We started the work for the iPad version from February, 2010. And we made our submission to Apple on October 18^th. During these 8 months, 900 changelists were submitted to SVN. We submitted 145 more changelists after the initial release for fixing bugs, adjusting puzzles, and supporting new features like multi-tasking in iOS 4.

There was 8 days before the game became “in-review”. We waited the result anxiously. It was a true relief when we finally got the “ready to sale” email on October 28^th. We thought we had reached the end line and could take a rest. We were wrong. We were just standing at the starting point.

We had no marketing experience and did not know how to promo our game. When looking back to that time, I could still see how we made every possible mistake. We believed the best game would automatically succeed (which was our game without doubt). We had NOT arranged any beta-test or preview. What we only did (and did right) was posting a forecast on Touch Arcade’s “Upcoming iPad Games”.

Fortunately, we received the most enthusiastic support that we could ever anticipate, from the true Picross players. They liked all our content, interaction and art style which was presented with a short Youtube video, and believed our game would become the best Picross game in AppStore. They noticed the release of our game, and even posted the announcement thread to the forum before we knew our game was approved, and was available from iTunes.

That was where our nightmare started.