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Achievements…

September 3,2009 9:00 am 4 comments

We’re just finishing up our “Achievements” list for Archon.  Some of them are pretty fun, some are hard, but most are easy.  We’re finding that in one game, a person will get 5, 6 even 8 achievements from the list we have.  In a game like Archon, you could possibly target a few achievements, because there are so many pieces and the games can be long…but come on…8 in one game?!  We’ve got to fix that.

So, I thought a good place to turn for ideas would be the community.  Who better to ask for help than the people playing the game?  So, people…What would make a really good achievement?  I mean a REALLY hard one?  Maybe even one that nobody can get…like:

“Annihilate the Dark team by only using 1 Knight.” or, “Win a game in under 1 minute.”  We have a list of about 20 or so…but some are really easy.  Let me know your thoughts on our forums.  Click here to enter your idea.

Thanks and I look forward to your ideas!

Archon 1.7 submitted to App Store…

September 1,2009 11:57 am 3 comments

Sorry it’s been a while since this update…we’re hard at work!  We submitted the last update 1.7 two weeks ago and we’re still waiting.  They came back with a small issue that had to be fixed, but I’m hoping it will be available soon.  Mainly so you can experience some fixes that have been a long time coming.

A HUGE fix we implemented in this latest update is with the controls.  One of the biggest complaints we have (and every other game on the iPhone) is the controls.  Where we erred was with the firing input.  I think the Dpad works just as well as the best virtual Dpads on the iPhone, and the firing mechanism is simple…just touch the right side of the screen.  The problem we discovered was the iPhone was confusing the ‘firing’ touches with ‘pinching’ and since we didn’t support pinching in combat, it would ignore the touch…hence the piece wouldn’t fire.  Sorry…our fault…but it’s fixed now with the 1.7 update.

Also, we’ve included a new board called “Invictis.”  It implements “Power-ups” during combat along with special Power Squares during Strategy that give other abilities (see image below.)

Color is very important on this board.  You can see on this Strategy board, the new look of Power Squares.  They each have a different number, which affects a different ability of each character.  Orange=Movement of the character, Red=Weapon and Green=Health.  So, landing on a Power Square with a Red dot could give you a triple shot, or a more powerful shot or even a faster shot.  Once you land on this new Power Square, the ability it gives you will stay the rest of the game…so it’s a different way of leveling up, like in Ascension.

In Combat, you’ll randomly have other Power-Ups appear throughout the course of the game.  We’ve kept the color the same as the Strategy Board, so you know Red affects your weapon, Green affects your Health and Orange your speed.

So, This new board offers a whole different type of Strategy than previous ones.  And the best part is it’ll be available to play through Multiplayer, when we get that finished (around the corner.)

We’re close to finishing Bluetooth and let me just say…there are LOTS of surprises around the corner!  Multiplayer is a blast, the game is more robust than ever and next update, I’ll talk about Multiplayer and the 1 player Campaign we’ve finished.