Blogs - PhilBee

There hasn't been one single factor that has contributed to the game arriving a little later, we've simply tried to make Eggs in Space as good and well-rounded as we possibly can. A bit of perfectionism seems like a good idea for our first App, each improvement can only add to our sales but it would be well worth doing things properly if only to make us feel truly proud of what we've achieved so far.

We've been adding little effects here and there (splats on the camera, reflection on the spaceship's console, that sort of thing) while also coming up with a lovely new home screen. We also got lured into using Unity Pro and iTween 2, so there was a few days spent finding out what they could do for us and how to get the most out of them.

This approach reflects our novice status in the world of Apps, it's all a big learning experience, so it would be a shame not to use each new insight we gain. It's amazing how far we've come and how the game has evolved into such a subtly different beast.

We thought we designed a great game from the off, but in hindsight that wasn't quite the case. The initial concept and basic look of the game has remained has planned but so much stuff has been invented on the fly. We've added a whole new game mode, an award system and so much text you are unlikely to read the same things in the same order twice - Eggs in Space is constantly moving and improving, just like we are as developers.

We are The Lonely Bee, four pals who stand at the start of our app odyssey, making our first proper video games. We’re almost as old as the video game (30-ish) but our experience lies in music, animation and web development, so this is us learning the ropes in the full glare of the app store. Games have been on our agenda for some time, but you know how life gets in the way.

So who are we four Lonely Bees?

John Keefe is a master coder, the multi-talented number jockey whose favourite song is Flight of the Conchords’ “The Distant Future” because it’s the only song he’s found with a binary solo.

Andy ‘Agent’ Cooper is a whizz with a pen and a master of all things animated. He’s working on discovering a new colour as we speak.

Chris Barker looks slightly like a suave Lego man and is a web designer by day, a respected musician by night and a brilliant DJ by even-later-at-night.

My name’s Phil Charnock and I’m going to be documenting the whole thing for you right here while using the old noggin to dream up ever more silly schemes to keep the others from loitering on street corners.

We’ve been planning on getting involved since the app store first opened, but it’s only in the last few weeks that everything has come together. Our first effort will be Eggs in Space; an action puzzler that features a whole lot of eggs flying at your face from a black hole somewhere in the cosmos. It’s a battle between good eggs and bad eggs that we think looks good enough to eat. We only realised later that we had done our first designs and coding on the 30th anniversary of Pac Man, which seemed rather appropriate. The only release date of a game that I ever remembered was Sonic Twosday, so I had no idea about this milestone falling on the same day that our first game started coming together.

Anyway, this blog will follow how we got here and we’ll be sharing a few development pics and goodies from Eggs in Space with you over the next few weeks as we build towards our first app hatching and meeting the outside world. It should be in the store before the end of July if the Apple approval Gods are kind to us and our cyber-baby, we'll keep you posted both here and on our own blog site www.thelonelybee.com