Big news here: I’m creating my first app for submission into the iPhone App Store! I’ve been working really hard for the last week and a half or so on it, and I’m going to keep going until it’s done (probably a month or two). Here are a couple screen shots.



The title screen. The UI button thingies slide to the right to open different scenes and start games. The game type names are all temporary. I’m going to try to think of better ones. The three rows of shapes slide left or right for visual effect.



The endless/survival game mode. Create matches for as long as you want, but you better match the bomb pieces before their time runs out or you’ll lose.



The onslaught game mode. Create matches for points, but don’t be too slow because the board keeps filling up. Sort of like a version of Tetris where the pieces appear in random places instead of always from the top.

Keep in mind that “Myto” is just a temporary name because I thought it sounded kinda cool. It probably won’t be what it’s actually called. It’s basically a bastardized, shortened version of “Mitosis.” I’m still brain storming about names, so let me know if you have other ideas!

The gameplay is like a mix of Bejewled and Trism. You slide rows and columns to try to make matches. But instead of matching colors, you match sides to each other. The goal is to complete a shape without any unmatched sides. The little black half-circles indicate sides that are currently unmatched. By doing this, you end up making crazy shapes and chains.

I’ve been working really hard on making the visual, audio, and gameplay experience as smooth as possible. Even though I’ve never really done much actual design work, I’m trying to make it look really streamlined. I’m constantly opening up Photoshop and making small adjustments to things until they look pretty good.

I didn’t really set out to make a finished app at first, but the more I worked on the game, the more I enjoyed playing it. I’ve been doing a TON of iterative design. It is completely different than it was when I first started. It’s been a really fun experience, and I have also learned a more about programming than I have in a long while. It’s amazing the problems you have to figure out when trying to push through to create a finished product. In the past, when my code got to spaghetti-ish and I couldn’t figure out what I was doing, I would just abandon the project and start again. Every time, my code got better. This time, I’ve really had to be careful so that I can maintain all the separate classes without them getting too confusing or anything, because it just keeps growing and growing.

I still have a lot to do. Some things I still need to add are pop-up score labels for matches, a way to save/load gamestate, GameCenter integration, some sort of animation when you make a match rather then just fading out, actual options (right now there’s nothing really in the Options menu), some more audio/music, In-App Purchase for different types of shapes and game modes to play with, and more. I’m super excited about this and can’t wait to share more!