The Halcyon designer, accustomed to working with music and abstract imagery, didn't necessarily have a particular yearning to try mainstream-oriented word puzzle games. That imaginary game was the root of his idea, he tells us. With less than two weeks to execute upon what was at the time only a fledgling idea, Gage pulled something of a coup with SpellTower, ultimately a sort of hybrid between Tetris and Boggle, the concept for which he had inadvertently stumbled upon after hearing a friend's report out of IndieCade - turns out her description of a " Tetris-meets-Boggle" experience she had seen there was quite different than what Gage had pictured in his mind. Basically, I only had until last week until I had to get back to the other work I had committed to." the IGF deadline had happened, so I had a little bit of a break. "I was working on IGF games," explains Gage.
Intuitively, his design mind migrated toward a potential solution to precisely this type of problem: How do you compete among the App Store's higher standards, yet develop a game at the same light-speed at which a concept formulates in the designer's mind? The whole community has changed."įor Gage, this creates a complex proposition, as he feels there are a lot of ideas kicking around his mind at various stages of completion - yet without the optimal polish time, he knows they have no shot on the App Store. Now, you have to polish and polish on the App Store. "Back then, you got to see a lot of experiments. "In retrospect, you really got to look into the sketchbooks of the developers you were interested in," he enthuses. "You'd buy something, and it'd be like, a beta." "When I first started developing for the App Store, it was a very different period - everyone was just making stuff and putting it out as fast as possible."Īlthough that was an exciting proving ground for game designers, many of whom got to enjoy the sense of participating in one another's prototypes, it "sucked for consumers," as Gage describes. "I'm trying to change the way I'm developing games," he tells us. Although he arrived at the title partially "by accident," as he tells Gamasutra, he has learned a number of valuable lessons along the way. Today, Gage launches SpellTower, on iPad, his first-ever endeavor into word puzzle games on the App Store. Yet for indie designer Zach Gage, the challenge is what's appealing. Even independent designers lauded by awards committees like the Independent Games Festival and experienced in developing for Apple's iPhone and iPad have plenty to learn in that changeable and high-stakes environment.
Success on the App Store is far from a science.
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