February 28, 2012 – 12:17 pm

Mirthwerx is proud to announce our approval to join family friendly gaming association Moms with Apps. They don’t take just anyone, and founder Laurie Akemann said Mirthwerx is just the kind of people Moms with Apps looks for.
Moms with Apps has three core purposes:
For Developers: To provide collaborative, developer-to-developer support by helping each other learn about the evolving mobile app marketplace. Successful independent software developers will lead to more thoughtful and diverse products in new media.
For Parents: To encourage families to think carefully about how they use technology in the home, and to introduce them to the variety of family-friendly apps in our developer network.
For Kids & Technology: To advocate healthy intersections of kids and family life with technology, where technology becomes an interactive tool for real life, and not a screen to hide behind. We believe there is potential in emerging mobile platforms to meet needs for education, communication and accessibility. We strive for our apps to be high-quality, educational, interactive and useful.
We look forward to sharing with and learning from other developers in the program.
By LordYabo
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Posted in News
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Tagged app store, apple, Catch The Monkey, family, game, ipad game, iphone, iphone game, ipod, mirthwerx, moms with apps
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February 23, 2012 – 11:55 am
Ever wonder “how the heck is that app in the top XX?” Well it could be the use of download bots. We just read an article on 148Apps about how this is the industry’s dirty little secret.

The most effective way to financial success of an app is to be listed high in the app store ranking chart, especially the top 100 paid or top 100 free. The only way to get there is by download volume. Obviously, to Apple, if an app sells, and they make 30% on sales, they want to push successful apps in front of as many people as they can. So if your download volume increases, so too does your rank and it becomes a virtuous cycle.
Dishonest marketing firms either with or without their client’s knowledge, use farms of hundreds or thousands of PCs with fake Apple ID accounts to download an app and falsely increase its volume.
We at Mirthwerx would never resort to this tactic. But we must admit we do understand the temptation. Catch the Monkey was a lot of blood, sweat, and tears to produce. We are trying to think of any way possible to get up the App charts so more people can see it and enjoy it. The allure of bots is powerful. But like Luke in StarWars, we have to resist the power of the dark side and go forward on our own merit, whatever may result.
This just goes to show with the progression of technology it only increases man’s reach and means, it does nothing to improve his ends.
By LordYabo
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Posted in News
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Tagged android, app store, bots, game design, game development, ios, ipad, iphone, iphone game, ipod, marketing, mobile
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February 22, 2012 – 2:47 pm
Our fourth and final article on how we built Catch the Monkey on a PC is up! Article 4 covers Testing, Releasing, and Marketing. The fun and mistakes never end.
And not to worry, we’re applying all these lessons learned to our next project!
By LordYabo
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Posted in Game Dev Behind the Scenes
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Tagged apple, article, catch, cute, development, game, ios, ipad, iphone, marketing, mistake, monkey, release
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February 21, 2012 – 4:20 pm

Today Catch the Monkey has hit the Canadian charts! In the Games, Family section is a list of the 120 “What’s Hot” games out of the 8,800 titles. We are #57! Tell your friends and help us climb the charts to #1!
By LordYabo
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Posted in News
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Tagged app store, apple, catch, Catch The Monkey, family, friendly, game, iphone, iphone game, mirthwerx, safe, top
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February 16, 2012 – 9:00 am

Our third article giving a behind the scenes view of how we built Catch the Monkey on a PC is up! Article 3 covers Polishing & Balancing. Those were crazy times.
These articles have proven to be quite popular! The first one has hit over 3,000 reads and the second, published just a week ago, is almost at that point.
We’re applying all these lessons learned to our next project!
By LordYabo
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Posted in Game Dev Behind the Scenes
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Tagged article, build, catch, design, development, game, gamedev, ipad, iphone, ipod, monkey, program
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