Gem Hunt - our upcoming game for iPhone

I feel that it is finally time to introduce our upcoming game Gem Hunt to you. The idea to make this game came from a little free & casual marketing game called StuderusMatch we developed for a client of us this summer. StuderusMatch resulted in a fun little hiscore game and we really liked the mixture of physics and color matching. So we kept the idea in mind to make a similar game. One day...

The Palm Experience

A few weeks later we got word about the Palm PDK Hot Apps Contest. We decided to participate and chose to go back to the physics and color-match concept with the popular gem theme on top. So we went ahead and put together a playable version in about 2 weeks time. Unfortunately we started about 4 weeks late and the contest was already running. There were multiple prize sections depending on the number of sales. Since all slots in the paid section were taken we participated in the free section.

Being new to the platform and late in the contest we weren't able to win a big prize in the contest. But we still got rank #34 or so with about 15.000 free downloads.

It wasn't quite enough for the 10k$ prize but it showed us that the game had potential and that there are users who like it.

Since we like the game ourselves we thought that it might be great to have this game available for iOS too and started the work about 2 weeks ago. Now we are spinning to take the game further and polish it to make it even better.

The following image shows the game how it is right now. The graphics will probably change until release...

Gameplay

So what do you do in this game? It's quite simple. You have 60 seconds to beat the hiscore. In this time you direct gems in a billiard-like manner. Two gems of the same type match and disappear from the screen. If you match the same color a few times in a row, you are able to score more points. We'll also add more game features and possibly also alternative modes in the next weeks. Some of the features will be available in an IAP shop whilst others will be available to start with. I will write more about the game and features in the next blog posts.

Beta-Testing

Although we haven't really started beta testing, it would be great to get some feedback on the game early. If you like to give it a go let me know on twitter. Thanks!