Ahoy there, beta7 is now live! Kickstarter backers can download it for Windows or Mac. Be sure to leave some feedback in the forums, your participation is a huge help!

I spent most of the week working on the iPad version of the game in preparation for GDC (the Game Developers Conference) that I’m going to this coming week. That means there won’t be a new build of the game next week.

I did a ton of work on the control options, so now you can customize the controls quite a bit. Be sure to check that out. I also made a ton of little tweaks to the “dual” and “turns” mods. And I fixed a ton of bugs, including some pretty messy ones!

If you happen to be at GDC, say hi! I’m friendly! Just look for the guy with the ridiculously huge belt buckle. I’ll be at the Indie Game Summit and the TouchArcade party for sure. And I’ll have a special GDC-only Galcon 2 sticker to give you

Cheers!
-Phil

P.S. Thanks for everyone’s bug reporting and testing this past week. Don’t worry, I’m not ignoring you, I just didn’t have time to fix all those things because I had to get the iPad port done this week. So the multitude of things we found still aren’t fixed yet. I’ll be working on those after GDC

New beta6 ready for exploration! Download for Windows or Mac. (Beta still only available to Kickstarter / PayPal backers.)

The final magnet set proofs came out great, we’re ordering the final stuff now! These are so much fun!

I’ve added in a “dual” mode for head-to-head play. This isn’t really “playable” on your computer, but you can kinda see what it’s going to be like for playing on the iPad.

I did a huge overhaul of the client / server stuff. The coolest bits are the adjustable chat region and the updated co-op mode. You’ll also see in this screenshot the percent-o-meter slider. This is more useful for mobile devices, but for now it’s in the desktop version too. Also, I added in nice looking “Galcon Fusion” style backgrounds and fades / transitions. However, it felt a bit off, because the game is so beta right now, having it look polished like that seemed awkward. So I disabled them for now.

Lastly I added more tabs to the Settings section. The only one with real settings is Audio as I added in the classic sound effects to the game. You’ll need to double check that they are set to on to hear the sound effects in beta6.

I’m going to be hanging out in Galcon chat and on the forums for the next couple hours, so someone get a server set up and we can play!!

Thanks!!
-Phil

Okay, so about 6 or 7 weeks ago this article got posted somewhere (anyone remember where??) about how demos reduce sales. I figured I’d try that out with Dynamite Jack. First a graph showing the number of demo downloads on iOS:

Second, a graph showing $ earned via the full version on iOS.

Best I can tell, sales go down when I got rid of the demo. Then they went down a bit more when I re-enabled the demo version of Dynamite Jack. My hope is that eventually the demo-to-full conversion groove will pick back up to bump sales up a bit more again.

That said, though, the number changes aren’t terribly clear. I’m guessing it would take higher volume or better A/B style testing to really make any sort of decent claims about this stuff.

The only thing that I think is terribly clear is that when Dynamite Jack got launched in the Humble Bundle on March 6th, it doubled the number of demo downloads on iOS for a day.

-Phil

Okay! It was a pretty great week here! Short version: beta5 is out for Windows and Mac, try ‘em out! Be sure to also try the esparano_frustration mod, it’s got a world map, and it’s pretty tricky.

Last Saturday a bunch of players and I played Galcon 2 multiplayer for about 2 hours and found tons of them. So I’ll be joining the first server we get up and running to play again today, and hope to track down all the new quirks. I’m especially excited to try out the Co-op server mode I added. Check on the forums for server IP addresses!

Also, I was able to include esparano’s frustration mod. It’s got a cool world map and it’s quite tricky. So give it a try and have some fun!

Anyway, have a good time trying out Galcon 2. Be sure to tell me what you think! Your feedback means a lot to me, so keep it coming

Cheers!
-Phil

P.S. The Android port of Dynamite Jack is out now as part of the Humble Bundle with Android 5 bundle. This is exciting for Galcon 2, because it means I’ve now got the larger part of the porting work done for Galcon 2!

Hey! I’ve just completed porting Dynamite Jack to Android! You can get it right now in the Humble Bundle with Android!

If you’re new to the Humble Bundles, they offer several games in a bundle and you can pay what you want for a bunch of great indie games! Dynamite Jack is along side Dungeon Defenders, Super Hexagon, Beat Hazard Ultra, Solar 2, and NightSky HD. You can grab all these games on Android, Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and Android for just a few bucks!

Also, we’ll be announcing a new Dynamite Jack maps contest with Dynamite Maps very soon, so sharpen up your map making skills to win some sweet prizes! Check back in the forums or in the Community Maps section of the game for details in a day or so.

Cheers!
-Phil

P.S. Galcon 2 had it’s first multiplayer game this past Saturday! For now, the beta is closed to Kickstarter backers only, but you can read the progress so far on the Galcon blog .

Hey, it’s been a crazy last week working on Galcon 2. I’ve just managed to get a rough version of multiplayer working, and it’s moddable too! I didn’t get it ready to work on my dedicated server yet, so has to run on a real desktop. So whoever can set up their router to work first gets to claim they were the FIRST Galcon 2 “admin” Please post your IP/port info to the forums here.

You can download beta4 for OS X or Windows.

In other news, the Kickstarter rewards are coming together! Here’s a picture of the magnet set proof on our fridge!

And here’s a picture of Nan working on the Power Necklaces.

Have fun with beta4!

-Phil