Taco Graveyard

In the App Store the icon is your only bait. Developing a good icon takes a lot of time and effort. We had an especially hard time capturing what we wanted to say with the Omegapixel icon. I don't think we hit the nail on the head with the Omegapixel icon, but I thought I would share the journey we took to get there regardless.

Omegapixel's original graphics consisted of simplistic bright shapes on a black background. They lent themselves to a simple and easily recognizable icon:

When the graphics evolved, we tried using in game elements as part of the icon:

The imagery didn't feel compelling, so we pulled elments from a watercolor that Steve painted:

After trying a bunch of combinations, we decided to focus on the ship and the Omegapixel:

At this point we liked the general idea, but the ship didn't popped. Everything bled together when scaled down. We experimented with drop-shadows, colors, contrast, and thickening key lines:

After a few more adjustments we ended up with this:

Have a better idea for an Omegapixel icon? Please share it!

The ship in Omegapixel is controlled via a virtual joystick. The touch screen is not well suited to joystick like input and it is hard to get right. Omegapixel was built using cocos2d so we had the option to use SneakyInput, but we opted to roll our own code. 

We've received a number of questions about the input code that we used, so I've decided to publish psuedocode of the implementation:

If you get a chance, give Omegapixel a try and let us know what you think: Omegapixel on the App Store.

We are currently developing our next title, but we are also working on another Omegapixel update. In addition to bug fixes and other small improvements, we are going to add a new upgrade to the mix. I have a number of ideas floating around in my head, but I want your feedback. Please vote in the poll below and help us decide which direction to go in.

If you have any upgrade ideas or other thoughts you want to share for future Omegapixel updates (more missons, game modes, etc), please leave a comment. Thanks!