Seek 'n Spell Approved by Apple!

The past few months of work have finally come to fruition, and you'll soon be able to get Seek 'n Spell in the App Store! The tentative release date is Monday, but that could potentially change. We'll keep you posted on the details.

We're pretty stoked about the release, as there aren't any other apps that utilize iPhone technologies in quite the same way. There are a ton of opportunities for developing additional outdoor GPS games, and it's really exciting to have created such an innovative product.

If you've been following the blog, you'll have seen the video of the first official play test for the new app, some screenshots of later testing, and posts for our weekly games. All this should give you the gist of things, but we haven't really provided an in-depth explanation of Seek 'n Spell. So if you haven't yet taken a look at the site or the latest video to see what it's all about, here's everything you need to know.

Seek 'n Spell combines outdoor spaces with virtual letters in a mad scrambling competition to collect letters and make the most words, thus proving yourself to be faster and have a larger vocabulary than all your friends. The basic steps for enjoying Seek 'n Spell are simple:

1. Grab a few of your iPhone-toting buddies and head out to the nearest outdoor space (like a park). Since the game uses GPS, try to stay away from tall trees or buildings that might interfere with the signal.
2. Fire up Seek 'n Spell, create or join a game, enter your initials, pick how long you want to play, and wait for the satellite map of your location to load.
   
3. When the game starts, a bunch of letter tiles will be dropped randomly around your playing field.
4. Race each other to collect the letters. You'll be able to see yourself and the other players on the map, so use this information to get the letters you need before your friends.
5. Spell out your best 3+ letter words. Longer words mean more points! Try to get the golden letters if you can - they double your word score.
   
6. When time runs out, the person with the most points gets to rub it in everyone's face.
   

This is how the fun begins, and we've already started thinking about what features we'll add for the v.2 release down the road. One thing we have in mind is bonus power-up tiles that could freeze people's movements for 15 seconds, shuffle letters around the board, or make your pick-up radius larger.

Some other ideas include a link to a site where you can schedule games for parks in your area and leaderboards to track high scores at specific locations. There could also be different game modes, where you compete to spell the first word, longest word, most words, etc.

If you have any thoughts on other features to make Seek 'n Spell more awesome, we'd love to hear them!

Seek ’n Spell Playtesting (and first screenshots!)

Yep... she beat me

My wife Dawn and I did some impromptu playtesting of Seek ’n Spell late this afternoon (I know the San Francisco team played a bunch today as well... I'll see if I can pester them into posting something). I fired up the latest and greatest build, and actually managed to get it installed on both phones, and hustled out the door to Lakewood Park.

It was actually a very nice day here in Cleveland (alllllmost feels like spring). And all the people running and walking in the park must have wondered what we were up to as we wandered and chased after letter tiles.

It's been since January since I last tested this on the actual device in Vegas, and I must say it's come a long way! Everything is looking great, all the tiles are sharp and crisp on the map. Gameplay is solid. We really didn't have any crashes to speak of, and were able to play 4-5 full games.

Some more impressions and screenshots after the jump...

Hot off the iphone, here are some actual screenshots straight from my iPhone of the games we played (I think these are actually the first screenshots we've posted of Seek ’n Spell):

In middle of a game... I've collected a bunch of letters including a double-score tile (sweet). Players are indicated by the colored circles with arrows showing which direction they are headed in. I'm purple with "JPW" as my initials, and Dawn is the yellow opting for the more minimal "D".

Later in the game, few tiles remaining in my stash... well it was worth a shot.

Going for a longer word... don't quite have the letters for it yet.

Overall, it was a lot of fun! Dawn had never played before, but after a couple games was crushing me in score. I personally loved it because since the early days of work on this thing, I've been using sat images of Lakewood Park trying to imagine what it would be like actually to play there, so I finally got to find out!

I'm hoping to organize a larger playtest this weekend - comment here if you're in the Cleveland area and interested.

First Official Scrambble playtest

On january 8th, we were able to head out to a park in Las Vegas, and test out the new game we have in the works. Tentatively called Scrambble, it uses the iPhone's GPS to combine real spaces with virtual objects to create a competitive word game. The object is to collect letter tiles, and create words to get the most points. It's intended to be played with friends in a park or other outdoor space.

Scrambble is the output of the second annual "Retronyms Debacle". This is an event we hope to make a tradition out of where we gather the whole team together and try to bang out a product in a little over a week.