Al Nyveldt

 Delayed release in progress

-   Aug 09, 2011 -   iDevBlogADay, iOS -   idevblogaday, release, sudokukids

I recently finished up my 3rd App Store game, SudokuKids for iPad.  While I can't wait to see it available in the App Store, I decided this was a good candidate for delayed release. I know many people advocate the delayed release.  Usually, the main point is to try to build up a buzz around the app. Noel Llopis wrote a nice short description of delayed release at the end of his review of the Business of iPhone and iPad Development.  You can contact media/review sites and even give out promo codes for your app ahead of time with the goal of having most of your PR hit right around the launch day.  To be honest, I’m not expecting to be able to generate a lot of buzz, but any buzz does help.  The main reason I delayed the release of this app was to give myself sometime to work on some of the tasks I’ve been neglecting.  I’m not sure how important these tasks are but I was beginning to feel they were pulling me down.  I decided I would give myself a few days to try to get them in order before this app hit the store. First up was a new RazorAnt Software web site.  It still isn’t quite done yet, but is getting closer every day.  I needed to make more information available about my apps and this is the place for that.  I’m not sure how valuable the web site is for iOS game developers, but as I have some different apps coming up yet this year, I figured I really can’t neglect it any longer. Next, I needed to start getting some social media connections going.  I’ve just focused on making games in the past and hoped the marketing would come.  Word of mouth has been ok, but hopefully this will propel it a bit better.  Lastly, I wanted to work on getting better pre-release details together.  Better images, write ups, a press release.  Hopefully, I’ll be able to get a video done this week as well. I was kind of hoping this would be the calm before the storm type of thing.  So far, I’ve been busy, busy, busy and feel like I’m not producing a whole lot, but I feel better about the image RazorAnt Software is projecting and that counts for something.  Since this is my first iPad app, I’ll have no idea if any of this helped compared to my previous releases, but I feel better about what I’ve done. SudokuKids for iPad was approved last week and will be available in the App Store this Thursday, August 11th.  If you have kids, be sure to check it out.

 SudokuKids gets an update

-   Mar 05, 2011 -   iOS -   sudokukids, ios

I’m really happy to announce that the latest SudokuKids update (version 1.1) is now available for download in the App Store. This is the first update for SudokuKids and it has a lot of little things that together really improve the app experience.  The most noticeable improvement is the addition of the cool new music that plays when you enter the app.  We’ve added new sounds as well for feedback as you tab squares and buttons while playing through the puzzles. Lots of little changes were made as well.  I decided to change the color of number you enter yourself in the puzzle.  As you can see in the picture to the right, numbers are in two colors.  Dark blue for given number when the puzzle was started and green numbers are what you’ve entered.  While it was a small fix, I’ve received a number of comments regarding how they like this from the SudokuKids+ app, so we brought it to this one along with a few other functions we didn’t have here. Anyway, I’m very open to hearing ideas for future updates to SudokuKids.  Please feel free to share them below or send me an message.

 SudokuKids+ update is live

-   Feb 28, 2011 -   iOS -   sudokukids, ios

It took a while, but I finally completed the update for SudokuKids+ and it hit the app store today!  Be sure to get your update and if you don’t already have the app, you can get it here. If you are not familiar with SudokuKids and SudokuKids+, these are apps I wrote last year that are simple Sudoku puzzles for kids.  SudokuKids is 4x4 puzzles (numbers 1-4 across, down, and in the box), while SudokuKids+ is 6x6 puzzles. This update adds some fun, spacey music at the intro as well as nice feedback sounds while you are playing.  Lots of little things were polished up and made nicer as well as the known issues corrected. I had been hoping to finish these updates near the beginning of February, but I have many projects on the table clamoring for attention.  It did give a lot more time for testing and also adding lots of small touches that overall I’m really happy with.

 To update or not to update

-   Feb 18, 2011 -   Business, iOS -   app store, sudokukids, ios

As I wrote in my goals post, I’ve been focusing more of my spare time on iOS development.  After a long break at the end of 2010, I decided the way to get back into it was to give some love to my current apps, SudokuKids and SudokuKids+, in the way of updates. I added new music, some sounds, and a number of other nice touches to them and it truly was a great way to get back into iOS development.  When I finished testing the updates I had planned, I decided to hold off for just a bit before pushing them out. I had read The Business of iPhone App Development last year and wanted to go back and go over some sections I had bookmarked to help promote the apps.  As I was doing that, I went off to CodeMash and one of the tables had a book that I added to my reading list, iPhone and iPad Apps Marketing: Secrets to Selling your iPhone and iPad Apps.  I decided I should read this one as well before pushing the updates.  Then, I ran across a 3rd book, App Savvy, that I added to the pile and therefore added to the delay.  (Yes, I will probably share an update on the 3 books in a future blog post.) Anyway, reading the books and making some notes, led to more things to do before the updates got pushed.  It seems I was suffering from a kind of self induced feature creep.  Maybe it could be called marketing creep or maybe it was polish creep.  I’ll let you decide.  However, I think I lost out on something else and that is the reason I’m sharing this post.  I lost out on sharing my work with my users.  I could have easily pushed the initial update after I had completed testing it and then planned for a second update in February or March.  I believe apps that update often are thought better of by users and here I’ve been holding off. The only con I can think of to updating often is the loss of reviews and ratings.  It is not a small thing when you have an app that doesn’t have a lot of them.  My thinking is now though that solid updates will promote more reviews and hopefully more sales.   I’m not sure if this is correct, but I doubt I can go wrong by pleasing my user base and updating more frequently and hoping that the reviews come out in force with future updates.