Pinball Mini was a collaboration with my friend Chris Echols. He did the game design as well as the actual UI/UX design and I did the rest. This was our first game (though we built many more prototypes that were never release). It was designed to emulate the little “pinball” toys kids used to get where you had a plastic case, a paper background, a tiny plastic plunger & spring, and a few tiny metal balls.
It had a few downloads and we even tried releasing an add-on board back when Apple added the ability to do In App Purchases. We ended up picking the worst time to release it because shortly after it’s release, Apple came out with the first “retina” display on the iPhone 4. Since this art was hand drawn and intended to be pixel precise, it was actually dawn at the resolution we needed at the time which meant it was impossible to make it look nice on a retina device without redoing literally everything.
It didn’t sell well enough to put more effort into it, but it was a blast to work on. This was my first time making money from a game as well as the first time I used a physics engine. At the end of the day, it only made Chris & I enough money to buy a few tacos, but the experience of building is still one of the best experiences I’ve had since it was so collaborative as well as challenging.
