Another good stuff: we’ve put together a gameplay video. Check it out, comment and share with friends!

Background music: «To The On Position» by Wonderland Hollywood.
These guys are awesome! @Twitter / @YouTube.

Right now, Underworld is the first MMO in the AppStore that has micro-transactions, so we decided to drop some knowledge on the whole micro-transaction deal and what troubles we were facing while working on it.

Workaround of the early days: points, points, points

As you know, the AppStore didn’t possess any kind of in-app payment system before 3.0 firmware. Developers who wanted to offer players a «free-with-paid-extras» model learned a little trick: various sorts of points, distributed as standalone paid applications in the AppStore. In exchange for these points, players got extra features to boost their game performance. In Underworld, we have UW points, distributed in the same way. In exchange for UW points, you can get full protection from cops; get detailed info on local market prices and other useful goodies.

It has worked pretty well for us and as far as we can tell, for other developers too. Although there are issues with this scheme, we didn’t like. The most inconvenient one is that players can only buy each Point Pack once: after you buy an app in the AppStore, all the subsequent downloads of the app are free of charge. It is not intuitive from customer’s point of view and we got a lot of feedback on this. Well, we decided to switch to in-app purchase as soon as it’s released.

In-app purchase these days: can’t sell in-game credits of any kind

An obvious decision was to base the micro transaction system on the same UW points: to sell the point packs right in the game and give extras in exchange for the points.

There was only one tiny problem with that: Apple restricts that kind of usage of in-app purchase. A quote from the guideline, you cannot sell «in-game credits exchangeable for virtual goods». What a surprise for MMO games in the AppStore!

Feature packs instead of Point packs

Well, good thing is that you can at least sell «an item for in-game use». We decided to get rid of the points in the micro-transaction scheme. Instead of gaining points and exchanging them for extra game items, players acquire items themselves, ready for use when they need it. For example:

• Small Protection Pack (4 items of one-hour protection from cops)
• Large Carry Space Boost Pack (50 items of 30% carry space boost)
• Super Large Combo Pack (lots of protection, carry space boosts, and other stuff)

All items are of «Consumable» sort, so players can purchase them more than once. Everything what the player purchases appears in his Inventory list thus can be used any time.

In-app purchase in free apps? No way.

That’s what Apple says. Not sure, what is the reason for this, but only paid apps are allowed to implement in-app purchase. Too bad for some titles, still willing to offer a «free-to-play» scheme. But for online games, there is a good workaround for this!

In Underworld, we are detecting when the player has first launched a certain version of the game. As soon as the player downloads and starts the Premium version, he gets a handful of extra stuff. Sweet deal!

Was it worth it?

As it comes to financial side, we don’t know yet. But one thing is for sure, the whole system seems to be much more convenient and intuitive for players. Let’s see how it will work out.

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If you want to review Underworld: SweetDeal Premium, we’d be happy to supply you with a promo-code! Let me know: andrey@a-steroids.com or in twitter.

Today, we are happy to announce that Android people will be able to get into Underworld this fall. We’ve been working on it for some time already and the launch date is really close now.

Details on the upcoming game on Underworld site >>

• Map blackout bug fixed
• New tiled-mode view added in the map screen
• Push notifications about your sales & received new messages

Quick, download it and let us know what you think!

Finally, we have launched a special place for Underworld dealers to meet and chat.

Please welcome an official game site!

Bad news kicked in about the anticipated Traffic theme of Underworld. Got rejected again. Apple contacted us, saying that nothing that involves trafficking of illegal commodities won’t pass the bar.

Is it the time to make a theme featuring medical use of Underworld commodities? Seems like this works pretty well for other iPhone apps. Prescription only, 100% legitimate business, eh?

Anyway, this doesn’t stop us from improving the game along the roadmap. We are releasing a new version in the next couple of days. Feature preview;

• Push notifications about your sales and new messages;
• The improved map screen: you’ll see not only your current tile but also tiles of other dealers you can reach;
• A couple of other useful improvements suggested by the community: like an option to make the system bar visible in the game;

What happened to the In-App purchase functionality? Although we have already done a lot of work to make this mechanics happen in the upcoming version, we’ll have to postpone it to the next release. The thing is, AppStore has a very strict policy on the in-app purchase usage and selling UW points as in-app goods doesn’t comply with this policy very well. We have to work on that a bit more and push another update within a week or so.

Well, how about new ranks then? Right. New ranks (=upgrades) will come out together with a big new chunk of gameplay, right from the top of the Open Roadmap based on your votes. Yep, we’ve promised ‘Missions’ some time ago and to bate your curiosity, we’ll squeeze a separate post soon about the stuff we’re cooking right now.

Stay tuned!

Image credits to GenMed64, via Flickr.

If you follow the news, you probably know that since the release of a new firmware, the whole iPhone/iPod Touch community expected it to bring a lot of apps previously rejected from distribution in the AppStore. Yet we are still unsure if it helps Underworld to get its original setting back, but we promised to take our chances anyway.

Yes, we have re-submitted the gray-trade version of the game, called ‘Underworld: Traffic’. It is rated ‘17+’ for Frequent/Intense Alcohol, Tobacco, or Drug Use or References and Infrequent/Mild Mature/Suggestive themes.

Underworld: Traffic will bring players into the same world as SweetDeal, with a difference in available commodities and dealer ranks.

Now we wait for the news from Apple and will let you know as soon as we get an update. Stay tuned!

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Update [July 10]: Hey, we’ve  got an update from Apple. Not a very fruitful one though:

‘Your application, Underworld: Traffic 1.0, is requiring unexpected additional time for review. <…>’

Sounds like bad news to us, considering that a previous response like that led to two and a half months of waiting and then to a reject.

Well, fingers crossed, we let you know the minute something new comes up. Meanwhile, we are still working hard on the planned game improvements. Stay with us

Please welcome two new packs: 350 UW points & 750 UW points. Available in iTunes AppStore now!

These are probably going to be the last packs we publish in an old-fashioned 2.0-style. New version supporting in-app purchases is on the way, to be submitted soon. As a bonus, push notification support will be squeezed into this version as well Stay tuned!