Reducing the Scope

We really wanted to put a lot into this next release of Zengaku.  We'd had a number of ideas for features to do and we were really excited by the idea of native iPad support since the larger screen would make game play better for the full size puzzles in particular.  However a lot of things have happened since our last release.  Not least of all was the fact that we all lost our jobs.  Then some of us left town in search of work, others have taken up at a real startup rather than our little side project.  Finally some have just lost interest and would rather spend their free time on other things.  So our resources have dwindled and our attention has been divided.  Recently I had my first child which also reduced my energy and free time.  The core red shirts is now numbering 2.  Maybe 2.125...maybe.  So something had to give.

A quick analysis of our installed user base shows us that only about 4% of those who've downloaded Zengaku are playing it on an iPad.  That's a pretty small base to be targeting a good chunk of our effort.  In fact when you do the numbers our iPhone version is actually also probably not worth the effort.  The Zengaku.com site is probably used more regularly by more Zengaku lovers than all our iOS sales combined.

However that type of calculated analysis isn't exactly what Zengaku is about and we will produce an iPad version soon.  But hopefully the new features will be enough to drive a few more sales and make that effort  make a bit more sense financially.  We also would really like to create some other applications on the tablet, smart phone, desktop and web front that we've been rattling around for a while but have not had the time to prototype while trying to get this update complete.

But on the brighter side we've added a number of great features in this upcoming release we think you'll enjoy.

1. Support for multiple orientations and locking an orientation if you so desire.
2. A clock to time your gameplay.
3. A chance to brag about your time via Twitter or Facebook.
4. A mechanism to easily share your love of our little application with your friends and followers on either Twitter or Facebook.
5. A lot more puzzles to chose from including a set of Jumbled Mini Puzzles.
6. Jumbled Mini Puzzles where there are 6 digits still, but each puzzle could use a different 6 digits from 1-9.

We learned a lot in this release.  We spent a lot of time dealing with the limitations of the Interface Builder and the dangers of integrating 3rd party libraries.  We also learned about some of the difficulties in supporting devices that are still running older iOS versions.  Luckily some of us have such devices so we discovered these issues in our own testing.  Hopefully you'll appreciate the work we've done here and support our application with rave reviews and sharing the Zen with your friends and family.  We'll keep working to make the application better as long as there are Zengaku lovers out there.