From the archive
Status Update: Sales, Overhauls and Progress Reports!
On May 24, 2012, Adam Saltsman wrote about a pricing protest, a long-requested Canabalt overhaul and the delay of Hundreds. The Verge, TouchArcade and Pocket Gamer all reported it.
Semi Secret is an independent publication, not the studio that made these games; this page is an unofficial account written from the public record.
A sale about control
Canabalt joined Because We May, a sale by indie developers on stores that let them set their own prices, to make the point that pricing control is a tool small studios depend on. It was only the second time the game had been discounted, to 99 cents for a week.
A free update instead of a sequel
He had resisted updating Canabalt because it has few moving parts, so changing one piece changes the whole game. Asking what a sequel would be, he decided the answer was to take things away, such as the rooftops, and to make it a free update. The planned features:
- A local two-player mode, played at the same time.
- Eight new hardcore game modes, each with a leaderboard.
- Game Center achievements.
What shipped
The update arrived on Android first, in July 2013, through the studio's partner Kittehface: a city map with eight new game modes, new leaderboards, a two-player mode, three new runners and new landmarks. The studio's blog said then that the iOS version was not done yet.
Hundreds, delayed
The post also pushed back Hundreds, the puzzle game the team led by Greg Wohlwend was making, to August 2012 at the earliest. By January 28, 2013 it had sold 100,000 copies.