[In this article, independent developer Martin Finch reflects on how his two-man team went about creating Go Chick Go Free, covering what he learned and offering advice to other aspiring mobile developers.]
Five years ago if you had told me that I'd be writing an article about a mobile game my partner and I did in five weeks, I probably would've laughed. In the grand scheme of things, writing an article isn't a major accomplishment, but it's a big milestone for us and we're super happy to be here.
This is simply intended to be an informal look-back on the development process of Go Chick Go Free for iPhone. I hope it gives other developers some useful ideas, inspires a little, and generally entertains.
About us, we're two developers based in Shanghai and originally from the UK. We've been out here for about five years now and have worked for various game companies. We lovingly call ourselves Cobalt Jungle Studios.
Martin Finch (programmer, designer of Go Chick Go Free) "Don't smile, you'll reveal all those wrinkles."
Stace Jamieson (art director, designer of Go Chick Go Free) "You as well, no smiling!"
Go Chick Go Free was first released on the iPhone app store on April 13, 2011 after five weeks of hardcore 8-12 hour days of development. It came as a result of us unsuccessfully trying to gain investment for an online 3rd person shooter we were developing.
Gimme The Power
In early 2010 I caught up with Stace and told him about a team of programmers who I've just started working with to release a multiplayer 'dog fight' style third person title. Great, we've got the team, the idea, let's get to work! That quickly fell through after a few months and we were left with zero as all code and assets were with the team, gggrrrrrr!
So in August 2010, I decided that I needed to put the power in my hands, and I started to learn Unity with the idea that I can put together a third person shooter demo and get an investment to build the full game. Stace was quickly on board, and we started to flesh out the overall design and work on a demo level. All was going well except for one big problem: money. To build a third person shooter requires a lot of capital, and investors weren't willing to risk so much on a new team that didn't have any track record (even though we'd worked on plenty of successful titles before). Again, we hit a brick wall, we didn't have control and we didn't have the power, double gggrrrr! This is where mobile games and iPhone came in.
We knew that we could build relatively simple iPhone games in a short amount of time, and in early February 2011 I finished working at EA in Shanghai and quickly went to the local Apple retail store in Shanghai to grab a Macbook Pro. By the next day, we started work on what would eventually become Go Chick Go Free.
