First day statistics

I´m glad to see that The Cave had a total of 462 downloads from the App Store in the first day online. That´s quite good for me!. This is the table containing downloads per country

Units	Country Code
1	CH
1	CZ
1	NO
1	CO
1	RO
1	PT
1	ID
1	PL
1	DK
2	TH
2	AT
2	AU
2	BE
2	SK
2	AR
2	PH
2	SE
3	HK
3	VN
3	MY
3	IN
4	SG
4	VE
4	GR
5	TW
6	JP
6	MX
7	ES
9	NL
12	FR
15	DE
17	RU
17	IT
22	GB
35	CA
262	US
Total: 462

As you can see, most downloads come from the USA. I´ve been sending yesterday´s press release to lots of iPhone apps review sites so perhaps downloads comes from reviewers. At this moment there number of reviews in the App Store is 0. Come on, it´s just a second to set stars or write a little opinion. I don´t want to write it, I´m a stakeholder. Perhaps the worst data that I can extract from this is the low proportion of chinese people that downloaded my app, just a mere 1/1,321,000,000 (using estimated data from wikipedia)

The Cave. Press Release

Madrid. February 25, 2009. I´m proud to announce that The Cave has just been launched in the App Store. The Cave is the first step in the evolution of the classical match-3 games into a 3D environment. Move across the borders of the transparent asteroid and tap the objects to select and match it. Earn points and use it to buy or update helper rocks as the black Joker in the included shop. The Cave, where playing beyond level 20 is probably only available to pianists, uses both touch screen and accelerometer to make you enjoy your spare time. Start playing now for free because The Cave is in promotion for a limited time. Download The Cave: http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=305722161&mt=8 Visit The Cave blog: http://thecaveaniphonegame.blogspot.com/

Almost there...

I have received The Mail. The Cave status have changed to "Ready to sell" in iTunes Connect so we will be out in just a few hours.

Updating..

The Cave is still not in the App Store but I already have started to work on the first update. I´m updating SIO2, the 3d engine, to the latest version. There have been a lot of changes in SIO2 functions so this is more painful than I first thought but I expect a better framerate. The game was running smoothly but adding game complexity could penalize framerate. After that, I want to fix a little bug that can cause in some occasions a game shutdown in the game over screen and fix some memory leaks and texture adjustment. Ball explosion sound should play in update. I know, I know, in space sound can´t be transmitted but if Lucas forgot that I can forget it too. I´m also thinking in adding a ray between matched worms and adding lights and shadows, we shall see.

iPhone gameplay

Video quality is very bad and audio is even worst but here it is. In device gameplay video.

It´s done. I´ve sent The Cave to Apple for revision. The last thing I´ve added is a blinking “powered by SIO2 interactive” image changing the first “loading”. I´ve removed the % of loading because after reaching 100% I am still preparing the scene and that was not very accurate. The application submission process may be quite long, it can last from a couple of days to some months and they can reject your app for some reasons as you may probably know. I think the only reason they can reject The Cave is due to some code leak I´ve not taken in consideration. I thought about adding some farting in the middle of the game to have a little more followers but at last I decided it would be a little disgusting ;) And as a side note, probably today or tomorrow I´ll record a device ingame video and upload here. The last time I tried I won a screen reparation bill and some days of angry wait. This time I´ll be more careful

A few more changes and submission process started

I know I haven´t updated this for days but I´ve been very busy fixing some bugs and adding some new functionalities. The main update is the use of accelerometer. When you have a worm selected and shake the iphone, another worm with the same color will be attracted by the first one giving you a little help. I´ve changed fonts because the old one was not readable and I´ve added a grey line to make it more visible against the background in gameplay. Although I don´t think there would be a reason to pause The Cave ;) I´ve added a pause button and a way to return back to the main menu. The process to upload it to the App Store has started and I expect it to be online in a few weeks. It will be free for the first days and then I´ll charge $0.99 for it. I hope everybody could enjoy it!