82 Apps is Erik Asmussen's independent iOS/OSX software development studio.
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| 13 May 2012 | Shape Shatter update | ||||||||||||||||
 Shape Shatter is coming along well, probably about two weeks from release. I now have most of the final art integreated into the app, and am now just fine-tuning the mechanics and adding another layer of polish. Playtesting has gone really well - I usually have to yank the device back from players - l and am very excited to see how this game is received in the wider market. My hope is that it actually fun to play while stimulating discussion on the free-to-play model and casual game design principles.
In the meantime, here's the new cover art. Nothing subtle about this! 
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| 05 Apr 2012 |Made In MA party | ||||||||||||||||
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Landed a table at the Made In MA party tonight at the Microsoft NERD Center. Going to be showing demos of two new games: Shape Shatter and (name still not yet finalized) Space Colony.Follow them on their respective facebook pages to get updates!
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| 21 Mar 2012 |The Gamer Brain | ||||||||||||||||
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I recently gave a talk at the local Boston Indies meetup about the psychology of game design. Specifically, it's on specific psychological attributes of games that make them fun and addictive. Here's the slides. I'm also writing a short blog series on the topic.
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| 08 Jan 2012 | New World Colony v4.22 is out! | ||||||||||||||||
 Now includes a map editor which you can use for local or online games, and is now backwards compatible with iOS 4.3. Full change list here.
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| 19 Jan 2012 | Space Colony update | ||||||||||||||||
 Working on a new game and will start posting more regular updates here.
The game is a unique real-time arcade/strategy game hybrid where you battle for control of a planet's surface by building and upgrding bases and harvesting crystals. It is meant to be a more streamlined and accessible verison of New World Colony, while capturing the fun balance between aggression, defense, and construction. The art for this game is by the extremely talented Luigi Guatieri. You can also follow updates directly through the Space Colony Facebook Page.  | ||||||||||||||||
| 08 Jan 2012 | Announcing New World Colony Lite! | ||||||||||||||||
 Ever wanted to try out New World Colony but didn't want to pay before you knew if you liked it? Now you can get a lite version of New World Colony for free! You can play unlimited games against the easy AI on the normal settings. If you've mastered the easy AI and like the game, then get the full version to play against harder AI, unlock all the game modes and map sizes, and even play online against your friends.
New World Colony Lite in the App Store | ||||||||||||||||
| 08 Jan 2012 | New World Colony v4.20 is out! | ||||||||||||||||
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| 15 Nov 2011 | First screenshots of new game! | ||||||||||||||||
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I've been semi-secretly working on a sequel (of sorts) to New World Colony, and I'm just now starting to take the wraps off. I'm calling it...Space Colony! (tentatively) My goal was to create something much more streamlined and straightforward that people could pick up and play almost instantly, and where games last just 5-6 minutes or so. I wanted a bit more action, and a bit more of the excitement that comes with random rewards during gameplay. So what I have now is kind of hybrid arcade/real-time strategy puzzler. I gave it a demo at Boston Indies tonight and the response seemed to be very positive, so I feel I'm on the right track. Although there's not much there yet, you can follow the progress of this game on its Facebook page. More news and screenshots will follow soon! | ||||||||||||||||
| 12 Nov 2011 | Reddit forum created for New World Colony | ||||||||||||||||
A few players were asking for a place to discuss the game. The facebook and Goolge+ pages are not ideal for having multiple simultaneous conversations. So I decided to create a reddit community. So now you can use this place to add suggestions, discuss strategies, and generally get news about the game.
Here's the link to the new page: r/NewWorldColony | ||||||||||||||||
| 27 Oct 2011 | New Blog Posts: adding turn-based gaming to your app | ||||||||||||||||
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Building turn-based gaming into New World Colony was definitely a challenge, and since the new frameworks were under NDA there weren't any good public resources about how to do this. So I decided that once the NDA was lifted I would write my own posts about it to help others do the same. So stop by my tumblr blog to learn how to add the new Game Center features into your app:
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| 13 Oct 2011 | New World Colony now Universal! | ||||||||||||||||
After months of work, a huge update has been released for New World Colony! The biggest change is that it is now a universal app that will run on any device that supports iOS 5. Secondly, it allows users to play turn-based matches online in an asynchronous (a.k.a. 'correspondence') manner. Several of the game rules have been updated for better pacing and balance, and the graphics received an upgrade to boot.
Download the new version today! |
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| 13 Sep 2011 | Presentation slides available | ||||||||||||||||
I recently gave a quick talk at the Boston Mobile Monday meetup at the Westin Copley hotel. It was focused on my year-long experiences building New World Colony as a solo developer. It's fairly lighthearted, but it might give some useful perspective for people just starting out in the app developent world.
You can download the slides here. |
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| 01 Sep 2011 | Huge update to BrewGene released | ||||||||||||||||
 Lots of big news on the BrewGene front. We built in a ton of game-changing features into this build - beer locator, beer menus, on-the-spot recommendations, a revamped home page, more social integration, and many other things. It's a free download in the App Store so if you haven't checked it out yet, you definitely should right now.
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| 01 Sep 2011 | New video for New World Colony | ||||||||||||||||
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| 06 Jul 2011 | Desktop Task Timer LE released! | ||||||||||||||||
 Desktop Task Timer LE is now live in the Mac App Store! This is a 'lite' version of Desktop Task Timer that has all of the core features, and is free! So download it now and take a tour. It's fully functioning as a task timer. The video below explains what features are in the full verison that are not in the LE version.
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| 06 Jul 2011 | Desktop Task Timer updated to 4.01 | ||||||||||||||||
 Newest version of Desktop Task Timer has been released. It includes a few functionality fixes in addition to all of the extremely useful additions such as groups, filtering, and synching that were added in 4.00.
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