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Episode 4 Energy Consumption is Out!

Energy Consumption was released yesterday!
Posted by Craig Hinrichs at 3:42 AM No comments: 
Episode 4: Energy Consumption

Episode 4: Energy Consumption has been submitted to the App Store.

This episode will feature a device that will hold all of the energy you collect from the stars you circle. You see the stars moving to the globe in the upper left hand corner and the score is now your energy limit. Some key game play features have been added to make the game more interesting.

I have also included some tweaks to improve the efficiency of the lasso, textures and included a pause button. This episode should be out in the next two weeks given Apples approval process. Posted by Craig Hinrichs at 6:34 PM No comments: 
Episode 3 Approved!

Episode 3: Love is in the void has been approved and available in the App Store for download or update.
Posted by Craig Hinrichs at 8:38 PM No comments: 
Episode 3: Love is in the void submitted to the App Store

I have submitted Episode 3: Love is in the void to the App Store.
This episode will feature a new star: The Girl Star. All of the other stars will go ga-ga for he when they get close. You will see they will have hearts over thier heads and will follow the girl star around. You can circle the girl and any color star that are in love and get the points and bonus for those stars.
Expect to see this update in the next two weeks given Apples current approval process. Posted by Craig Hinrichs at 11:59 AM No comments: 
Star Catch Episode 2: Anger Management now out!

Anger Management is out now and should offer a little more challenge. Circling stars that are not the same color will make them mad and if they get mad enough they will implode into a black hole.

Let me know what you think and if anyone has any suggestions for future episodes I am open to hear them!
Posted by Craig Hinrichs at 3:13 PM No comments: 
Star Catch Promotion Ended

Well, it has been fun but Star Catch is now back to it's low price of $0.99. Thanks to everyone who got a chance to try it and further gave me feedback. My update, Episode 2: Anger Management is still in the approval process and should hopefully be coming by the end of the week.
Posted by Craig Hinrichs at 7:47 PM No comments: 
Star Catch Free for a limited time

As part of an effort to get the word out and get feed back for future episodes I am promoting Star Catch by making it free for five days. Thursday August 27th until Monday August 31st Star Catch will be FREE in the App Store. This means that any future updates will be free. After August 31st the price will return to $0.99.

Now there is a link on the right for suggestions. Please post your comments and feel free to offer any crazy ideas you would like. Here are some ideas that are currently floating around in my noodle.

What are your ideas? Post a comment here

Posted by Craig Hinrichs at 2:22 AM No comments: Episode suggestions and improvements

Do you have an idea for an update to Star Catch or would like to suggest improvements? Please post a comment here.
Posted by Craig Hinrichs at 2:16 AM 2 comments: 
Episode 2: Anger Management Submitted to the App Store My first update to my first game has been submitted to the App Store for approval. Star Catch: Episode 2 Anger Management puts a spin on the game play by making the circling of two different colored stars a penalty when they get so mad they have steam coming out of their ears (do they have ears?) until they implode in anger and become a black hole. They will suck in any stars that are nearby. The red star has the biggest anger problem out of all of them. From there green will lose it next, blue and then finally purple. The purple star seems to have a better outlook on life and does not get overworked over much.

Though I just submitted this I was able to get the next update after this; Episode 3: (Name withheld) done for the most part. I will let you know what it will be called after Episode 2 get approved. I would like to add some more achievements and some other scores related to the game that will be posted on OpenFeint. So when this update is approved I will be submitting the next one right away. My kids have been playing it and they say they love it. Unlike Anger Management this update will be giving you a little help with getting those pesky stars. I am unsure about how this might affect the score because it is going to be easier to rake up a little bit better.
Posted by Craig Hinrichs at 3:45 PM No comments: 
Star Catch: Ep2 Anger Management Details Star Catch is a line drawing game that requires you to match as many similarly colored stars as you can by drawing a line around them. The more stars you circle the more points and bonus points you can get. There are four main colored stars; Blue, Red, Green and Purple. Each star is worth the same points but they are worth different amounts depending on the mood they are in.
For example, these stars will express emotions like Happiness (their normal mode), Awe (when you circle a lot of stars it impresses them), Shock and Angry. Each of these emotional states comes with different point values. If you circle a Happy star you get 10 points for example. Here is how it breaks down. Happy = 10 Points
Awe = 20 Points
Shock = 10 Points
Mad = 5 Points
Steaming Mad = 1 Point

Stars will get mad if you circle just one of them or circle them with a different colored star. This adds to the challenge as more stars are introduced and they move around making it more difficult to circle greater numbers of stars without making any of them mad. As you may have noticed if you get them in Awe and then circle stars you will get the most points.

You also get bonus for the number of stars you circle.

3 stars – Normal Points (The emotion points) x 3
4 stars x 4
5 stars x 5

… and so on. I think you get the picture.

Episode 2: Anger Management adds another layer of challenge by trying to force you to not circle different colored stars. When you circle different stars together too many times one of the stars will implode and become a black hole sucking in stars in the area. You are losing valuable points for that level and each level increases in difficulty so you want to avoid these black holes. If you really like them you can make them come as many times as you want. Only one black hole can exist on the board at a time. This is a good thing as multiple black holes could suck in the whole board. I suppose you could use black holes as a strategy to reduce the number of stars if you are running out of time and can’t clear them fast enough. The Steaming Mad emotion is a new one to Episode 2: Anger Management. This is the state that stars will go into right before they implode on themselves and become a black hole.
With the Episode 2 update I am including OpenFeint, the Online scoring, achievement and challenge system that will allow you to post your scores and achievements for the world to see. OpenFeint allows you to find Friends and see what they are playing. There will also be challenges introduced into the game in a later update. If you choose to not use OpenFeint you will still be able to save up to 10 scores locally for bragging rights.
Posted by Craig Hinrichs at 9:47 PM No comments: 
Episode 2: Anger Management

I have been working on the next episode for Star Catch: Anger Management. When you circle a star by itself or two different colors they get angry. Now they can get so angry that they collapse in on themselves and create a black hole taking in any stars nearby limiting the amount of points you can get. As I have mentioned before each of the stars have their own personalities and here you will see just how angry some can get and how it takes a bit more for others to start steaming.

In addition to getting the details of this episode done I am taking some suggestions from people who have played the game and implementing them. Here are a few things I am working on right now.

Everything is coming along great and I hope to have everything done and submitted back into the App Store by this Sunday. I also am hoping I can take some time and create a Lite version of the game.

One thing I noticed too late with putting out this first update was I compiled the game using 3.0 and essentially limited my audience in the process. I apologize for this and this next update should correct this issue.

I want to give a hearty thanks to pluto6 and skyye06 for all of the suggestions on Touch Arcade. Posted by Craig Hinrichs at 8:52 PM No comments: 
Star Catch: Get Together now available on iTunes.

Yes! Star Catch is now available. This is my first iPhone/iPod game for the app store and I am pretty excited about it. Check it out!

----> Star Catch: Get Together <----
Posted by Craig Hinrichs at 7:36 PM No comments: 

I have started working on the next update for Star Catch called Anger Management. While working on this I have come up with a complete story line that will drive future updates and help evolve the game. I don't want to give too much away but I can reveal that the researchers at Bill Hope laboratories are responsible for giving us the technology for catching stars and they are working hard finding a way to capture this energy to better man kind.

Posted by Craig Hinrichs at 3:19 AM No comments: 
Star Catch submitted to the App Store Star catch has been submitted to the App Store! It typically takes two weeks for an app to get approved but I have heard that it has been taking about a week right now. We will see what happens.

Being this is my first app the thought of rejection crosses my mind. The only thing that sucks about having your app rejected (especially your first one) is the delay it will bring but other than that I am fine with learning this process and sweating through this first initial waiting period.

Posted by Craig Hinrichs at 1:30 PM 1 comment: 
Contest - Name the stars We have four stars in the game that each have their own personality. At first it may seem that they all act the same but actually they each respond to events differently. This will become even more apparent in the next update. I would like to hold a contest for some promo codes so you can download a copy of the game for free. I will begin the contest and announce it on Touch Arcade when the game becomes live in the App Store.
Since there are four stars I will be giving away four promo codes to four seperate people. This means there are four ways to win one promo code (You can't win more than one promo code, sorry). More details to come.
Posted by Craig Hinrichs at 4:20 PM No comments: 
Star Catch - Get Together

The subtitle for the inital release of this game is, "Get Together." Well, because you are lassoing the stars together and they are wisping away on the screen. The objective of this first release is to offer a fun and challenging game experience. But what I am really looking forward to is the updates I have planned. I know I shouldn't get ahead of myself. When this app is submitted and available on the App Store I will post about the next update I have and my plan is to get it submitted within a week.
Posted by Craig Hinrichs at 3:31 AM No comments: 
Rename of game to Star Catch

Someone pointed out on the touch arcade that Star Fall already is a game in the App Store. I have choosen a new name and made sure that this name did not already exist before I settled on it. (Doh!)

I like the name Star Catch better anyway.
Posted by Craig Hinrichs at 3:54 PM No comments: Star Fall Video Preview

I know the video does not look the greatest. I am going to invest some time into figuring out how I can capture iPhone/iPod video the best way.

Posted by Craig Hinrichs at 1:33 PM No comments: Screen shots!!

Here are some screen shots of the game. Some things may still change before it sent to Apple for approval on the app store. Let me know what you think. I have a development video of the game coming soon.

Posted by Craig Hinrichs at 1:24 PM No comments: 

Star Catch Craig Hinrichs
