MindTheCube
8Jul/11

Pawns! 1.1.2 released, price lowered

Pawns LogoPawns! 1.1.2 is now available in the App Store. This is a bugfix release to address the problem with seeing arrows properly on iPad 2's. (And my thanks to Jesse Holden for designing yet another nifty icon for me!)

I've lowered the price of Pawns! to $0.99 USD. And of course, Pawns! Lite is still available for free, featuring the tutorial plus a generous selection of levels from the full game.

Links:
Pawns! home page
Buy it here

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15Jan/11

Pawns! Lite Released


Pawns! Lite is now available FOR FREE in the App Store.
It features tutorials, 10 puzzles, and 3 OpenFeint/Game Center Achievements from the full game, Pawns!

Links:
Pawns! Lite
Pawns! home page
Buy the full version here

25Sep/10

Coming soon- Pawns for iPad and iPhone!

The page is up for my forthcoming game, Pawns for iPad and iPhone! More than just a port of the Mac & Windows game, this version has many more puzzles, rated for difficulty. The user interface has been redesigned for touch screens. Not to mention the two most-requested features of all: knights and queens!

The game is currently in beta-testing and I hope to release it in about a month. Stay tuned!

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2Nov/09

Pawns puzzle editor?

Now that the dust has settled down on the new website I can finally get back to developing Pawns. I recently reached the milestone of 50 puzzles (including the 9 tutorial puzzles), my original target goal.

For fun I made a private build of Pawns which allows puzzles to be defined in a text file. I gave this to a friend of mine, who soon designed two fun new puzzles of his own, the first ever Pawns puzzles not designed by me. Here's a screenshot:
The first 3rd-party puzzle for Pawns

I'm delighted by this, but it presents me with a dilemma. It would be fun to create an editor for the puzzles and see what people come up with, but it would be a lot of work to support it. For starters, the Pawns engine will run most puzzles I throw at it, but certain complex situations confuse it. This is easily avoided when I design puzzles, but to support arbitrary puzzles from other people I'd have to rewrite the game innards. That's on top of the effort to create a bulletproof editor, and a way to trade or submit puzzles.

Something you hear a lot these days is how fostering communities will make or break your game. And it's true, some games take on a life of their own when the players are given the tools to extend them. I suspect Pawns is not one of those games. However, if you are someone who loves Pawns and want to try making puzzles for it, let me know.