A couple of recent articles covering grey areas of modern entertainment and possible abuse of location-based games:

• GPS Technology Allows Smart Phone Game Apps to Cross Realism
• Dealing Crack? There’s an app for that too!

While we don’t want to get into murky waters of what’s right and what’s wrong about location-based games, a topic worth discussion is which setting / set of commodities would be the best fit for UW2.

It’s interesting that even though the sweets were supposed to be a funny cover for the game’s true theme, SweetDeal has earned itself a lot of loyal fans who loved it because of the candies. And that makes the question of setting for the sequel even more complicated and tricky. What’s your take, folks?

P.S. We know you’re waiting some news on the feature set of UW2 — let me assure you we’re on track with that, please be patient! =)

The most important part is that we’ve finished all the necessary research & planning and dived into the code! That’s right. We have decided to throw out the first game’s code base and start from scratch. It was a tough decision because usually it’s not such a good idea, leading to enormous development timelines and huge risks. In the case with UW2, after looking at the vast amount of features and improvements we want to see in the sequel, it was clear to us that the new game needed a new foundation. The awesome part is that the new code works on both target platforms, allowing for almost simultaneous release on both iOS and Android. Cool, huh?

Now with the code development on track, we’re finalizing the Game Design Document and deciding what exactly goes into the initial release and what will have to wait until the update. As soon as we figure it out, we’ll share the scope of work with everybody. That’s the topic of the next update — stay tuned, folks!

For those who just joined us here: Underworld is our firstborn and the game famous for being packed with innovative stuff. For starters, back in 2008 it was the first location-based game on mobile. Not only was the gameplay using your real location and real life movements; we have introduced geo-aware Leader Boards  — with tremendous success. Finally, Underworld became ‘Freemium’ when ‘Freemium’ wasn’t even a thing!

With innovation all over the place, you can probably imagine how long it took us to balance the game, what a buttload of mistakes we did on the road and how much we’ve learned from that. Finally, we got an opportunity to re-use that experience.

One of the things that worked really well in development of the first game was that constant stream of support and feedback we received from the community. We intend to keep it on to gather your ideas and thoughts on the bigger, funnier and even more addictive second version! We promise to keep you posted on the progress as often as possible. Stay tuned for further details and spread the word!

Not only we feel great and enjoy the first spring sunny days, we also work hard on finishing our next awesome project - Dark Blood (working title). DB is a free online game for both Android and iOS that will be out later this spring. And since no one’s watching me, I’ll show you the screenshot of the aforementioned game. Stay tuned!

Vampire Rush is all about bloody sword fights, deadly fireballs and tower defense mastery! Expect countless hordes of greedy bloodsuckers, nasty werewolves and no one there to help you!

If you’re up for all that, we’ve got some good news — Vampire Rush has just hit your local AppStore! Go get it now and get back to us with your thoughts, rants and praises.

Vampire Rush, $1.99
Vampire Rush HD, $2.99

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Okay, let’s admit, we really screwed up with premature title’s launch announcement back in December 2010. On the bright side, it wasn’t our laziness that caused that delay. Quite contrary — we teamed up with awesome folks from Chillingo, who helped us improve the game even further. Two more months of bloody hard work and dedication and we’re finally happy to report that the game’s release is right around the corner.

The release date is yet to be announced, but don’t make it stop you from letting us know what you think. Our twitter and Facebook page are always there for you!

Let’s not turn this into a ‘year roundup’ post, but 2010 was pretty awesome, really. We finally grew into a fully-sized small studio, moved to a new office and released Vampire Rush, which was taken absolutely great by players and received Gold Award from the press!

During 2010, we had to dedicate a lot of time to a few work-for-hire projects. This has already been changed with the release of Vampire Rush and you will definitely see more games from A Steroids in the 2011!

Have fun folks, see you next year!

Sounds like a lot of time to transfer a game from one mobile platform to another? Well, that’s because we don’t want to just create a «port» from Bada to iOS. Among smaller improvements in art, UI, sound and gameplay, we are adding few major features that will literally blow you away. Stay tuned, we’ll reveal them soon!

Check out what’s in the update.

Get Vampire Rush from Samsung Apps.

For the last few weeks of game’s presence in the Samsung Apps, we are proud to say the game has been received really great! PocketGamer gave it Gold Award, customer average rating is 4.5 of 5 stars and the game has climbed to the Top 15 paid apps in few countries!

We didn’t want to stop on that though. We’ve collected carefully all the feedback we could get our hands on and used it to craft an update that will make the game even more addictive and awesome! Long story short, here is what you’ll find in the Vampire Rush 1.1;

• 2 more dungeons to protect from hordes of vampires;
• Pick-up chests on the dungeon map: collect them to get some gold, heal yourself or blow the place up and kill monsters around you;
• Dungeon high-scores: gain bonus score for using fighting combos, collecting chests and so on;
• Better game balance, tutorial, interface and many other small fixes and improvements;

The update is going to be submitted to the Samsung QA team first thing tomorrow morning. Fingers crossed, it should go live next week!

As usual, the update is free for those who already bought the current version of the game. For those who didn’t do it yet: hurry up, today is the last day of the Halloween 50% discount! Stay tuned, folks!