Sputnik Games

The iPad startup bug has been approved and should be in the app store within the next few hours.

I just released an update to Poker Solitaire.  There seems to be an issue.  iPads and older devices running non iOS 4 crashes on start up.  I found the fix right away and it was submitted this morning. Sorry about the bug and thanks to Jan for the heads up!

Soccer Kickoff 3.0 is finally out!  You can download it here Soccer Kickoff 3.0 This release has 32 unlock-able balls all representing the countries in the World Cup.  Open Feint was updated to 2.4.8 as well.  The ad free version should be released soon.

Follow me on twitter @MarkAndrade or check this blog on hints of how to unlock World Cup balls

Yesterday, Fish Food Frenzy Free has been downloaded 1,021,241 times!!!  It’s only been out just over a month and I’m totally excited!  Thank you everybody that downloaded it and look for more updates and additions to the game in the near (relative to apples approval processes) future.

For those of you who upgraded Fish Food Frenzy to 1.1 you might have noticed that it mistakenly has the ‘free’ icon.  That was a bone headed move on my part.  When saving the new icon designs I accidentally wrote over the non-free icon with the free one. Anyway, a fix is in 1.2 which is currently in review at the app store.   I’ve included a joystick sensitivity option, swipe control and swipe control sensitivity option new fish and a few more things.  Look out for it hopefully this week.

Cowabunga for Nokia is live, finally!  This is my first game using Flash Lite and publishing an app into the Nokia OVI environment. Let me tell you, it was, and still is a bumpy ride.  Porting the game to AS2, easy.  Getting the app to show up in the OVI store, painful. It took about two months of silly QA rejections!

The funny thing about the Nokia OVI QA process is that if the game works on a phone that is not OVI store compatible that game fails QA.  Why then is that phone even listed in the OVI publishing device list?  To get Cowabunga to pass QA I started removing specific devices that the game is compatible with until it finally passed.  No code changes, just a ton of guess work in selecting phones even when following their guidelines.

When it finally passed QA I received an email saying that the game will be live in about one business day.  That one day turned into 14 days.  Now, I understand that the store is going through some growing pains.  I can understand if there is a back log of apps waiting to be published and my app has to wait in the back of this virtual line.  Just don’t tell me it’ll be published in about one business day.  Tell me it’ll take two weeks and if it comes out earlier that’s a bonus!  Also, OVI publishing did not tell me when the app actually  went live either.  I’d love to get an email stating that the app is about to or currently went live like I receive with Apple’s App Store publishing.  That would sure as hell beat go to the OVI publisher site every day to check.

Now, I’ve been told that Cowabunga does not work properly on the 5800 Xpress Music.   Since I’m unable to physically test on a 5800,  I marked the 5800 and all S60v5 phones as “Might work” in the Nokia Publishing page. I’m betting QA didn’t even test it since it passed.  I learned my lesson here.  

If you bought Cowabunga and have the 5800, I’ll be working on a fix for it during the next couple of weeks. How long it’ll take to go through QA and wait in the publishing line, now that could take another month.

This weekend Soccer Kickoff hit the one million unique download mark!  What’s even cooler is that it looks like Cowabunga will hit it’s one million milestone by tonight or tomorrow as well.  It just needs 4001 more downloads.  Two free apps,  two million downloads.  For free apps they continue to bring in cash everyday with adMob.  So much so that Sputnik Games is now my full time job.

I’m fighting with feedburner and I’m losing. If you’re having problems with this rss feed please let me know. Hopefully it should be working by tonight.

Cowabunga 2.0 is very close to being done! All that’s left is tweaking a few things here and there and it’ll be ready to launch. I brought back the original game play that people are requesting and also keeping the current game play mode (which has been improved) as well.  You get to choose which one you want to play. 

Cows are now animated, there are more moos, more bonus item (in the full version), accelerometer control has been completely rewritten and works great and no more jittery movement!  

The best part the new look the ho-down music of course!

Please visit this blog or follow me on Twitter for more updates, sneak peaks and promotional codes!

Get a cool little game for your iPhone or iPod touch that you and your family will love and I’ll donate a portion to Ocean Charter School.  

Ocean Charter School is a community of families and educators using innovative teaching methods to nurture and educate children in a multi-cultural, urban environment. We are committed to achieving academic excellence through experiential learning, enhancing the growth of curiosity and imagination through the rigorous practice of an arts integrated curriculum.

How will this work? Simply get Bubble Bee in the iTunes app store on your computer, iPhone or iPod.  Once a day, when Apple posts the sales report, I’ll add up the downloads and post them on this web page http://www.sputnikgames.com/bubbleBee_iphone_game.htm

• 10% for downloads 1 – 114,999
• 15% for downloads 115,000 – 249,999
• 25% for downloads 250,000+

Schools that use art, music and other creative ways to teach our children are rare and amazing.  So please tell your friends and have them tell their friends.  Know someone at a news organization?  Ask them to report about it.  Blog about it, twitter and re-tweet, post on facebook and everywhere else.

Here are some direct links to share:

http://www.tinyurl.com/BubbleBee

http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=303570221&mt=8

Thanks!

What kind of game does a six year old want to play on the iPhone? I asked that of my daughter a couple of days ago.  She went ahead and drew some pictures of what she thought would make a fun game.  Will any of these see the light of day?  One of them just might.

    This one is about bees collecting honey.

 This one is basically the same game as Bubble Bee but with fruit!

 … of course there is a game with horses. “Don’t hit the black things!”

 …and lastly a game with Chowder and Shnitzel!

 All images are copyright Sophia Andrade and Sputnik Games 2009.  Skadoosh!!!