Hard decisions

I just released JiggleSaw for the iPad. I’m going to follow in a long tradition of blogging about its creation, so that future indie developers can read it and be inspired to create their games. Which I’m sure they will blog about as well.

I have actually been working on a game for the iPhone or the iPad for over two years. About 9 months ago I got the chance to work full time on my game for a while. The important point is, that game wasn’t JiggleSaw. Several months into full time development I realised that I had no chance of finishing that project with the time I had. I set that project aside and tried to come up with the simplest ideas that I could, so that the whole thing could be wrapped up and on the app store with in the time I had, which was 6 months (yes I have a strange idea of simple). What I came up with was JiggleSaw.

The idea of an animated jigsaw has been kicking around in my head for more than 20 years. It started when I was reading a novel by Piers Anthony. I think it was “Wielding a Red Sword” a character sits at a table covered by a jigsaw. He realises that all the trees in the jigsaw are gently moving in the breeze and that the picture resembles a path he just walked along. While he watches the jigsaw he can see someone else walking up the same path. So the jigsaw was like a magic surveillance camera. I liked the idea and have played with it over the years but never getting much out of it. Could I turn this idea into a game for the iPad/iPhone.

Well to cut a long story short, I did. I’m very glad I aimed for the simplest idea I could come up with because of cause it was a lot more complex than I thought (most of my ideas are). There were lots of design and implementation challenges. Now that JiggleSaw is on the App store for the iPad (the iPhone version is in the future), I have the next challenge of doing promotional work.

I have a few JiggleSaw stories that I want to share, I hope I can get to them in the coming days.

Feel free to ask any questions you want.

Now I have to get back to creating JiggleSaw’s trailer or no one is ever going to buy it. If no one buys it, I don’t get to do this all over again.