Welcome to the official blog of My Owl Software, creator of the excellent Apple Jack games!



Saturday 30 June 2012

Patch notes

Hello!

Are you enjoying / have you enjoyed Apple Jack 2? It seems to have gone down well, all in all, but one or two issues have cropped up for people playing the game. To that end I've released a patch which makes it more stable and fair to play:

- Fixed crash bug that sometimes occurred when sliding down a hole.
- Adjusted level 2 to work better for people with manky controllers.
- Also adjusted levels 8, 24, 50 & 51 for various reasons..
- Made the saw blade hit-circle more forgiving.
- Stopped the slight stuttering just before a new song plays.
- Added coin, combo and death stats to the pause menu.
- Made spikes speed up during rewind (purely cosmetic).
- Fixed bug that zoomed in to intro art on second viewing.

Nothing earth shattering, but the crash bug especially was annoying. You'll be prompted to download the patch when you next play the game and all your old save data will still work fine. Enjoy!

Wednesday 20 June 2012

Apple Jack 2 soundtrack available now!

As excellent and life-affirming as Apple Jack 2 is, you can't play it all the time.

Sometimes you need to go to the toilet.

Sometimes you need to go to work.

Sometimes you have to heave your body upstairs to have laboured, joyless sex with your boyfriend / girlfriend / wife / husband.

None of these things will ever be as good as playing Apple Jack 2, clearly. But with the new Apple Jack 2 soundtrack album, courtesy of This Eden, you can enjoy the acclaimed music of the game at any time, day or night!

What's more, you only have to pay what you think it's worth! Get it here:


http://thiseden.bandcamp.com/album/apple-jack-2-ost


They also have a self-titled proper album available, so buy that too while you're at it.

Monday 18 June 2012

Apple Jack 2 responses

Hello!

I've had lots of positive (and one negative) reaction to the game so far, so I thought I'd use this post drop a few links on yo' asses.

First, Indiegames.com found the intro very funny and used words such as 'interesting' and 'creative' to describe the game itself. It should probably be pointed out that they only played the demo though, the cheap sods. Read it here

Adam Pettifer writes for a group of websites under the Your Local Guardian banner, and liked it a great deal, saying "I don’t remember enjoying any 2D platformer quite this much, not Sonic 1 or 2, not Super Mario World on the SNES, nothing.". Slightly over the top possibly, but it's great to read something like that! Read it here

Indie Gamer Chick wasn't a fan of Apple Jack 1, so I wasn't expecting a great deal of gushing praise from her this time around. And so it proved to be. She preferred it to the first game, but ultimately she doesn't much like difficult platform games, and didn't think the adddition of a rewind mechanic helped enough to ease the pain. Read it here

Critical Hit start their review with a disclaimer stating that one of their staff, Kate Willaert, did the cover art for the game (which is true - see a few posts back). This doesn't take the gloss off of a very positive review though, which praises the graphics, the music and the level design, and awards a score of 20/20 Read it here

Will Porter at Hookshotinc said that the game 'stapled a smile onto the front-side of my fizzog', which is as good a place as any for it, I suppose. 'Highly, highly recommended', he goes on to say, and uses the term 'pluck-n-chuck' to describe the gameplay, which is too good not to steal and claim as my own. Read it here

I think there was another one but I can't find it at the moment.

There should be some more reviews coming soon if my inbox is to be believed, but in the meantime you could always take a look at the official Apple Jack 2 threads at Neogaf and Rllmuk. They were both started by the excellent Matt, who goes by the name of toythatkills.

I'll be getting a patch ready for the game soon, and many of the bugs and issues mentioned in the above threads will be addressed. A couple of crash bugs in particular are high on my list.


Finally, Gamers Dissent did this playthrough of the first few levels, complete with commentary, which I enjoyed greatly:






Thursday 14 June 2012

Apple Jack 2 is out!

Get it here: http://marketplace.xbox.com/en-GB/Product/Apple-Jack-2/66acd000-77fe-1000-9115-d80258550b4d

..And once you've given it a go, don't forget to give it an honest rating on the dashboard!

Thursday 7 June 2012

Apple Jack 2 released June 14th!

Nine months late but entirely on budget (£0.00), Apple Jack 2 will be released next thursday, the 14th of June...



...For a paltry 80 MICROSOFT POINTS!



That's cheaper than a big bag of crisps, even before you factor in the expense of driving to the shop to pick them up. My Owl Software's commitment to the environment means that Apple Jack 2 will be delivered digitally, direct to your Xbox, absolutely free of charge!

Anyway, does this bag of crisps contain OVER 60 LEVELS of deep-fried platform-puzzle mayhem, with a seasoning of giant monsters, huge fruit-multiplying combos and head scrambling puzzles?

No. It just contains some crisps.

To conclude: you'd have to be an idiot NOT to buy Apple Jack 2 next thursday, from the Xbox Indie games channel!


Thankyou.



PS. If I promised you a download code for the game, I'll email them off once I get them, probably on thursday.