Delay on Update

Hey guys! I have to update the reason for our current delay. There are several business issues that have culminated at once...PLUS we have a feature phone version of Pocket God (for Verizon Phones) that we are working on getting debugged!

Its causing me anxiety because I know its going to be a great update....but we just need good block of time to finish it up.

The awesome illustration above is by Ricardo Gimenes, on his blog "Behind the Website". He's an illustrator after my own heart! Go check it out!

PG Fan Trailer = Awesome

Love this. The music is hilariously epic! Not to mention the tag lines. See for yourself. Great job thesledbub!

Sneak Peak: Crack is Wack

Well, Dave is mid-vacation and news is slow, so I thought I'd go ahead and give a sneak peak of the next update. How does the title go with the scene? I'm sure people can guess!

Along with the free update, there will also be a new custom pack. Stay tuned!

Pocket God at Wondercon...and on iPad!

Dave and I dropped by Wondercon (the San Francisco Comicon) to hang out with David Hedgecock of Ape Entertainment, and he even set up an impromptu signing...and I fully expected that nobody would come up to us. But we ended up having lots of people coming up and saying "you guys did Pocket God?"...although many were aspiring app-developers, there were normal kids and adults too. We signed as many posters as people would take. We even signed the back of a kid's iPod! It was really fun. We even had people who knew the "Summer Squash" keyword and we immediately gave them a Pygmy figure. I also had my spanking new iPad (so cool) and we brought up Pocket God on it and was surprised how cool it looks blown up twice the size! Dave Hedgecock put it up as part of our display and it worked well in getting people's attention.

So we have already planned to attend San Diego Comicon, partly for fun, but also to hang with the Ape guys again and promote the Pocket God comic. By that time, the actual comic should have been produced and possibly new toys.

In the mean time, Dave and I working to finish the next update before he goes on vacation. Back to work!



Ape's Booth Display and they made a Pocket God Banner!


David Hedgecock and Dave Castelnuovo


Free posters! Get your free posters! We mean it! Take 'em!


Dave sidetracked by iPad. Come on, Dave, pay attention.

Sorry I'm not in the pictures. That happens on vacation also, the camera-holder-syndrome. Tons of pictures in an exotic location, and it doesn't even appear I was there.

Oh, and one more thing...regarding the iPad... If you are wondering if Pocket God is fun on it..check this video out!



Someone likes fish-slapping!

P.S. Apple is sitting on our update, we know. It probably has to do with the iPad flurry. Thanks for your patience!

Teaser Graphic

Waiting for the latest update to go through, we've decided to release the first teaser glimpse of one of our upcoming projects. Further details forthcoming...

Philrox Strikes Again

I am not really sure what to say about this, except thanks, Philrox!

Dave's State of the Island

Again, its just a mini-update but Dave gave us his latest update!

>> Read Dave's Touch Arcade Post Here <<

Mini-update submitted!

We're currently working on the next bigger update, but we've sent in a mini-update that includes a News feature as well as some fixes and enhancements to story mode. Now you will be able to blank out dialogue for Pygmy actions (so no word balloon appears) and we've added a new popup window to make it easier to select things like pygmy and island states. We've also added "Events" to story mode. This will grow, but for now it includes earthquake, tribal dance (everyone dances) and shark snaps.

Dave will probably explain better, but just wanted to get the update out! We are now going to hurry to get the next full update out before Dave takes a vacation!

In the mean time, here is a demo of Episode 31 by PocketGodVideos on YouTube..



And no, the maker of this video isn't us, but we appreciate what they've put up! Check out the rest of the channel!

The amazing image agove was created by PygKid104 and posted in the Pocket God Forums! (you might have to wait a bit for the full animated GIF to come in)

Happy Birthday Doodle Jump!!

Our good friends at Lima Sky just reminded us its the first birthday of Doodle Jump! Doodle Jump is still my own personal go to game whenever I need to kill a little time. If you are one of the only people who haven't gotten this awesome game, go get it! Like us, they release free content constantly. Help them get to number one again!

>> CLICK HERE To Download <<

Dave and Allan at Wondercon!

Hey, dave has been taking over our facebook fan page and posted this:

"Pocket God So, we will be hanging out at Wonder Con 2010 with Ape Entertainment (the company that's making the Pocket God comic book). We will be there most of the day on Saturday the 3rd and giving away some Pocket God figures. Can't promise you will get one but if you come up to me at the convention and say "Summer Squash" I might give you one. At least you'll get a poster."

Not sure what is up with the summer squash part but ....what he said! We're going to go walk around on Saturday, talk to the guys at Ape and bring some swag. I'll be wearing the shameless pocket god t-shirt!

Dave on Forbes.com Video Network

Another interview with Dave about the pocket god success story. When Dave says our updates are "averaging" 2-3 weeks", he is strategically ignoring the last couple of updates which took longer. But we are getting back to the faster pace! And sorry for the Forbes advertising on this embed. Sneaky!



Oh, and we are working on pushing out a half-update which should be submitted very soon. It seems that the ability to make a blank reaction (an idle without word balloon) in story mode isn't working. Normally you only have to leave the dialogue blank, but the editor is graying out the "Done" button when the text field is cleared out. Also, with the half update, we are adding a news box.

Episode 31 Is OUT!

So, it took a few more days than we expected to be approved, but Episode 31 is out! And it has a ton of new stuff.

Per the title, this update was geared to start Pocket God story mode. As mentioned earlier, this will serve various purposes. And probably a story will be pushed to you whenever we update Pocket God, to set up that update. But we also hope the story creator will encourage everyone to exercise a new and fun godly duty...creating your own Pygmy stories! To find it, go to the community menu and click the storybook icon (below the store icon).

The pain drain is in the underwater area. It is a new minigame where you tilt your iphone/ipod to guide the pygmy down a subterranean booby trap. Keep the pygmy away from the spikes and see how far down you can go!

We've also created a new Alien World custom pack! And like the Halloween and Holiday, it enables you to sub out weird alien versions of common Pocket God elements. The moon becomes a ringed planet. The dodo becomes a weird alien bird. The Octopus Statue is replaced by the 2001 Space Odyssey monolith!

On Touch Arcade, Dave explains what has been going on the past couple of months. We have heard people loud and clear about wanting MORE smaller updates and we are obliging:

"We've been really busy and have been struggling to get focused time to work on the game. However, we are going to try and change that in the near future. For the last few updates, Allan and I have been adding more and more stuff into them where each update is like 3-4 of our old ones. We're going to start releasing more frequent, but smaller updates in the near future. Pocket God is not done yet. We are still going to be working on more updates and hope to get the excitement that we used to have at the beginning."

>> Read The Rest of Dave's Touch Arcade Post Here <<

PG Highlighted on Shelly Palmer

A friend of mine sent me a heads up that he saw this on his TiVO so I thought I'd blog it!

Missed Suggestion Video

Sorry so late Joeldeak but, despite the fact that pencil sketches don't video tape too well, looks like your idea eventually made it in to Pocket God in the last update after all! He was one of several that really wanted some sort of tentacle action in Pocket God. And even though we just added an ice squid, there probably isn't enough tentacles just yet.

But I find it funny, that I missed the video at the time, probably because I was on vacation. And because Joel obviously read the blog (or a touch arcade post), he KNEW I was on vacation. Kids all over the world know if Dave or I are slacking off. LOL.

Thanks for the suggestion, Joel! Looks like you are a budding designer! Very talented! Keep it up!

Update Submitted! Finally!

Thanks everyone for weighing in, but Dave and I ultimately decided to push through Story Mode. Knowing GDC (Game Developer's Conference) was coming up, we gave ourselves a deadline of Monday night to get it together. We buckled down a couple weeks ago to get everything done, including the weekends. We were up all night on Monday putting the finishing touches on it. I believe Dave submitted at 5 AM and then had to go to a GDC round table on Tuesday at 11. I saw him later that day and he didn't look too good.

I can relate because of our schedule the last 4 weeks, I can't seem to shake this cold/cough I've had. Ugh. Anyway, its IN! Woohoo!

So the next update titled "What's the Story, Morning Gory?" (okay, the cute titles are getting hard to come up with!) will include quite a bit of new stuff to play with. The story mode is simple right now but quite fun. I admit I pushed the story mode. I was getting concerned that some people were opening Pocket God and totally lost. I felt we needed a story mode to set up the game and hint at functionality and thought it might be a fun extension to allow users to make their own stories. Dave was concerned that it be as entertaining and funny as functional. We tossed the idea around last summer but decided to put it off. As I read more and more comments on the internet from people who opened Pocket God, didn't understand and then gave up, we brought the idea back and boy, it was a LOT more trouble than we thought, but I hope people like it and it becomes a way for less patient people to "get" pocket god. And it will be fun for the fans of Pocket God to see the Pygmies talking, and even make up your OWN stories. YouTube anyone? We have ideas of future enhancements for story mode and I'm sure people will let us know what they would like once they play with it.

Dave came up with the idea for the Pain Drain I think is one of our most addicting minigames thus far! We also have been meaning to give the underwater area its own music loop, so we commissioned the same guy who did the Ice Island loop, Chris Tin, to make a new underwater loop.

Oh...almost forgot. After grumblings from people on twitter, we decided to make the Story Mode editor FREE (and not DLC)...and instead we created an "Alien World" custom pack (much like the Halloween and Holiday packs). This way, we hope people will be encouraged to make stories and spread the word!

Dave will describe them in more detail in his Touch Arcade Post.

So people have been noticing that the updates are coming much further apart. We have a dilemma. We have several projects in the background that need attention, and that includes the TOP SECRET project. Don't ask, its a secret! But we still have updates planned for Pocket God, they will be a bit more sporadic, but bigger. Remember when an update just included the ability to hit a pygmy with lightning? We don't really feel comfortable adding something so simple any more, so these updates take more time. We're at a point where we have to either hire people (which takes a lot of time in itself) or partner with another company to handle these projects. And that's part of what we're working on too. And yes, THAT takes time. So thanks for everyone's patience. The 31st iteration of PG is coming! How many 99 cent apps have done that? :)


(Oh, and we did a new printing of the PG figure. That's Dave's dining table above!....we are also working on getting a new Pygmy toy, stay tuned on that)

The QUESTION of the next update!

Okay, so we actually decided to move from the top secret project back to Pocket God "Proper" for a bit. A few things happened in the background that caused us to put a rush on the next PG project. However, things shifted AGAIN, and are focusing on the next update.

Dave has spilled the beans on Touch Arcade as to what has been hanging up PG. There are two parts to the update. One is a minigame called the Pain Drain. This is a new addition to the underwater area and its pretty fun. This part was created easily. The next was a little more complicated. We're creating a "story" mode where you turn on a "story" and a sequence plays of the pygmies talking (with word balloons) with various types of animations included (pygmy expressions, weather changes, island changes). We will create funny little stories that might serve a purpose, such as setting up an update or hinting at functions, or just be a story about the pygmies. As an addendum to this, we are making an editor you can purchase for 99cents that allows players to create their own stories. At first the story mode might have some limitations (only certain animations can play, etc.) but we will be able to add to it as we go.

Well, between our other project and the fact that the story mode is one of the more complex additions, we are watching PG fall in the rankings...so we debated on whether or not to just release the Pain Drain as an update, or spend a few more days to finish the story mode.

What do you think? Dave started addressing it on Touch Arcade here.

Where did we go?

Sorry guys. Its getting hectic and the pressure is definitely on. We have an update nearly done, but we keep getting sidetracked by our new top secret project which is ramping up. Wait...what top secret project? Well, if I told you, it wouldn't be that great a secret.

Sorry to be so cryptic, but hopefully we'll get the next update out the door soon so we can focus on one thing for a while, but in the mean time, we hope that people will forgive us for going underground!

The above cartoon is by Smi4450. I found it on deviantart.com!

Hilarious video

Well, its a been a busy week. The update is still in the works, but it is shaping up pretty cool. We are starting to juggle multiple projects now (as we knew would happen). And actually, Dave is the one who is being pulled in too many directions. In the mean time, here's a hilarious pocket god video suggestion by Philrox. Apparently he has a thing for monkeys...and its true. Where are the monkeys in Pocket God? Well, we're going to have to address this! But in the mean time. Check this out.



Thanks Philrox!