Fan Dance + Benny Hill Theme = Awesome

Liam "SaintsAlive" , PG fan and beta tester, wrote and asked me for a few frames of the fan dance from the dance pack. In case you haven't downloaded it, one of the dances entails the pygmies using their skirt leaves as fans, dancing around naked while covering the necessary areas (with the exception of a brief butt shot). And this is what he did....



P.S. If you haven't voted for the best app ever, today is the last day! Links below.

P.P.S. There are two questions we've been hit with. on some devices, the dance stops prematurely even though you are tapping, or you don't tap at a REALLY specific tempo. We're going to put out a quick fix for that soon. Also, is there more updates coming out? YES! Will it be aliens or pygmies in space? Well......we have another idea we think people will like. But its on the list!

Reminder: Vote! Vote! Best App Ever!

I'm starting to get used to not winning, but what the heck. Might as well make one last push!

Just a couple days! Go do it, for us!

Vote for us...

Best App Ever

Most Innovative

Just for Kids

For Middle School Kids

Best Use of a Social Gaming Platform

Oh wait...we were the number TWO app on the Appera's Best of 2009. So we did win something :) Thanks everyone!

Pocket God Comic #2 from Nerdism

When we link youtube videos and other sites to the pocket blog, it does a pretty good job of increasing views and visibility thanks to everyone who comes here. This benefits us because then fans make more stuff! Sort of a "scratch my back I'll scratch yours" situation. Chris Atkins whipped up another hilarious comic at his site NerdismComics.com. Be sure to go the site and tell them its fantastic! Thanks Chris!



Click the image above to go to the page and be sure to check out their other content, which includes a Nerdism's own comics, really funny movie reviews and other random nerd-type stuff!.

Great Job Ice Hole is out!

I can't believe we got away with that title! So, Dave describes the functionality in the link below, but I will say that this update has the long-awaited temperature change. When we were trying to figure out what it did (besides make them feel hot or cold), we went over several possibilities, but we had this idea that they would sink through the ice island, and then remembered ANOTHER part of the cool concept art by Palfince that was sent to us a while back that originally got us thinking about the ice island. In case you haven't seen it...



And we thought, what if the hole from sinking through the island stayed and you could fish from it? And then Dave thought of the title so we stuck with that idea!

The other part of the update is a purchasable "Dance Pack" . When we were trying to come up with the next downloadable content, I said it would be really cool to give them other dances. I had no idea what I was in for! It was an intense amount of animation and quickly figuring out dances (thanks to YouTube). I'm most proud of the Smooth Criminal zombie dance. At first I didn't want to do it because I said to Dave "its all about the hat." And he said "how about using their skullcaps". And I said "that sounds hard" but then when I sketched it out, I realized it was too good an idea not to do and stayed up until 4 in the morning doing it.

Of course as we got to the Dance Pack, the whole Pants on the Ground thing happened on American Idol. Dave called me and said "We gotta do it..." We put out a request for auditions to do the rap, but it ended up being Dave's that sounded the best. So the voice you here is Dave's pitched up! Its the only dance that got its own audio because otherwise it wouldn't make much sense! Also included is the Fan Dance, the Robot, the Chicken Dance, Staying Alive (main dance for Vampire, backup for the other Pygmies) and All the Single Ladies.

Dave's State of the Island!

So Dave, after losing the first version, recapped what's been going on and the next update! He goes into my own tragedy that happened during the holidays that I think might explain our discombobulation. Of course other things were going on too. But we're trying to get on track.

>> Check out Dave's Post Here <<

One thing I haven't blogged (too busy with the update!) is that after the Appera's Best of 2009 Poll, we came in Number 2! heh heh, number two....Speaking of the number two, Pocket God has sold 2 million copies. And I believe we are the first to hit that marker, although a few apps are about to do the same. When we started, I would never have dreamed it would go that far! anyway that's awesome! Thanks James!

>> Pocket God Number Two in Appera Best of 2009 <<

>> Pocket God Sells 2 Million <<

Episode 30 finally submitted and Dave's a TV star!

haha. he'll be mad at me for putting that. but in case you haven't seen this, check it out...

>> Bloomberg TV Invasion of the Apps <<

Whew. I am finally coming up for air after my face being buried in Pocket God 15 hours a day. The last two weeks were pretty rough for me. There are a few aspects to this next update that just kicked my butt. I probably produced over 300 frames of animation. And yeah, it took a LOT more time than we wanted and we've caught some heat about it. Dave will fill everyone in on the behind the scenes tribulations that went on in his State of the Island post on Touch Arcade, but our current goal is to get back into a groove and we're planning the next update. Hopefully later today Dave will have his post up. Stay tuned!

Pocket God reviewed on Kotaku!

This site is a favorite of ours! And the review from Brian Ashcraft is awesome!

>> Read Kotaku Review of Pocket God <<

So I was excited, but there was bit of a downer. Who the heck is Andrew Donley? Right initials, wrong NAME. I (Allan Dye) feel like Charlie Brown being handed the rock at Halloween.

(Brian corrected the article)

Oh well, at least we got a great review! Oh yeah, and be sure to leave a comment thanking them for the review.

Dave and I are a little behind (to say the least) on this update. All of the main art and programming is done, but Dave needs to tweak and test. I am furiously building a new custom pack to go along with the Episode 30. We are hoping that it will be very funny.

Dave Interviewed on Game Trailers

As I mentioned earlier, Dave went to CES (Consumer Electronic Show) in Vegas and, among other reasons to be there, he was asked to do a couple interviews. He had asked me to come along, but I had spent so much time away from home over the month of December (holidays and a serious family issue), and was really trailing behind him on work, I told him it was a good opportunity for me to catch up.

The first one to come out is at Game Trailers, check it out!

Video Games | Pocket God | CES 10: Creator Interview

XBox 360 | Playstation 3 | Nintendo Wii

Note: I noticed the embed they provided isn't sizing the video down (weird). CLICK HERE TO GO TO THE SITE....AND WHILE YOU ARE THERE LEAVE A COMMENT!

Vote for us on the AppEra's Best iPhone Game of 2009

Another "Best Of" contest from our theappera.com! Not only can the developers win the contest, but so can the voters! Go to the link below...Vote for us in the BEST GAME OF 2009 list...then leave a comment to enter yourself!
>> VOTE FOR US ON THE APPERA BEST OF 2009 <<
Oh, and in honor of Pocket God's 1st birthday, they posted this article too!
>> Happy Birthday Pygmies! <<

Thanks James (a.k.a. Superbad)!

The voodoo doll in the pictures have nothing to do with the contest but is way cool. It was made by Valerie Brockbank and in her words...

"I made this for my husband for Christmas. The felt pygmy is stuffed with bubble wrap, and the spear is detachable so he can be jabbed repeatedly to relieve stress."

Very cool! Thanks Valerie!

1st Anniversary of Pocket God

It is exactly on year today that the first version of Pocket God was approved on the iTunes store.


Backing up a little, in the latter half of November 2008, I (Allan) went over to Dave's place to have him help me upgrade my laptop. I asked him how app-land was with his first app. He said "great!, I sold 1,700!". I said "that's awesome!" and then we went to lunch while OS X was installing. He asked if I wanted to do a project together, and I thought for a second before saying "sure, sounds fun." He suggested we create an app involving "pygmies on an island that you can throw around". Then I did a few sketches of the pygmies and the island, and agreed to have it done in a week or two. We decided to keep it really simple so we could just put it out fast and then update it. Each update would cause it to move to the top of the Entertainment list (not the ranking, just the new adds). And our strategy was to keep updating it to move it to the top of the list. So it made sense just to initially have it do very little. I took a week out of my regular schedule to design the pygmies, the island, the animations, the splash screen and of course, the icon. Dave then spent a week or so programming it and submitted it around Jan 1. It took 8 days to be approved and then it was out there. Within hours, we saw some mentions on Touch Arcade (and I mean TWO hours after it was approved).

The reigning opinion was that it was "cute" or "interesting" but ultimately wasn't worth 99 cents. Then Dave and I promised to update it often...for a time, weekly...and were open to suggestions.

We retroactively titled that episode "Nowhere To Go, Nuthin' To Do" which was a misquote from the intro an old animation by OddTodd, called "Laid off land". The point was that it didn't do a whole lot. The pygmies just wandered back and forth across the island and the big thing you could do to them was pick them up and throw them in the water. But soon we added the volcano, then the gravity and earthquake, lightning and so on. For about 11 updates, along with our regular work, we worked all weekend, ending at about 4 or 5am on Sunday night to finish the update.

Somehow this ad hoc strategy actually worked and PG drifted up in the ratings. It got a lot of attention on YouTube and Touch Arcade...with widely varying opinions. Some good, some really REALLY bad. But it was all good. We figured if we kept at it, eventually it would be worth 99 cents. The app eventually reached number one and stayed there for almost a month. Then it stayed in the top ten for 4 months and hasn't left the top 100. We're planning a few spinoffs and still will continue updates as long as it makes sense. With 28 updates so far, PG basically took over Dave's and my life. Kind of a feat for a bunch of hapless pygmies!

So, a big thank you to everyone for all the feedback, testing, glitch-finding, videos, cartoons, etc. It was a fun year for us!

So we've probably recounted this story a dozen times, but I thought I'd repeat it one more time in honor of Pocket God's one year birthday!

Techland Interviews Dave and PocketGamer Names Bolt As Number 3 Dev of 2009

Dave is currently in Las Vegas for CES (Consumer Electronic Show) meeting people for various reasons...and I stayed behind because we are way overdue to push out a new update. This current update is a bit more of an old school update requiring tons of Pygmy animations which I have been plowing through this week, but it is fun to get back to the basics of little details and funny expressions and animations then when I finish them make me laugh out loud. Still, our updates have gotten progressively more complicated, and there is 10 times the work that was in the lightning update.

So I know we're starting to get a little hate out there for the delay on the next update and all I can say is sorry about that. But hopefully this update will put us back in the groove.

We have a few projects that we want to get started on but require contract signing. I never knew business deals took so long. Dave does talk a little about our talks to port Pocket God in a recent interview on Time.com's Tech section.

>> Read Techland Interview Here <<

The other is PocketGamer's list of the top 50 developers and we're number three! We're flattered. Our friends at Lima Sky are number nine and at number one is firemint....and how could we argue with that?

>> Read PocketGamer article here <<

Back to work for me!

Best App EVER!

Happy new year everyone! Dave and I are back to work on the next update, which means the blog entries are gonna slow down a bit, but wanted to take a second to do some good old fashioned vote-begging for the Best App Ever awards. Could we really claim something so grandiose? Well...prob not, but who cares? Vote for us anyway!! The online nominations are complete (and we ended up in a few categories). So vote for us Best App Ever....Or choose the category you feel makes the most sense to you. Here are the links. Vote today!


http://bestappever.com/vote/

best app ever
http://bestappever.com/v/bapp/301387274

Most Innovative App
http://bestappever.com/v/iapp/301387274

Best Just for Fun Kids App
http://bestappever.com/v/jfkd/301387274

Best App for Middle School Kids
http://bestappever.com/v/mskd/301387274

Most Innovative Game
http://bestappever.com/v/ingm/301387274

Best Use of Social Gaming Platform Game
http://bestappever.com/v/sggm/301387274

And yes, to all you Simpsons purists out there. Comic book guy would actually only say "Worst App Ever", but we all know who that goes to....And the title ends with the word "Devil" ! :)