From the archive
Semi Secret to Publish Aquaria for iPad
On September 27, 2011, Semi Secret Software announced that Bit Blot had chosen it to publish Aquaria, the award-winning underwater action-adventure, on the iPad that winter. TouchArcade covered it the same day.
Semi Secret is an independent publication, not the studio that made these games; this page is an unofficial account written from the public record.
The game
Aquaria, made by Alec Holowka and Derek Yu as Bit Blot, won the Independent Games Festival's grand prize. The iPad version kept the whole game, its enormous world, its boss fights and its unlockable powers, with its improvements aimed at the touch screen, as Kert Gartner's teaser trailer showed.
How the port happened
Aquaria's source had been opened, and a hobbyist, Andrew Church, used it to port the game to the PSP. That port convinced Alec Holowka an iPad version could work, and he asked Andrew to make it.
The Retina update
On April 13, 2012, an update added support for the new iPad's Retina screen, again by Andrew Church, with a new high-resolution logo made with Kert Gartner, and the game was $2.99 for that weekend.