March 3, 2021
Mexican Train Dominoes Gold has Just Pulled into the Switch and Steam Station!

 

Announcing our first ever Nintendo Switch and PC game release: Mexican Train Dominoes Gold! It’s a deserving family favorite that we’re happy to launch into the world for your gaming pleasure.

 

Mexican Train Dominoes Gold has been available on Apple and Android devices for a while, and more recently on Mac. However, we noticed that while there are other domino games around, there is definitely a gap in the market for Mexican Train Dominoes and it is one that we are well equipped to fill. Only time will tell how successful this venture will be, but the team did a great job with both the Switch and Windows ports. I thought this would be a good time to share some of the differences between touch screen phone development and developing for the Nintendo Switch. All aboard for several train-based words and puns as I steam ahead with this post… sigh…

 

Firstly, the PC version works well. One finger, one-touch games are fairly easy to translate to both PC and Mac. The normal changes were made while making sure menus work better for the mouse interface. The biggest effort was always going to be making our engine work on the PC and within the Steam framework a difficult job, but necessary.

 

The Nintendo Switch on the other hand was much tougher! It’s a fantastic console (that I love dearly, it’s no train wreck like the Wii U), but because we couldn’t rely on the touchscreen, we had to completely rework the control mechanism to efficiently support the controller. We created a grid system to place the dominoes and hoped that would be it. Nope! Of course, the management of the dominoes needed a lot more conducting than that.

 

Mexican Train Dominoes strategy involves the player creating chains of dominoes that they can lay on their row. This meant we needed a good way for the player to manage the dominoes. We had to get creative. When players moved the dominoes around, the arrangement of all the other dominoes was affected. It took us a while to create our domino inventory system, so it was quick and easy to use! It now shunts along the other dominoes when the chain is interrupted, keeping the order even when the player makes changes.

 

We had other challenges making the Switch version compared to the phone versions. Saving the game state on the Switch slows the whole system down to the point where we were experiencing a drop in frame rate that caused the game to temporarily stall. I mean dominoes is an intense game but should still do better than just chug along! We had to rework the save and resume game system to better fit the console. Most players won’t even notice the difference, but it showed us that we had been a little bit spoiled in the way mobile phones work with their seamless usage of the SSD.

 

After all this work, navigating Nintendo’s developers’ pages to get the game into lotcheck and arrange the marketing pages was surprisingly difficult. I do have to say that the people in Nintendo themselves especially in Europe would fix small errors without setting us back and their replies got us back on track quickly. That being said, the lotcheck went through pretty smoothly and it’s a vast improvement from the last Nintendo system I worked on which was the GameCube.

 

Of course, I’m talking like I ran this project, but I’m just the guy writing about it. The hard work was done by the team. Jasmine, Gregg, Steph, and Katie all pulled together to make Mexican Train Dominoes Gold a thoroughly enjoyable experience for the players on whatever format they want to play it on.

 

If you fancy taking a look yourself, you can find direct links to all the versions here!

May 19, 2020
On The Importance of Brand Consistency

Don’t judge a book by its cover – or, perhaps, you should.

 

You can tell a lot from a business from its consistency of branding. It’s more than quality pictures, games and text, it’s about style and how that carries on through the company from the game itself to the artwork.

For us at Glowing Eye Games, we love attention to detail and we love the little things. They are those subtle little morsels you might not even notice – and that’s the best part. Most of the time, you’re not meant to notice each that playing card is tailored to the theme of the game or how the load screen images have their own take on our logo. It’s just part of the overall experience and allows the game to be seamlessly immersive. You’d definitely notice if the background wasn’t quite right or if the sounds were discordant to the images.

These delightful details are handmade at the point of the game’s origin. Halloween Tripeaks has Dracula as the King, the Witch as the Queen and Frankenstein’s Monster as the Jack, whereas Magic Towers has a regal King, majestic Queen and princely Jack. Our most popular card game, Pyramid Solitaire: Ancient Egypt is entirely Egyptian themed with appropriate cards, font and background. It’s all about building the scene and creating an atmosphere our customers want to spend time in. This level of detail reflects the consistency to our brand and within our company, as each game is completed to the highest level of quality.

But it’s not just about logos and artwork, it’s about our players and respecting their own individuality. You may have noticed by now some of our games are the same game, just in different coats. Let’s take Tri-Peaks solitaire for example. Halloween, Magic Towers, Christmas and classic are all versions of Tri-Peaks with the same principles and same gameplay, however the key difference is that they target different types of people. We want everyone to enjoy the game and we don’t want anyone to feel they have to conform, bear flashy themes they don’t want or experience the game in any other way than how they would want to play it. We respect those who love the simplicity of our classic version of Tri-Peaks solitaire, just as much as our customers who love Christmas and jump on the chance to have a festive theme. It’s lovely that people still play it during the summer months! Similarly the same goes for Halloween, with ghoulish backgrounds and spooky sounds, and Magic Towers, which is the most calming of the four with an animated sky of passing clouds and twittering birds. Whichever game our customers prefer, they can guarantee they’ll be getting the same attention to detail and consistency of brand, as they would with any of our other games.

The point here is this: customers love to be immersed and they can tell immediately if something is made with care. If you’re a game developer or even a marketer, remember to pay attention to the little things, because, after all, they make up the whole. If you look after those details, they can help make your game an overall success.

May 7, 2019
Did You Know? : A History of the World’s Favorite Game

 

Our love of solitaire knows no bounds. From tri-peaks to forty thieves, we’ve made a hefty chunk out of the solitaire catalogue and we are still going. But our obsession is not exclusive. It turns out, solitaire is a global fixation and one that has been capturing hearts and heads for centuries.

The humble game goes by many names, from Kabal or Cabale by Eastern European and Scandinavian countries, Patience to the British and Reussite by the French. And that’s just for classic solitaire! The game of Tri-peaks also goes by Triple Peaks or Tri Towers, and Forty Thieves can be found under Napoleon or Roosevelt because of its famous devotees. Crescent, Pyramid and Spider solitaire all take their names from their very obvious visual tableau.

Call it what you will, solitaire is a firm favorite the world over. On our journey creating card games, we’ve come across some pretty interesting trivia!

 

Solitaire itself is rumored to have originated from a multiplayer card game. It became private after players who loved the game so much would go home and practice alone. Thus, its favor began to spread throughout the globe as a solitary pursuit and one to pass the time pleasantly. It even went as far as the mountainous Yukon, where Klondike the card game came to fruition amongst bored prospectors trying to make a living from the gold rush.

Other popular variations were mostly born in America. In the late 1890s, Richard A. Canfield was a clever man, a gambler, and the creator of Canfield solitaire. Looking to get himself some quick cash, he’d set up the cards and get the player to put in $50. For every card laid in its foundations, $5 was earned. If the game was completed, the lucky player could win $500! Pity the success rate of winning Canfield is less than 30%.

Over fifty years later and FreeCell is conceived by medical student Paul Alfille in the late 1960s. Originally played with physical cards, it was adapted for computer in 1995. Most recently, our familiar friend Tri-Peaks was actually only invented in 1989 by Robert Hogue of Winter Haven, Florida.

Computers really kept the heart of solitaire beating, from the earliest desktops to the present-day smartphone. It’s popularity and recognizability is partially thanks to graphic designer, Susan Kare, who illustrated the playing cards and clickable icons for Microsoft’s original solitaire. From there, hours of fun could be found, but that’s not the end of the story!

Solitaire is still being developed, even by the likes of us. We took the classic game of Pyramid solitaire, often used by parents to teach children simple maths, and enhanced its original format. The game was quite tough, so we created a temporary card slot to make the game a little easier. We also changed it to just one deal to ensure the enjoyment of the game was sustained and to aid in more consecutive wins! What more is there to love?

 

Whether you use it as a guilty pleasure, refreshing break from a hard day’s work or to practice your tactical skills, solitaire is the game for everyone. From the casinos to kitchen tables, Napoleon de Bonaparte and Prince Albert to the ordinary folk of today, there’s no stopping the allure of solitaire.

 

If you’ve enjoyed this blog, find our handy guide to solitaire on the Apple bookstore. Learn how to play Canfield, Spider and more using physical cards. It’s totally free!

https://itunes.apple.com/au/book/learn-how-to-play-solitaire-card-games/id1442286946?mt=11

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