After Blossoms, software programmer Noel Baldacchino is hard at work on developing more apps, says Christina Goggi.
While many of us were celebrating the launch of the iPhone 4S in Malta last November, local software programmer Noel Baldacchino was celebrating something even greater – the release of a game he had worked on for three years on Apple’s App Store.
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One month later the special edition of Blossoms, as the game is called, was released at the TUM Digital Arts event in Germany – it ranked fourth in the Game Development contest.
The journey didn’t stop there. The game was noticed by Research In Motion staff and they immediately supplied Noel with tablet hardware to do a Blackberry Playbook version of the game.
Here’s a peek into the creation and success of a game created by a local software programmer who wasn’t afraid to think outside the box.
What is the concept behind Blossoms and how does it work?
Blossoms is not a mainstream style game. There is nothing to shoot at and it doesn’t require frenzied clicking action. Also, for my first game project on iOS, I didn’t want to do just another puzzle game, with coloured boxes to click, or spaceships lining up to be shot. This has already been done by others, a thousand times over. Rather, I wanted to do something more innovative, even if it might not appeal to the conventional game player.
The concept of the game is built around the idea of nature and karma. Coloured leaves are charged with positive karma while black ones carry negative karma.
The player can control and master wind gusts to drift the negative leaves out of the way, while diverting the colourful positive ones into the Fountain of Youth. As soon as the Fountain of Youth is charged with enough positive karma, the game moves onto a more challenging season.
What inspired you to create Blossoms?
The tranquillity of nature, the beauty of a simple lifestyle, the positivity of good deeds, and the appreciation of non-materialistic things in life all inspired me. Living in a relaxed environment, like the one portrayed in Blossoms, is the best option for healthy living.
What audience did you have in mind when you created the game?
Mostly casual gamers of all ages, who want to kill some time.
What did the creation of Blossoms involve?
I started investigating iOS development in summer 2008. In the beginning, what attracted me was the challenge of experimentation with a new platform. Then App Store exploded shortly after.
After building a few simple apps for my own enjoyment, I decided to pack all the knowledge I had accumulated into a set of organised code libraries and build my own 2D engine. That took me around 18 months of laborious work.
The first version of Blossoms took four weeks of work. More than 90 per cent of the game logic is made up of mathematical formulas to mimic the way leaves react to different forces of wind in nature.
Apart from doing all the programming work, I also managed the whole project myself, and liaised with the various artists who would work on the artwork and music.
Do you see Blossoms going far?
The game is free so there is no financial aim with this project. There were 11,000 downloads in the first three days of the original game release.
I also posted it on a number of local Facebook iPhone-related groups, but sadly less than 0.1 per cent of all those downloads were generated from the Maltese App Store.
Looking back, was it worth all the hard work?
With non-commercial projects, it’s always a work of love. Bringing an idea scribbled on paper to life brings such satisfaction. I released a special edition of the game at a game development contest in Germany (TUM) last December, and this attracted the attention of RIM, who very graciously offered to supply Blackberry Playbook tablet hardware for the development of the game onto their platform – this should be out late next month.
Do you have any other projects in mind?
I am working on a puzzle game with the same team of artists who helped with the creation of Blossoms. I also have various projects that are in the final stages of development, including an eco-friendly game for children, an interactive storybook (original story), a pre-school educational title for young kids, which will be free, and a fast-paced arcade game.
Ms Goggi is a web marketing content specialist and a regular blogger on various tech websites.