Some of you may have heard the news that AGON is shutting down operations at the end of June. If you haven’t, well… AGON is shutting down operations at the end of June. Adam has selected this inspirational video to help ease the transition.
To make sure Tilt to Live doesn’t run into any problems, we’re disabling AGON online connectivity from our game and using Game Center exclusively for global leaderboards and achievements. What does this mean for those that are living under a rock and don’t have internet connectivity on their devices? It shouldn’t mean much since they can’t update anyway, or read this post for that matter. Your offline highscores will still be stored locally and you’ll be able to see your highest scores on the gametype select screen. When you tap on ‘Awards’ you will also still be able to see which awards you’ve unlocked and which ones are left to pursue.
If you’re worried about losing highscores or achievements, I’d recommend setting up a Game Center account (if you haven’t already) and making sure that Game Center is enabled in Tilt to Live’s options menu. This allows the game to save awards and highscores to Apple’s Game Center servers, so you’ll be able to restore them easily even between re-installs, or across devices.
We’re working on pushing an update out for Tilt to Live first, followed by Tilt to Live HD, and then a Lite update. Should be submitted sometime next week.
Maybe it’s just because we made the game, but Alex and I have been dorking out for a week or so about Tilt to Live merch. We auditioned Cafepress.com as a provider (primarily with Game II in mind), and what we’ve ordered has come back pretty cool. Plus, their return policy is more than reasonable if you don’t like your item.
So at long last, you can express your enthusiasm for Tilt to Live with an Overrun tee (pictured), or a super-high quality poster print. I think my favorites are the Caffeine Blast mug and the Pointillism print, which looks really nice in a frame in my office.
Fifteen lucky winners from the mailing list are getting free posters, so keep an eye out for that email today, and tell us where to send it!
I’ll have some cool stuff to show from Game II next week. Fun fact: we do have a name picked out already, we just can’t start using it until we’re finished tying up the rights. Don’t wanna jinx it.
¡Viva la Coop! has arrived for the iPhone and iTouch! Those of you with a healthy pool of potential partners should be pretty stoked. For the rest of you, I have some recommended reading.
We aren’t able to give promo codes away for our IAP anymore, since our in-app promo code system didn’t sit well with a certain fruit company. So instead, 30 mailing list subscribers are getting a free copy of the Tilt to Live Soundtrack! Tomorrow morning. When my Thursday night shows aren’t on.
Next week, Alex and I journey to our first ever GDC conference. I know it’s supposed to be GD Conference, but this is sort of a family blog. From what I gather, we’ll be spending the week attending lectures and drinking heavily. So basically college.
When we return, we’ll be putting the finishing touches on ¡Viva la Coop Gigante! That’s the two-iPads-required version, one of the more expensive multiplayer situations we can imagine. But it’s not too hard to port over, so why not? And after that… something new.
Happy birthday Tilt to Live! We got you cooperative play… whenever it’s approved. And happy birthday Steve Jobs! We got you 30% of our revenue. Don’t spend it all in one place.
I didn’t leave much to write about in the post. ¡Viva la Coop! for iPhone/iTouch is submitted as of yesterday, so pending approval you can expect it by the end of this month.
We got the following email recently from a serviceman in the Israeli army:
“hey there, first of all, i want to thank you for making, hands down, the best iPhone game i have ever played. Tilt To Live is the only game i was ever able to justify spending money for, and it was worth every penny. I serve in the Israeli army, and i work with a team of people who are all obsessed (thanks to me) with tilt to live. i catch my commander playing on my iPhone all the time, and its a known running joke that our whole office is addicted. Tilt To Live is probably responsible for countless wasted work hours, and its only tolerated because the game is so awesome. the reason i am writing is because i am (finally) finishing my army service next week, and i really wanted to give my team a going away present that was somehow related to Tilt To Live. is there any way that i can acquire a poster or something related to the game? i think that that would be the most appropriate present to get them, and believe it or not, that probably how ill be most remembered anyway (i hold the current record). any help would be greatly appreciated. keep up the good work! JON”
We decided to indulge his request for two reasons: (1) I happened to have ideas for Jew-themed weapons, and (2) you do not say no to people with guns. Below, the poster for a fantasy spin-off.
Having sent iPad’s Viva la Turret off for approval, we were once again faced with our favorite dilemma: what’s next? Artwork and concepts for Game II have been piling up since March of last year. But in the volumes of never-realized ideas for Tilt to Live, one has persistently tugged at our heartstrings: cooperative play. Before we move on, we just gotta.
February 24th is TtL’s first birthday, and what better present is there for our game-child than two player Viva la Turret? None, and don’t tell us how to raise our kid.
Why Viva la Turret? It works more naturally as a two-player game than the other modes. One of you will man the Perforator, defending your imperiled teammate as he grabs jewels and brings you fresh pickups. All of the rules and dot behaviors are being redone to accommodate two players, so expect a fresh remix of familiar Viva elements.
Coop (nearby/offline only) will be a free update for anyone who’s purchased the Viva la Turret Expansion. The iPhone version is about 60% complete, and should be released around the end of next month.
I was just notified by a friend of a rather cool video that I just had to share. Someone built a tilt motion controller for the iPhone and plans on mounting it to a camera to allow a robot to play accelerometer based games. This has been done before with Guitar Hero, but the cool thing is that they were using Tilt to Live to test the controller! Check out the video below and the short article here.
This looks to be shaping up to be a really cool project. You can read more about it on Shane Wighton’s blog along with some other neat stuff.
2010 Best App Ever Awards
The new year has begun, but we’re still feeling the tug of 2010! Specifically, the 2010 Best App Ever Awards are in full swing, and Tilt to Live has been nominated in several categories. We need your votes to win! You can place your vote anytime before January 25, 2010. The winners in each category will be announced at the 2011 Macworld Expo! So go vote, tell your friends to vote, tweet it, and post on Facebook! Here are the categories for which Tilt to Live has been nominated. Just follow the links to vote:
Best Game Controls (Tilt to Live)
Best Game Controls (Tilt to Live HD)
To have gotten so many nominations is really unexpected. Let’s see if the Tilt to Live community can make their voices heard! If we don’t win, that’s okay. We’ll still make games for you.
OpenFeint Fire Sale
In case your voting finger is still itching, Tilt to Live is also up for a Fire Sale promotion on OpenFeint’s Game Channel. I don’t have a witty reference to Die Hard at the moment, so I’ll leave that to the professionals. Tired of your friend complaining that Tilt to Live costs $2.99? (Because you already have it, right?) Here’s your chance to do something about it. If we have at least 2,000 votes by tomorrow, Tilt to Live will go on sale for the weekend for 99¢. The power, is YOURS! *Fades to black*
With the new update, Tilt to Live finally has enough music to make a short soundtrack! You can stream it all you want below. The only track we couldn’t secure the rights to was Gauntlet’s theme, so our apologies to fans of the mambo.
You could also support our composer by buying a copy on our Bandcamp site ($1.99), or on iTunes ($3.99 – we can’t tell iTunes what to charge). Or if you’re quick, you could click here and enter one of these five codes to get it for free:
3fgq-63ee
wau7-g4f3
p65v-3q54
rnr8-hz2a
ddm2-5tx7
Ten more free copies are heading out to our mailing list today, all of whom are getting a coupon code that reduces the soundtrack to 90¢. Now we’re friends with benefits!