I have just submitted an iPad application (barely within the March 27th deadline), and its called IsoCards. It will be free for the launch of the iPad!

IsoCards is a card game without any pre-programmed rules. Its just a mulitouch-gesture and physics driven deck of cards that allows you to play whatever card game you want. You can throw cards around, double tap or pinch a card to flip it over, and the app works in any orientation you hold the device.

Now, having the app be just a deck of cards and expecting it to be usable is a lofty goal. In fact, it’s probably impossible. So, I’ve introduced a few elements to add a little bit of structure so that you can actually play card games. For example, you can add a “player”, which is just a glass shape that can be used to collect and organize cards. It will automatically fan out your cards and you can drag and rotate this holder to anywhere on the table. There is also a menu button you can press that allows you to show your cards to everyone, sort your cards, or remove the player.

The biggest problem with allowing multiple people play cards on the same device is preventing your opponents from seeing your cards. How do we solve this? Well, the iPad has a large enough screen that I thought maybe we could allow the players to “cup” their hand and place it at the top of their cards (like they do in poker), at which point the cards will flip over and be revealed. When you lift your hand your cards will quickly flip back over.

See your cards without showing everyone else

I wasn’t sure if this would be feasible, and having not actually tried it on an iPad I still can’t be 100% sure, but I was able to test on my iPhone, and I have to say it is magical. It is easy to use and very responsive.

Finally, there is a notepad that you can bring up at any time you can draw or type on, making it easy to keep scores.

IsoCards 1.1

There are 2 killer features that I worked on for IsoCards, but I was wary of releasing them without having tested them on an actual device.

Enforced Game Rules

Most of the difficulty in programming IsoCards was coming up with a intuitive, flexible engine to handle a deck of cards. An engine that could be used to program practically any card game very easily, while inheriting the fluid animations and multitouch gestures.

Now that I have this engine, I will be programming nearly every card game that I can think of with IsoCards and releasing them in updates. I will probably start with a pack of solitaire games, and then move to multiplayer games.

Bluetooth/WiFi connectivity with iPhones and iPods

Image you want to play a card game with a couple of people that requires a large pool of communal cards (think Gin Rummy, Go Fish, or my favorite, Tien Len). The device can get crowded pretty quickly. So, if you have an iPhone or iPod you will be back to “dock” you cards on the edge of the app and transfer them to their iPhone. You can then just flick your cards off your device and they will land on the iPad.

IsoCards: iPad + iPhone via Bluetooth

So… that’s IsoCards! I hope it is in the App Store for launch day…

The 1.1 update of IsoWords has been out for over a week, and over 25,000 games and words have been submitted to the leaderboards. Up until this point I was used to dominating all my friends at this game, but now I see I am barely hanging onto the top (btw, if we aren’t friends on Facebook or Twitter then my scores will show up under “mbrandonw”).

Words

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For those who haven’t played IsoWords yet, the score of a word is determined by both the rarity of the letters used and the length. Every letter is given a point value just like in scrabble (A=1 pt, B=3 pts, etc). So to get the score of a word I first add up the points for each letter, and then I multiply by the length of the word minus 2. I subtract 2 so that 3 letter word does not get multiplied at all, a 4 letter word gets multiplied by 2, and so on.

The highest scoring word leaderboard is pretty much the only leaderboard for which I am at the top. My QUIZZER and MINERALIZE finds are just barely hanging onto the #1 and #2 spots. I also hold 5 of the other top 40 word scores, including QUANTIZE, QUARTZY (of which I didn’t actually know was a word until I tried submitting it) and SQUABBLE. However, someone who goes by the handle “danisse” is the most prominent in this leaderboard with 12 of the top 40 words belonging to him/her. Also, so many high scoring words have been submitted that it takes at least a 120 point word to break into the top 40 all time leaderboard.

In the Spanish version of IsoWords, also known as IsoWords.es, there have been over 2,000 words submitted, and there is currently a 3 way tie for #1: CARROCEROS, AQUEJARAS and RAZONABLE. More amazing to me is the 11 letter word that Carlos Sánchez found, DESCANSARAS, even though it was only worth 126 points.

Games

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My favorite game type in IsoWords is free play. It can be soothing to sit down with a puzzle for 30 minutes or longer, trying to piece together every prefix, suffix and root word you can find for long words. Before releasing the 1.1 update for IsoWords I had never broken the 900 point barrier. So, imagine my dismay when I saw the free play leaderboard on the right. 1,120 points?! Incroyable! This “danisse” person is just freakin’ awesome…

Daily Challenge

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I had some reservations about implementing the daily challenge feature. My fear was that it would not be used very much, making it a creepy, isolated place where you get 1st place just if you participate for that day. However, people are using it. In fact, somewhere between 40 and 50 people play it everyday, which is a lot considering the relatively small number of people who participate in the leaderboards.

I’ve taken the 1st place spot in 2 of the daily challenges, both of which just barely nudged “danisse” out of the top spot. So, in the end I am glad I took the time to implement this, and I hope it becomes more popular as IsoWords gets more players.