Mobile Who? What?
Some of you may have heard rumors about a project that I worked on over the holidays. Many of you have seen my multiple pleas for a used Android Smart Phone broadcast over my Twitter and FaceBook pages and in IRC (irc://irc.newnet.net #fpg). Citrine even mentioned the project in a previous blog post and how it caused some gear-switching at the office.
Yes, it’s true, Flowerpot Games has yet another project, but this one is different because
- It’s not a game.
- It’s a deviation from our RPG leanings.
- It’s Finished and available on the Android Marketplace!
What Is Mobile Montessori?
Mobile Montessori is an Educational App for Android Smart Phones and Android Tablets. It is designed for children age two to six and is packed with five traditional Montessori activities with more in the planning stages.
What Kind Of Activities?
The activities are learning exercises that teach and reinforce fundamental concepts like color recognition, shape matching, and block stacking. Montessori techniques can be applied to math, reading, and even practical life skills. Wikipedia does a much better job than I of describing the Montessori Method and the history behind it.
Screen shots of the activities and more detailed descriptions are available on our new Mobile Website FPGmobile.com
Mobile Montessori is being released in two versions, free with banner ads and $4.99 without ads.
Banner Ads? Not With My Children, You Don’t!
I hear you! I have three children of my own between the ages of nine months and five years. My family will tell you that I’m militant when it comes to preventing marketeers from getting their hooks into my kids. My holiday guests we’re bored to tears because I wouldn’t let them turn on the TV and they we’re shocked when I told them to turn off the internet stream of the Mariah Carey Christmas Special.
Because of my own sensitivity to what my children view, I have instructed the ad banner provider to ship ads that are acceptable for a “general audience”. So the ad banner version should not receive gambling, personal, or other adult content. With that said, I’d still buy it for $4.99 because it’s guaranteed to be free of ads.
The ad banner version provides you, as a parent or care-giver, with a risk-free-way to try out Mobile Montessori, see if you like it, and then purchase it. Your kids will never have to see the ads.
FPG Mobile Apps
Consistent with the Flowerpot Games mission to make games that are fun to play, we’ve launched FPGmobile.com. FPGmobile is the hub for all FPG mobile Apps. The first title is Mobile Montessori, planned for release on January 21, 2011 and you can expect more apps to follow. Half a dozen apps (mostly casual games) have already been prototyped over the last 2 months. Some of them instantly hit the bit bucket but a few others just might make the cut.
What About SoN and CoD?
When I prototyped Mobile Montessori, it took literally 12 hours. Those 12 hours included learning a new programming language, finding my way around the Android Software Dev Kit, and coming up to speed on the AndEngine game engine. Are we nimble? Yes. Are we fast learners? Yes. That’s what being an Indie is all about. Of course developing Mobile Montessori into a complete app took longer (about 40 hours). The point is that Mobile Apps have a short/quick development time, partly due to the completeness of the programming interface and the richness of the programming language (Java in the case of Android).
SoN and CoD are heavy on art content and money is needed to buy that content. CoD alone will cost us close to $50,000 to produce (SoN will easily triple that) so we’re looking for ways to raise that money. Producing casual or educational Mobile Apps with a short development cycle is one way to raise that money.
Everything we’re doing is focused on the ultimate goal of seeing SoN on your PC or MAC.
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