Acorn Heroes

Wow, what a turbulent year!  It seems to have shot by so fast, in a maelstrom of activity.  I guess that having three young children, full time work and a full time side-line can have that effect .  Having a second App on the store makes the whole “business” side of what we’re doing feel more real, more legitimate.

This is a short post to look at what my plans and goals are for the next year:

• Push sales to the point where we get a payment from Apple every month.  It’s a small goal, but an important one psychologically.
• Release a free, ad supported, version of Acorn Money to help spread the word about this great little App Sam has put together.  Our plan is to release a fully featured version of Acorn Money – at least based on the version 1.0 feature set – free, but with ads and the occasional nag to upgrade.  No artificial limits that cripple the app.  Who wants a money tracking app that can only have 6 recurring payments?  It’s a common pattern for free apps, but one that makes it nearly impossible to make an informed decision about the value of an App.
• Make enough in sales to purchase a new MacBook and an iPad.  There’s a couple of projects ticking over in the back of our minds that make more sense on the iPad than iPhone, plus we like our toys .
• To release Faerie, in both paid and free with ads versions.
• To get back into regular blogging – being near the top of the iDevBlogADay waiting list should ensure this happens!
• To spend more time in the company of other iDevs.  The NZiDev conference was great.  I’d love to get to GDC or WWDC if it were feasible.  Something to aim for at least.
• To stop saying “No” and “I can’t” by default, and concentrate on “Why not?”.  In other words, to kick some arse.

So what are your plans? There’s a lot of potential in the coming year, as there is in every new year.

We wish you all a happy and fulfilling year to come!

Note: No final article on Automated Builds this week – check in next week when I should have the final article prepared.

It must be the time of year or something, but obviously a few developers have been evaluating their progress and plans for the future.  Not afraid of being a slave to fashion, it seemded like a good time to have a look at the progress of Acorn Heroes over the past year.

In our case this navel gazing has been triggered by the fact that we’re due for our first payout from Apple on September 2nd.  Yep, you read that right, our first.  That may sound like a fairly mediocre result, and in some ways it is.  But there’s also a ray of hope there.  Read on…

Some context

Sam and I are both fully employed on other jobs.  We both have three kids, a wife and a mortgage.  The good side of this is that we’re relatively stable and don’t need to be successful on the App store just to survive.  The flip side is that anything we do is done in a spare hour here and there at the end of the day, family commitments allowing.

Past

Goo! (App store link) was released back in January, and is a fairly niche application for maths nerd who like playing with cellular automata, or possibly two year olds who like the pretty patterns (my youngest is a great example of this).  Despite that it’s been ticking over quietly averaging about 2-3 sales a day.  While it won’t make us rich, or let us quit our day jobs, it will cover the cost of our web hosting and dev license for another year.

iDevBlogADay has been (and continues to be) a wonderful experience – the requirement to write each week is a great motivator and has introduced me to an expanded network of great Indie developers.  If you haven’t subscribed to the iDevBlogADay feed yet, your missing a ton of great content.  Here’s a handy link.

Present

Sam (the quiet one) is doing wonderful things with Secret Project M. It’s only secret because we haven’t talked about it yet – but we should be announcing M officially soon.  We’re in what can probably be described as an ‘early beta’ stage – polishing features and UI and squashing bugs.

Faerie is a promising game idea that I’m looking to develop fully.  Basic gameplay is solid and we’re looking to build a solid, appealing game that will appeal to people of all ages.  Sneezies and Robot Unicorn Attack are great examples of the kind of experience we’re aiming to replicate.

In my day job, I’ve been part of a team working on data capture for high performance athletes – there’s a good story covering what’s been going on here.

Future

So, what does the future hold?  It’s busy, that’s for sure.  We’re aiming to finish M in the next month or two.  Having a second App on the store is a huge milestone for us, especially as Goo! was a proof of concept as much as anything.  To say we’re excited is an understatement.

Faerie is on hold for a little while, because I’ve taken on full time contract work until the end of the year.  I can’t reveal many details at the moment, but we’ll be creating a game for iOS that is linked to a major TV channel.  I’m hopeful that I can cover our progress over the next three months or so.  We’re aiming for a November/December release.

So, interesting times ahead with lots going on.  Sam and I would like to take this chance to thank everyone who’s bought Goo!, followed our blog or provided advice on working in the magical, mercurial world of iOS development.  Your words of encouragement mean a lot to us!