Ron Gilbert and Clayton Kauzlaric's Big Big Castle (Update: Now Available Worldwide!)

11 Jul, 2012, 23:01 | Posted by: Jennifer | Source: sanguinehearts

The Big Big Castle! is a free-to-play iPad game designed by Ron Gilbert and Clayton Kauzlaric, and released by Clayton Kauzlaric's Beep Games. In the game, you build tall castles for a king, or alternatively destroy them. It's described as "more fun than the plague and twice as infectious". With a tagline like that, how could you not want to play it?

Update: Look everybody! Ron Gilbert stopped by to post some details and answer your questions! Thanks, Ronzo!

Since Apple doesn't have a proper way to do beta testing, iOS games are often released in one country to gather information and feedback, so that's what we did with The Big Big Castle and it's worked very well.

We've made a bunch of changes and with any luck I'll be submitting a new build to the App Store Sunday night, so it should be available world wide in a week.

As far as Android goes, yeah, I'd love to support Android but there are a couple of issues.

The first is that I love objective-c. It's one of the best (and most fun to program in) languages I've ever seen. While it is true you can compile obj-c code for an Android device, the big missing piece is the NextStep libraries that Apple uses. Google needs to create an official and robust set of xcode libraries that use OpenStep and make it easy to cross build apps. I know a lot of iOS devs that use objective-c and don't want to (or can't) write their game twice. If Google would do this, there would be twice as many games on Android.

The other big (and most important) issue is that this game (and the 10 other ones Clayton and I have built but never released) are just weekend side projects we work on for fun that have nothing to do with Double Fine or The Cave. We just do them to relax.

Ronzo

Update 2: It's now available on the US Appstore and the NZ Appstore as well. Ron has also posted some more about it's development at his Grumpy Gamer blog.

Comments: 8

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Comment by: sanguinehearts | Posted 07 Jul, 2012, 05:38 | Quote
Now available worldwide!
Comment by: Qubit | Posted 11 Jun, 2012, 18:43 | Quote
If it's a personal project then that's absolutely fair enough and I take back what I said. Of course you should do whatever you want to do and it's definitely not my place to say otherwise. I don't think anyone would really say that porting app would be especially fun or relaxing.

Wih regards to the Objective-C comments, I've heard the same things from other people. I haven't developed anything for iOS personally and have never even used Objective-C, so I can't really comment on ease of portability, however surely there must be some reasonably well thought out compatibility layer out there somewhere? I'm not saying there is because I've never looked, it just seems like the sort of thing that would show up pretty quickly after android was released, specifically targeted at the phone/tablet market. But yeah, I can't see an official Google/Apple one showing up any time soon.
Comment by: Rum Rogers | Posted 10 Jun, 2012, 15:49 | Quote
I didn't know Ronzo had a Mixnmojo account. Cool.
Comment by: AlfredJ | Posted 10 Jun, 2012, 03:23 | Quote
Sounds great. It's a shame that I don't own a device that can play it, and games like this rarely come to pc. Oh well, I think I can probably play it on a friend's machine.

So, that Gilbert guy is making tons of games again? 2012 indeed.
Comment by: grumpygamer | Posted 09 Jun, 2012, 22:30 | Quote
Since Apple doesn't have a proper way to do beta testing, iOS games are often released in one country to gather information and feedback, so that's what we did with The Big Big Castle and it's worked very well.

We've made a bunch of changes and with any luck I'll be submitting a new build to the App Store Sunday night, so it should be available world wide in a week.

As far as Android goes, yeah, I'd love to support Android but there are a couple of issues.

The first is that I love objective-c. It's one of the best (and most fun to program in) languages I've ever seen. While it is true you can compile obj-c code for an Android device, the big missing piece is the NextStep libraries that Apple uses. Google needs to create an official and robust set of xcode libraries that use OpenStep and make it easy to cross build apps. I know a lot of iOS devs that use objective-c and don't want to (or can't) write their game twice. If Google would do this, there would be twice as many games on Android.

The other big (and most important) issue is that this game (and the 10 other ones Clayton and I have built but never released) are just weekend side projects we work on for fun that have nothing to do with Double Fine or The Cave. We just do them to relax.

Ronzo
Comment by: Qubit | Posted 09 Jun, 2012, 20:18 | Quote
I would pay for this in a snap (mainly because RG is in on it), but once again a game that I (amongst many others) want has been released exclusively on iPad. I realize that iTunes generates more revenue than Android's Google Play, but for the most part that is because there is nothing worth buying on Google Play (IMHO). Given that many free game dev thingys have been able to very quickly churn out compilers for both iPad and Android I feel that a commercial venture releasing for only one of these platform is both cheap and insulting. Especially given that many Android devices are by far better designed as gaming machines with more power etc.
Comment by: jp-30 | Posted 09 Jun, 2012, 20:15 | Quote
Not in New Zealand yet, either.
Comment by: koosjebig | Posted 09 Jun, 2012, 18:00 | Quote
it's only available to the uk itunes? I don't see in in the US....

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