The wife calls upstairs, “Ernie dinner’s ready!” I yell back, “Be right down.” Fifteen minutes go by and the wife, a little perturbed this time, calls up again, “Ernie, your dinner’s getting cold!” I mutter, “Um… Ok.” Twenty minutes later, the wife appears at my office door, “ahem!” I look up, “Yeah?” I say. Her brow beats down me and she says, “I gave it to the dog!” and storms away. I looked up, a little confused, then switched to Speed mode.
It’s GaryVee’s fault I said to myself, yup, he’s the one that told me about this iPhone game called The B1nary Game. He said, “you’ve gotta try it Ernie, it’s addictive!” He went on, “I’m not really a big gamer, just too busy, but this game is really cool, it’s easy to get into, but difficult to master.” Well, I’m not a huge gamer either, I thought, but do have my share of games on the iPhone, like Texas HoldEm, Sudoku, and Crash Kart Bandicoot. It sounded interesting, so I figured I’d give it a try.
So, I went to the App Store with my iPhone and installed The Binary Game. It was only $1.99 and a pretty quick download over 3G. I started the game and the first screen is a menu with some big bold buttons arranged in two columns. The left column are three buttons that bring you to the different modes of the game; Challenge, Speed and Practice. The right Column Has four buttons, the first is Quick Instructions, I clicked that.
Ok. It’s pretty simple. You have these buttons, which are your game controls, that you can turn on and off, and the value of the button gets added or subtracted to the total. Cool, I’m ready to play, so I click the menu button, and go to the Practice Mode, clicked the button that says “Touch here to begin” and above the controls is a Goal. I turn on the right combo of buttons, which updates my score, until it matches the Goal. When I hit the goal my time is recorded. Pretty simple. But that first time was a little awkward, I can do better. And I did. I’m a pro now, time to take on the Challenge Mode!
There are two primary modes to the game, the Challenge Mode and Speed Mode. Each has its own score board. The Challenge Mode has progressively more difficult levels. The challenge is to get through as many levels as you can and get the highest score possible. The Speed Mode is a race against the clock. The goal is to finish a series in as short a time as possible.
When I first started playing, I used my thumbs, but a I have pretty big hands, so it wasn’t so efficient. I found that if I held the iPhone in one hand and used my index finger I could operate the controls much faster. After a while I started recognizing patterns and got faster with each round. My daughter Emma saw me playing and asked if she could download it. I said sure, but I have a head start on you! I should’ve kept my trap shut, because after no time she was wiping the floor with me!
Dad’s Score Board
Emma’s Score Board
The Binary Game is one of those games that’s really easy to pick up and play, but may take a life time to master. And that’s what makes it so addictive. Every time you play, you can better your score from the last time. When you get a high score you can save it to your High Scores screen. And from there you can press the Sync Scores button that will let you transmit your scores to the B1nary Game website leader board. If you get a good enough score, your name and score will appear on the web page. I’m on the leader board! But full disclosure, that’s because my daughter Emma was using my iPhone.
I love this game, and my daughter is having a blast with it! It’s simple, challenging and addictive. I highly recommend it, so do plenty of other people in the iTunes App Store.
There are nuances and patterns to the game that don’t become apparent until you reach certain proficiencies. The Binary Game reminds of those computer games of old where you just get lost in the time, like Mine Sweep and Solitaire. It also has elements of a Sudoku game. But there was some other game in the past, I can’t put my finger on. So I decided to contact the creator and find out more about the game and what may be in store for future versions.
Interview with the Creator of B1nary
The creator of B1nary is John Kassimatis (@yonnage). Gary Vaynerchuk (@garyvee and Vaynerchuk.com) hooked me up with John through iChat, so I contacted him, and asked if he would tell me about his background and his motivation for creating B1nary.
John: I got the idea for the game back around 1996-1997 from this small little game called “Binary Blitz” which I got very addicted to. It never really took off, but it was a really fun game. It was that game that inspired the idea to write the Binary Game for the iPhone.
Is this your first iPhone game?
John: Before working on this game I had no experience with Objective-C or Cocoa. I picked up an iPhone Developer book from Amazon one day in late December , and started reading it. It was that book and awesome communities like iPhone Dev SDK that made it possible for me to learn and understand enough to fully be able to develop the game.
Aside from the great iPhone development resources around the net , a good friend, Erik Kastner (@kastner and http://metaatem.net) was able to offer some help when I got a little stuck. He and another friend Brian Woolley did most of the graphic art work and the icon.
How long did it take you to develop B1nary?
John: From beginning to end the whole project took about 8 weeks. Development (with a heavy learning curve) was about 6 1/2 weeks. I took about 4 days to fully test the app and fix any little things that I saw that needed to be addressed, and submitted to Apple on 2/9/2008.
The worst part was waiting for Apple’s decision. So many apps get rejected for little things which take minutes to fix. Then the developer has to re-build the app, submit again and wait all over. Thankfully Binary Game made it through Apple’s review process in 7 days, with no issues.
How do you know Gary Vaynerchuk?
John: I have known Gary for over 10 years. We first met when I was working for a small web development firm, where we were contracted to do one of the very first versions of Wine Library. Somewhere along the line we became good friends, and eventually I ended up getting hired at the Wine Library, and have been there for the past 6 years.
Gary got involved with this game a few weeks before it’s launch. Originally global high scores were going to be in version 1.1, but Gary convinced me to include it in the first version, because it was going make the game much more successful and fun. Of course, he was correct.
As you may have guessed he is also the genius behind the marketing. He knows what to do, and how to do it.
What’s the future of B1nary look like, do you have other games in the works?
John: I already have started working on the next game. I would say it’s about 40% finished. Once it’s completed it should probably have taken close to 5 weeks. Aside from that, we will be making regular updates to Binary Game. There’s plans to add a new mode which will challenge people even more. That should be coming in the next 3-4 weeks, or maybe a bit sooner.