New Game App: Gemmed!

[jwarrent]

Hi all, let me briefly introduce ourselves. We're a small band of three attempting to put some decent iPhone games together. I broke down and bought my first Mac when I realized (along with a lot of other people) how amazing a platform the iPhone is to make apps for. We're all independent developers who really love making games, and figured we'd toss caution to the wind and dive into this beautiful insanity.

Our first title is a little match-3 variant with some fun twists, smooth gameplay, and 50 levels of monsters and power-ups. Here's a little video showing the game in action:
YouTube Link

Links to the full and lite versions are in my signature.

Please check it out, check out the Lite version, let us know what you think! We're really excited about this one, and we are hard at work on lots of new features for it, more depth, greater variety, etc.
__________________
Jesse
Wasted Pixel
www.wastedpixel.com
[URL="http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=301954348&mt=8&at=10l3Vy]Gemmed![/URL] and [URL="http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=302004456&mt=8&at=10l3Vy]Gemmed! Lite[/URL]

 

[CarlyLyon]

I like this game. Its fun!

 

[jwarrent]

Thanks! I'm glad you like it. We've just submitted an update to Apple and hope to get it approved fairly soon. Please check out our website for some details on what we have in mind!

 

[hotrod#AC]

Ooh. That looks great. It looks like it has some gameplay similar to Crazy Bubbles on the PPC. I loved that game, and I'm definitely looking forward to this one.

 

[jwarrent]

Update Approved!

Our update for Gemmed was approved today, so version 1.1 should be available very soon! Apparently it's MIA from the App Store, but it should appear again at any time. We're having a sale price until Feb 1st to try and encourage more to give it a go, as those that do really seem to enjoy it! In the mean time, the details for the update are on our website!

Look forward to your comments! (and reviews!)

 

[hotrod#AC]

Cool. I just bought it. I'll post some comments after I play it a bit...

 

[jwarrent]

hotrod-

Thanks! Curious what you thought of it?

So far, slotted for our next update will be Trophy achievements you can earn for doing different things, probably a new look and feel to the gems, and some misc bug fixes.

 

[hotrod#AC]

I like it a lot. I haven't had time to really dig into it, yet. Hopefully over the weekend.

Again, I only played it for about 15 min through the first few levels, but is the purpose to create a path for the monster to get out or build points? What I mean is, will the higher levels make it harder or even impossible for the monsters to get out, especially if I don't pop the right gems?

One thing I was hoping for was to beable to build up bigger piles of gems before they pop. Sometimes I like the fast pace of Gemmed, but I also would like to strategize and move bigger and bigger groups of gems together before I pop them. Does that make sense? Right now if I make swap any gem and it combines to make 3 or more gems they pop. I'd like to only be able to swap gems if they make a group of 3 or more, but not pop the group until I double tap on it. That way I can slow the game down and think more about it.

Maybe a future version could have that as an optional gameplay mode.

I'm glad I bought it. And I'm sorry I haven't had more time to play it, but hopefully I can this weekend. I'll show it to my wife this weekend...Right now her favorite game on my iPhone is a simple Jawbreaker type game so I think she will like this step up.

 

[jwarrent]

Thanks for the feedback! The monsters automatically eat towards the exits- all you gotta do is match gems to try and create a path, one gem at a time. Normally, you won't have to try and create a full path for him, just try to get his color to fall between him and the exit.

One idea we're toying with is allowing the player to decide when to move the monster, so you could earn big points by making more than one move at a time. Something like that may come down the road.

Here are a couple screenshots of a new Trophy section we've added to the game:

With the update, there will be 15 trophies you can earn by performing different goals within the game, such as rescuing two monsters at the same time. Some of the trophies will come naturally as you play, while others will be much more challenging.

With the update, our world scoreboard will begin to reflect how long each game lasts and how many trophies you had for that game.

We hope to have the update ready sometime this week!

 

[hotrod#AC]

Well. I became addicted over the weekend. Between staying up till the wee-hours on Saturday night and getting up before dawn on Sunday just to play Gemmed, whenever I closed my eyes, I envisioned little gems. Between that and the Super Bowl, it strained my marriage.

I really like it. One other recommendation could be reached via different approaches....but I logged in several hours playing the game and I have not lost yet. I'm up to level 36. At this point, I kinda just want to throw a level, so I can quit and enter in my high score. So what I'm saying, is perhaps it needs to be harder, AND/OR add the ability to load different games or different players. That is, I said in my earlier post, I wanted to let my wife play....but since I was still in the middle of my game, I didn't want to give it to her, in case she messed up my score.

While I hate games that are so hard you never seem to get anywhere, right now I seem to be going on and on.

OH, and the help section needs to up elaborated upon. There are all those power ups, but the description is not very descriptive.... with many power ups I did not know what they did until I acted on them. And then it took many times of engaging some power ups to understand how best to use them. Maybe that's part of the game, but I would have liked to know more about what each power up does and how engaging it will affect the board.

And lastly, I realize where the Monsters are supposed to go, but after 36 levels it is still not clear how or why they move. Similar gems must be near by, for the monster to eat, but I can't quite explain to you or others what must be in place to get the monster to move across the board. It almost seems pretty random. Maybe there needs be more explanation in the help section as well. Maybe I'm an idiot. Which I am pretty dim, but right now, I couldn't explain how it works to anyone. I can show someone how to get the monster in the hole once it is near by, but I don't understand what triggers it to move across the board.

Thanks for a very fun game. And I look forward to seeing all your updates.. This has earned a spot on my iPhone Games page. I do truly love it.

And thanks for listening to me today and earlier about swapping gems to build bigger groups. I'd like to see that too.

 

[jwarrent]

Thanks for the feedback! Sorry I didn't respond sooner. Been spending all my free time getting more stuff into the game. Speaking of, our latest update is now available!

I hear you on the difficulty factor. Our original goal was to enhance the difficulty with new features we add, scale it up a bit as we go, with more ways to earn points and trophies. I just submitted an update right after this one was approved, which is mostly a maintenance update, bug fixes and tweaks. Should be approved in a few days.

Once that one makes it out, we have a meatier update almost ready, featuring a couple interesting obstacles to the gameplay, which will definitely make it more challenging. I'll try and post some screenshots once that is a little further along!

It was sort of a strategy / necessity to leave out more detail on the power-ups. We wanted people to experiment with them and find interesting ways to use them.. (for example, the tornado power-up works really well to remove the Black gems without them increasing its bar). Necessity because we didn't want the help graphics ballooning too much more than was really needed.

We'll probably include a FAQ of some kind in the near future that goes over the power-ups on our website. That might be a good way to give lots of detail without inundating the player too much.

For those that have given it a go and enjoy it, please take a minute to leave a decent review in iTunes! It'd help us a lot!

Thanks-