You Have All The Trumps … in one single XCode Project!

I recently helped Andreas Heck to unify 4 of his projects into a single one. Before this intervention he would copy the project from a previous “Super Trumps” app and modify parts of it to fit the new theme. But of course this would multiply the effort necessary to do updates with every iteration of the process.

It was for this surgery that I researched and discovered the method of Target-specific Headers and many of the techniques in this article about compiling for 2.x and 3.0 from the same project. Now he can happily concentrate on just collecting artwork and information for new sets and can keep 95% of his code unchanged.

Andreas Heck is doing beautiful work on the contents of his apps, you can purchase them by clicking on the images above. Now that his first 4 “Super Trumps” games are live on the app store I checked up on them on Applyzer because I was interested which geographic preferences could be gleaned.

All Super Trumps games share the simple yet fun gameplay. From 32 cards you receive half. When it’s your turn you can choose which feature you think is the best. This is then compared to the card of the computer player and who has the better card wins. The game ends when time runs out or when one player has accumulated all the cards. The major strength of those games is the beautiful pictures combined with easy to get into gameplay.

I added all four games to the list of my subscribed apps on Applyzer, which you can currently do for free until the BETA ends. Then I made a screenshot of the first 5 countries for each game to see if there are any surprises.

Top Trumps Cars

UK and Germany are known for their interest in beautifully manufactured cars. An effect that seems to infect neighboring countries like Austria and Ireland as well. Slovenia has a strongly growing economy and because of that it is one of the most recent new member countries of the EU. With prosperity comes an interest in cars … and iPhone games about cars.

Super Trumps Bikes

Germany is one of the biggest markets for the iPhone as well as motorcycles, but I could not have predicted the strong interest in Bikes in Egypt and Chile. Isn’t there too much sand in those places? No wait, the Egyptian desert is the place of choice for many bike crazy people who have fun hopping over dunes on their motocross machines. Switzerland and Finland have interesting and varied landscapes which make biking all the more fun. Here we can see their hidden interest in beautiful bikes.

Super Trumps Aircraft

Again we could have predicted Germany being top 5, but all the other countries express a longing for flying machines that you would not necessarily attribute to them at first glance. Well, except maybe Taiwan. Isn’t that where most of the electronics parts in modern aircraft are coming from?

Super Trumps Guns

Finally the Guns Trumps have always been the wild card in the deck. Andreas Heck originally targeted those at the gun grazed US market, but found almost immediately that the Americans seem to prefer first person shooters to card games about guns. Super Trumps Guns is doing extremely well because of it’s high rank in UK and Germany. Who would have thought that the peace loving Swiss care for guns? Latvia and the United Arab Emirates are also a surprise. Latvia might be influenced by the Russian mafia, while now we know what those sheikhs might be carrying beneath their long clothes … an iPhone with Top Trumps Guns.

The Future holds … Even More Trumps

Having such great success Heck tells me that he is working on several more card games. With the newly unified project he can now concentrate on content rather than coding. We’re thinking: how about a couple of adult-themed trump games. What other whacky or interesting themes can you think of to see in a trumps card game?

In any case I must congratulate Michael Dorn who does a fantastic job with Applyzer. This top 1000 ranking information allows for amazing insights into the workings of the iPhone app market.

Categories: Peer Review