Players of the current version of Jetpack Dragon are hopefully familiar with our in-game currency, the gold panda coins. Now with patch 1.2, we’re adding the item shop where you can buy power-ups with those gold coins, to help you run farther, score higher, and devastate more!

So first, a glimpse at the shop:

A few of the new power-ups include:

Brakes
Activate the brakes when you’re running to fast and need to slow down a bit. This will slow you back down to the starting speed. You can cancel using the brakes by either jumping or performing your dragon dash. Be careful not to slow down too much, you don’t want to miss a jump!

Bubble Shield
Miss-time a jump or not have enough fuel to dash through a wall? No worries! Activate the Bubble Shield and you’ll slowly float through all obstacles and rise up above the ground safely again until time runs out (or until you choose to turn the power-up back off). But beware, you don’t earn any points while in the bubble shield so use it only for emergencies!

Fire Shield
Jetpack Dragon is sometimes just too hot to handle! Enable your fire shield and watch the flames swirl around you, automatically destroying all obstacles and burning all villages until the time runs out. Feel the devastation!

A lot of our games were initially developed for the iPhone specifically, and as we’ve been developing for the iPhone since its launch, it’s a comfortable place for us. The App Store is a well known entity at this point, and most developers know the typical development / submission process well:

1. Make game
2. Submit game
3. Await 2-5 days for approval (our recent averages)
4. Game goes live
5. Start each day checking your sales numbers

Ok so I added that last one largely for me - after all we may be making games, but it’s still a business.
And this doesn’t speak to the weeks it takes to get setup with Apple in terms of getting legal papers out of the way, bank account information, etc.

Let’s compare this to the Android Market…

Android Market

It’s similar to the App Store in a lot of ways (and differs in a lot as well - more on that below). But let’s look at that same dev/submission cycle.

1. Make game
2. Submit game
3. Game is live within minutes (literally 2 in our case)
4. Endlessly refresh the Google Checkout account as you can track sales in real time

Again, that last one there is due to my own obsessive-compulsive tendencies, but that’s not the point of this post. Notice the lack of delay. The lack of waiting. You submit your game and as long as they can process the file you upload, you’re live. We went from not even having a publishing account on the Android Market, to having our first game live, within a 10-minute span.

Clearly the Android Market appears to be more developer friendly…but let’s think this through a bit more.

The ability to instantly publish, and more importantly instantly update your games, means as fixes come in, you can get them to your users that same day. No more waiting days to fix that nasty crash a user just destroyed your rating with.

Now for the downside: the floodgates are wide open.

With the ease of publishing new products, and the even-lower-than-iPhone-dev cost of entry, products can be put up in swarms, very quickly pushing you off the main list there is. Unless you somehow can push swarms of people to get your game to put you in Top free/Top paid (which is much more difficult, seeing as you’re not in a place to be discovered), or you’re chosen to be featured on the main page (which again, as people can’t find your game, how can they choose to feature it) then after a few days of being live, your app is effectively invisible to the masses of Android owning gamers.

For featured apps/games, atleast from my brief experience it appears that there are about 5 banner image slots, and 15 featured slots. Compare this to the numerous lists available on the iTunes App Store (What’s Hot, New and Noteworthy, What We’re Playing, etc).

It really seems that while the Android Market is a lot more developer friendly from the standpoint of publishing, it’s certainly less consumer friendly in terms of new product discovery, and because of that, far less developer friendly financially.

Of course, all of this is only my initial thoughts…and if anything I’ve posted here is unfair or incorrect (please, feel free to comment) I’ll be posting a followup.

The Battle of Pirate Bay HD: Coming Soon

From http://developer.apple.com/wwdc/ada/

Topple 2 is an ideal model for excellent iPhone game and game sequel design, technology adoption, performance, connectedness, and localization.

Topple 2 combines the features of multitouch and the accelerometer to create a game about stacking blocks and keeping them from toppling over. Local WiFi multiplayer mode enables game play between two players, and a challenge mode where recorded sessions can be sent to others players via email, twitter or facebook. Localized for English, French, German, Japanese, and Spanish, Topple 2 uses multiple iPhone SDK technologies including UIKit, OpenGL ES, Bonjour, CFNetwork, Multi-Touch, Accelerometer, Email, and Twitter and Facebook integration.

Macworld - 4.5 / 5

148 Apps - 4.5 / 5

Destructoid - 7.5 / 10

Pocket Gamer - 7 / 10, Bronze Award

Slide to Play - 3 /4

Besides these great reviews, Topple 2 has maintained a 4.5/5 star rating in the iTunes App Store.

Our heartfelt thanks to everyone who’s reviewed the game so far, you guys rock!  If you haven’t tried it yet, check it out!

We’re happy to announce that our latest game, Topple 2, is now available in the iTunes App Store!  Featuring 30 levels, wifi multiplayer, and a unique “Challenge” mode.  Check it out! ]]> http://mutekicorp.com/2009/03/16/topple-2-out-now/feed/ http://mutekicorp.com/2009/01/01/new-price-for-a-new-year/ http://mutekicorp.com/2009/01/01/new-price-for-a-new-year/#comments Thu, 01 Jan 2009 21:33:12 +0000 bryan http://mutekicorp.com/?p=128 We’ve decided to go ahead and drop the price on our first iPhone game, Line Shift in celebration of the new year. Dropped to only $0.99 we hope many more people will get a chance to experience and enjoy Line Shift as we here at the muteki corporation move into 2009 with many more games to come.