Update to 1.1 and video coming soon

Ok, I´ve completed the modifications. This is the list of changes:

• Changed the main menu. I´ve erased the three rotating balls and added two cubes, one for the Play menu and another for the Shop menu. Both cubes rotates through an invisible point each one opposed to the other. Don´t worry, the cube text is always visible to the player. I´m still thinking about let the cubes rotate as described or let them stay there.

• The first time you play, you´re forced to play the tutorial. It´s about a minute and it shows you how to move in the cave, select and match objects and use the accelerometer.

• Killed those ugly worms. Cubes, spheres and cones are the new pieces. At least it´s brighter now.

Video is in process and it will be ready today or tomorrow. I´ll look for errors and send it to Apple in the following hours.

An update is coming...

I´m stuck with the new design of the objects. You may already know my lack of design capabilities looking at the “worms” in The Cave but I still want a little change in this game. I´ve also started to work on the next project for which I´ll count with a good designer. I don´t want to talk about it at least until I can show you something and that will take me a looong time but I promise you the results will worth the wait. I hope I will be able to show you some screenshots of the new objects in The Cave this week and have an update for it in the following days.

"Original idea for a 3D environment. Nice."

That´s an opinion from another user in the Unites States. I´m glad you enjoyed it but wait until the first update in the upcoming weeks, that will give The Cave a better look. I´m almost done with the integrated tutorial and preparing the main menu and pieces redesign. No more worms, please.

A re-think of The Cave

I´ve been thinking in the past days about how to change The Cave to be: first, more visually attractive and second, more playable. After some different options running in my head I think I´ve reached a solution. I want to rethink the idea so I still don´t want to say anything here. At this moment I´m changing the tutorial and the main menu but I´ve been very busy the past days and next weekends will not be available for me so it will probably take some weeks. I´ll keep you posted.

The BAD news

Yesterday, I was looking for posts about The Cave and found this.

That made me feel quite upset at the begining. "but... In 20 seconds you don't even have time to play!" I thought. A lot of ideas came to my mind, "I have to leave this", "it's a failure", ... You know. But after a while I realized I could use this information and fix my failures.

This is what I've learned.

- I knew design was important but not as many as quitting you from giving a try to something for it.

- The Cave is not good enough to charge for it so I probably will keep it free and learn as many as I can for the next game.

- People do not get how to play the game after 5 seconds so they erase it and think it's shit. The way to solve it is to teach the user how to play the first time he opens The Cave. I'm deleting the tutorial option from start menu. Awh! How many times I played a game and though why should I have to play the tutorial before starting the game! I really know why now.

- Main menu is crap. I should change that awfull rotating balls and delete the tutorial from there.

- The worms do not look like worms so please, do not call it worms. I think they should look more like rocks so I'll change it.

- And finally but this is the most important. It's design, stupid! Today starts another project and I'm not taking this boat alone...

I think I can change this in a week and have it uploaded soon. I'll keep you posted.

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

The Cave Tutorial

Let´s start with Camera Movement. After you enter The Cave, move your finger across the screen, either up to down or right to left. You´ll see how you orbit around the central wormhole. That will allow you to see and follow all worms inside the cave. Let´s see how to match objects. Wait for a worm to appear in the central wormhole. Now tap it and see how the worm changes to a brighter color, imagine it´s a blue worm. This worm is now selected. Look for another blue worm and tap it, the first selected worm is now attracted by the second one. We can say now they are matched but matching two will not give you points. Select one of that matched worms and match it with another blue worm and see how the three worms disappear and how you get 3 points. Easy, huh? Where is the difficulty in this? As you get points, level is increased, maximum worms in scene limit is decremented (yeah, you start with a 30 worms limit) and worms appear faster. There´s a pause button on the top right corner of the screen and next to it there´s a black ball with a number. That´s the Joker icon. When it´s greater than 0, you can tap on the black ball icon and a Joker asteroid will appear in the central wormhole. You can match it with any worm regardless its color. You can increase the frequency the black rocks are generated in the shop using your points. Accelerometer. Yeah, you can shake your iPhone front to back with a worm selected and two worms will be attracted by the central wormhole for a couple of seconds. But beware, those worms are not matched, you have to do it if you want.

Now, enjoy!

I have good news and bad news...

I´m going to Start with good (at least for me) news. I´ve just seen that The Cave is currently #56 in Games->Puzlle->Free. I know this is not as good as being #1 in games; in fact, The Cave is not in top 100 but I´m proud to appear in one list. And now the bad news. I´ve had the first user review. It´s something like “I don't get this don't waste ur time it's lame” in the USA App Store. I know perhaps The Cave is not as easier to get as some other games and my first idea was to include a video tutorial showing how to play the game but I wanted the download to be less than 10 MB so you can get it using your 3G connection. I finally included 4 screenshots and text describing how to play in the tutorial section. I though that forcing users to get The Cave through WiFi may reduce significantly the users downloading it. I´ll include in the next update either a good tutorial video, a link to youtube or a real tutorial. Anyway, the next post is a little tutorial of how to play The Cave. PS: 277 downloads yesterday, not bad!.