Maybe it’s because the weather in Barcelona has been fantastic until a couple of days ago or maybe it’s because we’ve been incredibly busy, but we hadn’t realized that the year was coming to an end already. Yet it seems to be that time of the year again and, leaving 12 months of hard work behind, we feel we should take a look back to check what was done in Undercoders during 2011.

So let’s go briefly through all the games we’ve developed in this interesting year, which undoubtedly had a lot of Nintendo DSi in it!

Crazy Spammer – iOS

Crazy Spammer was our first game released in 2011 and last game programmed by Ale, Undercoder’s first intern and main character in Ale’s Master Mind, who left the company to pursue new goals after one year of great work. After completing a game as Ale’s Master Mind we wanted to create a puzzle game which had some more action, so we came with this idea of a sliding puzzle which changed dynamically. The spam theme came a bit later, when tons of spam mail jamming our accounts served as an irritating inspiration.

Later in the year we released a free ad-supported edition of this addictive little game and, a few weeks ago, we updated it with a few Christmas themed changes which actually make the spam feel even greater. Spam for everyone, anytime!

Los Tiki Phantoms – iOS

You don’t get asked to make a game for an awesome music band every day, so when we were contacted by Los Tiki Phantoms to work with them we didn’t give it any second thoughts. Our work load was heavy by then and the schedule was tight, since the game had to be out by the beginning of their new tour, but we managed to put up a pretty fun little game, which quickly made its way into a few Top 10 lists and would eventually reach the 1st place in Arcade Games in the Spanish App Store.

The rocking and catchy tunes of Los Tiki Phantoms, together with the fantastic art from Conspiracy Studio, proved to be a great combination and was really well received among fans of the band. The game got featured in several music magazines and the collaboration picked up the interest of some media, such as Generació Digital, which interviewed us in their fantastic radio show and invited us to participate in a video game related event inside the Sitges Cinema Festival. A great experience!

Ubongo – Nintendo DSi

Ubongo was both our first collaboration with fellow developer company EnjoyUp and our first project with a Nintendo console.Ubongo, for those who might not know about it, is a somewhat famous board game which enjoys quite some popularity in northern Europe. Korner Entertainment, a Spanish publisher, secured the rights to it and commissioned games for almost every gaming platform available in the market.

We were asked to design and code all the interfaces and menus, prepare the sound project and provide the multiplayer code for the Nintendo DSi. Not bad for our first contact with a dedicated video game platform! Although the development was somewhat longer than expected due to a few problems encountered in the way, the game was finally released in April in North America and Europe by Korner.

Puzzle Fever – Nintendo DSi

Puzzle Fever was in some way an spiritual successor of Ubongo. Again published by Korner Entertainment and developed in collaboration with EnjoyUp, this time we were in charge of creating all the graphics in the game, compose the music, program all the interfaces and provide the multiplayer code. With the experience of Ubongo on our backs, the development process was quick and smooth in this occasion and saw the light on the Nintendo DSiWare store as soon as in July.

Although simple in essence, Puzzle Fever provided tons of hours of single and multiplayer fun for puzzle game lovers and was generally well received by the press, scoring a pretty good 7.5 on IGN (review link).

Ubongo – iPad

Shortly after finishing Ubongo for the Nintendo DSi, we were contacted directly by Korner Entertainment to create a version of the game for iPad, as they were quite happy with our previous work. We were asked to add an exclusive 4-player mode, taking advantage of the iPad’s big multi-touchscreen, and were given all the high quality assets from the PC version to work with. Once again the development was quick, since we already knew the game mechanics very well and we could work easily with our own engine for iOS platforms.

The result was pretty good, with the people at Korner calling it the best version of the game, thanks to the intuitive touch controls and the 4 player mode on the same device. We received news that Grzegorz Rejchtman, the creator of Ubongo, is particularly fond of this version too!

Battle of the Elements – Nintendo DSi

Battle of the Elements, our second game ever, was reborn on Nintendo DSi, a platform which we found was much more fit for this game than the original iPhone we released it for. It was a huge work to adapt all the resources to a much less capable machine, reprogram it completely in order to take advantage of the dual screen, include new characters, create a multiplayer mode, and redesign the game mechanics to make it a much more straightforward experience. The result, though, was well worth it!

Battle of the Elements for DSi is clearly the best version of the game. It was released in North America on Thanksgiving day to positive reviews from gaming press, receiving ratings of  8/10 on IGN (read review) and 8/10 on Nintendo Life (read review). An European version will be released in early 2012 and will be available English, Spanish, Italian, French and German!

Pinnochio’s Puzzle – iPad

And to close the year we just published Pinnochio’s Puzzle, a game for kids and family released originally on WiiWare by EnjoyUp. We were given the opportunity to make a port on iPad and accepted, since we were already developing a similar type of game (to be released in 2012) and could use much of the code. All the mechanics and interfaces had to be adapted from the Wii version though, in order to make it easily playable on a the iPad.

2012: The year to come

So what are we up to now and what are we preparing for the upcoming year? Well, many, many things actually. We’ve got a Japan-themed puzzle game on advanced stages of development, a port of iSpot Japan for Nintendo DSi, which has already been completed and it’s waiting for a release date, the third episode of Vuvuzela VS Zombies with tons of novelties and crazy as ever, and a couple of super secret projects which we loved to give details about, but sadly we can’t right now!

Platform-wise, we will still be developing for iOS systems and we’ll jump on the MacOs bandwagon too, starting with ports of our existing games. Talking about consoles, while the Nintendo DSi might be about to enter its last year, the PSVita and 3DS are looking quite good to us and we might start developing something for their virtual shops. Who knows!

In any case, we’re still full of energy and ideas to try and make of 2012 our best year yet. Let’s hope it goes that way. Happy 2012 to everyone!

Just one week ago we released our newest game Los Tiki Phantoms: Escape From The Volcano, the official game of Barcelona’s rock band Los Tiki Phantoms to promote their third and newest LP Mueven el Esqueleto, for iPhone and iPad

On Friday night Los Tiki Phantoms kicked off their new tour with a concert in Barcelona, with tickets being sold out and the hall fully packed up with people. Luckily, we were invited to the event and could enjoy the great show with lots of rock, drinks and a Conga!

The game was mentioned on several occasions, both by the band and the fans, some of which we overheard commenting about how far they had made it in the game, or guessing on which stage did each song appear.

All in all, a great way to end the week and a nice start of Los Tiki Phantoms’ game, with more than 9.900 downloads on its first week in the App Store.

Los Tiki Phantoms App Store Link

From now through March 31st, 100% of the proceeds from our game i·Spot Japan will be donated to the Japanese Red Cross Society to support disaster relief efforts to help those affected by the earthquake and tsunami in Japan.

In addition, the price of the upgrade pack has been reduced to the half as an incentive.

Our thoughts are with all the people affected by the tragedy in Japan, among which are some of our good friends which helped this game become a reality.

Download i·Spot Japan

2010 was without doubt the busiest year so far, in the short but eventful history of this independent development team called Undercoders. 12 months go by really fast and, while many ideas, prototypes and projects didn’t see completion, we still managed to publish quite a few games.

Let’s give a look back to what 2010 was in games!

Battle of the Elements – May 2010

Battle of the Elements had been in development for quite a long time (over a year) when it finally saw a release in May. Creating an new gameplay idea with an original rule set for a competitive puzzle game proved to be a really tough task, far more complex than any other aspect of the game. Coding the Artificial Intelligence and designing the 40 puzzle missions took also an unexpectedly long amount of time.

The result was well worth the effort though. Battle of the Elements is a really complete and original Puzzle Game, especially praised for its graphics (which we created in collaboration with Hamo Studio) and soundtrack. Although the game included a tutorial mode, some reviewers criticised the gameplay for being too complex or unfamiliar (some users kept thinking this was another match-3 game), something we’re still looking into for the next update. It seems sometimes going the original way is not the most popular decision!

The most interesting result obtained with Battle of the Elements though, were the doors that it opened to us as a development company. We were invited to join the Play Haven network and we were offered the chance to start developing for Nintendo DSi, a really exciting milestone with some results (hopefully) coming out early this year.

Ale’s Master Mind – June 2010

Ale’s Master Mind was originally conceived as a company training exercise, which we ended up publishing as a free game since we were quite happy with the result. The objective of the project was to help Ale, an intern who joined Undercoders in November 2009, get familiarized with our framework and programming style.

Ale named the project  after the classic board game “Master Mind” and his own name, and soon we found ourselves hooked up to the initial text-only version, trying to crack each other’s secret codes before our rival in the 2-Player mode. The game was simple and fun, so we kept the name, gave it a classy and polished look and published it as a free game.

A later universal-update gave Ale’s Master Mind a healthy download boost and now it’s regularly featured on the “What’s Hot” lists under Board Games on the iPad App Store.

iSpot Japan – July 2010

iSpot Japan was another long-time project which finally saw the light in 2010. With the original code almost completed as early as in summer of 2009, the real weight of the development workload fell on image editing and description writing.

Selecting interesting and adequate pictures to fit on a tiny iPhone screen (there was no iPad or Retina Display when the project was conceived!), adjusting them with the right colors and light, creating the differences and evaluating their difficulty with our testers, was a time consuming process indeed. As it was searching through all the pamphlets we had gathered in our previous travels to Japan, to provide the game with accurate descriptions of each location.

iSpot Japan was our first game to be released following a “Freemium” model, being the free download a starter pack with 30 images which users could upgrade to 200 via in-app purchase.

2011 will be a great year for iSpot Japan too, which will be seeing a universal app upgrade followed by an expansion pack with dozens of new images and some other surprises.

Vuvuzela VS Zombies – July 2010

Ok, so how did something like Vuvuzela VS Zombies come to our minds? It has a simple explanation actually: picture us working during a horribly hot summer, without holidays, asking ourselves why in the world were stupid games so popular and why were there Zombies everywhere in the App Store, and cursing those vuvuzela players every time we were watching a World Cup match.

The idea would soon follow: “you know, we should make the stupidest game with tons of zombies in it,  throw in some of those horrible vuvuzelas and make it free so that everyone can play it”

Not much more to explain actually. After laughing at the idea for a couple of minutes, we decided to go for it, so we worked really fast so that it could be released before the World Cup ended. and it was just before it ended actually, since it was published on the same day Spain beat the Netherlands in the final match. Oh yeah!

As stupid and annoying as Vuvuzela VS Zombies was, it was our first (and only, up to date) game featured in Touch Arcade and, probably thanks to getting featured by apple, it got more than 6,000 downloads per day during the first week, being our fastest and most downloaded game currently.

We’re not sure if we’re happy or sad about this…. (O_O)

Quiz Game Land 1.5 – December 2010

The latest update of Quiz Game Land, our very first game published in the summer of 2009, was a huge one. In fact, we treated it a s a whole new game, changing all the color scheme, redesigning most of the interfaces, creating a new icon and giving it a new identity in general. Oh, and a cool teaser trailer which we had lots of fun (and frustration) filming. You can check it out in our Youtube channel.

Apart from cosmetic changes, Quiz Game Land 1.5  featured retina display and iPad support, Game Center and Open Feint with 25 achievements, musical questions (guessing the tune) and hundreds of new questions which add up to more than 1000. The update has been well received among our users and it has been selected as Quiz Game of the Year by Capsule Computers and has been recently reviewed in Slide To Play with an excellent score.

Slide To Play thought a multiplayer mode would be a nice addition to the game. Well, we have listened, so stay tuned for more Retro Gaming Trivia in 2011

Vuvuzela VS Zombies Xmas Carnage – December 2010

When we first released Vuvuzela VS Zombies we developed the game in a hurry, so that it was released before the World Cup ended. Because of this, some ideas were left out of the game, such as a parody of Guitar Hero which we called Vuvuzela Hero. Luckily, the flood of stupid Christmas games in the App Store reminded us that we had a perfect chance to release our own stupid Christmas game.

And so we did. Vuvuzela VS Zombies Xmas Carnage was a much improved sequel to the summer hit, which contained the new Vuvuzela Hero game in which you could play bloody Christmas Carols with your Vuvuzelas, while bursting zombie’s heads. Yeah, the stupid got stupider. And funnier!

What it turned out not to be funny at all was the incredibly high piracy rate that Vuvuzela vs Zombies Xmas suffered. Within hours of the release, the game appeared in several pirating websites and, up to date, around 80% of the copies which have been played are pirated. Hard to believe considering it’s a 0.99$ game for a several hundred dollar device. Oh, the irony…

Nintendo DSi Projects – 2010

As we noted earlier, this year we started working on the Nintendo DSi platform thanks to a collaboration offered to us by fellow Spanish developers Enjoy Up (authors of games such as Chronos Twin or Red Riding Hood Zombie BBQ for DSi and Wii). While we can’t unveil many details about the games we have been working on, we can tell you that the first project in which we were involved is almost over and should see the light in early 2011, while the development of the previously announced port of Battle of the Elements is advancing pretty smoothly.

2010 was a nice year all in all and, while some goals couldn’t be reached (we’re still a really humble and small independent company after all), we’re sure we will be able to achieve them in 2011. In fact, Crazy Spammer, our new release for all iOS devices, will be released as soon as this month of January.

A great way to kick off another challenging year with tons of games to deliver, Happy New year!

Well, it’s that time of the year again when it’s cold, people get together, delicious meals are served and we hope there’s an incredibly cool video game under the tree. Yay, it’s Christmas eve!

And how are we celebrating it? By conducting a special sale in all our iOS games! Right now, and until December 30th, you can get all Undercoders games and in-app upgrades for only 0.99$!

Isn’t that sweet? Even if you don’t own an iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad, there’s still chances Santa will get you one so you can downoad your favorite Undercoders game for a buck.

And continuing with our generous Christmas spirit (ho ho ho!) here are the winners of the Quiz Game Land Contest which ended yesterday: Mark, Casey P, Ikuko B, Maurice, D.Morris, InstaKill, J.M.Serra, Pol Parts, Yungen C, Nesfan82, Mastershot, Densie, Stephane, Julian M and BombCast.

Congratulations to you all,  you have a promo code waiting in your inbox, and tons of retro gaming goodness in the game!

Happy Holidays!

We just released a huge update for our beloved retro gaming trivia adventure Quiz Game Land and, to celebrate it, we’re giving away 15 promo codes to download the game for free. How can you get one?

In first place, watch this cool little Teaser Trailer for Quiz Game Land we’ve prepared:

How many of the games that appear in the Teaser Trailer can you name?

To participate in the contest, just shoot us an email to quizcontest [ at ] undercoders [ dot ] com with your answer! The 15 participants who can name more games correctly will receive the promo codes via email, to download the game for free on their iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch.

In case there’s a draw between some participants, we’ll choose the winners randomly.

You have to indicate us game and system! If you’re not sure about a game, you can try your guess since bad answers won’t substract points

Deadline: The contest will close Next Thursday December 23rd 2010. Until then you have plenty of time to name all those games!

Eligibility: Since now promo codes can be used from any account in the world, any iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch user is welcome to participate!

Are you gamer enough to win?

Good Luck!

Yesterday Nintendo announced that it’s soon-to-be-released 3DS will be able to run Game Boy games in 3D, cool!

Yesterday also we received an e-mail a from good friend of ours, joking about how Nintendo was going to include our GLBoy in their 3DS. And that brought us good memories!

GLBoy was an experimental Game Boy emulator we coded for our 3rd grade university project. The idea behind it was to emulate all the hardware just as the original Game Boy but, once we had all the screen information, render every pixel as a cube in 3D using OpenGL. That would allow us to apply some depth and effects to our favorite old school games.

It wasn’t easy to convince a teacher to lead our project. Most of the guys we asked told us that wasn’t interesting (they wanted us to code a C# application for cellphones… uh yeah, how interesting is that) or was too complicated, but in the end we found a great O.S. teacher that thought the project was cool and we were able to deploy it.

GLBoy running Dr.Mario

Coding the GBZ80 emulator was a bit of a pain in the ass. In fact, most of the time we spent in the project was emulating the regular hardware, having only about a week for all the 3D stuff before the presentation. The emulator itself wasn’t very polished, it could only emulate simple roms (ROM only or ROM+MBC1), had no sound and was quite slow (0% optimized), but the 3D effects were pretty cool!

You could basically move the camera around as you wished using the mouse and 2 keys (for zooming) and apply several extrusion effects to the pixels. Light could also be applied as a spotlight so pixels would appear to be illuminated and enhance the depth perception. It had a few extras like basic palette coloring, joystick support and we even programmed a fancy menu which showed a GameBoy cart we had modeled in 3DMax (version 3 IIRC) and loaded some textures.

All in all the experience was well worth it, we got the highest grade for GLBoy and we could show all the boring teachers how a computer science project could be fun too. Now that Nintendo has announced GameBoy games in 3D for the 3DS, we can’t wait to see what they are going to deliver!

In the meantime, lets remember our GLBoy with a video we recorded back then (and edited now with some captions)!

Our first Universal App (an app designed for iPhone/iTouch, iPhone 4 and iPad ) has been submitted to Apple and is now waiting for review. And what app might that be? Well, none other than the new version of our silliest yet most downloaded game: Vuvuzela vs Zombies.

Following the release of Vuvuzela vs Zombies, we were asked if we would be releasing an HD version (among some other requests), so we looked into it and thought that it would be actually a good idea. We have been looking into iPad development for a while now, but with so many ongoing projects we haven’t been able to invest enough time, so a new version of a relatively simple game seemed like the perfect opportunity.

So what did making a universal App from a regular one involve? In first place we had to update our framework, so that the iPad and iPhone 4 resolutions were supported and 2D object positioning was consistent independently of the screen size. In second place, redraw all the graphics so that they would look good at double size (this would have been faster if vector graphics had been used)  and redesign some interfaces.

Regular vs HD graphics

Having designed the game for iPhone in first place, there was not much gameplay tweaking or rethinking to make, since the original gaming experience had to be kept intact. What we did though, was introduce an iPad-exclusive VS game mode, which takes advantage of the device’s big screen. In this mode, every 2 zombies killed in a combo send an extra zombie to the opponent stage and the player who survives longer wins the game.

VS Mode (Click to enlarge)

But HD graphics and VS mode are not the only novelties in Vuvuzela vs Zombies 1.1. A completely new game mode called “Vuvuzela Jump” was added to give more variety to the game. In Vuvuzela Jump players take the role of a zombie trying to escape from hell, by using a Vuvuzela-powered jetpack and jumping over brains, bloody hands and rotten fish.

Vuvuzela Jump (Click to enlagre)

Sounds absurd? Maybe, but we’ve had a lot of fun both developing and playing it, so we’re sure you’ll enjoy it. Especially since Vuvuzela vs Zombies 1.1 will still be completely free.

Stay tuned for a (really soon) release date!

Whoa! It’s been more than a month since our last (until then) weekly update… have we become lazy? No way, we were lazy already! So, let’s blame it on the world cup, I mean, the hard work!

Last Friday we published two new games, iSpot Japan, our previously announced spot-the-difference game based on the beautiful country of Japan, and Vuvuzela vs Zombies, a funny and free game inspired by the annoying vuvuzela buzz we had to endure during the world cup matches.

Delicious Sashimi in iSpot Japan, how I miss it...

Both games have been quite well received so far, although Vuvuzela vs Zombies has naturally gathered more attention thanks to the vuvuzela madness. Let’s take a quick look at the latest publications on both games:

• Touch Arcade: “Three silly games you don’t need but should probably have anyway” is the title of this great article at Touch Arcade, in which Vuvuzela vs Zombies is understood as what it is: a funny parody of the App Store topics, mixed up with a trendy vuvuzela and some ads. <Link>
• The Appera: Vuvuzela vs Zombies was introduced as “Just like the Netherlands vs Spain”, shortly before the great World Cup final. The game is regarded as fun to play and valued to be free. <Link>
• Anait Games: “First Game Of The Year of the Day” is the way our friend Nae describes Vuvuzela vs Zombies in a joking way, praising its humor and the fact that its completely free. <Link>
• AppBank: Our Japanese friends at AppBank reviewed Vuvuzela vs Zombies with lots of detail, including a gameplay video, and recommend to download it since it’s free. I still feel sorry for Japan loosing against Paraguay during penalty kicks, having played a great group phase and with great players such as Honda and Endo, they should have made it to the next stage! <Link>
• Capsule Computers: the first iSpot Japan review comes from our Australian friend Master Abbot and includes a great video explaining the game in detail. iSpot Japan was given a great score of 8/10 capsules! <Link>

Talking about future games, we’re preparing a new update for Vuvuzela vs Zombies which will include iPad HD support and a new game mode. We also have a couple of new game demos which need a bit of development.

This summer we’re spending most of our time developing a game for a different gaming platform. We can’t reveal more details yet, but we’re quite excited about it

Oh, did I mention we’re really happy that Spain finally won the World Cup? I guess that goes without saying!

There have been a few publications about Undercoders during this week, so let’s make a quick summary in case you missed them

Nosplay Interview: we were interviewed in Nosplay, the first spanish social network designed exclusively for gamers. We answer questions about the origins of our company, our iPhone games and how is Apple gaining importance in the video game market.

http://www.nosplay.com/articulos/entrevista-desarrolladora-espanyola-undercoders-primeros-pasos

Battle of the Elements review at AppBank: our latest game was reviewed in Japanese website AppBank.net, accompanied by a gameplay video of the game. Our Japanese isn’t good enough to understand it clearly, but it’s nice to see our first appearance in the Japanese media. It seems they enjoyed the original game mechanics, for being different from the rest of puzzle games. The guy playing in the video is pretty good actually!

http://www.appbank.net/2010/05/31/iphone-application/127593.php

Battle of the elements review at Average Apper podcast: a new review of Battle of the Elements brought by the fantastic iPhone gaming podcast Average Apper. The game was pretty well received, scoring 4 stars out of 5, being praised for its graphics, music and original gameplay. Open Feint integration was said to be desirable, so we keep that in find for future updates!

http://averageapper.podbean.com/2010/05/13/averageapperep17-and-were-back/

i·Spot Japan preview at Capsulecomputers: Capsule Computers released a preview article covering our new upcoming game i·Spot Japan. Here you will find some screenshots taken with the latest build of the game and some detailed information on the release.

http://www.capsulecomputers.com.au/2010/06/i-spot-japan-coming-soon-to-the-apple-iphone/

Big thanks to all the people who show their interest in our games and help us spreading them !