The results are in, and if you keep reloading this page there’s a 1 in 7 chance that Outwitters will be at the top of the Honorable Mentions for the coveted Best App Ever Award! We’re truly grateful to join such excellent company as Punchquest, The Room, and for some reason Google Maps. We even took home 2nd Place for Best Multiplayer Game of 2012, beat by a super-slick word game called Letterpress, which is totally fine by us.

Thanks a butt-ton to everyone that went out of their way to nominate and vote us!

Of the map pool we’ve been testing, we’re narrowing things down to three new single player maps and two 2v2s to include in our 2nd Gen Maps. If the poll we set up stays true, it looks like we won’t be retiring any of the first gen maps. At least the chances of you landing on your least favorite map will be watered down with the new additions.

We’ve been looking at analytics data since the last update’s Bramble buff, and it looks like he still needs a little help. So in 1.6, expect to see thorn patches with FOUR health. And we’ll keep cranking that number up until the damn thing works.

I’m kidding. We changed something else about Bramble, which you’ll see when the update hits. We plan to submit next week.

The new Outwitters maps are still being explored by testers, but you common folk should see some submission movement in the next week or two. I like testing against Alex, because I can beat Alex. I don’t enjoy testing against certain Super-Titans, because I believe they can read my thoughts.

Concurrently, Alex and I are fiddling with some new game design tools and something called a “Git”, which (as I understand it) allows you to push tortoises across the internet. I dream of a day when we learn the ultimate development tool, which we never replace with a different tool, so that our brains can finally be at peace. And then atrophy into a delightful pudding.

The new maps are on their way to our beta testers for the weekend. Names like Sweetie Plains II have been replaced by names like “Chocwit Chip”.

New maps are in the works for our next update, and we’re conducting a poll for which old maps should be retired from league rotation. You can also vote to keep all the old maps in play, so there’s no reason not to go vote right this second!

Today marks the last day of January Idea Diarrhea (TM). Wait. I can do that better. January Idea-rrhea.

We’re wrapping up our game design experiments today, so early next week we can resume making things to sell, to make a living or whatever. First up on the agenda: Outwitters remix maps! We’ve got some new designs like Foundry II and Thorn Gulley II that we’re eager to balance for a release. Should have those ready sometime in February.

As you’ve likely already noticed, Outwitters 1.5 is out! This update buffs the Veggienauts’ thorn patches to 3 health, so enemy soldiers and runners will have a harder time cutting through. You can even medic-boost them to 4, so no one can kill them in one hit! Since it’s tougher to clear thorns from the map, we’re giving out a bonus wit for each patch that’s killed directly.

Changes:

• Bramble thorns now have 3 health
• Players get 1 wit for killing a thorn directly
• The League Point system was amended to make divisions more competitive
• Fixed some memory leaks that would cause crashes

The special unit buff update (which does not have a very catchy name) is still in Apple’s review queue at the moment, but should be arriving soon. We’ve already had a few inquiring minds asking about what’s next: Gametypes? New team? New maps? We haven’t actually decided yet. It’s what we’ve been thinking about all month.

Around the start of the new year, Alex and I decided that January would be dedicated to experimentation. A time to explore different prototypes of things that could be, before we dive back into the production grind. We’ve still got one more week of exploration before we have to figure out that whole “what’s next” thing.

This slipped under our radar, but voting is underway for the Best App Ever awards and we’ve been nominated in FIVE flippin’ categories! Those are nominations by the public, so it really means a lot that you guys thought us worthy. Click a link to support Outwitters in whatever category you like. If we win something because you voted, it’s kinda like you won something, eh?

1. Best App Ever
2. Best Multiplayer Game
3. Best Board Game
4. Best Strategy Game
5. Best Free to Play Game