'A Noise Machine', an experimental sound app I've been working on on and off for months (though it really doesn't do much), was approved in 2 days by apple. Maybe they have extra resources with the ipad launch coming up, though I thought they would be plowing through all the ebooks that need to be evaluated...

Managed a 4 star review in the UK which I'm pretty happy about, I figured the first review might have gone the other way since it is a like it or hate it app (though only one person I know dislikes it, the rest think it's pretty cool/interesting).

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/a-noise-machine/id361218159?mt=8

Xmas planet reviewed!

A great review from noDpad:

http://nodpad.com/2009/12/20/xmas-planet-review-how-santa-travels-in-one-night/

That makes me feel good about the stupidly late nights that went into getting it out in time, anyway :)

cheers,
grant

Xmas Planet Released

Submitted on the 2nd, approved on the 10th. Maybe apple have extra reviewers on to counter the holiday themed app flood such as this one...

http://itunes.com/apps/XmasPlanet I did receive an email from apple yesterday asking me to change my description and for a short while I thought I'd be put to the back of the queue - but it wasn't a 'hard' rejection, and after fixing they got back to me an hour later saying the changes were fine. With the recent modifications to the app status info and that sort of feedback it was a much better experience, and less like submitting into a black hole that it used to be.

Xmas Planet

I probably don't have time given the submission approval slowdowns come the leadup to the silly season but I'm having a crack - xmas planet, using Volcano Planet as a base, is 80% there. If I don't get this out by the end of the week I probably shouldn't bother, I don't imagine an xmas theme is much good in the first week of jan. I'll try to get some images up in the next couple of days.

cheers,
grant

Volcano Planet

Been a while since posting - Volcano Planet has been released in the meantime, and managed to score a listing as one of the best 100 iphone games of 2009, accoring to iLounge. Page 33 if you can be bothered... it also picked up a bronze award from pocket gamer. Sales are on the nonexistant side of things, which I'd say comes back to my marketing abilities and efforts.

This DDSummit link is something I really should spend some time looking through. And part of the reason I'm back here to post :)

Squashem - released, early feedback

Squashem was released a couple of days ago.

http://tinyurl.com/squashem

Feedback has been positive overall, but with both a 'definitely worth the $2' from an end user happy with the game, to a review listing it as value for money, to a review that was 'good, but not deep enough to justify the $2' I'm left considering my choices.

Has the App Store turned $1 into a monster worth hundreds of hours of dev time? Of course it has :)

I've a bunch of extensions planned for the next release of Squashem - the most obvious being more levels/level options - and considering putting it on sale to .99c until the update is available, which would be 1 weeks work + 1 week in review (assuming it is only 1 week in review...), then it would bump back up.

Or do I wait until my update is closer to finished - does going on sale too quickly send the wrong message and irritate those who may have bought it already? (need to wait for sales figures from yesterday to become available, though if it is over 20 I'll be suprised given day 1 was 20).

Meanwhile I continue to post out review requests to whoever I can find to send them to.