Interview: Paul O’Connor from Appy Entertaiment

Paul O’Connor, Brand Director at Appy Entertaiment, took some time to speak with us about their upcoming Updates for Trucks and Skulls, FaceFighter, the upcoming RPG game and games for the Android Market.

Hello Paul! how are you today?

Groovy!

can you tell us who you are and which developer you work for?

I’m Paul O’Connor, one of the founding partners of Appy Entertainment. My title is “Brand Director” which means I get to answer the mail and maintain our Twitter and Facebook presence, but Appy is a small shop and we all wear a lot of hats. Prior to Appy my expertise was in game design and I still get to do a little bit of that for Appy.

How many games have appy developed for iPhone?

Our original titles for iOS are Trucks & Skulls, FaceFighter, Zombie Pizza, Tune Runner, Candy Rush, All-In-1 Zombiebox, and Appy Newz. Between free and paid versions, and separate iPad versions of some games, we actually have fourteen different apps on the iOS App Store right now.

we also have a Mac OS version of Trucks & Skulls.

Are there any games coming to Android platform?

At present now we have both free and paid versions of FaceFighter on Android (and the paid version will be on sale for .99 over the Memorial Day weekend, thanks to promotion from our friends at the new SmartApps Deal of the Day website). We’ve had some compatibility challenges with FaceFighter on Android, but earlier this month released a big update that appears to have solved many of them. We do still recommend players first download the free version of FaceFighter on Android to check for compatibility with their device.

No additional Android apps are in development but we are in discussions with partners about how we can better support Android in the future. We remain excited about the potential of this market.

What’s been the biggest challenge for Appy?

Discoverability in a crowded market. Appy has been fortunate in that all of our original titles have been featured by Apple at some point (and Trucks & Skulls was both iPad and iPhone Game of the Week for Apple in November), but it is still a challenge reaching players to let them know about our games. We’ve had better success than many — we’re over 8 million downloads right now — but the market is still crowded with hundreds of terrific and inexpensive games all vying for player attention.

What’s next for Appy Entertaiment? Do you have other games lined up?

Our next releases are major updates for Trucks & Skulls and FaceFighter on iOS. The Trucks update should go into submission with Apple in the next week or so, and we’ll be ready to talk about it more at that time. FaceFighter shouldn’t be too far behind Trucks. Both updates feature substantial new content, and the Trucks update will flip that version number over to “2.0” thanks to the new options it will afford players.

The Trucks update, especially, is game-changing — like moving from the deadball era of baseball to the steroid era overnight. Expect a shake-up on our GameCenter leaderboards.

Can you tell us more about the upcoming RPG game? What kind of missions and challenges await players?

It’s not yet officially announced. Contracts were signed earlier this month, and yesterday was actually the official “kick off” date, but as our engineer is out of the country on vacation right now, we haven’t quite got the wheels moving just yet.

We do have a title, and a design document, and the beginnings of the visual design. Not much more to say at this point, aside from noting the game will be free-to-play with microtransactions, and will have the characteristic Appy take on the subject.

We’re excited to tackle an RPG as we think it plays to our strengths in creating original characters and worlds. Several of us are RPG geeks here at Appy, too — we play D&D a couple times a month, and I’ve been involved in the paper & pencil side of the business, off-and-on, since writing and editing Grimtooth’s Traps for Flying Buffalo over thirty years ago (!).

What’s your favourite game – or the game you’ve enjoyed playing the most?

That’s kind of like picking between your kids É I probably logged the most “seat time” testing Tune Runner, and still have affection for that game. Zombie Pizza and Candy Rush both caught me up pretty good, too. I like to slap my partners around with FaceFighter every now and then. But if I had to pick one game it would be Trucks & Skulls, thanks to the depth of content (over 200 levels now, and more coming every week).

To finalize our interview we like to Thank you for taking the time with us, we are also excited and can’t wait to play an RPG game by Appy Entertaiment.

Thank you for your interest and support of Appy! We regard the affection and dedication of our fans as our most important resource. We welcome feedback from all Appy players on our Twitter feed, at our Faceback page, or via direct email: info(at)appyentertainment.com.

Contact Paul O’Connor at:

email: paul(at)appyentertainment.com

blog: http://goldenboat.wordpress.com/

profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/paulryanoconnor

web: http://www.appyentertainment.com/