Seeking to Understand

Hexy has been on sale for two full days. The timing hasn’t been the best - with the holiday shopping season now here, tons of apps in the app store are doing special promotions or holiday themed releases, etc. It’s very hard to get noticed. Even so, the first day of sales was pretty good - we sold 19 units. Yesterday, even though it was Thanksgiving here in the US, we sold 8.

Hexy doesn’t have a hype machine behind it, isn’t built by some “big name” in the industry, I only have 71 followers on Twitter to pimp it to, and no one reads my blog… (Greg is in the same boat.) So from where I’m sitting, selling 27 in 2 days doesn’t seem half bad - especially considering that Hexy is actually pretty hard to find in the store unless you’re looking for it. We’re not on any Top or New lists, and we’re several pages away from the front when ordered by release date in the board game sub-category. (Which I don’t really understand… it looks like they are sorted by when the app was submitted and not so much when they finally go on sale. Given the variable nature of app review times… that doesn’t seem entirely fair. But oh well.)

We have a lot of sales to go before we break even, though - and we didn’t bill ourselves for the time it took to actually program it! In general terms, Hexy was really cheap to produce since we only had to pay for the art/music. (And we got a good deal… thanks Louie!) Even so, it takes a lot of sales to make that back. If we could maintain this pace of 27 sales every 2 days, it’d still take almost a month to earn what we spent to make the game. If we had to pay for the programming time as well, it’d probably be more like 5 months at a pace of 27 sales every 2 days. Given the drop between day 1 and day 2, though, I have to wonder if that’s even a reasonable pace to expect. We might be looking at 3 months just to pay back the cost of the art… I guess the only way to know is to wait and see.

UPDATE: I forgot to mention the awesome reviews we’ve got so far! There’s 3 reviews in iTunes - all 5 star! That’s pretty sweet. Thanks to the reviewers! Side note: I’ve long had a theory that about 10% of people participate in online feedback (comments, voting, etc). Given that there’s 3 reviews in the store and we’ve almost sold 30 units… that fits nicely with my theory so far…

I’ve been working on iPhone apps since before it was “legit” and even gained a bit of fame from last year’s mind-bendingly intense iApp-a-Day project. Even so, I’ve only recently managed to have one app that I could call “mine” get into the store - Tapulous’ Photo Collage. Ironically, that didn’t happened until after I quit!

In the down time between Tapulous and my new gig, Greg and I had this plan to build an app of our own. It had been years since we’d done anything together, so this seemed like it’d be fun. Naturally, the timing didn’t work out so well as things kept coming up, clashing schedules, general laziness, etc all conspired to make progress shockingly slow to the point of wondering if it’d ever really get done…

Of course unlike other projects we’d taken on together and not really finished (most not making it past the idea stage), this one had more at stake - we actually paid Louie Mantia (and, indirectly, David Lanham) for some art and it’d be stupid to not get it into production and hopefully try to at least break even on it… Plus, the game rules.

Introducing Hexy!

Experience addictive strategy gameplay with Hexy: it’s easy to learn, challenging to master, and impossible to put down! The game is simple. To win, build a bridge connecting your two sides of the board while blocking your opponent from doing the same thing. Play against a friend or take on Buzzy, the Hexy artificial intelligence, for hours of fun!

• Three modes of play: by yourself (against Buzzy the AI), against a friend on the same iPhone or iPod, or against a friend on the same WiFi network
• Choose between three levels of difficulty
• Beautiful graphics and nifty animations - look out for the bees!
• Optional fun sound effects and compelling background music
• Use your own music too - Hexy won’t stop whatever’s playing on your iPod
• Automatically saves your game if you receive a phone call or exit Hexy while playing
• Built-in help explains the rules of the classic strategy game Hex, on which Hexy is based
• Carefully designed graphics that are suitable for colorblind players

Known bugs: Bees

It was just submitted to Apple for review tonight, so there’s no telling when it might show up in the store, but hopefully things will go smoothly!

UPDATE: It’s approved and for sale! Tell your friends!

Well, just to get this out of the way, a lot of stuff happened last week. I no longer work at Tapulous and am moving on to another iPhone company that has a very different business model and corporate culture. (Well, as far as I can tell so far… :P)

While at Tapulous I worked on a variety of projects, but for some reason never had my own - until Collage. If it ever shows up in the App Store, you’ll all get to see it. It’s a very cool new direction for one of my more popular apps from the iApp-a-Day project - and I wrote it entirely solo. Hopefully nothing was changed between the time I left the company and the time it shows up in the App Store.

For those who are emailing and asking, yes, Tapulous purchased my iApp-a-Day stuff that I did last year (which initially got their attention in the first place). So it’s all out of my hands now and no longer mine. It’s sad to leave such a body of work behind, but it doesn’t change the fact that I did it alone in the first place. The achievement still stands and I’m still proud of accomplishing what I did - even if the apps were mostly simplistic. That was never the point.. the timetable was the true challenge.

So that’s all I’ll say about that, I guess. Right now I’m in job limbo as things get into place for my next gig. It’s nice to have a vacation - it feels like I haven’t had time to just brainstorm ideas or even relax for at least a year. Ah life… what would I do without you?

Here it is folks… the long awaited update to Wallpaper! I hope it works for you. Go have at it… lots of changes under the hood here. Here’s hoping the server doesn’t melt…