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I’ve been building my latest MonsterUp game for a few months now. The game has been accepted as part of the AppCademy program from Nokia and Microsoft and will be included in there when it’s done and passes all the necessary certification. Very happy and proud about that, but this is not what this post is about at all:)

The MonsterUp new game is being built using Unity and I’ve been learning a lot about the engine and tools while doing that. This does mean that I had to refactor a few things a few times already, but at some point I wondered what it would be like to make something new with all the things I’ve learned so far. So, I’ve decided to take a little break for a week or so from building the MonsterUp game and make something else completely.

The new game would have something to do with physics and maybe sports, so I chose to do a small archery game. The game set out to be an archery competition game with obstacles and moving targets set in different locations. And it also needed a cool name, where my friend Paddy helped. So the final name of the game is Daryl, from the Walking Dead character of course:)

I built the game using Unity in about one week, including integration with iOS stuff like Facebook and Twitter sharing, GameCenter achievements and leaderboards as well as Everyplay integration for sharing gameplay replays to social networks and youtube. Yes, Unity is awesome and the ecosystem is very well formed allowing all sort of nice things. The game features 5 different themes, Countryside, Beach, Old Castle, Rainy Forest and Snow Mountains. The game will be released shortly for iPhones, iPods and iPads (in both landscape and portrait mode) for free including the first of 5 themes. The rest are available for purchase as a single IAP inside the game. I also added some consumable bonues items that make shots less tricky, since they help with the shaky hands of the archer, the wind that affects the trajectory of the arrows and allow undoing some, ehm, unfortunate shots. None of these is essential in enjoying the game for free, but they add to the experience.

So there you have it, a free game for iOS made in a week using Unity that looks damn good, plays great and is fun! When the game is released, it will be available here.

So the new Surface tablets, Surface 2 replacing Surface RT (well, actually the original RT will stick around) and Surface Pro 2 replacing Surface Pro (duh). The Pro version looks like a powerhouse, awesome hardware with a few flaws (I would love to see a Retina like display on that thing and the price is REALLY high – get a high-end Pro 2, a battery cover and a dock and you are looking at $2,200 ffs) but at least batter life looks solid, which was my main complain with the original Pro.

The new Surface 2 though is interesting, since my previous post was all about my thoughts about that. Most of them were unfortunately not taken into consideration. The obvious ones that were actually done were the CPU power (the mention 3-4 times faster CPU but I have to use one to really see if that is the case) and mostly the don’t-throw-the-user-on-the-desktop-if-they-didn’t-specifically-ask-for-it with the 8.1 update since most of the settings are now on the metro environment. LTE is also supposingly coming early 2014.

The things they didn’t do from my suggestion list were kind of important too. Price seems in line with the previous Surface RT and no kind of keyboard is still bundled. Too bad, that would make the sale so much easier.

Another thing that I think should NOT happen is the availablity of the accessories which is all over the place. While the Surface themseves will be available on launch day, the docking station, car charger and power keyboard will not. Rather they will be available “early 2014”. Not cool.

In any case, the “blades” concept seems an awesome idea overall, with interchangable snap-on keyboard replacements for various functionalities, such as the music mix “blade” that was demonstrated. I hope they decide to open up the system for third parties to be able to develop “blades” for the Surface family.