Changes made for Not a Clone iOS approval

Time for some bit of transparency. We released our game, Not a Clone last Thursday, but that journey wasn’t without some bumps. As you would expect from a satirical game, we did receive a rejection from Apple once, and had to make a few minor changes to the game so they would approve it on the AppStore. Their concern was that our app mimicked the home screen and AppStore too well. For reference, here are the two screens in question:

startscreen4

Shop

In response, we’ve made the following changes:

  1. Skip the starting animation, and jump right to the end of it.
  2. Make all the icons squares.

As such, the two new screens looks like as follows:

approvedstartscreen3

approvedtopapps

Fortunately, that’s all that we needed to do. We were surprised ourselves.

There’s also been a long lull before we started making weekly updates again a few weeks ago. We were actually spending most of that time asking professional help on legal matters. We didn’t think it was particularly interesting for most people. Still, it did lead to this funny joke on the start screen:

disclaimer

And hey, it gave us a little time to add in an Easter Egg as part of the completion bonus! Have you found it yet? Let us know!

New feature: Inverted Objectives!

After a messy game jam and the relaxing holidays, we’re back and working hard to make Not a Clone the best mobile game about mobile games. There has been a lot of tweaks since the last update, so let’s list a couple. First and most notable is inverted objectives: in certain games, the objectives will occasionally change to something else, usually the opposite of the usual instructions. For example, here’s what normally happens to Flappy Sombrero when the sombrero hits a cactus:

ObjectiveNormal1

With inverted objectives, however, the instructions changes. Instead of flying between the cactus, the sombrero is supposed to fly into it. To make the difference more clearer, we’ve also inverted the colors of the objectives, making it easier to recognize when the objectives has changed.

ObjectiveInverted2

We’re still in the middle of working on this new mode, so stay tuned!

Speaking of staying in tune, last update, we’ve mentioned that Challenge mode was being implemented, and that certain details may change. One significant change is that you no longer lose a life if you fail the Challenge. As a consequence of this, we’re planning on making Challenge games a lot harder.

There’s also a few updates we’ve made to the opening of the game. First, the loading screen now shows different quips each time you open the game. Second, the number of icons that appears within the first few frames of opening the game now reflects the number of games you have unlocked. For example, the first time you play the game, you have 15 icons visible on the screen:

StartScreenApps

Lastly, the start screen now has a rolling label below the start button. It changes every couple of seconds to display a new information:

StartScreenRollingText

Lastly, we’re going to leave with a mystery concept art our artist put together. Can you guess what it could be?

Bicyclabult