It was a good night, a very good night last Wednesday when Fastspot, a Baltimore-based interactive design firm, learned
Jumbalaya, a word game designed for Apple's new iPad device, would be one of about a thousand apps available for the iPad's launch on Saturday, April 3.
"There's a big advantage to being in at the ground level on something like this. The marketplace will get more and more flooded over time and we think it will be a pretty revolutionary device and we wanted to have something for it when it came out," says Tracey Halverson, Fastspot's creative director and principal.
Available on Apple's App site, Jumbalaya is a word scramble game that takes advantage of the iPad's multi-touch technology. "You can really use all your fingers to move the Scrabble-like blocks around to create as many words as you can," Halverson says.
The game offers players two distinct gameplay modes -- Survival and Quick Play. Survival pits players against the clock, making words to stay alive. In Quick Play gamers are challenged to get as many points as as possible in two minutes. Players can choose between three -- Wood, Earth and Ice.
It took the design team at Fastspot about one month to create the game, submit it and get accepted by Apple. The big challenge was creating the game on a simulator because the iPad was not available until last Saturday. "We have experience developing for the iPhone, so our lead developer was able to tap into that experience. Apple has been very good about providing feedback on the app along the way, so we just followed their deadline," Halverson explains.
Now that the team has experience designing for the iPad, Halverson hopes that they will be able to use that to create iPad apps for Fastspot's clients.
"I think this device will really become quite popular and we want to do more of it for our clients as well. So it was really great to dive in and get our feet wet," says Halverson.
Source: Tracey Halverson, Fastspot
Writer: Walaika Haskins