Hey - due to popular demand, I’ve implemented 2-player servers for Galcon for the iPhone / iPod Touch.  Now when you sign into find games, the maximum number of users will be listed next to the game server name.  For example:

“Alpha-3 3/4″ is 3 players on a 4 player server.
“Beta-1 1/2″ is 1 player on a 2 player server.

Hope you have fun with this new feature :)  Tell me how it goes!

-Phil

Hey,

A friend of mine (who helped me develop Galcon for the iPhone / iPod Touch) just put out a new game!  It’s called Smiles, and it’s quite a clever matching puzzle game:

“Smiles is a colorful collection of two carefully crafted puzzle games for gamers of all skill levels, filled to the brim with extra game modes, achievements and more!”

I’ve put up some screenshots and a video on my site, so be sure to check it out!

Enjoy!
-Phil

Hey,

So Galcon 1.3 is finally in the AppStore today Here’s the rundown of the swell features:

• Colorblind option in settings. This changes the colors used in the game to be more accessible to colorblind users. Thanks so much to everyone who responded to my questions about color preferences. The colorblind mode restricts Galcon to using just four colors which I picked as colors nobody listed as conflicting with each-other.
• Deluxe Galcon Music - I’ve added the music from my first video into this edition of the game. For those of you who prefer to listen to your own music, you can go into the Settings App and turn the volume down to 0 and your iMusic should work just fine.
• Various enhancements - The most notable one is the addition of being able to click on enemies planets during the multi-player game to see what their rank and name is. This is handy for helping you gage a player’s skill.

This week I’m also launching a Super Sale of Galcon. The sale price is 4.99 (down from 9.99) and will be running for about one week. No promises I will run it for longer though! Here’s the scoop:

• We’ve (almost) reached our 100,000th multi-player game, it’s time to celebrate!
• Everyone wants improved match-ups in games. The way to do this is to have a huge increase in players. Right now there are usually around 12 people playing at any given time. If we can get this to 100 or more people, then there will always be people available with comparable rank to play against!
• So tell your iPhone / iPod Touch using friends that NOW is the time to get Galcon while it’s on sale! Yay!

Here’s some awesome user testimonials:

“Just imagine, a game so fast it could be over in 20 seconds, so strategic it could take 15 minutes, so well networked that at any moment there are always countless people blasting each other, so fun that you will play it hours at a time even when there’s no WiFi, and so addictive that you’ll soon start seeing little triangle spaceships every time you close your eyes!” - davidejorgensen

“Hands down, the most intuitive game for the iPhone. And multiplayer…are you kidding me?! This game is awesome and it truly shows the capabilities of the iPhone. Developers learn please learn from these guys as they have made one hell of an app!” - Higa27

“Wow!!! I bought this game because of the added ONLINE play, I am impressed! I think this game is officially the best Game on the App Store! You’ll be crazy not to own this game…$10 is a steal.” - tushoih

-Phil

Hey, just a short while ago Galcon 1.2 was released on the iTunes store! It’s a very exciting update, not only because it allows you to toggle the sound effects and select all the planets via a double-press … but it also includes the addition of multi-player Galcon! So now’s the time to tell all your iPhone/iPod friends that they MUST to buy Galcon so they can play it with you for hours on end :)  Here’s a snapshot of the server list:

Hope you enjoy Galcon 1.2 !!! If you want to help out, blog about it! Make a youtube video about it! Tell your friends and your enemies and your boss about it! And put up posters and start a support group and buy a t-shirt!

-Phil

Hey, I’m trying to get Galcon-iphone to work for the color-blind population

Here’s the colors I’m thinking about using.  If you are color-blind can you tell me if you can discern between the colors?  If not, please tell me which numbered colors you are having difficulty with.

Thanks!
-Phil

Thanks to everyone who’s bought and played the game and left a review! Also thanks to touch arcade for writing a review of Galcon. So far there have been two main requests that I’ve seen in the reviews:

Where’s the Sound?!!

I had some technical trouble getting sound working originally, but thanks to all your pleading I was able to figure out how to get sound to work in Galcon. It now has the sound effects that have always been an important part of the Galcon experience. I’m still not planning on adding music, as I’d rather listen to my iPod tunes. Quick usage tip: if you want to adjust the volume of your music, or skip to the next track WHILE playing Galcon, just double tap the Home button and the iPod brings up a dialog box to let you do just that!

(I’ve just uploaded this update to the Apple dev site, so it may be a few days before they approve it. So you’ll have to suffer soundlessly for a little bit more.)

We want Multi-Player!!

Indeed, multi-player was one of the things that made the shareware version of Galcon such a hit! And I totally can’t wait to get it on the iPhone But I think it’ll be a few months before I can really get around to that. It will not connect with the shareware version of Galcon, primarily because the play-field size is so different, it wouldn’t really work out. (Shareware Galcon handles around 65 planets on screen during a good MP match, the iPhone can only handle about 25 planets on screen.)

Thanks for all your reviews and comments!
-Phil

Hey folks! It’s finally here - Galcon for the iPhone and iPod Touch

You can get it from the iTunes Store

Here’s a video of me playing it:

Here’s some bzawesome screenshots:

So, hey, I think we’ve got a fun opportunity here folks .. So far there are only a few games for the iPhone that are really good. I bet with a bit of good olde-fashioned grass-roots hype we could get the word out and get Galcon to the top of the list! So here’s what to do:

• tell all your iPhone toting friends about it!
• blog about it! twitter about it! whatever!
• play it and make a YouTube video of it!
• up-vote this on your favorite news site!
• leave a review on the iTunes site!

Anyway, there’s lots more exciting Galcon news coming over the next few months so stay tuned!

Tallyho!
-Phil