iCombat

After 8 days waiting to be approved by Apple, iCombat is accepted and “Ready for Sale.”  I was pretty patient during the wait but by today I was starting to get worried.  I shot off a few e-mails to Apple, posted my scenario to a couple of websites and waited, and late this evening I found out that we were approved.  When I spoke to the team they thought it was an April Fool’s joke, which thankfully it wasn’t because we are now in the App store.  You can check out our description and buy it in the iTunes store here.

While I have been vague about what iCombat would be until now, I wanted to give you some background as to why we chose to do a classic arcade style tank game.  I grew up in the mid 80’s playing a beat up Atari 2600 – it was behind the times even then (let alone now!) but the good side of having the outdated console was that I could buy old Atari games at used book stores for under a dollar. I didn’t have the money, or need, back then to buy a newer console and it didn’t matter because the Atari had some of the best game play design of any console I have ever played.  Simple rules, easy to use controls, a fast learning curve, all of these things helped make it much easier than picking up today’s games (except maybe the Wii).

The game that captured my attention most was Combat, a 27 game in one combo pack that included the Tank game.  There were many variations of play, one of which was Tank pong – here you fired missiles (squares) at the other tank (a rectangle) and they could bounce off of walls and hit the enemy.  For me the bouncing missiles and fierce 2 player versus mode hooked me, and so when the iPhone launched we saw the opportunity to bring a similar type of game play to the younger generation of gamers.  The idea was to stick to simple game logic but utilize the powerful features of the iPhone to create something great.  Truthfully, we just created it also because we wanted to play it – and we tried to stay true to the game play fundamentals that made the original games so addictive.  And while there are half a dozen tank style games in the App store, we hadn’t found one that scratched our itch for this classic arcade style play.

We hope, after playing, you will start to share our enthusiasm for tank games and that you will become a fan of iCombat.  We also want to make iCombat better in future updates, so please send us your feedback at icombatgame@gmail.com or post something here.  We are planning to offer prizes of some sort (maybe t-shirts or something) to anyone whose idea is implemented in future updates so send us your best suggestions for future changes such as new weapons, levels, enemies, etc.  If your idea is good and others support it in the comments we will do our best to make it happen.  I will be posting some ideas of my own in the coming days so don’t be shy to shoot them down if you think they are weak!

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