Just the amount of persons of the leaderboards a few months ago. Hopefully there were more who just weren't on game centre.
Minotaur Rescue, Minotron and Gridrunners are my favorites in that order. Damn I love Minitaur Rescue. Jeff is brilliant.
Keep on my device: 1. FiveADay, GoatUp, Gridrunner, SuperOxWars. Alphabetical, I can't choose a winner between these. 2. Minotaur Rescue. A notch below the last four on account of its relative simplicity. It's cool that there are lengthy write-ups within the game on the modes as well as on Llamasoft and The Minotaur Project. Minotron has these too though. Don't keep on my device: 3. Minotron 2112. There's sort of an over-saturation of twin stick shooters available which I find tighter than this plus this never seems to be on my mind when I want to play a Minter game as compared to the previous five. Still, a masterful game. 4. Deflex. Just not my genre, or something like that; I do like some puzzle games. Love the video/audio presentation, just not the game itself so much. 5. Caverns of Minos. I'm just kind of indifferent to this game. 6. GoatUp 2. I seem to recall Minter's explanation of the physics/controls in GoatUp being in opposition to the standard platformer fare and there it made perfect sense. In GoatUp 2, not so much. I just feel the interface is not adequate for the structure of this game. It's too SSB and not enough SMB. If I can play Gridrunner, a fairly repetitive arcade shooter for 20 minutes before seeing a Game Over, it doesn't make sense that I should see a game over in less than 5 minutes in Goat Up 2, a game with a huge amount of differentiated content and many elaborate levels.
Bbbbbaaaaaaaaaaaa! Goat Up by a mile, but I do love me some Gridrunner. I don't get Goat Up 2 either, but I may just be not smart enough...?
I think it would have worked better if landscape mode were an option. It seems some people could play it in landscape but it was some sort of error that allowed that. Main problem is that it's just awkward to have a controller-like setup in portrait. So, I tried it on an iPad for more thumb room, but that didn't wind up feeling right either. At any rate, farther into the game, it just comes off as requiring too much precision for the physics engine it has. I'll say, though, that if that had been the first Minter game I'd played, I'd still have wanted to see what else he'd done, despite not exactly liking my first experience.
Jeff stated that he wasn't really making any money on iOS, so he jumped ship. Presumably he decided not to renew his developer's license with Apple, and his apps disappeared. Shame, really.
What a shame! I'd have hoped he'd at least get enough sales pay the license, but if work is required keeping up with OS updates, it could be impossible (without higher sales) even so. Very discouraging, as someone who wishes to enter the mobile game market, to see such an iconic game developer fail in the attempt! I hope he dips his toe back in some time. (It also makes me consider the issue of someone who just wants to put out games as a passionnever making a dimeand still has to pay $100/year. I wish it were free to just keep your apps in the store, even if they can't be updated nor sold for money. I DO hope to make money some day, but not, I'll still want to build games in my spare time.)
