Swift for Android is Available, Next Up is iOS

Andrea's avatarIt’s finally done! Kind of…

After what seems like an eternity, Swift for Android is finally up for sale on Google Play. It’s Phanatix Interactive’s first product on the market, and hopefully there will be many more to follow. It’s been quite the learning experience developing and publishing a game with just a two-person team, and there’s still a lot left to do to get Swift ready for other platforms. The next on the list is iOS.

So why did I go against the norm and release Swift on Android first? For starters, I’m a dedicated Android user myself, and I’m always rather annoyed that iOS gets all the good games months and sometimes years before they hit Android. So to even the playing field, I went ahead and launched Swift for Android first. It also helped that the process to launch an app on Google Play is much simpler than it is for iTunes, so it made a good starting point to test the waters as a first time publisher.

Where’s the iOS version?

I’m still working on the iOS version of the game, which also doubles as a performance update for the Android version. As I’ve mentioned before, Swift was my first experience with game programming, and as a result, I made a lot of mistakes along the way–many of which I didn’t have time to go back and fix if I wanted to get Swift for Android out to market on time. The biggest mistake was the way in which I handled the graphics rendering, which pretty much crippled the game on low-end devices such as early iPod Touches and iPhones. If you’re playing the game on an Android 2.2 phone, you will also notice that it’s lagging behind more than you’d like. Apple’s submission standards are pretty high, and I knew the game wouldn’t cut it in its current form.

So I’m remaking the entire game from scratch, building it from the ground up the way it was meant to be… now that I actually know what I’m doing when it comes to code. Given that I am using a multi-platform engine, that means the Android version will get a restructuring makeover as well. So if you happened to buy the game for an older Android phone, don’t worry–there will be a free update to get you up to speed as soon as I finish it.

Thank you for all the support!

Getting this far has been a monumental task, but the journey is far from over. There are more platforms to be conquered and more games to be made. But I’d like to give a big thanks to everyone who has encouraged me this past year as I grapple with entrepreneurship. In all honesty, I cannot think of a more challenging endeavor I’ve ever had to deal with in my lifetime. So thank you, and I hope I can live up to everyone’s expectations to keep making more awesome games!

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