Christmas is coming!

It's december, there is a little bit of snow lying on the ground and I'm hearing christmas songs. Yes, it's the best time of the year, it's christmas time :)

And that's the perfect time to release another game with the theme christmas (surprise surprise). It's called Santas Helper and it's again a very simple game. You are in front of the present machine, in the middle of it you'll get shown the next present. Then you have to click the right buttons for the present, the paper and the ribbon for it. Did you click all three of them, the present is falling down in the bag of Santa.
You've got one minute to reach a new highscore, for every right present  falling in the bag you get an exta second. So be fast to get more time ;)

And now have a wonderfull time and don't forget to buy or (better!) tinker presents for all you love :)

Unannounced but still there!

Today I released a new game called Cards'n'Dice.

It's a singleplayer cardgame and my first with a (very simple) AI. You and the AI got 6 stacks, each with 8 cards on it with different values. There is a dice in the middle, which determines which stack is used for the round. Choose your card, the AI chooses also one, the player who has got the higher card win this round and get 2 points. If someone chooses a ✰-card, this player can choose again, now he knows the opponents card value, so he can take a card thats close above the opponents card or, if he got nothing above, takes the lowest card.

It's simple to understand while playing, so have fun if you want to try it! :)

Maze released

Hey,
just uploaded my last project to the PlayStore. As already announced it's called "Maze".
Actually it contains 45 different mazes. In these maces are keys, chests and candles hidden.
You need to find the keys to open the chests to get points. The candles are needed as a lightsource. You've got a candle from the beginning, but it is burning down which also let shrink the shine of light around you until you are standing in the totally dark.

Have fun if you try it :)

On the way to gold...

Hey,
good news (mostly for me, but maybe some of you is also interested in). I'm taking the last steps to release my next game called "Maze". And it's, surprise surprise, a mazegame!
Yes it's nothing big but for me as a one-man-team, every release is a huge big thing :)

The game itself is simple, you are in a maze, you have to find the exit and on that way you'll find some keys. With this keys you can open the chests that are also hidden in the maze to gain points. To make it not too simple there is something that cuts your time that you've got to finish the maze. A candle. It's burning down and if the candle is down, you are in the dark and the game is lost. But don't worry, there can also candles be found in the maze, fantastic isn't it?

Most thing are already done, at the moment I'm integrating the different mazes, which will have a size of 10x10. To keep this simple and fast I created myself a leveleditor in LibreOffice.
This is how it looks:

Leveleditor in LibreOffice

At the moment I've inserted 27 different mazes, but there will be some more. If I finished this, the game will come to the betatest and when nothing strange happens, I will release it in the next days.

I'm curios how this game will be liked. My last one Halma, had a fantastic start, in the german PlayStore it was in the top ten of the charts in the new puzzle games. Since it's out there the downloads brake down, but I'm proud to have 3768 active device installs, 3612 of it are germans... Danke schön dafür :D

And now I have to insert more mazes! Stay tuned!

2,073 active device installs...

Hey,

I'm happy and very proud to announce that my last game Halma reached 2000 active device installs. I don't know how much of you are using the game often than once, but for me this is a fantastic number and I'm curios how numbers will become in the next days/weeks.

At the moment I paused the working on Kingdom Heroes, I'm stuck and need a little time-out from it. But I'm not lazy, currently I'm working on a little maze-game. Most things are already done, at the moment I have to work on graphics and some coding, because there are sometimes mistakes in displaying the graphics.

If the game will works half as good as Halma, I would be the happiest person on earth ^^

So I want to say thank you again and I hope you all have a great week!

Halma V1.3 released

Hey hey,
because Halma seems to be well accepted out there, I was working the last day's on it. Today I released version 1.3, which brings a mainmenu (yes I know, it's a world changing innovation), new skins for the stones (another milestone, you're right) and a puzzle mode.
The puzzle mode is random based. This means, there are no saved puzzles to solve, it works with a seed number, from which the puzzle is generated. Because this, the user's got the chance to enter the seed manually, so it is possible that different users can solve the same puzzle.
From now on, there a two different versions available. The free version (width ads) is where the puzzle mode is a little bit reduced. This means, that every day a new puzzle is generated, but the user's got not the option to enter a seed manually. This will only work in the paid version (where the puzzleboardsize can be up to 7 rows/columns (in the free version it's limited to 5 rows/columns)).

I hope everything works fine, if not I would be happy if you could send me an E-Mail to SG@IZUware.com

Have fun if you're playing it :)

Side-Project: Halma

Hey, I'm still testing Kingdom Heroes, I've got some problems balancing the values for heroes and dungeons, but I hope it will done in the next days.

A few days ago my sister asked me to develop a little halma game. And because she was asking me a lot if I finished it (until today I hadn't even start with it), I'm happy to release V 1.0 of Halma.
You can find it in Google Play.

Have fun with this little game :)

Let me show...

...the inner castle

That's another picture of the game. It's the inner castle.
You can see the tavern at the bottom, the place where you can hire experienced heroes. At the right sight is the wizards tower. In there your heroes can train their magic abilities. But you can also brew some potions, which will help your heroes in the dungeons.
At the left is the barrack, the right place to train the strength. The archery at the top of the picture is also for training, and guess for what... for dexterity ;)
Every of these buildings can (and should) be upgraded to provide better results in training.

The gate on the top guides you to the castle, where you can hire unexperienced heroes from your soldiers. The advantages of these are, that you can determine what class they should be (warrior, archer or wizard), they didn't cost anything and you can customize their equipment, which is not possible for heroes you hire in the tavern, which are like mercenaries. And yes, you have to pay them every day, and the better they get, the more expensive they are.

Let me introduce...

...the consultant

The consultant is a very important person if you play the game the first time. He will show you what todo, how everything is working and gives you informations about the past and the background story. He is old and wise, he was the consultant of the former king, your father, and knows a lot about the things that happens in the time when your father ruled the kingdom.

Let me introduce...

...the king

That's the king, ruler of the kingdom in which the game takes place. This kingdom is not very large... I would say it's very small, about the size of a screen ;)
His father was a wise man who made some good decisions in the past. At least they look wise at that time. Today his past decisions will cause some trouble four you. Yes, i said for you, because you will be the king. But what is the trouble you will have? This information is revealed in the next days.

I can see light at the end of the tunnel...

...and I hope that's not the train!

Yes, I can't believe it by myself, but it seems that I can really finish the project. The important things are implented and are working.
The next tasks to do are the graphics (a lot to do :/ ), some fine-tuning, like the size and position of the windows and very important: testing, testing, testing.

Attached a little graphic with the title of the game. From now on I will post more frequently what progress I do :)

Doing some graphics...

... and with every picture I start or finish I realize that I am not, and will never be a gifted graphic artist :/

Currently I'm trying to do the pictures for the background and the town overview. But my skill is horrible and it costs me hours and hours for one simple picture to finish it. Every single picture is in my head... and it's beautiful, but when my hand tries to bring it on the PC, nothing looks as I've got it in my mind.
But I do my best, I'm not satisfied with my images, but I think it's not so bad that everybody would delete the app immediately when he sees it.
And as an early warning for you, I'll show you what I've got, the last one is the final picture:

Hire, Fire, look at the Equipment...

Surprise surprise, I'm alive.
After one week of biking and sleeping under the sky I'm in front of the PC again. Unfortunately I have to realise that I will never manage it, to finish the game in this week :(
There is too much to do, and I don't think about the graphics when I write this.

At the moment I'm fixing some small bugs I integrated and plan what is important to do next. What is ready so far is to upgrade important buildings like the barracks, archery, wizardtower or the castle, to hire and fire heroes and to have a look at their equipment, which consists of a weapon, armor for the head, body and feet and an amulet and 2 rings. The normal warrior will also have the chance to wear a shield.

The next thing I do will be the first dungeon to visit. When I've done this, the inventory, items, quests, training and more will follow. But this will take some time. Because of this I'm thinking about an alpha release of the game. So some more people will recognize the game, I'll get hints and proposals for the game and a fast bug reporting.
I'm not sure what to do, maybe I know it when this week is over. Depends on how far I come with the game... we'll see.

And now, back to work!

Don't have to work...

...but nevertheless working.
Since a few days I've got holiday. And what am I doing? Sitting the hole day in front of the computer programming my next game, with the only wish in my head, to finish it before my holiday is over.
So far I'm making some huge steps, what slows me down are the graphics. I'm not good at it, which means that it cost a lot of time and at the end at most cases I'm not satisfied. But I try my best and when the game is released, maybe I've got some more time to optimize the graphics.
Attached you'll find a graphic of a tavern. At the moment I like it, so far it's the best result I achieved in my graphical experiments. The most difficult thing is to reach the same graphic style in the other buildings... this will cost a lot of additional time :/

Still alive... and working!

It's passed a long time since my last post, nearly 2 months :/ Sorry for that! But I was not lazy in this time, a few weeks ago I published my last app, the first one that is not mentioned to play with. It's a finance app and it's called Financial Overview. A small and simple app to keep the overview on your finances. You can add your revenue and expenditure and the app shows you how much money you have left to spend. Also this is my first app with a widget. With the help of this you've got the overview on your homescreen and can add simple and fast new entries to the app.

At the moment I'm working on a new game. Because it's an early alpha there's nothing to show, except of a few drawings I've done for some graphics. I hope to reach some higher graphic standard as in my last game Air Traffic Controller. Shouldn't be difficult, but I also want some better User Reviews. At the moment there voted 10 users for the app and I've got an average rating of 1,7 stars from 5... thats a little bit disappointing. But maybe the next game will be better. In my dreams it will have got the same average rating like ClickDown: 5 of 5 stars... but I hope with some more people voting for it instead of only 2 ;D.

So let's see what the future will bring... at the moment it's bringing you a scan of my drawings ^^

Easter is near

Easter is near and the chickens are working 24 hours to produce enough eggs, so that we can paint and hide them. For this event I've released a little game called "catch the easter eggs". It's like "whack a groundhog", which we all know from funfairs or from the TV.
Every second an egg appears behind some grass and you have to click it before it disappears. Every egg you hit, gives you one point. When you've got 10 points there will appear two eggs at the same time, after 30 points three eggs and after 70 points there will be four eggs every second.
It's not a big game, but it can be uses for a little break.

And now I'm wishing everybody happy easter and a very nice weekend :)

Too much ideas und not enough time...

It's a little bit sad, I've got too much ideas for games or software I want to develop for android, but I've got not enough time to do it.
I've got an idea for a game in the old egypt, you are the pharaoh and have to manage the building of your grave, which have to be bigger and better than that of your father. You had to manage how you treat the slaves, if you give them extra food rations (makes them happier but also slower) or if you punish them, which will increase there work speed for a while, but also increase there anger and decrease there health. Also you have to build your army to conquer your neighbors, to get more slaves for work or to get ressources. I think this will be one of the bigger things I will develop in the near future.
At the moment I'm on an update for Air Traffic Controller, which brings a new obstacle and with it some new levels. And if I could manage it to run, I want to integrate a share function for the overview of IZUware projects. So if you want (would be fantastic ^^) you could share the barcode or the link to the games at facebook.
Another thing I'm on is a little multiplayergame for 2 players connected with bluetooth. It's just a test, but ClickDown was also born as a test, so maybe this test/game will also be released.

We'll see what will happen :)

Maybe it will work this Weekend...

Two times I was announcing an update to the weekend, two times it came to late. Let's give it another try. I'm making good progress, so maybe(!) there will be an update this weekend.

There are several changes in the game. One of them are the emergencies, I announced a few days ago. Another thing, thats new and makes the game a little bit harder is the instant direction change. At the moment it's still possible to let a plane, which flies to the left, instantly fly to the right, without any "realistical" turn. With the update this will no longer be possible. When you plane is flying to the left and you want it to fly to the right, you first have to turn to the top or the bottom. Then, in the next step you can fly to the right. So you now need 2 steps to turn you plane around. 

At last I want to show some pictures of the warning signs for the emergencies. They should explain themselves, if not ask or wait for the update to get to know ;)

Working on an update? check!

Hey,

I'm still working on an update for Air Traffic Controller, which brings it to Version 1.2.
It includes a better layout for smaller screens (in some cases admob was hovering over the controls so the game was unplayable). Or on bigger screens with a higher resolution the textsize will increase, so it should be easier to read the values of the planes.

Another bigger thing are the new random events. There will be some "emergency cases" you have to care about. While you have to guide the planes to the landing zone, it could happen that an emergency call arrives you, the pilot of a plane is sick and he can't fly the plane any more. So a civilian have to fly it. You will give the same commands to that plane than to the others, but because the civilian isn't a pilot and your tower has to explain every step, the action will take 2 ticks later than normal. So you have to plan wisely how you guide this plane, because a spontaneously change of the direction isn't possible. But that's only one of a few ideas I've got for the emergency cases. You'll find the rest out when the update is ready to download.

Stay tuned! :)

The Child's got a name!

Hey Hey!

Like pronounced on twitter a few minutes ago, there will be the release of a new game, called Air Traffic Controller. And surprise surprise, your task is to guide planes in the air.


In this game you are an air traffic controller, not an artist drawing some stupid lines!

Here you don't have to draw a path which the planes will follow. You have to guide each plane in every second. Have a look at the speed and the height and guide the planes safely to the landing zone.
Tell them to increase or decrease speed and let them fly lower or higher. You have to stay concentrated, if not, planes could crash into another or on the ground if you don't look at their height.

Sounds easy and the first level is not challenging you? Try another level with some mountains or a higher difficulty mode. How much planes will you manage to land safely until something will happen? Or will nothing happen?! Only you will see.

Download it, try it and if you want, rate it or give me some feedback what you like or dislike.

Have fun! :)


Attached a little teaser picture. For screenshots visit us on Facebook
If you want to play, download it in the Android Market.

a few days later...

Now, a few days after the first post on this website/blog, and a few hours of development later, one of the pictures in the first post isn't needed anymore. and it is.... .... .... .... .... .... THE YELLOW PLANE!
If somebody needs it, feel free to use it, I don't need it and it would be sad if it wouldn't be used anywhere.
So far the sad things, let's come to the good news: I want to present a new picture you will see in the game. I'm happy to introduce: the grey panel!

the grey panel

But wait! There is something more, one more picture to show, which will want you to have the damn game now ;)

Here it is: the grey panel with a white border!

the grey panel with a white border

Isn't this fantastic?!?! :D

More details about the game and maybe some more pictures will come in the next days, stay tuned!

IZUware - the Website/Blog

Hello World!

Since the beginning of IZUware on the 6th of December 2011 I was thinking about a cool homepage. There were a lot of plans and ideas, some of them very cool, some totally stupid. As you can see I've choosen nothing of both, I will use this blog as a homepage.
Here I can post statements about ideas for future games, or some news about reached milestone in games being developed.

And because this is the first post, I want to show some pictures of the game I'm currently working on, I hope to release it soon. I will tell later something more about it but for now, a few pictures has to be enough ;)

Oh, just discovered that there is a cut at the explosion... will fix that in the game ^^