I submitted Castle Tiles for initial review on Saturday and I thought that would be it until the iPad launched. But then I got an email to resubmit with the latest SDK for final review. This actually turned out to be quite fortunate because I got intense criticism strong encouragement from friends and commentators to completely redo revisit my horrible programmer art initial art pass.

The additional time also gave me some time to review some of my original thinking about the art. For example, I thought that for a puzzle game, the most important priority would be clarity. So choosing pure red, pure green, and pure blue seemed like a logical choice. It turns out that an even higher priority is picking colors that don’t actively assault the eyes with their hideousness are aesthetically pleasing as well.

(For the record, I was originally trying to go for a Keith Haring kind of look but I think the new look works better.)

I managed to submit my iPad project before the Saturday 5pm deadline (with an hour to spare!) so there’s a chance that Castle Tiles will actually be available to purchase on the first day that iPads become available. Here’s another screenshot. Can you guess how to play from the image?

So in addition to spending a month India and having a baby, I’ve been busy working on an app for the upcoming iPad. I’m not quite done yet (hey, I’ve still got a day to work on it before the launch app submission deadline!) so I won’t go into too many details. But it’s going to be a game called “Castle Tiles“. Here’s a screenshot of one of the starting menus.

Now I’ve just got to figure out how to do some AI…

Update: Welcome, visitors from Joystiq and beyond! Please feel free to check out the rest of this website. And if you happen to have an iPhone or iPod Touch, check out my apps ’cause baby diapers and food are expensive! It’s like the boy just eats and poops 24-7…

At our baby shower, one of our friends, Asaki Oda, offered to paint our nursery for us. Now, Asaki is a professional set designer for theater plays and clothing stores so this wasn’t just a simple offer of “I’ll paint it blue for you”, but more along the lines of “I’ll make something cool.”

She asked us what kind of style we’d like. I wanted something with big, simple, yet bold shapes with bright colors and cute characters. Then I thought, what about the video game Loco Roco? My wife and I both loved that game. And you couldn’t ask for cuter characters.

So we left the country for a month to pick up our baby. While we were out, Asaki and four more of our dear friends went to work and when we returned, this is what we came back to!

Just a quick video to introduce … Mach 2:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtqUVBCLYs0

We’ve been in India for nearly five weeks and it’s finally time for us to head back! It’s been an interesting trip but also exhausting and we’re very much looking forward to being back home. I think the biggest benefit to travel is that it can make you aware of things back home that you might take for granted. For example: in the United States, cars actually drive inside the lane markers and mostly in the direction of traffic. Crazy, hunh? If I had never traveled to India, I might not have realized that those things were optional. Also, I learned that it’s possible for an entire family of four to ride on a single motorcycle. But somehow, I don’t think Tracy’s going to let me try that one…

What I’m going to miss the most about Mumbai is the food and the warmth of the Indian spring sun. What I’m looking forward to the most at home is the ability to easily communicate with the people around me. Oh, and high speed wifi.

Every night they would come, to feast on the blood of my family. Nothing we did could keep them out. They kept on coming, relentlessly. But on some nights, I would manage to slay one of the vile creatures. And then I would place its mangled body on the window sill with the others. I had hoped that the long line of dessicated corpses would serve as a warning to the rest of them. It never did, but the seeing the increasing numbers of their dead by the light of dawn would give me grim comfort…

We’ve been in Mumbai the entire time we’ve been in India. But Mumbai is huge. It’s nearly the size of New York City or Tokyo but it has more than 50% more than either of those cities, which makes it more than twice as dense as New York. So getting around anywhere in the city takes a long time. But the other day, we decided to go for a to a nearby part of town, Hiranandani, to do some shopping and this is what it looked like.

… of advertising on Google AdWords, that is.

I got an offer from Google to get $100 worth of free advertising if I start up a new account with their ad words. But I’ve already got an account and to be honest, I couldn’t really use it because they don’t allow you to use words like “iPhone” in your ad, which makes it pretty useless for me.

So hey, if you’d like the $100 coupon code, comment on my blog about what you’d use it for. I’ll pick someone over the weekend to get it. It might not work because it might be tied to me or you might need to have a Google Analytics account or something. But hey, it’s free. (Although, you do have to put $10 on your credit card to start the account.)

So … we’re in India a little bit longer than expected. Mostly that means that we have to sit and wait for phone calls and such in our hotel room. But, it also gives me some time to work on iPhone stuff, like the looong awaited updated to Boom Dice. Hey, remember that app? Yeah, it’s the game I wrote with exploding dice. In the update, it’ll actually have three types of dice to choose from, not just one. Also, there will be AI opponents, a few achievements, and a leaderboard through the Open Feint network.

I’ll be working on the update some more and hopefully submit it to Apple in the next few weeks. Buy it now while it’s only $0.99 and you’ll get the update for free!