My folks got me these great Incredipede themed pins from Illuminati Glassworks on Gabriola Island. Gabriola is a small island off of the coast of British Columbia. Sarah and I are spending Christmas in B.C. on Vancouver Island where I grew up. Gabriola is known for supporting a lot of interesting artists.
We’ll see what happens to them… I only have like 10 so I guess I’ll give them to friends? Or mabey I’ll do some kind of contest…?
After Tokyo we spent two months in the Philippines with our friends Ron and Arlie, and my god did we have a blast. We stayed in a seaside mansion where we had delicious Filipino food prepared for us nightly, and were visited by friends from across the indie–verse and beyond. We took a lot of pictures, and it seems most of them fit into the categories: sailing, snorkeling… and bugs.
Oh and some photos of me shooting an AK-47 and hiking up to a native Mangyan village with our friend Peter. The expats were super friendly and welcoming, centered around the local yacht club where we had dinner on Friday nights and took a few sailing lessons. The older brits and their young Filipino wives seemed a little colonial at times, but some like Peter were active in the community and helping to promote touristic alternatives to seedy Sabang and boring White Beach.
After the Philippines the two of us spent two weeks in Hong Kong. Unfortunately Colin came down with a mysterious illness and was out of commission for much of it. We stayed in Mong Kok on the Chinese side which has the highest population density in the world, as well as many wonderful markets and whole streets dedicated to aquariums, flowers, and songbirds. Our room was a cozy little breadbasket, bright and quiet and just big enough for a bed and the two of us to stand. We met some eccentric housemates and wrote an iPad game for Colin’s mum, which teaches Japanese Katakana using a crossword and photos from our time in Tokyo. We showed it around at an indie game meetup in Hong Kong and people were impressed, so we may release it on the app store eventually.
Christmas with family on Vancouver Island was great as always. It hasn’t snowed yet but there’s still time before we head down to San Francisco. We’ll be there until March or April but haven’t decided where to go after that. Europe? Eastern Canada? We’ll see…
The iPad 1 version of Rebuild has less snantzy animations, the map doesn’t scroll quite as smoothly, and admittedly it does run out of ram sometimes and crash. But these issues don’t seem to have lowered the game’s ranking or sales. I’ve gotten more complaints about Air incorrectly listing 15 languages than about performance.
I’ve been tracking the figures on AppFigures.com and was excited to see Rebuild’s #1 app ranking in Anguilla. Well… just kidding, but it was in the top 100 games in the US and UK for awhile. Considering it was never featured by Apple, Rebuild did pretty well, and made $15k in the first month.
Releasing iPad 2 then iPad 1 separately may have been better too, because the update triggered a second round of press.
Like the Katakana crossword game Colin and I wrote for his mum for Xmas. Or the movie keywords parlor game I’ve been meaning to write for years. Or Word Up Dog (perhaps soon to be rewritten in Stage 3D).
Or, you know, Rebuild 3.
I’ve got Word Up Dog now running with Game Center on iPads and iPhone 4+, but I need to test it on the iPhone 3GS and iPod Touch 3+. So this is a call for testers – please sign up to join my Test Flight team if you’ve got any iOS device, and I may recruit you to help me test Word Up Dog, Rebuild, or some future game.
Word Up Dog was always meant to be an iOS game, so here we go!
Rebuild is now available for the iPad 2 on the Apple app store!
I am happy to report that the game plays great on the iPad 2. Sarah’s done a great job rethinking the interface for the touch screen and this is probably the best version of the game. You can almost feel the zombies clinging to your finger tips.
Sarah also made some new content for the iPad 2 version. She didn’t really have time to stuff all the features into Rebuild 2 that she wanted to so this was a chance to get that stuff into the game. You could think of the iPad 2 version as the “complete” version of Rebuild 2.
I don’t want to spoil all the new stuff but there is a new plotline (which I wrote, props to me!) with a new building and a new ending. The new plot is unique because it’s more of a selfish path through the zombie apocalypse.
There are also Watch Towers that you can use to keep tabs on the zombie hordes. If you research things right you can even use them to mow down troublesome clumps of zed (a great way for advanced players to keep the danger rating down).
As with Rebuild and Rebuild 2, Rebuild iPad was written entirely while traveling. While Rebuild was mostly written in europe Rebuild 2 was written in Central America. Rebuild iPad was written in Japan and the Philippines!
It was great fun to test. I’ve played hours and hours of Rebuild and Rebuild 2 but the iPad game really revitaised the fun for me.
I hope you find playing it as great an adenture as making it was!
