My buddy, messenger extraordinaire and restauranteur, Chuck Hootman and I have come together to form an iPhone game company. The name of our company is JUFTi pronounced (Joof Tea). We’re getting close to launching our first app, so I thought I’d pull the curtain back on the iPhone game we’ve been cranking out with an amazing team over the winter. This isn’t exactly a “how to make an iPhone game post”, but I’ve thrown together some highlights of the game development process (mainly the fun design parts) and will soon be offering a peek at our marketing strategy in a future post. I’ve intentionally overused cliched titles. Don’t destroy me over these cliches.  :)  Enjoy.

Obviously from the giant Cornhole All-Stars graphic, we’re bringing the game of Cornhole to the iPhone. I’ll quickly throw in that this is anything but an ordinary game of Cornhole.

The Game of Cornhole

via Flickr

via Flickr

For those of you who have no idea about the game of Cornhole, let me explain. (Cornhole isn’t as naughty as it sounds). The game as described by Wikipedia:

Cornhole is a lawn game in which players take turns pitching cornhole bags—cotton duck bags filled with feed corn—at a raised platform with a hole in the far end. These platforms are usually made with plywood or occasionally plastic, and are often decorated. A corn bag in the hole scores 3 points, while one on the platform scores 1 point. Play continues until a player reaches the score of 21.

The entire Cornhole entry on Wikipedia is Over Here

To summarize the game; if you have ever pitched horse shoes, the scoring and game play of Cornhole is very similar.

Why Cornhole? One word: COLUMBUS

We are based in the great city of Columbus, Ohio. That’s right I said it: Columbus, Ohio. Our fine state lays claim to the origins of Cornhole. Don’t even give an ear to Kentucky who thinks they invented the game. It all started here. One only has to drive through the OSU campus to see lawn after lawn filled with Cornhole players.  You get a feel for its popularity and tend to wax reminiscently on the game’s origins. The religious experience of Cornhole is spreading like wildfire. It seems to have found its way to the suits of downtown Brooklyn, who are rumored to participate in “Corporate Cornholing” and to Scottsdale, AZ, where they host the Worldfest of Cornhole.

That said, we did not set out to recreate a game for the iPhone because of popularity, rather, Chuck and I just wanted to create a fun, social game that showed some Ohio pride with a twist. So, we put our heads down and teamed up with expert designers and developers (Corn fed- Columbus grown I will add).  And with local pride blowin’ under our wings (don’t forget Ohio gave birth to flight), we began to conjure up visions of corrupt sheriffs, scurvy-infested pirates and rickety crypt keepers who would dominate western towns, pirate ships and graveyards. It’s been a journey; a trip through space and time. With the pleasantries out of the way, let’s dive into the highlights of developing our iPhone game.

Tossing Sacks On The iPhone

We started with the game mechanics. This is a fancy word that describes the game play. Game mechanics encompass everything from the rules of the game to tossing the Cornhole sacks. The image you see above is called a wireframe. A wireframe is a visual guide that describes how the user-interface (game controls) will carry out the game mechanics.

From the very beginning, we knew we wanted to have a “Wii like” toss of the sacks on the phone. However, we also wanted someone sitting in a boring college class to be able to play the game without wildly swinging their arm in the aisle and ticking off a professor. We determined the game could detect the intention and type of toss either way. (Crunching the math of the toss if you will.) We arrived at a point where you can toss the Cornhole sacks with the characteristic swing of the arm or a touch and a flick without any extra steps.

Take Me On - Multi-Player

The second major piece of the game mechanics is multi-player play. Personally, I’ve yet to see a good use of “multi-player wifi” on the iPhone. Multi-player wifi is when you and your friends join the same wifi network and try to play in the same game on separate phones. Most of the iPhone apps that use it are clunky, irritating and unresponsive.

We decided early on that we didn’t want to aggravate people with multi-player wifi and instead opted for what is called “pass and play”. Pass and play is simple: up to 4 players can play on the same iPhone or a single player can play against the computer.

Saving Face - Cornhole + iPhone + Facebook

To complete the trifecta of the game mechanics we opted for Facebook integration as a part of our development plan. This will mean a few things for the users. For one, you will be able to “log into the game” with your Facebook account if you want. Secondly, you’ll be able to challenge your friends to a game. Third your scoring will appear in your profile and lastly, players of the game will be able to win trophies and things that will appear in their Facebook profile. Fun, fun and fun!

Sketchy Character

Probably the most fun we have had in the development, is dreaming up the characters and scenes, and then watching our master artist-modeler-animator Bill, effortlessly sketch these insane creations. Without giving away too much of the story of the game, below are some of the initial character sketches.

More Sketchy Characters

Making A Scene - Environment Design

This stage of the game development process is where things start to get pretty. And by pretty, I mean pretty cool and pretty realistic. The process to create these scenes starts with what is called wire framing, which we mentioned earlier and ends up with something called a model. 3D scenes are created and stills are rendered to create what you see below. Who would have thought you could play Cornhole in a cemetery?

Puttin’ Meat On Them Bones

Once we approve the sketches, the characters start to get some meat on their bones.  At this point, we’ve started to nail the entire look and feel of the game.  This basically means that throughout the game, it should look consistent, from the characters to the locations to the menus. They should all compliment one another.

Things Are Starting To Move

The anticipation is really starting to build at this point. Chuck is getting cranky. I’m getting cranky. One particular day, Chuck picked me up in his car with Van Halen blaring. (From a tape deck, nonetheless). I clearly remember this day and getting the link for the video below from our project manager, Meredith. Columbus in the winter time, like most places that get a “real winter” can be gray and snowy. This video brightened up my day. It’s a little choppy because it’s in flash and being streamed, but take a look at the detail in this scene. Incredible.

http://www.vimeo.com/4090397

Don’t ya’ll wager too much if the sheriff of this thar town challenges ya to a game.  If you is the sheriiff of this town, all due respect sir, don’t abuse yur power too much.

This Is For The Geeks - Unity

Hopefully, you’re not getting the impression I’m minimizing the technical efforts that make this game possible. I’m not. If the game looks good and plays crappy then well, it’s not a good game.

Our technical development team elected to use a game development tool called Unity for this project. It’s a really awesome tool that gives you all the graphical firepower you can throw at it. A built-in physics engine that easily lets us define how the cornhole sacks will behave and lastly, you don’t need to be an Objective C expert to author and publish an iPhone game using this platform. Objective C is the programming language under the hood of all iPhone applications. If you’re struggling to learn it, Unity is a great option.

More Models

Like I mentioned before, I don’t want to give away the story behind and inside the game. So, I’ll let these character models speak for themselves.

Branding The Game

I won’t put you through two or ten agonizing paragraphs with my philosophy on branding. However, it should be said here that I don’t think the brand is the name or logo by themselves. They are both components of the brand. Very important components.

We went round and round on the name and it felt like it took forever to settle in on something. We even summoned the gods of alcohol to deliver us a name. All to no avail. Do we use the word “cornhole” in the game title? Do we not use the word cornhole in the game title? Will people even know what it means? Will you be slapped in the face uttering the title of the game?

Anyhow, we did have a blast naming the game. Below are some early names that didn’t make the cut:

• iCornhole
• Cornicopia
• Cornhole Tournament
• Colonel Corn

The more we lived with the name Cornhole All-Stars, the more we liked it. After a certain point, you have to just commit to a name. The more the logo was refined, the more we liked the name. The plain and simple logo you see at the top is what we ended up with. Below are some initial logos that were designed.

Rolling Out The Game

We are about 30 days from launching. Behind the scenes is plenty of project management (thanks Meredith), mad modeling and texturing (thanks Bill) and some coding deep in the matrix (thanks Brian). It’s safe to say that we think Cornhole All-Stars will be a killer product, a fun game for people new to Cornhole or experienced Cornhole pros. Also, we’re confident that our experienced team can navigate the Apple App Store approval process. They’ve done it before.

White Noise And The App Store

As I write this post, the Apple App store is closing in on 1 Billion (with a B) downloads and there are now nearly 30,000 applications one can download! The store is getting extremely crowded making it very difficult for most publishers to get their applications noticed. We have a marketing plan, which I’ll be sharing next week in a post. Will it work? I hope so, but I have no idea, so you’ll have to ask me next year. We will constantly be testing and listening to our customers to push for the success of the game.

Presenting Cornhole All-Stars The Trailer

Below is a link to the official Cornhole All-Stars Trailer. That aggro music you’ll hear is no accident. If you’re sitting at work you might want to turn down your speakers. If I can answer any questions about game development, please feel free to leave a comment below. If you’re an OHIOIAN, show some Ohio Pride and Digg, share and tweet this post to your friends. Thanks for sticking with me if you’re reading this.

What Do You Think?

Any and all feedback on what you see here is greatly appreciated! Leave a comment. If you’re a developer or entrepreneur considering an iPhone game feel free to leave a comment with any questions. I’d be happy to share more of our experience. Thanks again.

Track The Launch Of Cornhole All-Stars!

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