Now we’ve got the main work done on our new game, Fast Fishing. We’ve got a little time to take a look at our older games and getting some much needed update work done.
I thought it might be a good idea to keep our players in the loop, so here’s the first Strange Flavour State of Play update!
Fast Fishing:
While we were hoping to have Fast Fishing ready for the iOS App Store for Christmas, it turned out not to be practical and it is now set for a January launch, alongside the OS X version.
Fast Fishing marks our first return to Mac games since the Apple Design Award winning ToySight and Airburst Extreme a decade ago. Something we’ve always wanted to do and plan to do more of!
The Mac version of Fast Fishing will also be our testbed for the Oculus Rift VR headset. It won’t be in the initial version as it takes a bit of finessing to get right (and the Oculus Rift itself is still in development), but we’re looking to have it as a free option in the Mac version once it’s ready.
Any Landing and SnapMatch Soccer:
We released two games this year. Any Landing and SnapMatch Soccer. Both used our Play Nice system for fair In App Purchases and I adjusted it in SnapMatch Soccer to make it even more fair to players by making all the purchases non-consumable. So no matter what extras you buy in the game, you can always reset the game and regain your purchases. Fast Fishing also uses this version of the system on both iOS and OS X versions.
With the release of the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, there are some new screen sizes to take into account. Fortunately both Any Landing and SnapMatch Soccer work with the new screen sizes, but we’ll be doing updates to add specific iPhone 6/6+ screen modes to them and hopefully adding a few more features while we’re at it.
SlotZ Racer & SlotZ Racer 2:
If you’ve got our original SlotZ Racer game, published by Freeverse, hang onto it! With Freeverse’s purchase by ngmoco (and subsequent purchase of ngmoco by DeNA) the Freeverse App Store membership appears to have lapsed and all apps on it removed. This means that if you purchased SlotZ Racer, Warpack Grunts or The Plank, you won’t be able to re-download them (Flick Fishing was moved to DeNA’s store, so is still active).
As we don’t have any control over these apps, we originally created SlotZ Racer 2 to be a free app with all the features (and more) of SlotZ Racer unlocked so any SlotZ Racer players could get the new version and carry on playing. It also had some features that unlocked for free if you had the original game on your device. As the original isn’t available any more and can’t be re-downloaded if you’d purchased it, we’re going to unlock these features by default in the next update. While I was at it, I’ve added MFi controller support so you can race using any of the MFI controllers. This even works in multiplayer, so if you’ve got 3 friends with controllers, you can race using your iPhone connected to your Apple TV over AirPlay and play SlotZ Racer on the big screen 🙂
We’ve also noticed that SlotZ Racer 2 has some problems with iOS 8 screens, so I’ve re-written it to handle the new screen modes as well as iPhone 6/6+ The update should be submitted first thing in January and look out for some more exciting SlotZ Racer news then around the time of the Autosport International Show 😉
Warpack Grunts:
Grunts was another casualty of the loss of the Freeverse App Store. Fortunately as we still own the rights (and I still have the code hanging around), we’re looking at re-releasing Grunts under our own banner soon, with a much needed Universal update for iPad and MFi controllers. No idea on when it’ll be done as it’s a spare time project, but keep an eye out for it 🙂
Thank you all for playing our games and I hope you’ll keep enjoying them along with the new games we’ll hopefully be launching in 2015!
Aaron Fothergill
