My name is Lance. I am the graphic artist behind our games. I have always had an interest in game design, and with the ease of entry of the iphone/ipod touch platform, I couldn't resist. It so happens that I found out that an old high school buddy of mine, Heber, was also extremely interested in creating iphone games. I was lucky enough to partner with him to create polished play llc. I take care of the graphics and sound while he takes care of the coding (and does a fantastic job of it).
Our first game is called "invisible links". A spatial strategy, drawing, golfing, puzzle, memory, maze game. It's really simple, despite my previous sentence. The game was created from the ground up to take advantage of the iphone's unique capabilities. There is nothing currently like it on the app store that I am aware of, so I will hold off on further gameplay explanation, until we are closer to release. Call me paranoid but there are so many "clones" in the app store that you can't be too careful.
We decided to start with this game after discussing many possible ideas we thought we could produce. This was the most fun and innovative idea that just seemed to "fit" the multitouch controls. I can't imagine it existing on any other platform, which is really the kind of gaming experience we are interested in creating. We have been developing since January 2009 and we spend as much spare time as we can invested in the game. It will be in development for a few more months, because we want to provide a "polished" experience that we can be proud of. I realize we are shooting ourselves in the foot a little with a name like polished play. If it's not polished it will be all to easy to make a clever criticism in the reviews. Oh well. Hopefully, you'll give us a break, we are just two guys trying our best after all.
The game has undergone many revisions, and design changes all to try and arrive at a seamless experience. We have tried to critique ourselves often, and gather impressions from beta testers along the way to hopefully end up with the best possible product. I love how the gameplay mechanics have been honed so there are no messy buttons or toggle switches, once you know how to play everything is intuitive, but more on that later.
Here are a few of the title screens we have shuffled through to show some of that process. No gameplay images yet. I will be posting more samples of the game and our experiences developing it. More than likely no one will read or follow this blog till after the game is released, but that's okay. As long as my wife is proud of my work I'll be just fine :)
The next update has been submitted. Taking into account some feedback that the game is very difficult, we have made it easier to unlock the next levels. We have also included 9 new tutorial holes (found at Ned's desk) to help teach the game at a slower pace and also provide some advanced strategy ideas.
