We went from, “Wouldn’t it be fun to create a Halloween version of Farkle!” to submitting it to Apple in 13 days flat. That was fast! The app came out great and is now with Apple pending approval. The Android version is not far behind.

 Click on image to see the entire art.

How we did it.

Zombie Asset Management – The entire team is required to use SVN to check in and out files. Thus all code, art, sound, text changes, even marketing material goes through this system. We decided up front that we would see how far we could get, in 7 days, by simply swapping out the current Farkle Dice files with new Halloween files, this is often called as skinning. Wyatt quickly made a branch off the trunk for the code and we dove in with our eyes wide shut. So like Zombies, no thinking allowed, simply replace what we had, one for one, a rule we had to break several times.

Terrifying Text – My first task was to change the localization text to terrifying text. Not every developer  makes a single file for all the text for the app, but we do, as we localize our games into other languages. Creating this file really paid off when making the Halloween version. Because instead of having to track down all the text strings, I had one file, that I was translating into something scary. So Player 1, became, Undead Player 1, AI player Stead Stan, became the Grim Reaper. Winning the game became Surviving. It was really fun thinking of ghoulish words to use.

Spooky Sounds – Finding new sound effects was very time consuming. I don’t have a library of Halloween sounds so I spend hours going through several sites I commonly use and gathered an online library of sound effects. While I was doing this, Jim was starting to hand off some art. After I saw the style of the art and the theme he was going for, I tossed many of the sounds I found and searched for new ones. Jim was creating art that reminded me of classic horror movies while I was headed in more of the modern Zombie direction. But his art was fantastic so I found werewolf howls, screams, blood splatters that I liked, purchased them, then renamed the files exactly what existed in the code for the non-Halloween version, and then checked them in. The hardest sound to find was for the title screen. I really wanted a spooky theme song, but I did not like anything I heard. They were either too dramatic, like Jason chasing you with a knife or the song reminded me of some satanical ritual. I did find some great ambiance tracks and the one I purchased worked great. I used Audacity to do some basic mixing of sound effects and editing. What a great free tool.

 Killer Art – Jim has been responsible for all the art for all our games for years. He was instantly enthusiastic and I think started to draw before the meeting was over. He handed off the title page first with some witch and bat animations and replaced the dice with pumpkins. This visual was a huge WOW. It also let me see a different side of Jim, a scary ghoulish side, which was great, although I am locking my doors now at my house. As I mentioned above, the art helped me focus the sound files. I think Jim must have drawn with both hands and feet because in about 5 days he had handed off most of the art for iPad, iPhone, including retina. We had very few discussions around the art as we trusted Jim to deliver.  I especially like the little things he added, like blood dripping on the characters name on the game board. Jim is now converting the art to work on Android tablets and phones.

Eerie Engineering – Wyatt quickly made a branch of the existing Farkle Dice code for the team to access and provided constant direction to the team when we had hand-off questions. Wyatt, took the lead designer role for the title screen and other areas. Jim handed off the art and I handed off  the sound effect. The only direction we gave Wyatt for the title screen was, “Make it fun” and he did. The bat flying around and the witch swopping by are some of my favorite parts of the app. To keep the QA minimal, we dropped iOS 3.x support and concentrated on 4.x – 5.x beta. Wyatt was making builds for us to try on a regular bases. And although we started out with the rule of one to one replacement, we handed off to Wyatt sounds that needed to play in new spots and new animations. Then at the very last day I asked Wyatt to add two custom fonts.  We were all tired by now, but Wyatt did it and now the menus and dialogs have that extra scary look.

Morbid Android – We are now repeating the process for the Android version. John is lead engineer and is having a lot of fun with the build. Because of the lead time needed for Apple to approve and since there is no approval for Google apps it made sense to start with the Apple version. John is rapidly creating the app and he is about 85% or more done. We converted the sound files to MP3 and Jim is redoing the size of the art. John has been sending builds almost hourly for us to review and adding his own design style to make it great on Android.

The App was the Spec – Beyond basic notes from our meetings, emails flying back and forth, and a few spreadsheets in Google Docs, there was no traditional specification. The App was a living prototype and specification along with the code.  When we discussed a design issue, we were either pointing to the game or to the code repository. Such as, look at this file, or here’s a screenshot, can you change this to that. This worked well given the time frame and our past experience working with each other paid off.

Email me at tsherman@smartboxdesign.com if you have any questions. I will post links to the stores as soon at the app is approved in iTunes and uploaded to Google Market and Amazon.

 

This post was written by  Winkie Chen on Amazon’s Blog Site 08/24/2011 http://www.amazonappstoredev.com/2011/08/developer-spotlight-smart-box-games-.html

Farkle Dice – Free and Farkle Dice Deluxe (Ad-Free) are two popular and well-reviewed apps in the Amazon Appstore for Android.  Developed by Smart Box Games, the apps present a fast-paced dice game and offer both solo and social gaming experiences.

Smart Box Games was one of the first developers to join the developer program after the Amazon Appstore launched in March.

Why did Smart Box Games act so quickly to join a brand new store? Todd Sherman, president of Smart Box Games, said that as a small, independent game company, “Our priority is to make sure the games have beautiful art, professional sound effects, and music, and are programmed to be stable and responsive. We typically have limited resources for marketing.  The Amazon Appstore gives developers like us a chance for success by offering customers multiple ways to explore and find games.”  He added, “For example, you can navigate the store by Top 100 Games, or by category, or through widgets powered by Amazon’s recommendation engine such as ‘Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought.’ Plus, the first year fee for the developer program was waived.”

Within a few weeks of its publishing, Farkle Dice – Free skyrocketed to the top of the Board Games category and soon climbed the charts under the Top 100 Free Bestselling Games.

Amazon featured Farkle Dice Deluxe (Ad-Free) on July 23  as the Free App of the Day, a daily promotion in which we make a premium app available to our customers for free and prominently promote the app on Amazon.com and in the Amazon Appstore.

Farkle_fad

We set an expectation of approximately 75,000 downloads for the Free App of the Day promotion with Farkle Dice – Deluxe. “Our actual downloads far exceeded that expectation, and we were thrilled by the exposure and the comments from new players,” Sherman said regarding the result of the promotion.  What does it mean for Smart Box Games to have so many new users? “As part of a long-term monetization strategy, we plan to contact those newly acquired users via the messaging function within Farkle Dice – Deluxe when we release our new game later this year.”

This post was written by  Winkie Chen on 08/24/2011 http://www.amazonappstoredev.com/2011/08/developer-spotlight-smart-box-games-.html

Our game Farkle has had tremendous success in 2011. I put out this press release today.

Bellingham, WA – May 25, 2011 — Smart Box Design today announced the chart-topping highly entertaining game Farkle Dice for iOS and Android has been downloaded more than 500,000 making it one of the most successful dice games available.

Farkle offers players an opportunity to challenge friends or compete against a variety of “intelligent” computer opponents with a wide range of personalities—from cautious to daring—that will determine the level of risk each opponent is willing to take when deciding just how far to push their luck.

Farkle is an enormously popular game throughout the world. Players roll a set of six dice for points and can continue rolling the dice as long as their roll continues to yield points. Any non-scoring roll is called a Farkle and the player forfeits their turn and any points accumulated during that turn. Like most games of chance and skill, Farkle’s attraction stems from players hoping to beat the odds and roll a high scoring combination.

Smart Box Design is known for the attention it places on both the playability and design of its games, and Farkle is no exception. There are very few dice games available for Apple iOS and Android with the quality and attention to detail that went into creating Farkle Dice. The game, which can be customized to accommodate regional rules, is extremely easy for users to pick up and begin playing upon installation. It is beautifully designed with the rich hues of a felt and wooden game-playing surface surrounded by a western theme.

Many games feature computerized opponents that are programmed with varying degrees of difficulty (smart, smarter, and smartest). Farkle, rather, comes with a collection of computerized opponents that are programmed to employ different strategies and take various degrees of risk when deciding whether to continue rolling for points—just like different people that Farkle players will encounter as they play the real dice game.

“We are delighted to bring one of the all-time classic dice games to the Apple iOS and Android Markets,” said Todd Sherman, Smart Box Design’s president. “Our version of Farkle provides mobile device users with a great game that can be picked up when they only have a few minutes to spare, but user beware—once the game is started, it can be very difficult to put down!”

Farkle Dice is available either as a free ad supported app or without ads for 99 cents.

Farkle Dice has been translated into French, German, Spanish, Japanese and Korean.

Download Farkle Dice

Farkle Dice for iPhone / iPod touch
Farkle Dice – Free for iPhone / iPod touch
Farkle Dice for Android Phones and Tablets

About Smart Box Design

Smart Box Design, based in Bellingham, Washington, was formed in 2003 by game industry veterans who share a common vision of creating exciting, high-quality, strategy and thinking games for mobile users. Smart Box Design licenses, develops, and publishes games for iOS and Android devices. The company has previously released Farkle Dice, Triples, and WordPop!, a best selling strategy, puzzle, word creation game and continued the series with Word Monaco Solitaire and Word Watch.

The physical book is a fun read but the iPad versions brings the characters to life. I was the Project Manager on this book and I had a great time working with the team. The brainstorming sessions were great; the list of fun ideas was huge. Below is a just released video of the book. Outback Odyssey was developed by iStoryApps.com.

For the last several months I have had great fun working with www.istoryapps.com. They are a publisher and developer of high quality books for the iPad. Most of you know me as a game developer, but my background is in education, specifically teaching children how to read using technology. I leveraged that experience to create games for adults such as WordPop! When I got the change to work on some children books I jumped at the chance. My role was to work with authors and illustrators and brainstorm with them how the team could transform their book into an interactive iPad iBook. There are several books in the queue at Apple but below is one of the first books I worked on. Working with Woody was fun and inspiring. The more he understood the platform the more ideas we had. Well, enough writing. Please watch the video below and let me know what you think.