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We’ve added a bunch of bug fixes and dropped the price by more than 50% to just $0.99 or £0.79!
We’ve got a nice surprise winging its way towards all you Windows Phone 7 users!
CryoDefense now has explosions! KABOOM!
Not only that, we updated the machine gun tower images, added an always show grid option, tweaked the difficulty curve on level 3 and updated the background image for level 3.
Download CryoDefense today here or find us in the marketplace in the strategy section!
CryoDefense is a live beastie, since our initial release we’ve done 3 further updates.
Version 1.1 included a big performance update (we now have an upper limit on sounds), a resume bug fix that we found just after release and some image updates.
Unfortunately we didn’t get the release out before Rowan Forster left us a bug report in his generally positive review. Rowan, you asked, we fixed it!
As we saw with Rowan, we weren’t very discoverable for people wanting to give us feedback, report bugs etc, as such in version 1.2 we added the connect screen where you can send us emails and sign up for the newsletter. We also added a Facebook fan page. Get in touch if you have any feedback!
Version 1.2 included another couple of points raised in feedback. We added an in game tutorial for the first time the game’s run and apply a blue tinge to slowed units.
Version 1.3 Added the third level with multiple entrances, tower range images are now more accurate and we added achievements!
Version 1.4 (under development) is jam packed, we’ve got planned:
- Running under a locked screen
- Explosions
- Better gun tower images when shooting
- Prices shown for selling and upgrading
We’re in the WP7 marketplace right now! Go find it under the strategy section!
We also added a facebook fan page here so feel free to leave feedback or game suggestions there.
CryoDefense may have launched, but development is by no means finished. We’ve got lots of ideas for improvements and are very interested in taking your feedback. Leave a comment, post in the discussions on facebook or send us an email feedback@cryodefense.com
We’re waiting for submission to complete (~5 day turnaround).
We submitted last Tuesday, found out on Friday that we’d failed (due to incorrect back button behaviour).
We fixed that up, so let the good times roll!
We’ll post again when the game’s in the marketplace ready to download!
Today Neil and I headed down to Microsoft London to spend a day with a device.
It went really well, we’ve not optimised the code at all and it still ran beautifully, XNA rocks!
The key takeaways from today’s session with a device?
- Don’t forget that you won’t be using a mouse to use your app on device, sounds obvious but remember you need a decent touch area.
- Spacing of clickable elements is really important as a result too, one of our menus had resume and restart close enough together that you could click both at the same time.
- You can be so much more productive with a device!
We managed to rewrite almost the whole interface for a finger interface, replace a bunch of the sound effects and get a lot more ideas.
We’ve got a bunch of items still on the todo list before we’re ready for launch, but we’ll be there!
So we’ve shown off a lot of our concept and game art, by now you’ll have seen how awesome Alan’s work is.
What did us developers get up to in this time?
We managed to build:
- Variable game speeds – Slow (x1/2), Normal, Fast (x2) and Pause.
- Variable game difficulty selection
- Get the bad guy path finding algorithms working really well.
- Add drag / drop for towers.
- Add map grid overlay when placing towers.
- Add zooming and scrolling!
- Add sounds + music
- Add options screen
- Add game over screen
- Add saving and loading game state
- Add resume game option on main menu
- Add a game difficulty slider
Having got the towers and vehicles decided on, we had sets and various UI left to go on the graphics side.
Here were the splashscreen choices (we chose #2):
We were really excited to see what Alan came up with next, we’d loved the concepts but the colours he put on the table changed everything.
Slow
Medium
Fast
We were blown away by the strong colours, as a result we asked Alan to tweak the vehicle designs. The results were:
Slow
Medium
Fast
We think they rock and are going to be great in game. We hope you agree.
