As of Monday, St. Albert computer programmer Michael Feist had 300 free hits on his game called A.R.T. and 27 paid hits.
“Apple tracks every purchase. It’s like watching the stock market,” said Feist.
Feist is a graduate of St. Gabriel Storefront School in St. Albert and is currently in his second year studying computer programming at the University of Alberta.
This past summer he applied for a developer’s license from Apple’s App Store. In September he published his first computer game, A.R.T., which is an acronym for Automated Relativity Traveler.
The Apple developer fee is $99. A light demo model is available for free, and that’s the version that has had 300 hits. The complete game is available for 99 cents on iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad devices.
“If you sign up to be a developer on the Apple website, they help you program and give you access to documentation so you can track how the game is doing. The free download of my game is being played all over the world: China, Hong Kong, Ireland. And that’s in less than a week,” said Feist.
A.R.T. is a puzzle game that resembles Tetris because it has differently shaped blocks but Feist described it as being more of a maze-type game.
“You move around a nine by nine inch grid in which the blocks can move. As the game progresses, you will start to see blocks that you can push around to help you get to places and open doors. It becomes further complex as teleportation devices come into effect,” he said.
Feist admitted that his new game is one of thousands developed every day by Apple, but the experience of building his game as well as checking to see if others are playing it, has been rewarding.
“I developed a passion for programming in Grade 3, when I asked my dad how to make computer games. I wanted to learn how to do it and a lot of it has been trial and error. This past spring I decided I would put my mind to developing a game from start to finish and now I have developed one that doesn’t crash all the time,” he said.
The link to Feist’s game A.R.T. on the App Store on iTunes is: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/a.r.t./id462306522?ls=1&mt=8
