A couple of weeks ago I gave a presentation about iPhone development at Gamelab, the main game development conference in Spain (yes, it was my first technical presentation in Spanish!). Afterwards I was interviewed by Zoom Net, a popular TV show about games and technology. Yesterday they aired the episode with my interview and I was pleasantly surprised to see they turned it into a full 4-minute section covering Flower Garden. Coverage starts at 8m 40s from the start (and, obviously, it’s in Spanish).

Notice the other iPhone games that flash at the start of the Flower Garden section: Harbor Master, Up There, and Little Red Sled, all App Treasures games! The video also starts with coverage of Fifa 10, so we’re in pretty good company

Today we finally unveiled a project we had been working on for a couple of months: The App Treasures label.

Only indie games that we consider to be really fun, polished, and of high quality are part of the label. We hope that when players enjoy one of our games, they can turn to the other App Treasures games and find something they like.

With the App Store dominated more every day by big developers and publishers, this is a way for small indie developers to stand our ground. With App Treasures we establish a strong brand, share resources, and get more visibility in the App Store and in the eyes of the users. The same benefits we would get with a publisher, but without giving up our independence, creative freedom, or a percentage of the profits.

The current App Treasures members are:

• The Blimp Pilots (Koi Pond, Distant Shore)
• Imangi Studios (Imangi, Word Squares, Little Red Sled)
• Snappy Touch (Flower Garden)
• Streaming Colour Studios (Dapple)
• Veiled Games (Up There, Payday Roulette)

You can read more details in this interview I did for App Craver. Mobile Orchard also published a really good piece with some interesting views and conclusions on App Treasures.

Oh, and don’t forget to follow App Treasures on Twitter to keep up with the latest news.

Come join us for the next iPhone developers meet-up. This should be an interesting one with lots of things to share after GDC and the launch of several local apps (Sky Burger, Appy Newz, Flower Garden and more!).

When: April Wednesday 22nd at 7:30PM until whenever
Where: O’Sullivan’s Pub in Carlsbad (home of the Appy Entertainment Secret World Headquarters)

Appy is being a great host again and providing some munchies. You’re responsible for your own drinks though

Hope to see you there!

The latest podcast from Mobile Orchard covers my interview describing my experience as an indie iPhone developer and how Flower Garden was developed. I was particularly pleased when Dan Grigsby invited me to do the interview because the Mobile Orchard podcast is one of the two podcasts I listen regularly (the other one being TED Talks).

The interview topics range from high-level topics like business aspects of iPhone development, down to the nitty-gritty of how the procedural flowers were created, or how I had to use assembly language to take advantage of the vector floating point processor on the iPhone to do all the heavy lifting for matrix transforms.

Flower Garden was finally approved and it’s available right now! This is what I’ve been pouring my heart and soul for the last six months. You can buy it directly from the App Store.

If you like it and would like to help out, here are some of the things you can do to promote it:

• Go back to iTunes and write a fair review
• Grow flowers and send bouquets to your friends
• Join the Flower Garden group on Facebook
• Tell all your friends how great it is

Thanks everybody for all the encouragement and support along the way. I hope you enjoy playing it as much as I enjoyed creating it.

And don’t worry, this is just the beginning. I have lots of updates planned, so keep an eye out for lots of fun new features!