Hmm IMO the game looks good and everything but with a little improvement of the graphics you can get more sells! I recommend you to stop using pixelart and making graphics in photoshop, atleast for your next games, btw! I might be interested in making iphone games, but I am wondering is it hard to program? and! how much money have you won from this game? I am really interested in knowing how the iphone market is.. I hope you can help me : ).
Non-pixel art graphics probably would increase the marketability but truthfully, I love working with Josiah and pixel art is his thing, and he is -really- good at it, so I'm happy to stick with the whole pixel art look for now
. This game probably won't be going all photo-shop-y anytime soon, so...
. There is an advantage to pixel art, too, because of the way he does things, the game is < 5 MB on the app store, which is ridiculous given the amount of backgrounds, units, etc. in the game. If the game is > 10 MB, users can't download it over the 3G, so there's potential loss of sales from impulse buys. It's a balancing act.
As for how hard it is to program for the iPhone, depends on how experienced you are. If you know a C-based language, then it'll just be a matter of a few weeks getting adjusted to the very different syntax for ObjectiveC. Then, you can pick up Cocos2D, which is the engine we use and which is very easy to get into. You can also do some stuff in C/C++ libraries but I figured I may as well learn Objective C, so...
It's always great to see old members return, having risen from lowly homebrew game makers to professional game developers. Especially when said member is one I was just thinking about the other day. Good to see you, TRW, and good to see that you've made a game.
Thanks
It's good to pop by every once in a while.