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Flick Fishing Redux
Time to stop messing around 🙂
When we wrote the original Flick Fishing for the iPhone back in 2008, we never realised just how influential or long lasting a game it would be.
Due to change of ownership and management of our publishing partners we gradually lost the ability to update the original version and decided to focus on different games for a while. However the fans wanted Flick Fishing and we rebooted and relaunched the game as Fast Fishing and then Fish!, deciding that launching with the same name but as a different product might be confusing (the original app SKU not being under our controlFlick ).

What we’ve realised since then is most of the players buying Fish! have been searching for Flick Fishing and are more confused by the name change and lack of Flick Fishing on the App Store than it being a new product. It also doesn’t help that Fish! is a terrible search term. So, let’s de-confuse it a bit…
From the 1.4 Update on 19th July, Fish! will now be Flick Fishing (or Flick Fishing Redux as its full name 😉 ). It’s still, as always, the Flick Fishing you’ve grown to love, but we’ve stopped messing around calling it a different name.
The 1.4 update will be simultaneous on iOS, macOS and tvOS and features more fish, a new fishing spot and a new system that lets you collect powerups to build your own custom fishing rod!
Fish! (soon to be Flick Fishing) App Store Link


Fish! for macOS
The macOS version of Fish! is now up on the Mac App Store. That means Fish! is now on every single Apple platform, macOS, iOS, tvOS and watchOS!
Here’s the Mac App Store link Fish! For macOS Â https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/fish/id1313955304?mt=12
and here’s the iOS version link (which also counts as the watchOS and tvOS version) Fish! For iOS/AppleTV https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/fish/id966194870?ls=1&mt=8
The App Stores are pretty broken for smaller devs like ourselves at the moment. Not only does the search ignore a new app until it gets a few zillion downloads, it also doesn’t show an app even if you type its name in exactly (on the Mac App Store for instance, it’s impossible to find Fish! or Strange Flavour by search). So we’re reliant on the direct web links.
Unfortunately that’s now broken since iOS 11 as the new desktop version of iTunes removed the iOS App Store it means you can only use an iOS App Store link on an iOS device. (Likewise you can’t buy an AppleTV or MacOS app unless you’re using the device specific App Stores).
What we’d love to see is a cross platform web based App Store that lets you buy apps for all your Apple devices in once place (or at least from any device). Your account already knows what devices you have anyway, so the store should be able to warn you against buying them for the wrong device and it would make the App Store a lot more accessible to everyone (not to mention letting it tempt people away from other platforms 😉 ).
Pre WWDC Update Update :)
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
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) Â SlotZ Racer 2
SlotZ Racer Caterham Special (iOS)Â SlotZ Racer Caterham Special
Apple Dash/Bob (publisher & added code) (iOS)Â Â Apple Bob
Melvin Tiles (iOS)
Any Landing (iOS, Apple TV)Â Â Any LandingÂ
Snapmatch Soccer (iOS)
Fast Fishing (iOS, Mac)
SlotZ Racer Zenos Special (iOS)Â Â SlotZ Racer Zenos SpecialÂ
Tiny TrackZ (iOS, Apple TV)Â Tiny TrackZ
Fish! (iOS,Apple TV) Â Â Fish!
SpinnYwingS (iOS) ( AppleTV and Mac coming soon!)Â 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 🙂
