Unity 3D and iOS Development
Sparky the Road Clown
Running over clowns? There’s (about to be an) app for that
Dec 13th
Sparky the Road Clown, about a good clown gone bad, is available immediately in the App Store as a Universal App for $0.99 — here’s the gameplay trailer:
It’s running over clowns and available now in the app store — what more do you need to know? 
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Sparky the Road Clown – Evolution of an Idea
Mar 17th
When I tell people I’m making a game about running over clowns, I invariably get the “wow, how on earth did you come up with that idea??” look and/or question. This article will trace the evolution of that idea, the gameplay and the graphics from a silly name to a finished game.
Just a name
The name Sparky the Road Clown is actually a name I’d had in my head for years. When somebody would cut me off in traffic or something like that, I’d say something like, “Hey, Sparky- nice driving!” or “Watch it, Sparky!” and I imagine a lot of other people say similar things. Over time, I associated Sparky and road craziness and I came up with the name Sparky the Road Clown and even came up with a little backstory: he used to be Sparky the Rodeo Clown but had since gone off the deep end and became Sparky the Road Clown. This name (and the concept of rodeo clown to road clown) stuck in my head for several years before iPhones were even around.
Hey World, come run over some clowns
Nov 12th
My first Unity 3D indie game, Sparky the Road Clown, is now in open beta on Facebook. It’s integrated into Facebook via dimeRocker Arcade, which is a super platform and has provided a super easy way for me to add leaderboards, achievements, social media aspects (inviting friends, comparing scores), microtransactions and more. This is not a paid endorsement or anything — I just get to use their product and I’ve been really, really happy with it. The guys at dimeRocker have been super helpful, their devs and product managers really responsive and it’s just been a great experience overall.
Walk a mile in my big, red clown shoes.
Oct 28th
Well, last night I decided to dress up as the character in my indie Unity3D game, Sparky the Road Clown. I managed to make one small child cry and fulfilled a number of requests for hugs and people who’d like to honk my nose. Here’s the original character concept art that Chris Magee sketched and colored and a slightly disturbing picture of a clown, with me underneath that makeup and wig.
I plan on doing it again at some point, hopefully with a little yellow hat, the full costume (which I believe my wonderful wife is going to sew for me) and the rest of it. You can’t see ‘em in the picture, but I do, indeed, have big red clown shoes on.
In game related news, the game is coming along well, and I’m ready for people to start checking it out…
Sparky is almost ready to go live…
Oct 8th
It’s been a while since the last update, but we’ve been working like mad monkeys to get everything finished. Despite PETA putting out a game about abusing clowns (via elephant), we feel like our game is *the* game to play if you don’t like clowns. We’ve made a ton of improvements to the game, including upgrading to Unity 3.0, which is just stellar.
Here are a couple of screenshots from the most recent version:
Beta Gameplay Video
Jul 16th
Just a quick blog post to direct people to the gameplay video of my new Unity3D game, Sparky the Road Clown.
More updates coming soon!
Running over clowns? There’s about to be an app for that
Jul 7th
It’s July, and we’re only days way from launching our new game, Sparky the Road Clown on Facebook and iPhone. We’ve already done a “soft launch” on Facebook, which means we’re letting a few people play the beta and we’re opening that up to more and more people as we add in and finish out more things. We’ll be opening it up to the world and sending the app off to Apple for approval within the next 2 weeks.
It’s great to see people who haven’t seen or played the game yet figuring out the key to knocking Sparky into the open railroad car at the end of the street, or better yet, knocking him way over the trains off the edge of the world (oops, gotta fix that). I’m getting some really good feedback from gamers and non-gamers alike. I can’t wait for everyone to see and play Sparky, but the world will have to wait a little bit longer. While I can’t wait for absolute perfection, I do want to wait for the right balance of quality and timeliness.
Here are a couple of new screenshots — the first is our excellent ngame loading screen (as usual, done by the talented Chris Magee) and the second is a screenshot showing off the new train cars, sky/background and Sparky taking one right in the face.
Facebook version is free, iPhone version is $1.99
Jun 18th
Sparky the Road Clown was going to be an iPhone game from the beginning, and part of my marketing plan was to buy some ads on Facebook. The more I learned and worked with Unity3D, though, the more I realized that it wouldn’t be that much more difficult to create a Facebook version if I planned it that way from the beginning — so that became the plan. While I don’t think charging people just to play the game on Facebook would work, charging for extra content within the game on Facebook is not at all uncommon (see: Zynga) and that’s the model we’re going to follow, but only to a degree.
The game will be finalized on Monday, June 28th, and sent off to Apple and launched on Facebook at the time. It will be $1.99 on the iPhone, but it will be free on Facebook. Some people have questioned the logic behind this, but I’ve spent some time thinking about it, and I think I’ve got a reasonable model in mind.
As I talked to people about my pricing model, people had questions like:
- So why $1.99 on iPhone and free on Facebook?
- Free on Facebook?? How is that fair to iPhone users who pay for it?
- Will they be exactly the same? Isn’t the free version going to hurt the sales of the paid version?
Clowns, and hammers, and cars! Oh, my!
May 28th
The great guys over at Unity recently posted a Car Tutorial, complete with racetrack and lots of options to tweak. I haven’t been happy with the physics of our car yet, so I started going through it to see how they did what they did… I got a bit sidetracked. I woke up yesterday just before 5am and had an idea about hitting the clown with a big hammer… why not, right?
So I spent all of yesterday and most of today and got that working, as well as our car model in their racetrack scenario (using that environment as a testbed) and had Chris (our graphics guru) come up with a hammer… and here are the results. Now, instead of just driving your car straight at Sparky the Road Clown, you can choose to drive past him and try your luck at whacking him with a big hammer that’s mounted to your car instead.
World, meet Sparky the Road Clown
May 21st
After many months of development, it’s time to unveil (or should I say unleash?) what I’ve been working on with the help of several talented friends. Sparky the Road Clown is a game for iPhone and Facebook and will be released this summer. The premise? Well, Sparky the Road Clown is an ex-rodeo clown. A tough old bird that has gone a little bit cuckoo, if you will.
I mean, sure, clowns are funny when they’re making balloon animals at the party, but what about at 2am, in a dark alley?
Good thing you brought a car.
Here’s a first look at our antagonist and an early screenshot from the game…