Well, as I’m sure you know by now, Spaceteam went live on the App Store on Thursday November 29th (App Store link). It was, unsurprisingly, incredibly exciting and terrifying. As soon as I saw the real-actual-official-oh-my-god-this-is-happening Spaceteam icon appear after obsessively refreshing the store I downloaded it, made sure the in-app-purchases worked, played a quick game with Sara, and breathed a sigh of relief.
It all happened so fast. My app status was in the “Waiting For Review” stage for about a week, and then over a period of 3 hours it went from “In Review” to “Processing For App Store” to “Ready For Sale”. I’m sure Apple has the review process down to a fine art by now, but even so I was surprised at how quick it was. Also, interestingly and almost certainly not coincidentally, it hit “Ready For Sale” just before the release date that _I had set _when first submitting the build the week before. Which leads me to believe that they schedule the reviews in order to respect the developer’s preferred release dates. But now I’m curious what would have happened had I set the date a few days earlier or later.
The Buzz
My amazing friends and colleagues helped spread the word through Facebook and Twitter, and hooked me up with some great press contacts. My first official mention is an article by Ben Kuchera from Penny Arcade Report, who says:
“Think of Spaceteam as the result of FTL and Artemis getting together and doing lines of speed.” (link to article)
I’ve been getting so much positive feedback from reviews on the App Store (more than 50 five-star ratings!), tweets, and emails. I’ve collected a few here:
“Spaceteam Haiku:
Must all play Spaceteam.
Get ready for the Spaceteam.
Caramelize Onions.”
“Being on a #spaceteam is the most rewarding thing about owning an iPhone.”
“The most incredible game I have ever played. 3 of my friends just sat in a coffee shop yelling “Appreciate the artwork… QUICKLY”.
“This game is seriously amazing, and awesomely unique … If this game and I were in prison together, I would stand behind it in the shower to protect it.”
“I had dreams all night about spaceteam. Not lying. Super stressed.”
“YESYESYESYESYESYES. I can say, without any exaggeration whatsoever, that this is easily the best game to have been released this week. My god, it’s so mind-bogglingly brilliant that I really, really hope the developer succeeds and profits from this.
…
At the point where you’re staring at your randomly-assembled control panel, yelling at somebody to turn the Swigglethorp Dial to 3, while they’re telling you to “turn off the thing that looks like a shoe”, while you’re trying to replace a swinging panel that’s come loose, while they’re trying to see under slime that’s leaking over the pieces, while you’re both shaking your devices to avoid an asteroid while your screens are wibbly-wobbly (timey-wimey) because you failed to avoid a wormhole, you know you’ve arrived.”
“Spaceteam is so. F*cking. Good.”
Here’s one of the only examples of a “negative” review:
“… This is a ridiculously unpolished app, and the IAP are all laughable, but I bought every single one of them out of appreciation for such an imaginative concept. …”
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The Statistics
After 3 days I’ve had 3,730 downloads and 241 purchases. And there’s more coverage to come. I’m tremendously happy with how it’s gone so far and I can’t wait to see what happens next!