DoubleDrop News

Updated July 20, 2008

We would like to thank everyone for their overwhelming support for DoubleDrop. We have a major update to DoubleDrop that has been sitting in Apple's review system since long before the App Store went live. We wish we could speed up the process, but we do not know what to do. There was a noon PST on Monday July 7 deadline for having an app reviewed by the App Store go-live date of July 11. We had our "final" version of DoubleDrop uploaded to Apple by 6PM EST on Sunday July 6.

Two weeks later, Apple has neither authorized the update for release nor kicked it back to us with a problem notification. We're stuck.
We have not publicly discussed this situation in order to give Apple time to get their act together. There are so many other developers who are complaining about similar experiences that we just wanted to get this news out to you.

We feel that all of the comments and support email requests that we have received so far are fully covered in the version that Apple is currently (supposedly) reviewing. To repeat ourselves, we mean the same version that Apple should have reviewed and provided to our customers on day-one of the App store back on July 11.

Apple has actually updated ONE of our Apps: iSoroban. Unfortunately, for a few days Apple listed ALL of our Apps as updated. When this happened, DoubleDrop was listed as available for update to "Version 1.0"--it was misleading and confusing. We're very sorry this happened. We presume it is because all of our Apps had updates in the Apple review process at the time iSoroban was updated and Apple just didn't check whether the App was "in review" or "accepted" in the update page.

But there is an update coming VERY SOON. We used to send emails to Apple every other day asking them to review and release our software. Once the iSoroban update came out we were very hopeful for our other Apps, but unfortunately that does not seem to be the case.

 

RESPONSES TO APP STORE REVIEWS:

Instructions: After reading comments on the App Store, we would like to let you know a few things. First, Apple is actually distributing TWO versions of DoubleDrop. One has instructions and one does not have instructions. We believe these are interim builds that were uploaded to Apple long before the App Store went live. Why they do this? We're not sure. We wish they would only distribute our most recent version--at least you would have instructions. How can you get the right version? We're not sure. We have definitely seen 2 different versions on people's iPhones and iPods.

We have worked carefully with one user to try to re-download the most recent (pre-final) build, and we cannot find out how to get the version with instructions. For those of you who would like the instructions, they are listed at the bottom of this page.

Scoring: In all current and future versions of this game, the more colors connected when you touch a group of tiles, the more your score will increase for that drop. There is a clear benefit to grouping as many colors together in order to maximize your score. On all current releases of DoubleDrop that Apple is distributing, the score is something like this: if you have 2 connecting tiles, you get 1 point. If you have 3 connecting tiles, you get 3 points (1+2). If you have 4 connecting tiles, you get 6 points (1+2+3). And so on.

Similar Games: Other names for this game are "Same Game" and "Chain Shot". There is a wikipedia entry for Same Game that explains a lot about the game. DoubleDrop is simply better than Same Game, because you can twist it left and right to realign orphaned colors.

Rotating: We would like to comment on the fact that you cannot rotate the phone upside down to realign the colors. This is due to Apple iPhone development guidelines. They have specifically asked us as developers to not develop iPhone Apps that support an upside-down user interface. Their reasoning is that the Home button should always be at the bottom of the screen when in "portrait orientation" so as not to confuse the iPhone user.

Even without Apple guidelines recommending it, we feel it adds a little to the challenge of the game--you can't rotate any way you want to realign the tiles. You have to have a little challenge. :)

 

DoubleDrop Instructions:

DoubleDrop is a puzzle game where the goal is to remove all tiles from the screen.

Tiles are removed by tapping on groups of 2 or more matching color tiles. When tiles are removed, the tiles above fall down and allow new tile color alignments.

In order to obtain more color alignments, orient the screen left, up, or right (but not upside down). This will change the way tiles fall, and allow the realignment of single tiles with matching colors.

Options allow the choice of small or large tiles, the type of tile, as well as difficulty level. The harder the level, the more color combinations exist. "Insanity mode" hides the color combinations, making them all gray. The groupings are visible by connections between the tiles of matching color--you know what colors match, you just don't know what color the other tiles are.