The Story Behind iPACROSS – Launch on iPad (#2)

iPACROSS available in iPad and Mac AppStoreThe selling number was very low at the beginning. One of the reasons was because I made a brainless mistake in the submission. When filling the submission form, I chose “Entertainment” as the primary category, and “Games” as secondary. I did not know AppStore entirely ignored the secondary category, and our game had not appeared at the Games section at all. I noticed that immediately and submitted an update to switch the category. But we already lost our first chance to build the visibility.

That was bad but not the worst. There were some players already known our game from the forum. They downloaded the game immediately, and gave us feedback that we had never expected. They complained that some puzzles could not be solved, including one of the entry level puzzles.

Unsolvable puzzle in the initial build of iPACROSS

Which is the right solution, red or yellow?

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The Story Behind iPACROSS – Launch on iPad (#1)

iPACROSS available in iPad and Mac AppStoreWe started the work for the iPad version from February, 2010. And we made our submission to Apple on October 18th. 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.

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The Story Behind iPACROSS : Prologue

iPACROSS is a Picross-like puzzle game for iPad and, more importantly, our first attempt in the area of iOS development. We have 4 team members, video game industry veterans. Each one of us has quite a few AAA titles under his belt. But as indie developer, making iPACROSS for iPad, later for Mac, was for sure somewhat virgin experience to all of us. Like many other stories, the story behind iPACROSS has its own ups and downs.
iPACROSS available in iPad and Mac AppStore

If you are not familiar with Picross game, just look up the word on YouTube. Simply put, it’s a number deducing grid based puzzle game. iPACROSS does have some achievements. This game’s iPad version used to climb to the 1st puzzle game in Japanese App Store. Both the iPad and Mac version was featured in AppStore for several times. Even today, when I was writing this, it’s still among the hot games in Mac AppStore. Although it was not the type that everyone would like, the game has built up its reputation among loyal players. According to AppPicker, iPACROSS has an averaged rating with 4 1/2 stars.

Technically the game is not completely finished yet. As one of the two planned free updates, the 5th pack of puzzles will be released in a few days. We have also started the work for the final puzzle pack, and wish to finish it soon.