Kids vs. Zombies! iPhone game.

[Buckaroo Banzai]

My friend and I developed a game for the iPhone which was just accepted yesterday. It was quite a process that took us about 2 months R&D and then another 2 months to develop and polish it, and finally 6 days for them to accept it.
Granted this was all done our spare time so it's hard to truly estimate the total development time.

I've seen some questions pop up from time to time around here about iPhone development, so I'm more than happy to answer any questions about the entire process.

*Edit - Strange, hotlinking doesn't seem to be working. You can see the game here:
http://www.monkeywrenchgames.com/

[Spontaneous Cumbustion]

Very cool, love zombie games.

When I get an Iphone I will definitely snag it.

[EmpireF4i]

Looks cool. I think I should get a FoH discount though. J/k.

I might just dish out the $3 for it and write a review here.

[Believe]

Few codes for FoH members?

[Buckaroo Banzai]

Would love to, but we blew them all on review sites. And hookers.

[EmpireF4i]

Awesome game. Ive been playing it for an hour strait and my only complain it sore fingers!

[Eduardo]

For $3, you would have to be one cheap fucker to ask for a discount.. lol

I don't have an iphone but this game looks cool. good job! Have fun rolling in the dough if it ever catches on...

[EmpireF4i]

Yeah, $3 isnt bad compared to some of the other stuff ive payed for on my iPhone.

[Faille]

awesome, congratulations!

was thinking of working on some iphone type apps this year once I brush up on my programming, so I'll be back with many questions!

What was some of the hardest parts of making the game, and what were some of the hardest parts of the process in getting it approved and what not?

[Zarcath]

grats dude! will download it later and check it out.

Curious to know if you came across any unexpected limitations, size of the game, hardware limitations, doing the leaderboards?

What type of return in investment are you guys projecting?

[Buckaroo Banzai]

Originally Posted by Faille

awesome, congratulations!

was thinking of working on some iphone type apps this year once I brush up on my programming, so I'll be back with many questions!

What was some of the hardest parts of making the game, and what were some of the hardest parts of the process in getting it approved and what not?

Thanks!
I handled all of the art/sound/UI and a lot of the design. My friend handled all of the programming/pipeline/marketing.
From my point of view, the hardest thing was coming up with something that we thought other people would be interested in. It's so different from 'major' game development as you only have a small sliver to deliver to people, so it's gotta be a good sliver.
We initially started messing around with a 'Missile Command' type game (that old school trackball arcade game.)
But then I thought we needed something unique and would maybe stir up a little controversy without being offensive. So zombies about to eat kids sounded about right.
That, the RnD, and then the final stages of polish were probably the largest pains.

As for the application process, I was pleasantly surprised. I had read nightmares about how it was taking some devs like 3 months to get accepted. At the very least we heard the average was 2-3 weeks. Not sure if it was how cleanly my friend filled out the application, but we submitted a week ago Sunday, and it was up on the store late saturday night. So only 6 days!
We're waiting approval on a free 'lite' version of the game right now.

Originally Posted by Zarcath

grats dude! will download it later and check it out.

Curious to know if you came across any unexpected limitations, size of the game, hardware limitations, doing the leaderboards?

What type of return in investment are you guys projecting?

I was INCREDIBLY surprised at how flexible the iPhone was, and we really didn't come across anything that hindered us. Well so long as we weren't expecting Crysis graphics.
However the few things that were limiting:
- Our game has a LOT of creatures on the screen at once, so all of my zombies are only roughly 300 polys.
- Skinning a character is expensive, so everything is segmented. I tried to hide it as best I could.
- FX, this one may be unique to us, but because we had so many characters we couldn't afford to do tradional FX. So instead we went with an animated billboard system, which in the end worked out fantastically.

We really didn't project any sort of return in investment for 2 reasons.
1) We didn't invest anything other than the 100$ for the dev kit.
2) It's such a random market right now. There really is no way to project anything based off of previous games. Some of the worst games have the best sales, and other than grass roots marketing, I can't figure out why.

[Zarcath]

oh, 6 days! I thought it took you 6 months. Edit your op! Sounds promising though.

Have plans to do another game? or will you wait to see how this one does?

[Buckaroo Banzai]

Haha thanks Zarcath, it's fixed.
I got pretty burned out working on the game as it started to become quite time consuming. That and with developing games for a living, i didn't want it to affect my full time job.
Still, if it makes some decent money, then i'll reconsider my options (17 billion sales minimum!!!!1!!). But right now, we're taking a much needed break.

[tseveng]

Awesome game man, great job. The variety in style of attacks between the kids allows for different play styles to be successful but the inclusion of different "hardships" that are thrown at the player each round forces you to play / upgrade each child. The prices at the upgrade shop also seem to have been carefully thought out which is much appreciated.

I do have one complaint, however. Why is there no option to disable inverted aim? My GF and I are both retarded when it comes to inverted controls, so my brain hurts when I play too long.

[Korioni]

WTB a G1 Android market version.