Games - iOS Archives - Page 2 of 4

Lots of Fish!

August 6, 2017 by Zwilnik

As I’ve mentioned previously, we’re working on a big update for Fish! which goes into overdrive through the next couple of weeks while I lock myself into my office and crunch on the code side of it to hopefully submit before the end of August.

We’ve noticed a lot of new players recently too, which is good and a lot of them are our old players from Flick Fishing, who’ve managed to find our new version Fish! hidden away on the App Store 🙂

One of the most requested features of Flick Fishing to bring back in Fish! is the old Flick Fishing Megaguide, or at least the bit about where to catch the fish 😉 If you have an Apple Watch, you might be already using the mini fish guide in the Fish! app for the Apple Watch, I’m working on adding something more comprehensive to the main game itself.

In the meantime, I thought it might be handy if I put a very quick guide to what fish you can catch in each fishing spot up on the blog to get you started. I won’t go into details about which bait each fish prefers or what distances to cast (while spoil all the fun 😉 ) so you’ll still have to play a bit and try different things out, but at least you’ll be in the right location if you’re after a particular fish for the quest 😉

The Old Pond : Catfish, Minnow, Carp, Bream

Lake Smith : Minnow, Carp, Bream, Rainbow Trout, Large Mouth Bass, Pike, Brown Trout

Waves of Blue : Sea Bass, Sailfish, Blue Marlin, Yellowfin Tuna, Bonito, Wahoo, Mahi Mahi

Doom Harbour: Dogfish, Mullet, Flounder, Plaice, Red Snapper, Sea Bass

Shores of Blue : Sea Bass, Sailfish, Mahi Mahi, Grouper, Striped Bass, Barracuda, Rooster Fish, Black Marlin

Doom Deeps : Blue Marlin, Yellowfin Tuna, Bonito, Wahoo, Cobia, Swordfish

River Tam : Carp, Rainbow Trout, Large Mouth Bass, Pike, Brown Trout, Crappie, Peacock Bass

Pirate Cave: Sea Bass, Plaice, Red Snapper, Grouper, Striped Bass, Rooster Fish, Conga Eel

Some of these fish (looking at you Cobia!) are being particularly hard to hook at the moment, which I’m tuning in the update and of course, there may be new locations to fish in soon too 😉

Pre WWDC Update Update :)

May 30, 2017 by Zwilnik

Well, it’s WWDC next week and one of the things we’re all expecting is the end of 32 bit iOS apps.

Luckily for us, all but one of our current games are already 64 bit and the last remaining one (SlotZ Racer Caterham Special) should have its 64 bit update submitted before WWDC.

This does give me a prod to update you all on what we’re doing behind the scenes to keep our games fresh and what updates to expect either soon or eventually 😉

Fish!

Fish! is in the process of a very big rewrite. It’s taken a lot longer than planned for its update as we realised there was a lot of stuff we really could do with changing so it can easily be updated across iOS, tvOS and macOS without huge waits in between each version. As the aim is to have the iOS and tvOS versions (at least) able to play multiplayer between each other, that ability to update simultaneously is pretty important. The good news though is that while it’s taking longer, it does mean we’re going to be including more of your favourite elements from our original Flick Fishing in the game and the re-engineering will make it faster for us to do updates in the future.

If you’ve got any particular favourite bits of Flick Fishing you’d like to see in the updates, now’s a good time to let us know. Either through our contact page, or on Strange Flavour’s Facebook page!

SpinnYwingS

SpinnYwingS has soft launched rather nicely and has picked up a decent number of players in the HeyPlay system who are busy challenging each other in multiplayer games. We’re going to be doing some more point updates to SpinnYwingS and gradually introducing more content to unlock.

Tiny TrackZ

Once Fish! has had its big update, I also plan to re-engineer Tiny TrackZ to allow us to update it faster and add more content easily.

SlotZ Racer

The SlotZ Racer games are now relatively old tech, but once SlotZ Racer Caterham Special is updated, they’ll all still happily work on new devices and should be good for a few years. Any non critical update focus is going to be solely on SlotZ Racer 2 though and ideally I’d like to be writing SlotZ Racer 3, but that will be a little way off probably 🙂

Teenage Dirtbag

March 31, 2017 by Zwilnik

What on earth do you get a teenage software company for its birthday?
Strange Flavour Ltd. is 13 years old as of tomorrow (April 1st 2017). We’ve been releasing games as Strange Flavour since 2001 but went full time with it and set the company up with Freeverse as our publishing partners on April 1st 2004. (we picked that day as it’s also Apple’s birthday 😉 )

I’ve made a list of every Strange Flavour game that’s been released for this blog, but I thought you might find it interesting to hear about some of the great ones that *nearly* made it to release…

First up of course, is Airburst XBLA. This was the ultimate version of Airburst, written for the XBox 360 and unfortunately shelved very near to completion due to running out of budget and a need to shift to iOS game development when that became available to pay the bills. (which was lucky for us as that was when we wrote Flick Fishing and paid off all the debts Airburst XBLA had run up 😉 ). Airburst XBLA was a pretty awesome game though and it’s on our “One day…” list.

France France Revolution: You might remember our Apple Design Award winning game ToySight. It was a compendium of arcade games all controlled by the iSight camera and there was one game that didn’t quite make the final package as it wasn’t quite there yet.
In France France Revolution you waved your arms in time to music to attract the attention of the Scarlett Pimpernel so he could come and rescue the French Noble about to get his or her head chopped off by the Guillotine 🙂

A notable mention is one we did actually release, but it was a special project for a drug company to use at shows and was a special ToySight game where you play as a new drug fighting colon cancer (quoting the client “Best damn ass cancer game ever!”) . File that one along with the crowd controlled version of Totem Ball (and the play while you’re queuing for a Caterham thrill ride version of SlotZ Racer) under “cool but weird exhibition stuff”!

Strange Flavour’s Games

We have actually finished and released a huge number of games though. Here’s the full list of what we’ve done in the last 13 (or 16) years…

Bushfire (Mac)
Airburst (Mac)
ToySight (Mac) (also ToySight Gold with extra games)
Airburst Extreme (Mac)

Spyglass Board Games (XBLA)
Totem Ball (XBLA)
helped on Marathon Durandal (XBLA. Freeverse did most of the work, we just consulted)

The Plank (iOS)
Flick Fishing (iOS), (also Flick Fishing HD, Flick Fishing Free, Flick Fishing Free HD) and updates for 5+ years
SlotZ Racer (iOS)
Warpack Grunts (iOS)
SlotZ Racer 2 (iOS, Apple TV) SlotZ Racer 2
SlotZ Racer Caterham Special (iOS) SlotZ Racer Caterham Special
Apple Dash/Bob (publisher & added code) (iOS) Apple Bob
Melvin Tiles (iOS)
Any Landing (iOS, Apple TV) Any Landing
Snapmatch Soccer (iOS)
Fast Fishing (iOS, Mac)
SlotZ Racer Zenos Special (iOS) SlotZ Racer Zenos Special
Tiny TrackZ (iOS, Apple TV) Tiny TrackZ
Fish! (iOS,Apple TV) Fish!
SpinnYwingS (iOS) ( AppleTV and Mac coming soon!) SpinnyWings

If you include the alternate versions of Flick Fishing, that’s 29 professional game releases in 16 years. Not bad for a tiny 2 man team. I think I’m taking the day off tomorrow 🙂

Balloons, Balloons, Balloons

January 23, 2017 by Zwilnik

Well, I think we can all say, 2016 didn’t exactly go as planned!

We’d hoped to get a lot more new games out last year as well as updating our current set. However, circumstances kind of got in the way and I spent most of my time doing contract work to pay the bills.

The good news is, that’s just about done, bills are paid for now and we’re cracking on with some great new games (not to mention having time put aside for updates). Things are still a bit too close for comfort, but we’ve got a selection of different games on the way. Some may be a bit familiar to our long term fans too 😉 (our theme for the year, Balloons, Balloons, Balloons!)

While we’re still looking at paid games being our main focus, Adam and I also want to try some ideas out as super small games as free to play with video ads. We’ve been playing quite a few games with this model and not all of them are entirely annoying 🙂 (Actually, it works very well as a “Watch Video To Continue Game” system after you hit the Game Over screen). We also think we’ve got a way to get around the problem of them not really working for offline play too.

Anyway, we’ll have more news soon and our first new game of the year very soon!

Updates Updates Updates!

April 18, 2016 by Zwilnik

It’s been a month of updates!
SlotZ Racer 2 finally got its new 2.09 update with MFi controllers, new cars and general updatey goodness to work on newer iPhones and iPads and Fish! had a couple of point updates to fix bugs, tune things and add a couple of minor features that players requested.
Adam’s even been working hard and updated the Strange Flavour website too! (more tweaks ongoing in that department).
We’ve actually got another SlotZ Racer update in submission as a bug snuck through in the championship mode of the game, so expect to see that hit the App Store this week.

Next up in the updates department is a fairly big one to add all the extra locations and features in the iOS version of Fish! to the Apple TV version. Both the Apple TV and iOS versions will be getting another update later on with some rather cool new features.

We’ve not forgotten our other games either, while they may take a bit longer, there’s updates in the works for Tiny TrackZ on iOS and AppleTV (and an OSX version at some point too!).

Happy Birthday Apple!

April 1, 2016 by Zwilnik

I’ve already posted about it being our company birthday today (1st April), but the big news is of course that Apple is 40 today and the oldest computer company in the world (that actually makes computers) so I thought I’d show you a list that explains why we’re such fans of Apple here at Strange Flavour.

This is what a couple of guys with off the shelf Macs can produce in 12 years..

5 Mac games
1 Mac game for medical research
3 Xbox 360 games, plus helping another get finished
16 iOS games
and 4 Apple TV games

About 30 million people who’ve bought or downloaded them and played them and approximately 2000 years (yes years) of gameplay time.

Also an Apple Design Award and a MacWorld Best of Show award plus had an animated short based on one of our games shown at ComiCon 🙂

That’s the level of productivity you get when you work on computers and software you can rely on (we did try using a PC for the Xbox 360 development but it was too unreliable and Windows worked better on a Mac anyway 😉 ).

Hopefully, by the time Strange Flavour reaches 40 I’ll be posting these updates from my Apple Hover Sofa (TM) using the thought transcription mode in my iShirt (TM)

Happy Birthday Apple and here’s to many more!

Thanks also to all the great people we’ve worked with over the last decade or so at Freeverse, Apple, Microsoft, Caterham, Zenos and Unity to name a few!

Happy Birthday ;)

March 30, 2016 by Zwilnik

While it’s not quite as momentous as Apple’s 40th birthday (the oldest computer company in the world), it’s also Strange Flavour’s 12th birthday on Friday 1st April.

We’ve actually been Strange Flavouring since 2001, but April 1st 2004 marked the formation of Strange Flavour as a Company in the UK and the start of our publishing partnership with Freeverse.

While Freeverse are no more, their founders Ian and Colin Lynch Smith have started a sequel. Second Verse! Check them out here! http://secondverse.org

We’re cracking on with our games of course. Fish! is doing great on TV and iOS and we’ve got a 1.02 update for Fish! going through the submission process at the moment, with an update to the TV version following soon. We’re also in the final testing stages of the long awaited SlotZ Racer 2 update that adds MFi Controllers and parity with the TV version to the iOS version of the game.

A heads up on SlotZ Racer 2 btw. Because it’s been a long time between updates and we’re really glad you’re all playing it still. We’ve decided that we’re going to roll the IAP content in the game at the moment into the main game. So the price will go up by $1, but both the car packs will now be included for free (and once unlocked on the iOS version, they’ll appear on your TV version too).

More Fish!

March 18, 2016March 12, 2016 by Zwilnik

Well, after a lot of work, the iOS version of Fish! is now out and on the App Store (Fish!) !

The iOS version has 2 new locations, the River Tam and the Pirate’s Cave, along with 3 new fish to try and catch and some more game modes.

Harking back to Fish!’s roots in Flick Fishing (what *is* the correct apostrophe usage to indicate ownership after a proper noun that ends in an exclamation mark btw? ) I’ve added Pass and Play game modes for both the tournament types. This means you can play a tournament on a single iPhone or iPad by taking turns.

The big addition though is network play. I’ve added this to all game modes so you can link up over your local network and play against your friends. You can even do this in Pass and Play mode so you can play as Team vs Team! (Team 1 takes their turn, then pass their devices to Team 2).

All this of course will be coming in an update to the Apple TV version of Fish! So you’ll be able to use your Apple TV as a server and play with up to 4 players. Note this is full local network play, not just using your phone as a remote. Which means if your kids keep beating you, you can send them to their rooms and you can all carry on playing together 🙂

Thanks to me making a typo in the press release, Fish! for iOS was announced at the wrong price. So for the launch week only (until 17th March) I’ve set both versions at the discount price of $2.99/£2.29 to honour this mistaken price. As I’ve mentioned before, we don’t do sales, so this is a pretty much one off occasion and it’s worth nabbing the game at this price while you can. If you’ve already got Fish! for the Apple TV of course, you can download it free on your iPhone anyway!

SlotZ Racer Update

We’ve been *really* busy behind the scenes and the SlotZ Racer update is almost there. Because it’s taken so long to do though, We’ve decided to make a little change and make both of the extra car packs that were previously available as IAP included for free in the game. However, I am going to be putting the price of the game up by $1 as that fits the size and scope of the game more and hopefully means we’ll be able to afford to do more updates a little faster!

So again, it’s worth grabbing SlotZ Racer 2 now! (and of course, it’s Universal Purchase, so buy it on one device and you own it on all of them)

Oh, and I’ll leave you with this great review we had for the iOS version of Fish!

*This* is why we write games 🙂

Screen Shot 2016-03-11 at 16.12.50

Fish! .

December 24, 2015 by Zwilnik

It’s Christmas Eve and I’m just finishing up my work for the year before a short break. We recently managed to launch our 4th Apple TV game, Fish! after some very hard work and it’s going well. Fish! is a more direct sequel to our classic game Flick Fishing (none of that fast fishing stuff this time, promise!) and you’ll be pleased to hear that I’ve been working hard on the iOS version of the game for release towards the end of January so you can play it on the bus. You can also use the iOS version as a remote controller for the Apple TV version to bring it up to 4 players.

As with all our Apple TV games, we’ve made Fish! a Universal Purchase, so if you buy the Apple TV version, you automatically own the iOS version and vice-versa. We think this is the way to go for any Apple TV games as it lets us give you a remote option on the iOS version.

The update for the iOS version of SlotZ Racer 2 is also nearly done. This won’t have the wifi remote option *yet* (as it’s a bit more complicated for that one) but it will have all the other features from the Apple TV version like MFi game controllers and the zippy Zenos E10 and E10S sports cars!

I hope you all enjoy your holidays and your games!