Next Seek 'n Spell Meetup Sunday June 19

Mark your calendars, the next Seek 'n Spell Meetup will be Sunday, June 19 from 1-5pm.  We'll be back in Golden Gate Park doing the usual eating, drinking, merry-making and games-playing.  This time we'll be at the Pioneer Log Cabin Picnic Area, which is the field next to Pioneer Log Cabin with the coveted picnic tables.  Details, including a map and parking info, are on our Meetup page. Hope to see you there!

First Seek 'n Spell Meetup of 2011 Coming Up

Now that the winter rains seem to have gone away, we'll be having our first Seek 'n Spell meetup from 1-5pm Saturday, April 30 at Pioneer East Meadow in Golden Gate Park.  It'll be an afternoon full of grilling, drinking, and games, and if you're in the Bay Area we'd love for you to come!  Details (including a map of the spot where you can find us) can be found at our Meetup page, hope to see you there!

Come Out and Play Festival Comes to San Francisco October 22-24!

We've posted before about the Come Out and Play Festival that happens every June in New York City, as Seek 'n Spell was part of the lineup back in '09, and this October it's coming to San Francisco!

COaP is an amazingly fun outdoor/street games festival, and while there aren't as many games going on as there are in the NYC incarnation, the couple games I have played I just love to death, and the others look like a total blast too.

So set some time aside that weekend to come over to the Panhandle and Golden Gate Park (working schedule is here) and enjoy some of the most fun and innovative games that you'll run across for a while, maybe ever. Extra special bonus: all this fun is available for free!

Seek 'n Spell Meetup Sunday 7.18

Finally, after an all-too-long hiatus, we'll be back in Golden Gate Park a week from tomorrow for another afternoon of food, drinks, and Seek 'n Spell. We'll be at Pioneer East Meadow from 2-5pm, and if you have any questions about any other particulars, details are on the Meetup site.

Happy Earth Day!

Not only is it the day set aside to celebrate our lovely planet, it's also Seek 'n Spell's first birthday! Yes, our wonderful location-based spelling game is now a whole year old. Alas, there will be no cake and presents, but you can celebrate these two exciting events by spending some time playing in the great outdoors.

Winners of ADC2 Announced Today

And alas, Seek 'n Spell was not among the chosen elite. Needless to say, we're a little bummed, but many thanks to everyone who voted us into the final round, and congratulations to all the winners!

Seek 'n Spell Meetup November 15 at 2pm

To celebrate the Seek 'n Spell Android release, moving on to the second round of ADC 2, and all the new things going on with the iPhone version, we'll be having another Meetup next Sunday. The location is back in Pioneer East Meadow in Golden Gate Park, at the picnic area where JFK Dr. and Stow Lake Dr. meet. As always, there will be lots of food and drinks for all, along with extra phones so you get the chance to try out the game. You can also join our Meetup group for up-to-date info for when these go on, hope to see you there!

Seek 'n Spell Moves on to Round 2 of the ADC!

We are excited to announce today that Seek 'n Spell has made the 1st round cut of the Android Developer Challenge (ADC). What's even more satisfying is that the judging in this round was based solely on user feedback. We're happy to hear that all you Android users are enjoying getting outside and spelling words!

The 2nd and final round is underway and user judging is still a large component of an app's overall score. The length of this round is unknown, so grab your Android phone and download the free ADC app from the Android Marketplace. You'll be given apps at random to play around with and judge. Keep an eye out for Seek 'n Spell and have fun!

Seek 'n Spell for Android in the Market!

For everyone with an Android phone who has been impatiently awaiting the arrival of Seek 'n Spell, the wait is finally over! At long last the most exciting mobile spelling game can be yours. Just get that phone out to get the app!

Seek n Spell 1.3 in the App Store

The next update to Seek 'n Spell is finally available in the App Store! Version 1.3 has one very exciting new feature: automated computer-generated players for some extra competition. The CPU players can be added to multiplayer games but are probably most beneficial for single player games so there's way more motivation to run around to get letters. But beware, they're pretty good, so if you're just puttering around, taking your good old time to collect letters, there is a very good chance that you'll lose!

We've also developed a free version of the game for the iPhone, Seek 'n Spell Lite, which is still under review but should be out soon. This app isn't ad-supported, but alas, you only get a measly ten minutes to play per day, and this version doesn't have the computer-generated players. To anyone who might feel the need to whine about this, you're right. This is all an evil ploy to let you try out Seek 'n Spell, only to find that the ten minutes allotted per day does nothing to satisfy your running/spelling lust, forcing you to upgrade to the paid version [insert menacing laugh].

In other exciting news, Seek 'n Spell will no longer be exclusive to the iPhone! We're putting the finishing touches on the Android version of Seek 'n Spell, and it'll soon be available in the market. It will have all the same features as the iPhone version, and what's even better is that iPhones and Android phones can play in the same game! Yes, here we are bridging the gap between Apple and Google, to bring people with smartphones together for fun-filled outdoor spelling competitions. We'll keep you posted on when Seek 'n Spell is officially in the Android market and Seek 'n Spell Lite is in the App Store!

Stow Lake Seek 'n Spell Aug. 23

Don't make any plans for the afternoon of Sunday, August 23, we're holding another Seek 'n Spell Meetup in Pioneer East Meadow near Stow Lake in Golden Gate Park. It'll be picnic-bbq style with lots of food and drinks and games for everyone when they've digested enough to be active. As always, details are at the Meetup site.

Best App Ever...

...is Seek 'n Spell, according to the UK Mobile Phone Blog! Thanks guys!

Seek ’n Spell Sale!

Seek ’n Spell is on sale for $0.99. Get it before the weekend is over and go out to celebrate in style with game of Seek ’n Spell!

Come Out and Play 2009 in NYC June 12-14

This past weekend The Retronyms were in New York City as part of the 2009 Come Out and Play Festival. Seek 'n Spell was one of the games featured, so the San Francisco crew took red-eye flights out Thursday night and spent most of Friday napping until the designer meeting, got some food, and then the games began.

First was the Neo-Cowgirl Faux Rodeo, in which Cowgirls competed against gangs of Rustlers in three events. My favorite event was the bronc riding, played in a ring that's a sheet on which cowgirls placed their hands on the sheeted ground and their feet on an exercise ball, with a rustler at each corner shaking the sheet to dismount them. In the overall competition I took second out of six, but as my father always reminds the family when he wins at cards, second place is just the first loser.

The rodeo was followed by the opening ceremony, Hijack the Band, where smartphone users voted for the styles and musicians they wanted the band to perform as, and Heartbreaker, the Lover's Dilemma, where players rolled dice - or didn't - to find their true love and break as many hearts as possible. The winner broke 24 hearts!

The last event of the evening was CryptoZoo, a mad chase through the streets of New York after strange shy creatures that can only be caught by replicating their movements. The hunt began in Times Square, and with about 100 or so people running backwards, swinging around trees, jumping on posts and moving in other unusual ways, it was exhausting but super fun.

Saturday was mostly spent in Central Park, and the first game we played was Chamball, best described as a mix of tetherball and dodgeball. There is a soccer ball in a net tied to a rope with a bit of bungee which is staked in the ground. The court is the circle the radius of the rope length, and players throw, kick, or swing the ball to knock out the other players.

You can only touch the ball from elbows to fingers and from knees to toes, and getting hit anywhere else gets you out. This is a really fun, albeit sometimes brutal game, and we played for a few hours. Since we were some of the first and last folks there we got gift certificates for free Sauconys, and I won the most games so I came home with my own Chamball setup!

Unfortunately one of us lost a bag with ID, credit cards, phone, etc. inside, so the guys went to cancel the cards and get another phone for Seek 'n Spell the next day while I played Circle Rules Football. This is another great game with a center goal consisting of two posts and a crossbar with each team scoring from opposite directions. Teams try to get an exercise ball through the goal by punching, kicking, dribbling, pretty much anything that doesn't involve holding the ball. The game I played was really close, and my team lost by just one point.

Both Chamball and Circle Rules Football are two games I'd like to get going in SF since they're tons of fun, social, have pretty easy setups and no local organizers. Not sure when that might happen, but stay tuned for details.

The evening was spent back at COaP's headquarters at the Tank, where the first game was Pitfall! Live at the Tank. Yes, a live-action version of the classic video game where players swung on a rope attached to the stage's ceiling across alligators and pits projected onto the stage's screen. Every bit as wonderful as you would imagine. Sadly, as with most video games, I failed miserably on the first couple attempts. But no less fun by any means.

This was followed by the Player Party at the Tank, but didn't stick around for much of that as after hours of play in the park we were HUNGRY. So ate dinner and then sang karaoke. The amazing real kind of karaoke where you have a room to yourself for a 20-person sing-a-long and don't have to listen to strangers' off-key solos.

Sunday was much more mellow with Seek 'n Spell prep occupying the morning, the event itself in the early afternoon, and the awards ceremony afterwards. This was the hands-down highlight of the weekend as Seek 'n Spell won the award for Best Use of Technology! Definitely want to throw out a well-deserved congratulations to the other winners of the Come Out and Play Awards:

• Best New Sport - Circle Rules Football
• Best Use of Space - Ran Some Ransom
• Best Spectacle - Pitfall! Live at the Tank
• Best Use of Narrative - CryptoZoo
• Players' Choice - Groove Moove
• Best in Fest - Circle Rules Football

And I'd like to add well done to all the other designers. There wasn't a game that I played and didn't enjoy, and from talking to the folks who played what I didn't, this seemed to be the general consensus.

The only disappointing part of the weekend was that we didn't get a chance to play all the games, but the ones I went to were all crazy fun. Sadly we don't have any photo or video documentation of the weekend ourselves, but there's a ton of pics of everything on Flickr from those handy with a camera.

The weekend was super busy, and we spent pretty much all the time playing games and hanging out with other folks attending the festival, so there wasn't as much time as I would have liked to explore the city and whatnot, but altogether it was a really fantastic weekend. New Yorkers be sure to set some time aside to make it out for Come Out and Play 2010! Very excited to see what will be there next year.

Seek 'n Spell at E3

Last week, I went down to E3 to do some Seek 'n Spell promotion. It was a bit of a marathon trip, with the conference all day and after parties late into the night, and I'm just now feeling rested enough to write up my thoughts.

These sorts of events are a great chance to get away from my computer for a few days and spend some time talking to people about what we do. Everybody that I talked to was really impressed with Seek 'n Spell, and I even convinced a few people to buy it on the spot so I could give multiplayer demos.

Even though I was at E3 to show off Seek 'n Spell, a surprisingly large number of people were interested in our other apps. Four Track in particular was a big hit. I guess a lot of people in the game industry are also aspiring musicians!

I have a couple of observations about the show: 1) There were a lot more iPhone developers there than I'd expected. I guess iPhone is really starting to establish itself as a gaming platform. 2) The Internet seems really enamored with the new Microsoft project Natal stuff, but I didn't really hear anybody at E3 talking about it. At the show, most of the buzz was about stuff that you could actually get your hands on right there. The guitar hero shows were surprisingly popular.

That's it for now, since I've gotta get prepped for our upcoming trip to the Come Out and Play outdoor games festival in NYC.

New Seek 'n Spell Meetup in SF Civic Center

The next Seek 'n Spell Meetup has been scheduled for Wednesday, June 3, 12pm at the SF Civic Center Park. Get away from the day-to-day office boredom for some fun outside during your lunch break! As always the full info is on the Meetup site.

Seek ’n Spell Receives AIGA Award

The Cleveland Chapter of AIGA: the professional association of design announced award winners for the 2009 Cleveland Design Competition. We're honored that Seek ’n Spell has been recognized with a design award amongst stiff competition and nearly 300 entries. We're doubly honored to be recognized by such esteemed judges such as Jim Ales (Monteray Bay Aquarium), Barbara deWilde (Knopf Publishing), and Jeffery Keyton (MTV).

You can check out more picks from the Reception, and find the Exhibition Catalog at cleveland.aiga.org

Photo by Katie Major

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!

Play Seek ’n Spell with us at Golden Gate Park! Thursday at 1pm

As we mentioned in a Boing Boing Video interview (we're in at about 00:39:00) this morning: if you're in the San Francisco area, come join us for a few rounds of Seek 'n Spell tomorrow (Thurs, March 26). We'll be at the same spot we were at last saturday - in the botanical gardens in Golden Gate Park, by the fountain. Take a look at the map.

We have loaner iPhones you can use. If you want to install it on your iPhone 3G, see instructions after the jump.

To get an installable version, send an email with your UDID to support@retronyms.com so we can make a copy of the game that will work on your phone.

In my opinion, the easiest way to get your UDID to us is to download and install Ad Hoc Helper. It will generate an email with your UDID you can send to us. You can also hook up your phone to your computer, and when the phone gets recognized by iTunes, go to the device's summary page. Click on the serial number, and the identifier (UDID) will magically appear.

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.