Windows Phone 7 Game: Code Breaker

I'm sure most couples do more coupley things with their spare time. My better half Andrea and I however have been spending a considerable amount of our free time working on a Windows Phone 7 game called Code Breaker. It should be in the Windows Phone Marketplace imminently and is released under our cheesey and unimaginative collective moniker "Dandrea" (we had to come up with a name for the marketplace registration and weren't in a particularly creative mood :P).

The Game

Code Breaker is a very simple puzzle/memory game in which you need to try and figure out a code by guessing a sequence of shapes. The code doesn't change per level so if you remember the shapes you've guessed correctly you can eventually figure out the whole code and progress to the next level (a new longer code). Like I said, very simple but it's actually good fun if a little frustrating if like me, your memory isn't what it should be (for example, how I'm 'forgetting' to do the washing up right now).

Windows Phone 7

We thought we'd have a go at a WP7 game mainly as a learning exercise and to see what the process was like. We've both had a WP7 Nokia Lumia 800 for a few months now and whilst the sales for Windows Phone seem somewhat lagging we both find it's an excellent platform and has been consistently well rated in the media. Whilst a comparatively much smaller market than iPhone or Android the Windows Phone Marketplace is much less saturated so we decided to have a go and see what sort of attention our little game would get and whether it's worth pursuing or not.

Why games?

We spend all day building desktop, web and mobile software at our work so there wasn't so much appeal to just building useful apps. We both really enjoy video games and are always discussing game ideas so we thought we'd take that to the next logical step of creating our own. We also both have fond memories of long lost backgrounds creating games in Flash. The hardest part so far has been trying to not let our ideas get too far ahead of ourselves, Code Breaker represents our first baby step into the modern indie game development world.

What next

I'll be posting some thoughts on the WP7 development and publication process and also reporting on the success (or dismal failings) of Code Breaker and any revenue it may draw through the in game ads. So far the process has been fairly painless with one particular stand-out point being the collaboration between development and design achieved through Expression Blend (Andrea) and Visual Studio (myself).

Anyway, I'll update this post with a link to the game when it's available and if you have a Windows Phone let me (@dannyt) and/or Andrea know what you think.

(This is Frank, he's our logo/splash screen :P)