Sunday, May 27, 2012

A Game Play Video of FUUSIO

I uploaded the first draft version of the game play video to YouTube.  I have a better game play video in the works, but this first version is just for providing a preview of the FUUSIO puzzle game and to demonstrate how the puzzle levels are played and solved.

FUUSIO App submitted to App Store

Today I submitted the FUUSIO puzzle game app to App Store for acceptance review. If the app is accepted, it should be available on App Store by June, 6.

Saturday, May 26, 2012

Introduction

This blog is about a puzzle game app I have been developing for months (but only during late-night hours) as a hobby project. You see, I have been always a big fan of puzzle games, Tetris, Sudoku, Sokoban, and Builder Dash to mention only few of my favorites. In summer 2010 I came up with an idea about a puzzle game, which I believe is quite a novel and unique.

I created the first proto of the puzzle game for Android. The proto was actually fully functional and feature ready - it even featured a built-in puzzle level editor. However, I decided to implement the first app to be released for iOS, because I wanted to learn iOS programming as well. I also believed, that if I want to make any pocket money from selling the app, I have to publish the puzzle app first for the iOS platform (unfortunately - I do like iOS and iPhone, but I am a big fan of Android).

It has been been a quite a long and bumpy road to develop the iOS app. For instance, I am definitely not a graphical designer (like my two very talented younger brothers).  I have experienced quite many frustrating moments when trying to create decent graphics and UX for the Fuusio puzzle game. I ended up creating a lots of design alternatives (I'll make a dedicated blog posting about them). Playing with the design alternatives was very time consuming, and frustrating because I was happy with each design only for few days. I constantly returned back to drawing board. Finally, I just decided to go with some design ... The one I chose to implement was very simple and graphical. I guess my younger brothers will give some pitiful comments about my graphical designs :)

I had no money to buy the tools I would have liked to use, such as Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator, so I had to learn to use open source alternatives, like GIMP and Inkscape. Don't get me wrong - both of these aforementioned open source tools are just great, but I had to spent some time to learn master them.

I have learned a lot, and I want to share my experiences. I really hope that I have time to run this blog in a way that it is worth following.

THX. I would like to thank especially my wife Sari who has given me time and space to work with my project.

-- Marko