Yesterday in our Patreon post we heard from the one and only Justin Smith, the evil genius behind the totally insane Enviro-Bear 2010 ($1.99) and several other indie titles we love. I’m kind of trying to flip back and forth between tiny indie devs and larger studios, so today we’re alternating to FDG Entertainment, a studio which has released and/or published so many great games it’s hard to pick one to highlight. I guess most people would know Oceanhorn ($6.99) but they’ve got a full catalog of similar awesome premium games that fit directly into the mold of what people around here are always looking for.
If for some insane reason you missed out on the whole Oceanhorn phenomenon, you should do something about that. Here’s the trailer:
And here’s Thomas, one of the point men behind the company who has brought such radial things to the App Store:
I’m Thomas, one of the three founders of FDG Entertainment. We’ve produced mobile games since 2002 and started with black and white J2ME games for feature phones. When the iPhone came out we began to look for related sites in 2008 and immediately got glued to the TouchArcade homepage ever since. It became our one-stop place to find out what’s hot in the international iOS developer community and the US market. TA is a place with people who understand games, in fact – breathe games – just as we all do here at FDG Entertainment. TA became part of our daily routine, right when getting into the office and sitting down for the first coffee. It would be terrible without it.
TouchArcade was a key factor in our success because they love quality and everyone gets a chance – just like Apple. When we worked on our first iOS game Bobby Carrot Forever ($3.99), it was so exciting to find it featured on the TA homepage. The community was great and we got lots of feedback. Editors even gave us tips on how we should design the touchscreen controls which was very helpful.
iPhone development was such a huge leap compared to the J2ME business. Those colors, the powerful CPU/GPU, the international marketplace! Thanks to Apple and TouchArcade we managed to release a game that was featured on iTunes with a big banner and a following community. This banner, our first Apple feature, saved our company from going bankrupt. The last years of J2ME business hurt us badly because of the device fragmentation and huge “mandatory device support lists" from mobile operators. The release of the iPhone and its success was truly a game changer. Thank you everyone! Today we are known for producing and publishing high quality games. Our success allowed us to team up with great developers around the world and work with them on new game ideas and truly fantastic games. Say stop if you know any of these awesome games from our iOS catalogue: Slayin, Oceanhorn, Banana Kong, Clear Vision 17+, Beyond Ynth, Across Age, Parachute Panic, Cover Orange, Red Ball 4, Crystal Siege, Paperama, Tentacle Wars and many more… Please search for us on iTunes 😉
Great, I’ve been reminded of Slayin again. That game is so good it’s stupid, and I’ve been going in spurts playing it since it was first released a little over two years ago. Anyway, I love that we’ve been able to help out FDG so much, it’s crazy to think of a universe where they weren’t able to get the boost they needed to become an App Store staple. If you agree…
