to sign contracts, etc. before we can really say its a "Go".
I just went on to youtube and found this hilarious video by Vdominus and I think it speaks for itself. And, just to be clear, this video doesn't necessarily express the opinion of Bolt Creative...NECESSARILY :) thanks Vdominus!
Okay, let's move on to something less touchy and more interesting! In our scramble to stay on top of the increasingly complex world of PG, I never got a chance to upload all the contest entries to Flickr. For some reason my computer doesn't like the uploading mechanism, but tonight I took a crack at it and it seems it got all the way through the list!
I was also hesitant because I just know it is going to create controversy and criticism, but then again, why should this be any different than anything else?
I tried to eliminate duplicates, or overly dark photos, but probably missed some offending ones. The list may evolve as we deem some to be redundant or hard to make out. It is also possible that Flickr didn't upload some. It's a little touchy.
To remind everyone, the objective was to send a creative photo of the person with Pocket God on their iPod (or iPhone). The winners were FernyTheBomb, Dylan Johnson and MalcomJudd (see their entries here) Some were good, some were great, some were downright WEIRD, and many others had us scratching our heads. Dave and I whittled down our favorites and focused on the favorites we had in common. There were some I felt really bad eliminating because I liked them so much, but we couldn't give EVERYONE the prize!
There....hopefully that helps everyone see we didn't take the contest lightly! So, thanks to everyone for sending....some people put a huge amount of effort into their photos. Check 'em out. They're awesome!
Okay, so we're finally breaking the silence. We kept our mouths shut for a while, because we didn't want to create MORE buzz about the subject. But it seems that its too late for that. In the background, many ipod/iphone fans and pocket god fans alike, took notice of Pocket Devil Pee-Devil. For better or worse, it rocketed to the top of the rankings. Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, but we didn't really think it needed to be rewarded. It took us about 10 or so updates with an untested idea for PG to achieve the ranking they got on their first release. Why? Well, with all the really awesome games released lately, we don't think it was because it stood out for the right reasons. And Krapps doesn't think so either! Check out their article here:
To add to their sentiments, we are most worried that people will take notice. Take an idea, change it a little but keep it close enough to create controversy, and watch the money roll in from the confused iTunes users. I don't think anybody likes THAT idea. Thanks Krapps!
P.P.S. Dave wrote me after reading this post and suggests that everyone start calling it Pee-Devil. This way, any mention won't exactly be positive publicity! haha
Hey guys, sorry about the blackout. The last few weeks has been filled with distractions, but I thought I'd post an update as to what is going on.
Dave and I have been working on the newest update, but there are some things in the background that is taking up a lot of our time. However, Dave has made a bunch of progress updating the game engine to handle more graphics....We've maxed out the graphic memory of the iphone/ipod. To keep it simple. As it is, all the functionality is loaded in at once. If it exceeds 25-30 MB, you are risking crashing. In fact, I think maybe some devices are already experiencing this. When you play other games, do you notice that between levels, you see a loading screen? That is why. You can't load everything into memory at once. So we have to make some major adjustments to the game in addition to the update. Then we find out that there may only be time for ONE MORE update before Christmas, due to the avalanche of new apps and updates coming in at the end of the year.
So what is our solution? Well, we've decided to rearrange our plan a little and move a heftier update to the front so we have a new fun addition to PG for Christmas. We're sticking with the title "Pyg Chill" but it was ORIGINALLY going to be a somewhat light update, with a new area and a few god powers. Instead, we are also adding a new challenge which we think will be badass.
Among the other things happening in the background, we have been inundated with inquiries and opinions about a certain app in the app store. We really are loathe to blog too much about it, because its the controversy that's really caused the buzz. Instead, I think I will post this great video by Trevor of AppAdvice, going over EVERY feature of Pocket God! Thanks App Advice!
Oh, and the pic above his by Henry Wallis. Not sure if I've ever posted it before, but I thought we needed a funny graphic!
Hey! We joined Arn, Blake and Eli at Touch Arcade for their new Podcast (#3). We loved being included, it was a lot of fun, although its a little frustrating for ME to realize how in articulate I am and how, at one point, I laugh WAYYYYY too loud.There's nothing like hearing your voice recorded. Dave, by comparison, has a better radio voice. But it was fun. They gave us 10 bucks each to buy 6 games to review, Skull Pogo, Flickitty, Earth Dragon, Taxi Fight, Ignite and Doom (although, for some reason I missed this app). Plus we talk a bit about Pocket God. But thanks to the guys at Touch Arcade. Its a really great series, so check ours out and the first couple as well..
Want to give a shoutout to App Advice Daily. I was aware of the site but this is a well-done production with lots of interesting news, hosted by Robin Rhys, on all things Apps. And for Halloween, they mention our latest update and halloween pack (around 3:47). Thanks guys!
Just want to tell everyone to have a safe and great halloween. Anyone dressing as Pygmies? Be sure to take a pic!
Oh, and a reminder to get the Halloween Skin Pack! Here are screenshots that show you how it customizes the islands...(click on the image to see it larger).
The volcano becomes a bit more threatening than before. Not to mention, the meteor is just creepy now!
The Skele-dodo captures the Skele-fish!
There's something you don't see every day!
The underwater statue gets kinda freaky.
Hmmmm. The graveyard is already kind of there, but we threw in some pumpkins!
The image above was an entry for the Twitter Picture contest from PocketGodPwns (feel free to comment your actual name to get credit!) and got close to the final 3!
Whew. I thought we weren't going to make it before Halloween to finish our horror trilogy. So, the episode should be up sometime tonight. This update finally makes use of the spider web. Drop a pygmy into it to trap him. Then tap the Pygmy to bring out a small spider that cocoons the Pygmy. Then tap again, to break the cocoon and bring out the baby spiders. Then, the giant Barking Spider leaps out to come after the pygmies. And yes, it barks just like a dog! You can thanks Alex Parent (a.k.a. MetalBear) for that one. He figured out we were making an update about a giant spider and sent that title in. We thought it was hilarious. Not only is it another play on a movie title, but Barking Spider is a euphamism for a fart. However, it also really is a type of spider in Australia that makes hissing noises when threatened. But we thought it would be funny if it growled, barked and whined like a dog when struck.
Furthermore, we've modified the battling system to include a new achievement. The objective is to beat the spider (or T-Rex) in as few spear throws as possible. The top achievement is if you can get it under 10 throws. It might seem hard at first but it just takes a little practice and figuring out the trick of it. Both the Spider and T-Rex's hit areas have been limited to their heads in order to make it more challenging. So if you don't hit the head, (from behind or front), the spear won't connect. People will also notice that once a battle begins (when the first spear connects), you can no longer poke the T-Rex or Spider off the screen. This is intentional because it would make the game too easy. If you want to start over, simply go to the Island menu and turn the spider off and on again (or you can go to another island and come back). Finally, the T-Rex has been sped up and the spider moves pretty fast. This is to keep it challenging. There are some good tips and tricks in the touch arcade forum.
Also included with this update is the Halloween Skin Pack. This reskins some of the Pocket God pieces into a scarier Halloweenized version. The Dodo is a skeletal Dead Dodo...the volcano is an evil Volcano of Death, Pumpkins and cobwebs are scattered around the islands. Again, this is for the people who would like to support Pocket God as we continue to release free updates but doesn't affect the episode content. It was our way of continuing to develop PG without charging. Or we could go out and make a cheap knock off of someone else's idea instead :) Just kidding.
Thanks for everyone's patience! When the iTunes description goes through, we included the title of the next update! And while you're there, why not give us a good rating. We need a little help lately since our thunder has been stolen a bit. You KNOW what I'm talking about.
Hey everyone! Well, Barking Spider should be coming out this week, but we have a request. If you haven't voted for Bolt Creative in the iLounge Pole Developer category, go do it now! Already voted? Well, maybe there's another computer you can use at a friend's house? School? Library? You get the idea! We are tired of qualifying but not winning! :)
Speaking of contests, we are submitting Pocket God to the Independent Games Festival. It asks for a video. We opted to put together yet another music montage up on YouTube.
There is a sneak preview of "Barking Spider" in there! Enjoy!
We took a bit of a break after the last update was submitted (last Wednesday). We've been working non stop for weeks, including the weekends, and both of us came down with a bad cold. Today, we're trying to get back to work. Dave talks about the outcome of the move to 3.0 and the DLC sales for all that are interested in what shook out from that.
Obviously this latest update is about a spider, but we took this opportunity to refine the Pygmy battling system...so we went back to the T-Rex and started there and came up with a more game-like mechanic and then applied that to the spider...
"There are new achievements for combat based on the lowest number of spear throws it takes to knock one of these down and I have to say, it's pretty hard. Because if the difference in sizes, each monster needs a slightly different strategy to take it down. Some of the betas had a reaction that it was way too hard at first but there are techniques you can learn in order to get better at it over time. I think it will end up being a fun challenge and it brings more life into the T-Rex so those skins don't go to waste. "
He also discusses the new DLC, the Halloween Skin Pack which works a little differently than the T-Rex skin pack. He mentions the next technical hurdles that Pocket God will have to jump over, and then drops a hint about the next three updates!
Episode 28 Barking Spider, Crouching Pygmy took longer than we hoped. It includes a game mechanic that has taken longer than we expected to get right. is it too hard? Too easy? How is it scored? We're close to settling on it, but I'll bet everyone will have a different opinion. What is the game exactly? I will let Dave fill you in on the details. We're still ironing out a few things but it will be submitted today.
I thought I'd take a second to show appreciation for everyone who bought the TRex Skin Pack! The sales were awesome and we know it is the hardcore fans that stepped up. One thing we get asked constantly is does it cost 99 cents for just ONE T-rex option? That answer is no, 99 cents, gets you ALL the T-Rex options of course! We've tried to make it clearer in this update.
Here's a helpful video that talks about our update but also shows the T-Rex Skin Options in case you haven't seen the various options (Thanks DaRkxXxHeArTs).
So...i've just worked two 16 hour days in a row and before that, all weekend. I've completely lost track of the people that were having trouble with the Skin Packs. If you are still having trouble, comment here!
This post is just an announcement to the people on iTunes that are leaving one star reviews that we aren't compatible on iPod. That of course is NOT true...The folks at Apple has said they will remove postings that are not true (technically) if we ask them to, but instead, we just ask everyone to please post counter-reviews saying they have and iPod and successfully downloaded the latest PG update. But YES 3.0 is required. We apologize for the confusion, but the fact is that eventually ALL apps will be 3.0 compatible (probably when 4.0 comes out). Trust me, you can't fight it. I've tried! Thanks, everyone.
NEW NOTE: Actually, a really helpful thing would be to go to the iTunes review...and click on the comments, and then pick 3 comments on the first page that aren't saying Pocket God is incompatible with iPod Touches and click on YES under "is this review helpful".
NEWER NOTE: GREAT JOB guys! looks like we have some better comments at the top. If you have nothing to do, go ahead and repeat the process and select a review that is positive...the deal is that the list gets ordered by 'how helpful it is'.
Dave and I are finalizing the last of the horror trilogy. The title? Well, I think I'll let the cat out of the bag because it was via a suggestion from Alex "Metal Bear" and it truly changed the direction of the concept. "Barking Spider, Crouching Pygmy". And let me just say, I sincerely hope the next creature we add doesn't have eight legs.
Dave will fill you in on the details once it is submitted, but here's a very cool video from 5Jusername!
P.S. the DLC experiment has proved (so far) to be a huge success. Yup we slid in the ranking (probably not helped by switching to 3.0 only), buyt we are happily surprised at the in app purchase sales! There are some people having trouble completing the purchase, and I am still tracking down the possible issues. If you downloaded the app without purchasing it from iTunes (you know who you are), then of course you are gonna have problems! If you happen to have bought the app on a DIFFERENT account than you are currently using, then there's gonna be issues too. For the rest, that isn't the reason, I am sorry and I am still working on it.
We're on the nomination list for Developer of the year at iLounge! Its a site that focuses on everything iPhone and iPod. Click the graphic above, and find us on #3 of the survey, and vote for us!
There is some sort of reverse Murphy's Law at work here, where I write a long post about updates being slowed down, and then Apple approves the next update quicker than expected!
So the line between life and death is a little fuzzier in the Pygmy graveyard. When a Pygmy is sacrificed, he becomes a Ghost Pygmy. You can guide the ghosts by tracking your finger from a ghost to a destination and they zip around. You can then help the Ghost Pygmy "cross over" by guiding him into "The Light"...Or keep the Ghost Pygmy in limbo and haunt the other Pygmies. Trace your finger form a ghost to (or through) a pygmy to haunt it in different ways. Try coming from the bottom, to or through the side and from above. There's an homage to the exorcist, and is heavily influenced by the ghosts in Ghost Busters. Hold your finger on a ghost to make it wail like a banshee.
The other part of this update is the first customization: the T-Rex Skin Pack! Now this is an extra where you can change the look of your T-Rex. This is our answer to the in-app purchasing without charging for updates. Hopefully it works well and will help the continuation of Pocket God's evolution! But we'll see.
UPDATE: There seems to be an issue with Ooga Jump causing the app to close. The people that have reported it on Twitter have successfully stopped the crashing by restarting their iPod/iPhone. Try that and let us know! Really sorry if you still can't get it to work, it will be fixed with the next update!
It probably doesn't seem like it, but again, we are really busy. Good Will Haunting has been in review for a week and I'm in the middle of probably one of the most complicated animations I've created thus far. Why is it complicated you might wonder...well let's just say there's a new creature, and it has a LOT of appendages.
Dave is optimizing while he's waiting for my art...so he's taking more steps in that direction.
Somewhere in the comments, somebody complained that our updates aren't weekly anymore and that we are "breaking our promise"...which I can understand a little. It might not have been clear that we never intended to update weekly forever. I just want to defend ourselves a little. When we embarked on the updates, we had NO idea we would be doing it all year long! Pocket God was a big experiment and it could have gone either way. To our surprise, it paid off BIG, and so we kept it up!
When we slowed down, around episode 15, it was partly due to Apple's update process was slowing down. But also we wanted to take the time and start thinking about ways to make every update a unique addition to the app, and not just quickly slap something together over and over.
The reality is that, even if Apple's review process did only take a week, we would be dead by now if we kept it up on a weekly basis for the last 9 months. We weren't going outside, seeing friends...we were missing our favorite TV shows and I missed most of the early summer movies. Just to make the deadline we created for ourselves. If we were still doing that (and alive), we wouldn't have been able to up the complexity the way we did. The original updates were much more simple than the ones we create now. The app is more complex and not only are we creating more content, but are having to fit it into an increasingly busy matrix of interactivity ( and get some really interesting glitches) But come on, somebody point out another developer that gave their 99 cent app over 25 updates!
Not to say that we didn't have good reason. Many people probably noticed that an update meant a bump in sales and ranking even as we drifted downward.
We're taking steps to try to push sales up, so we can continue updating pocket god into the new year...which is also taking time and effort. More on that later. And there are other things running in the background, that i never get to talk about. Hopefully something new and interesting will be announced soon!
In the mean time, here's a cool video by TheDingaderen we came across on YouTube. It has a particularly interesting intro.
Oh boy, contests are rough for me. There were so many really great entries, Dave and I went through the list of almost 500 pictures and whittled down our favorites. The we came up with our individual top 20 separately, but picked a lot of the same pics. I thought they were all winners. Then Dave and I locked ourselves in a room with no food and water for days and argued over what would be the top 3! Okay, not really. We sent emails back and forth until we came to an agreement and here's the 3 we chose...
FernyTheBomb FernyThe Bomb made a great Oog Island (out of clay? ceramics?) and then took his picture the mirror....which we found an interesting way to take the shot. Plus there is something about the green coloring that makes it seem extra artistic. Notice he has a zombie and a pygmy drowning and everything!
Dylan_Johnson Dylan_Johnson did what a LOT of people did and dressed as a pygmy with a faux-island background. Yes tons of people did something similar but there is something about his huge smile and energy that won us over. Plus he nailed the hair.
MalcomJudd Malcom Judd is one of the people that sent in TONS of entries (Remember the rules, as many times as you want), so it was sheer numbers on his side! Actually he had a lot of really great shots and ended up with 3 in Dave and my top 20's. But we really like this shot, looks like some sort of school lineup with some very serious kids. Something about our goofy app among all those serious faces really amused us!
I'd like to list the honorable mentions but that would risk confusion! We are going to take the collection of amazing pics and put them into our Flickr account for everyone to check out. People often gave us very similar shots from slightly different angles, so we might narrow those down.
Thank you guys for sending in your pics and Congrats to the winners! They each win the latest 64GB iPod Touch! Everyone did a great job!
Liam and the guys at the PG Forums wanted to ask me (Allan) a few questions and I was happy to oblige. In fact, I think I answered the questions almost TOO thoroughly! But I think some people who are interested in the art-creation side of Pocket God will find it interesting.
Per usual, Dave posts on Touch Arcade about our latest update. I already hinted that it was a little more involved than we expected. He describes the latest update, ghosts! but also talks about our newest function, in-app purchases. As we continue to develop PG, and offer updates for free, we have to figure out new ways to still have it make financial sense. The idea is that we still update for free, but offer fun "extras" that do not affect game-play. So people can take it or leave it if they don't want, but still get the regular updates free. Only, in the middle of development, Dave got some bad news...
"I had thought I could do a 3.0/2.2 hybrid like we did for push notifications and everything seemed to be working fine with that until Jason Citron from Open Feint told us he had submitted an app like that with in app purchases and it got rejected because the iPhone can only support in app purchasing on 3.0 only apps. We were so lucky that he warned us about it because we could have had a good 2 or 3 week delay before we were rejected and figured it out. "
So, there are going to be some people (iPod Touch owners that haven't upgraded) that aren't gonna like this, but if you update, you must also have 3.0. We agonized over it, but knew from experience, you can't fight the future. We know we are taking a huge chance being an early adopter, but it would have to be done sooner or later. So yes folks, if you don't have 3.0, then you shouldn't download the next update. If you really feel you can't upgrade...the only thing we can say is that this isn't our fault. Apple wants everyone to upgrade and if you want the latest and greatest, you will HAVE TO eventually. If not because of us, because other games and apps will be going this way. Are you aware they dropped the price of the ipod upgrade to $4.95?
What a week. Have you ever been worried something would be difficult, but instead everything just fell into place quickly? Yeah, me neither. I actually thought this next update would be pretty easy, but it was the exact opposite of easy... but we'll wait for Dave's State of the Island for you to hear about the details. Good Will Haunting, the second of our horror trilogy, was submitted yesterday...only five days later than we MEANT to submit it. Better late than never!
So, the contest is closed and there's a ton of photos to go through. I notice some people on Twitter thought we'd announce today, but we need time to go through the submissions and vote for our favorite. So expect the announcement before next Friday. I also notice some people were bent out of shape that we didn't feature their photo on the blog. Sorry...If I posted every photo, this blog would take even longer to load than it already does. I just grabbed random selections that looked good, but by no means has any bearing on our final choice. I'll feature some more before the announcement.
Three people will win the latest 64GB iPod Touch, so stay tuned.
Okay, i've been neglecting the blog. Both Dave and I have been homebound and our faces growing pale in the glow of our monitors. Ugh! This update is ...well.. its going out a little later than we'd hoped. I think I'll hold off on talking more about THAT for now and just remind everyone that the deadline for the contest is this Friday! People definitely have gotten creative! If you haven't gone and taken a picture for it, why not? We're giving out THREE BRAND NEW IPOD TOUCHES!
This is just a reminder that the deadline for the Twitter Yer Picture contest is less than a week away! We've received a bunch of great photos but wanna see even more. Keep 'em coming! Keep your camera and your iPod/iPhone with you at all times in case you happen to find that Pocket God Kodak moment by accident. I received a bunch of inquires about people unsure of how to post a twitpic. Click here to sign up for Twitpic!
Some people used a different photo linking service which is perfectly fine. Our suggestion is Twitpic for ease of use.
Here is a small sampling of photos we think hit the mark (this does not in anyway indicate our winning choice)...
Zombies come to Pocket God! You will find an all-new spooky area of the island (the graveyard is on the same island as the T-Rex, just East). In the graveyard you will find a grave that you can dig up. Put a pygmy in the dug up grave, bury him. This will activate the ancient seal on the tombstone. Then the pygmy will emerge as a Zombie. When it encounters another pygmy, it will eat his brain and turn that pygmy into a zombie too. The zombies are fragile though. If you mess with them, they will break apart into a cloud of blue flesh. Fill your island with zombies and then tap on the screen to make them do the thriller dance!
Have you wondered who left behind these powerful relics? The octopus statue on the main island? The octopus statue underwater? Even the frickin' laserbeams on the shark's head? Now the zombie tombstone. I don't think the peaceful Pygmies made them. Will they ever encounter the creators? We'll just have to see...
But I digress. The update should be available sometime tonight. This is part 1 of our horror trilogy (this time, there's no play on Star Wars, haha). What do you think is next?
