Podcast Interview: The development of the IPhone game… Skybound

The developers of the IPhone game Skybound talk about developing it

You can download the podcast here…
http://www.indiegamepod.com/podcasts/skybound-iphone-podcast.mp3

Or listen to it here…

[wp_youtube]jwfUwNVdNsA[/wp_youtube]

Show Notes:
Interviewer: I’m here at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. How about you introduce yourself?

Christopher: I’m Christopher from Tumbleweed Interactive.

Hobart: And I’m Hobart from Tumbleweed Interactive, or Howard in America.

Interviewer: What game have you guys worked on?

Christopher: We worked on Skybound and the Skybound lite version for iPhone and iPhone Touch.

Interviewer: What is the game about?

Hobart: The game is basically you draw clouds through your fingers. You align with your finger and then you have to bounce a ball higher and higher up into the sky. It’s kind of similar but instead of sales being the device you draw your own platforms. That’s the base core mechanisms.

Interviewer: How long did it take to develop this game on the iPhone?

Christopher: This game took about two to three months with one to two people.

Interviewer: What were the challenges that you guys encountered as you developed for the iPhone? What are the issues?

Hobart: The first issue was we had to familiarize ourselves with the platform. We never used Mac before, so we bought the PC first and then we bought the Mac hardware. The other problem was we launched a bit too early perhaps, and we had to redo the whole user interface, and we also had a bug; so some minor launch issues.

Interviewer: Did you have to do or did you do any user testing then before you launche, or how did that work?

Christopher: We did some user testing, but it was not as extensive as we should have done and then just the launch. Also, we see that we changed the way we do user testing now because when we explained to people how to play the game they are going to play it in the way that we think it’s meant to be played.

Interviewer: Sure.

Christopher: Some people just pick it up and play it. They are going to do whatever they want with it, and that’s something that we have to take into consideration.

Interviewer: Any other things you would change with your user testing to make sure it’s more robust and accurate?

Christopher: Yeah, in the last patch we had an easy mode, to make it easier for new players to get into it. That’s something also we didn’t develop at first because it takes a couple of minutes until you get sort of into the groove, as we like to say, and then you get into the high score chase. We’ve got online high scores as well so that’s another draw.

Hobart: One big problem about our game, I guess, is that you have to play it for five minutes and then they get hooked. For the iPhone games, that’s a lot because people with the iPhone they are on the move with a short attention span. I heard one of the guys said that iPhone games should have five second attention span. If they don’t get it in five seconds, then you have a much better chance of success. Our game takes five minutes, so…

Interviewer: When are you guys going to change to make sure either that it works for this game or for your next game? What are you going to do different?

Christopher: We are going to work on making the experience smooth as much as possible for the users to get into the game fast, depending on the title, of course, if we have a RPS title for our game, if they can’t make it in five seconds.

Interviewer: Sure. You guys had to do some changes after you released. How does Apple handle that? Do they like that? Do you have to resubmit, or what happened?

Christopher: Yeah, just basically resubmit to the store. No problem.

Interviewer: Well, how long did it take to get it approved again?

Christopher: Also, it’s a very fast process. Apple has been very easy to work with.

Interviewer: Some people have been complaining that it now takes months to get approved. When did you guys submit this initially?

Christopher: The first version was out on the 23rd of December, but we had submission approvals later in February or late January. It’s always been very fast for us. Maybe, some people are just unlucky.

Interviewer: Are you guys going to do another iPhone game?

Christopher: Yeah, we want to but we have to know that it’s going to sell. It’s got to be a pretty good idea to go further on the platform since the market is getting pretty saturated and there are games still coming out.

Interviewer: Any other suggestions for other iPhone developers or future iPhone developers?

Christopher: Test your game thoroughly and also try to make the user experience as easy as possible. It’s just got to be easy. It’s got to be [?] if you’re determined.

Interviewer: Sure. Thank you very much.