The 1.1 update to IsoWords has finally been submitted, and it looks amazing. Below are the new screenshots for the App Store. More information will come soon…
Monitoring press and mentions
Set up a “Google Alert” here http://www.google.com/alerts with your app’s name as the search term. This will send you an email digest everyday with websites that have mentioned your app. So, if you get mentioned by a website you can spread the press around and thank the website for any kind words they may have given you.
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IsoWords 1.1 sneak peak
I believe I am just two weeks away from submitting the 1.1 update for IsoWords. It is a huge update; in fact, I believe I have spent more time on this update than I did on writing the core game. Perhaps it should be called 2.0…
Please take the screenshots below with a grain of salt. The interfaces are more like wireframes. The next 2 weeks of work is being devoted to putting in the final artwork.
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Bluetooth/WiFi multiplayer
There is a new way of playing multiplayer games in this update. In the current version on the app store you can play with multiple people through the “pass and play” option: each person takes a turn on the device and then all the words and scores are compared at the end.
In Bluetooth/WiFi multiplayer up to 4 devices can participate in a game of IsoWords at the same time. The only restrictions are the following:
- All devices must be running OS 3.1 or newer and be connected to the same WiFi network
- or all devices must be 2nd generation or newer, running OS 3.0 or newer and Bluetooth must be on
Further, there are 3 different ways of playing IsoWords:
- Parallel: In this mode all participants play the same puzzle for the same length of time and the scores and words are compared at the end. It is essentially the same as “pass and play”, except everyone plays on their own device.
- Battle: Everyone plays the same puzzle, except now once a word has been found on one device it will be marked on all other devices. This means words can only be found once across all devices. Also, once a cube is removed from one device it will be removed from all others too. These games can get very heated since you might be in the middle of forming a really good word, and either someone else will find it first, or a cube you need gets removed before you finish!
- Rounds: This mode is a little more leisurely and allows you the time to find bigger words. This game proceeds in 10, 15 or 20 second rounds. In a round each player can submit exactly one word or remove exactly one cube. Words found in one round cannot be repeated in later rounds. It allows, however, for all players to get the same word in a round.
Bluetooth/WiFi Battle - your words are white, everyone else's are red.
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Multiplayer & LITE version
The biggest problem with Bluetooth/WiFi multiplayer on the iPhone/iPod platform is finding a bunch of friends who are also willing to buy the app so that you can actually play. I believe I have novel solution to this problem. People with only the LITE version of IsoWords will be able to participate in Bluetooth/WiFi games. The only restriction is that at least one person in the group must have the full version of IsoWords.
*So, if you have the full version of IsoWords and you are having a hard time convincing friends to buy it so you can do multiplayer games, just tell them to grab the LITE version.
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Improved Facebook / Twitter integration
There is now a settings screen where you can enter your Facebook / Twitter account info once and it will be stored indefinitely. This way you do not have to re-enter it every time you want to post a challenge.
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Respond to Challenges
Right now when you accept a challenge through Facebook, Twitter or email there is no way to respond to your challenge to let them know if you won or lost. This update allows you to do just that. If the challenge was accepted via email, you will be able to send an email back with the scores and words of both games. If the challenge was accepted via Facebook / Twitter, then a message will be posted back to your account saying that you won or lost along with a link showing the results. For example, a Twitter response looks like this and the results page looks like this.
*Unfortunately this functionality requires that both people are running the current version of IsoWords.
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Global Leaderboards
IsoWords now has custom leaderboards for comparing your scores and words with everyone else in the world. I would have loved to use OpenFeint or Plus+ for this, but neither could completely accommodate my needs. There are leaderboards for every length of gameplay (1 min, 2 min, etc.), as well as a leaderboard for highest scoring words. Further, the leaderboards can be filtered by top scores for the past 24 hrs, past week or all time. This way everyone has a chance to get a top position on the leaderboards.
In order to participate in the leaderboards you need to either provide a nickname, or connect to your Facebook and/or Twitter account. Once you have done this all of your past past scores will even be submitted to the leaderboards. Further, if you connect to your Facebook / Twitter account you will also see all the scores of your friends.
Leaderboards for Top Free Play games and Highest Scoring Words
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Daily Challenge
Everyday a single puzzle will be posted that everyone can play. This allows you to see how your skills stack up against IsoWords player across the world. There is a special screen where your ranks for each day are aggregated:
You can easily see your position in every daily challenge on the calendar.
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Other Improvements
- More customizations in the settings screen, e.g. if you do not want the 2nd tap of a letter to submit your word (sometimes you accidentally submit a word), you can now opt out of this functionality.
- An official SOWPODS word list is now implemented.
- A few small bugs and crashes have been fixed.
What happens when phone dies while an app is open?
I wasn’t sure what happens when the iPhone dies and you are in the middle of an application. Does the applicationWillTerminate: method get called like it should, and is it allowed enough time to take care of its business before being forced to quit? I have been meaning to test this out, but never really had the patience to run down my phone’s battery while using an app.
Well, today this naturally happened to me while I was testing IsoWords, and I am happy to report that it worked perfectly. It appears that when the phone is ready to turn off due to low battery it exits the app as if the user had hit the home button, waits a moment, and then turns off. Therefore the applicationWillTerminate: method gets called like it should. IsoWords uses the applicationWillTerminate: method to save the game’s state when exiting so that the player can resume when the app is re-opened. The code is fairly simple, it just puts everything in an NSDictionary and saves it to a plist on the disk. This was all handled successfully so that when I charged my phone and opened the app my game was still intact.
Just thought this info might be useful to other devs.
The thing that keeps me going…
Sales of IsoWords have continued to be awful… really awful. Yesterday 2 copies of IsoWords were sold, and 5 in total across all versions. I can’t do a “Week #2 in the App Store” type of post since iTunes connect is going down for the holidays, so I will delay that until the first week of 2010. The main reason I continue working on the 1.1. update is the nice reviews, especially the ones from other countries who appreciate the immense amount of work it took to localize everything:
“This is a good playing, modern looking and polished word search game, I’d highly recommend it!”
“This is a really nice twist on the word game “formula”. I’ve played games like Bookworm and others and this one sits nicely next to those on my iPod. Really love how the game plays and it’s really challenging. Not to the point of frustration though, I really can’t recommend this enough. If you’re a word game fan then get this, I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.”
“I’m telling you, you’ll be crawling all over this damn cube like an ant on a honey jar. You can spend, well literally hours with just one game.”
“I write few reviews but felt that this game really deserves a line or two especially as I am not the greatest fan of word games. Have to admit I have been unable to put it down since downloading and the devs have done a great job with the statistics available. Well worth a few pennies and spot on for the tube of a morning.”
“Una applicacion muy buena y ahora también en Español. Muy re comendada para los hispanohablantes. Gracias por hacer Apps también en nuestro idioma. Y hoy (19 dic) esta free por el appvent calendar… GRACIASSS!!!”
“Einfaches, süchtig machendes Spiel.”
“El juego mas entretenido que tengo y tengo mas de 100.!!no paras es súper adictivo,entrenido 100×100.lo recomiendo a todo el mundo.yo me lo baje gratis y ahora te cuesta pero lo hubiera pagado Aguayo.gracias diseñadores.”
“Jeu prennant, bonne idée d’ appli.”
Unfortunately, reviews mean nothing when it comes to guiding the purchases of users.
IsoWords Roadmap
Now that a good number of people have IsoWords installed (thanks to the Appvent, see previous post), I thought it would be a good idea to let everyone know where the game is headed. I definitely do not consider IsoWords done, and I have two large updates in progress. The current version of IsoWords is 1.0.3 because I just submitted an update that fixes a bug in the email challenges.
Update 1.1
- Cosmetic enhancements to some interface elements that were a little rough upon shipping 1.0, and improved sounds.
- Bluetooth/WiFi multiplayer with up to 4 devices simultaneously playing and with 3 modes of gameplay:
- Parallel: All devices play the same puzzle independently, and when the game is over everyone’s scores and words are shown for comparison.
- Battle: Everyone shares the exact same puzzle so that words can be found only once across all devices, and once a cube is removed from one device it is removed from all devices.
- Rounds: The game progresses in 10, 15 or 20 second rounds. In each round every player selects one word that will be submitted once the round ends.
- When you accept a challenge on Facebook, Twitter or by email, you will now have the option of responding to the challenger on the game over screen. This will send your friend the scores and word lists from both games so that he or she can see the final result.
- Global leaderboards! Everyone will now have their scores and words submitted to a global leaderboard so that you can see how your skills stack up to those across the world. There will be a leaderboard for each length of game play (1 min, 2 min, free play, …), as well as a leaderboard for longest words and highest scoring words. Further, if you connect the app to your Facebook and/or Twitter account you will see the top scores/words of all your friends.
- A half dozen other small features and bug fixes…
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Post Appvent Update: The Good and Bad
IsoWords participated in the Appvent Calendar this past Saturday, and I was overall very happy with the outcome. The English version of IsoWords was downloaded about 10,500 times, and all versions together were download about 12,500 times. In bar chart form all my sales look something like this:
If you look closely you might notice a small spike around the date 12/19.
Clearly this was great exposure, and lots of people have posted challenges on Twitter (in all languages), which is more great exposure. This got coupled with a nice review of the game at iPhoneInCanada.ca, and I dropped the price to $.99 so that there would be no obstructions to buying the game. Unfortunately, the next day only 49 copies of the English version of IsoWords were sold, and 28 copies of all other languages combined. It is also just barely hanging on to the top 50 position in the Word Games subcategory.
The Lite version of IsoWords just came out too, but it has not gotten many downloads, so I doubt I am getting many conversions from that. For reference, the Lite version is missing the 3, 4, 5 minute modes and un-timed mode, and pass and play can only be for 2 players. Also, challenges can be sent from the Lite version, but not accepted.
I’m nearing the end of my list of ideas for promoting this game, but I will keep updating my progress.
IsoWords and the Appvent Calendar
IsoWords participated in the Appvent Calendar today, and it was a total success from my viewpoint. Early this morning I set IsoWords to be free, and by the afternoon there were numerous mentions of IsoWords on Twitter and other websites. Some very nice things were said, including
IsoWords takes on the tested formula with a slight but very cool twist… A fun all around word puzzle wrapped in some pretty impressive UI. – Filip, creativeapplications.net
IsoWords climbed to #7 in the free word games and #19 on the free puzzle charts in the App Store. There have also been a ton of challenges posted to Twitter, and hopefully Facebook too. Unfortunately, a user emailed me to let me know that email challenges are not working, but I just submitted the update so they should be working soon.
Further, I made the Spanish, French and German versions of IsoWords free for today, and they have been getting some buzz too. In fact, a few challenges on IsoWords.es were posted to Twitter, and my girlfriend played them.
Tomorrow morning I will know just how many units were downloaded, and I will flip the switch to bring IsoWords back into the world of paid apps. I’m going to try to ride this wave of buzz as long as possible and set the price at $.99, down from $1.99, which is the price I feel it rightly belongs.
IsoWords in the App Store, Week #1
IsoWords has officially been in the App Store for an entire week, and so now it is time to reflect on everything that has happened. The sales have been absolutely abysmal, but I am not yet ready to concede that IsoWords is a game that holds no value to iPhone/iPod users (maybe soon though). In the first week IsoWords has sold ~100 units (not counting promo codes), ~25 of which came from the Spanish, French and German versions. 25% of sales might be seen as a triumph for localization, but the numbers are too small to draw any conclusions.
The most important obstruction to sales has been the lack of coverage in any review sites. I sent out emails a week ago with the app description, screenshots, videos and promo codes, but I heard back from only one, iPhoneInCanada. They agreed to post a review this coming Sunday (yah!), and I am really looking forward to that. I will post again to analyze what effect the (hopefully good) review has on sales. As for the other review sites, right now I am chalking it up to the volume of requests they receive everyday, and IsoWords slipping through the cracks.
Looking to the future of IsoWords, I am nearly finished with the 1.1 update, which includes more features of the “killer” variety, such as Bluetooth/WiFi multiplayer. I also have a cute idea of how to approach review sites to increase the chances of getting noticed. Once I have done this I will post again to talk about whether it succeeded or failed.
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IsoWords 1.1 is live, 1.1.1 is coming
The IsoWords 1.1 update went live on the App Store this past monday (Feb 22nd), so grab it if you haven’t already. I also dropped the price to $.99. The leaderboards seem to be very popular, with over 10,000 games and words submitted so far. It’s interesting seeing how good some people are at this game. In the Spanish version a player found the 11 letter word DESCANSARAS, which is pretty amazing, and in the English version a player broke the 1,000 point barrier in free play games.
I am very happy with the 1.1 update, but I quickly saw a few small shortcomings with the leaderboards once everyone started submitting their scores. For this reason I have just sent a small update to Apple with a few cosmetic changes.
The leaderboards show only the very top scores (top 20 for games and top 40 for words), so it was a little frustrating to not know out of how many games/words I was being ranked. So, the leaderboards now have a little header that give precisely this information (by the way, I’m dominating the word leaderboard
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Next, after playing the daily challenge you are taken to the game over screen with a little purple box at the bottom showing your current rank. When I saw this I immediately wanted know the scores of everyone else who had participated so far. So, now there is a button to bring the daily challenge calendar up directly from the game over screen.
Finally, I got a request from a Touch Arcade forum member to add an option for disabling all sounds in the game. This can now be done in the settings menu.
If anyone else has suggestions on how to improve the game I would love to hear them.