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Publishing a Commercial iPhone Game, Start To Finish

Posted by timothy on from the alger-would-be-proud dept.

Niklas Wahrman writes with this "motivational story on how a student and part-time developer was able to take an idea and turn it into an Android project and then port to iPhone for commercial release in less than a year. In the article, he focuses on how to get a game done — a problem many independent developers face. During the development of the game, Asterope, he took a lot of screenshots from many of the development stages that show how the game gradually came to life."

7 of 38 comments (clear)

  1. Good for him. by bigattichouse · · Score: 4, Interesting

    A detailed post-mortem is always a good thing. I have to say I love reading gamasutra's PM's - I get a much better perspective on the projects I do, if I can occasionally see how other people got through theirs.

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    meh
    1. Re:Good for him. by butalearner · · Score: 5, Informative

      A detailed post-mortem is always a good thing. I have to say I love reading gamasutra's PM's - I get a much better perspective on the projects I do, if I can occasionally see how other people got through theirs.

      I agree wholeheartedly. I usually go to GameDev's collection of post-mortems, which includes links to gamasutra's. The "what went wrong" sections are especially insightful.

  2. Ha ha! by butalearner · · Score: 5, Funny
    A very (probably unintentionally) funny part about this game for the iPhone is the objective (from the game's website):

    10 Levels to stop the Androids' invasion of Earth!

  3. Start to finish... by iminplaya · · Score: 5, Funny

    Does that include its deletion from the Apple store?

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    What?
    1. Re:Start to finish... by alexj33 · · Score: 5, Funny

      Here's a Flowchart on how Applications get permission to enter the App Store.

      http://gizmodo.com/5051273/how-apple-picks-which-apps-make-it-to-the-app-store

  4. The title's a bit off by verbalcontract · · Score: 4, Insightful
    The postmortem is mostly about how an independent developer developed a game for Google Android, and has a blurb about developing for the iPhone. From TFA:

    I won't discuss the details of developing for the iPhone. I'm a bit unsure of the NDA so I better keep my mouth shut.

    But this is a great post-mortem about how to go from idea to finished game.

  5. Re:Cell Phone Games? by XxtraLarGe · · Score: 4, Informative

    Agreed 100%. I own a Samsung Omnia with WinMo 6.1 (my 3rd WinMo device - the first 2 were ipaqs) and I just don't get this whole mobile gaming thing this side of GameBoy/DS.

    I have a DS which I enjoy a lot, but I would have to say that my iPod Touch is definitely my most played game platform at the moment. I bought a bunch of games for $.99 each (Solebon, Cro-Mag Rally, Burning Monkey Puzzle Lab to name a few). They're all good for a quick gaming session when I have a few minutes to kill. Plus, you have companies like THQ, Namco, Electronic Arts, Atari, Konami, Sega and Hudson Soft developing for the iPod, so it's obviously a hot platform for games.

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    Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.