Just in case you might have missed it, Flying Cats Game is now on the App Store! Here’s a handy link to the app, and some lovely screenshots for you. You can also check out the Flying Cats Game page and view the trailer.

As soon as I started playing about with ideas for Flying Cats Game, I decided that I wanted to make the whole process open. I’d previously been worried about people stealing my ideas, but reading this article, among others (thanks to @dwsjoquist for the link), really opened my eyes. The truth is the chances of someone stealing your idea are incredibly low, and besides, what is there to stop someone ripping you off after release? Developing in the open is great for creating a bit of buzz, but I found from experience that there were two other excellent benefits.

Feedback

I have zero years experience in the games industry. The only stuff I made before Brainz was all at Uni, where the end product never needs to be particularly amazing. But out there in the land of Twitter, even amongst the people I follow, there must be hundreds of years of combined experience and some expert advice. And even people with less experience than me can offer some really great insights, just from having that different perspective. Here’s one of the early images I posted:

A couple of people told me that it looked kind of scary (@chrismwaite, @celsiusgs), which made me stop and think. I was thinking of a game with monsters, but I wanted it to be cute. They looked so much like cats anyway that I decided to just make them cats. Without this outside opinion, I may never have taken this direction, and I think the game is much better for it. I also had a couple of people (@spritestack, @GeorgeSealy) point out that in the mock-ups I did that the cats were too big, so I made them smaller, which really helps gameplay.

Encouragement

Working on a game by yourself, it’s tough to stay motivated, and you start to question whether anything you do is actually any good. The fact that I had some great feedback about the art style (thanks @CocoaGeek and @chrismwaite!), and some really positive comments about the gameplay video (from @mysterycoconut, @celsiusgs and @madgarden) mean that I’m really positive about launch. Also, putting something out there that people like and want to see finished has really helped to drive me to completion.

I think the only thing I’ll do differently in the future is be more open! It’s great interacting with other developers about the whole development process, and harnessing the insight and encouragement of others has been invaluable.

If you’ve not heard of the “release early, release often” software design philosophy before, I think it’s fairly self explanatory, but I’ll let you read up on Wikipedia if you’d like to. It originated in Eric Raymond’s essay, The Cathedral and the Bazaar, where Raymond discusses the benefits in open-source software development, but I think there are lessons to be learnt in making commercial, digitally distributed games as well. Flying Cats Game is a bit of an experiment to see if this can work in this context, but I think there are already examples on the App Store of this being a massively successful strategy.

When a game ships on a disc then obviously there has to be a final version that goes out that is the finished article, but digital distribution allows you to iterate far more easily, and so also allows a fundamentally new approach to game design. What I’m talking about in this context is certainly not about shipping something unfinished or not a full game in it’s own right, or shipping something with major bugs (so quite a distinction from how Raymond applies the term). My approach with Flying Cats Game has been to limit the scope of the game to it’s core essentials, polish that to a high quality and ship that. Then depending on the success of the game, I’ll add more features as I go.

I think this approach has a couple of really key advantages. One is that you limit the time you spend on the creating version 1.0 of the game, thus minimising the risk involved. Of course, if making games is just a hobby for you, then this might be less of an issue, but I still think it’s worth taking into consideration. The other main advantage that I can see is that big updates generate buzz, and adding lots of new features for free could potentially make your customers happier and more interested in your game in the long term. The main disadvantage that I see is that having a strong launch seems to be important on the App Store. However, I think if you create something that is of a high quality, but stripped down to it’s bare essence, you can still achieve this, particularly in the casual games space.

So will it work? It kind of depends what you mean by work. It has certainly minimised the risk factor in creating a new game; that’s undeniable. If Flying Cats Game is not a success, then maybe it wouldn’t have been a success if it had extra features either. I guess we’ll see. What you leave in and what you skip for version 1.0 I think depends on your own opinion of what matters. For me it meant shipping something fun, with an excellent learning curve, power-ups, Game Center leaderboards, multi-tasking support, Retina display graphics, and obviously something stable and as bug free as I could make it. What I left out were achievements, Twitter and Facebook integration, multi-player, iPad support etc. The key is to make sure you have a fun and well polished core game.

But who am I to tell you this is a good idea? Flying Cats Game isn’t even out yet! Well let’s take a look at one of 2010′s big App Store successes, Fruit Ninja.

I’ve been doing some internet detective work to see how Halfbrick went about developing this massively successful game. It appears that version 1.0 only had what is now termed “Classic” mode, as well as some OpenFeint achievements. So what did the reviewers say? Well, Touch Arcade said “It’s so simple, that it’s hard to explain the appeal”, yet saw that it had appeal and gave it four stars. I’d say that’s a pretty good start, and it’s an app that sold well straight away. Building from that success, it looks like their first big update was 1.2, which brought Zen Mode, combos and some new fruit. For anyone that’s bought it since, it’s almost hard to believe that combos weren’t in the original game! Since then, separate updates have brought in multiplayer, Game Centre leaderboards and achievements, and most recently (after the adding in a placeholder menu banana to tease us!) Arcade Mode. Also along the way have come separate iPad and Android apps. The game has really transformed since it first started life back in April.

Another great advantage to this approach is that you can more easily develop a dedicated fan base who are eager for the next update. Not only that, but what you put in the game can be moulded by your user requests, meaning that you end up with a product that is more and more attractive to the marketplace. Halfbrick said on the release of Fruit Ninja 1.2:

“We are listening! Every suggestion and every review from Fruit Ninja fans is carefully considered by our development team and we are committed to ensuring your game is of the highest quality! Today marks the biggest update yet for Fruit Ninja, which includes enough additions to DOUBLE the content of the entire original game!”

This is a phenomenal way to develop a rapport with your customers. Imagine how chuffed you’d be if you were one of the many that suggested feature-x, and it actually made it in to the next release! Interestingly, Halfbrick increase that sense of ownership by referring to it as “your game”. To quote The Cathedral and the Bazaar, “The next best thing to having good ideas is recognizing good ideas from your users. Sometimes the latter is better.” Of course, it’s also important not to mess with your users by making previous high scores irrelevant, or wipe leaderboards completely, so consider these issues from the start.

So this is the approach I’ve decided to take with Flying Cats Game, and probably subsequent games as well. I think there are big questions that I haven’t figured out yet, like how this applies to less casual games, where the genre dictates a larger initial investment in time, but while I’m focused on casual games, it’s the approach I’m going to take. I’ll be sure to let you know how things pan out.

This is the first of my Flying Cats Game pre-release blog posts. Firstly a bit of bad news. Today one of my beta testers uncovered an issue with one of the game’s menu graphics which was wrong on Retina displays. So that means back of the queue for me, and a pre-Christmas release is looking very unlikely. I happen to believe in miracles though, so we’ll see. And the lesson has been learned — I think any future submissions will need to go through a checklist. 

Anyway, onto the good stuff! One of the things I love about indie games is that they reflect the character of the developer, and like any artistic creation, are a product of what the creator has consumed. I wanted to highlight some of the things that I’m conscious of inspiring Flying Cats Game to give an insight into the development process. So in no particular order…

Other Games

One of my favourite iOS games is Fruit Ninja. It’s fun and simple, and the general idea of things flying across the screen that you need to swipe started me thinking about other gameplay mechanics. I think also that I had in mind shooters, like the skeet event on Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games. Finally, I loved the art style in Linkoidz by Retro Dreamer, and originally set out to create a space shooter. Obviously the end product has nothing to do with space, but that’s all part of the creative evolution process. 

Videos

I saw this great video linked to on Twitter, right at the point I was considering art style. By the way, Jeremy Messersmith‘s music is available on a pay what you want basis, so if you like this track you should definitely check out his work.

Music

The Wall-E soundtrack is one of my favourite albums to work to, and on it are some of the classic songs that make up the soundscape to this amazing film. This includes the beautiful La Vie En Rose as performed by Louis Armstrong, and I thought early on that I wanted something similar for my game. I finally found a jazz piece by Bix Beiderbecke that is safely out of copyright. It may seem like an odd combination, but I like that, and the way something created 85 years ago can be a part of something so new gives it a real timeless quality. 

Cats

Undeniably, the arrival of my kitten, Shigeru Miyamoto (or Moto for short) to our house played a part in the theme of the game! I’ve always loved cats, though, and I think they have brilliant character that is perfect for games. Add to this my Studio Ghibli obsession, and films like Whisper of the Heart, The Cat Returns and My Neighbour Totoro, that give cats that mystical quality, and they become an irresistible choice to feature in a game. 

I hope you’ve enjoyed this brief insight into how my all these things things fused together to make something, that I hope in it’s own right is creative. Maybe Flying Cats Game might even inspire someone else in some way…

I’ve been busy over the last couple of months making a new game. It was submitted to Apple late last night – there’s a nice external deadline called “Christmas” coming up, and I’m hoping I might just sneak in the App approval before the iTunes people go on holiday on the 23rd. It’s not the end of the world if it doesn’t make it, but it sure would be nice!

And here it is! The simply titled Flying Cats Game. Check out the gameplay video and let me know what you think. I’ll be setting up a game page on the site soon, with all the marketing info and press packs, and if you follow me on Twitter, I’m sure I’ll be letting people know when it’s out!

I’m also going to be blogging about how the game came into being, from inspiration, to artwork and tools used every week day until release. Hopefully I won’t run out of things to say!