Approval!
It has been an incredibly busy week so I’m a bit behind in my updates. Star Fighter X2 has been approved and it will be launching on August 31st!
The SFX2 website is now live and includes lots of content from the game. Click here to check it out.
Huge thanks to Mike for helping to get this game and site ready for launch.
Beginnings…
The release of Star Fighter X2 marks our very first game in the App Store. Exciting times! Although the excitement isn’t completely due to the idea of, “sweet! let’s see if we can make a few bucks!”, it’s the fact that we’re releasing a product into such a tight-knit community of developers and consumers. At least for me, that has to be the most exciting / nerve racking aspect of an App Store release. Aside from your group of beta testers, you get to see what people think about it, how much they hate it or love it, and how we can improve upon the ideas that we have built into v1.0.
The concept behind SFX2 was dreamed up back in April of this year for the 360iDev Game Jam. For those of you who haven’t heard about 360iDev, listen up! Aside from WWDC, it’s the absolute best iPhone developer’s conference out there today. 360 Conferences is doing another 360iDev in November down in Austin, TX. Do yourself a favour and grab a ticket (or two) right away. (www.360idev.com)
At each 360iDev, they schedule a night for the Game Jam. Game Jams are a lot of fun. The idea is to pump out some form of playable prototype iPhone/iPad game — starting from the end of the day’s sessions — and have it ready by the end of the night.
The last Game Jam was sponsored by TouchArcade, and they graciously provided loads of food and drink, and a special forum thread where we could post progress updates for visitors to their forums.
Since the iPad was JUST released in the US, I knew I had to do an iPad game. With the larger display, I figured it would be great to also include some form of head-to-head gameplay. Next, perhaps it would be fun to use the touch interface to drive something around your side of the device, and do something to attack your opponent? The first prototype, called Shove It, was born! It was a tank game, each player had their own half of the display to move their tank around and fire upon the other player.
Further into the night the attendees were making great progress. The atmosphere was awesome. You constantly heard ideas being bounced around and everyone was really into their work.
That, ladies and gentlemen, was but one example of the community I referred to earlier. These events are fantastic in promoting collaboration between people from all ranges of skill sets and backgrounds.
I ended up staying the entire night. Towards the morning, I was trying to get a better firing/aiming algorithm to work but I decided to rip it out at the last minute. Turns out red bull can only sustain your “mental alertness” for so long. Shove It was still semi-playable and I felt that it could really become something fun and easy for anyone to pick up and play. At lunch the next day, everyone presented their games.
Seeing a working prototype led us to believe it could be a fun game. We decided to stick with the concept, but we changed the theme to a space shooter, and put more elbow grease and polish into it.
Today we announce it’s going to be going up for sale on the App Store. Unless someone can speak up, this might also be the first game originally developed at the 2010 360iDev Game Jam to be released! There were a number of games released from the previous 360iDev conference.
In essence, we owe the launch of this game to the opportunities available from great conferences like 360iDev and sponsors such as TouchArcade. If you are sitting on the fence about going, here’s proof that you never know what new connections and friendships may develop, or new ideas that might develop into the next great app!
If you are reading this and would like to take a test-drive of SFX2 before tomorrow’s launch, either email me or send me a DM on Twitter, (@coffeedan).
Onwards and upwards!
