Ok, now it’s a good time to summarize what’s happened with Underworld during the last time. Lets do it in the form of FAQ session. Feel free to ask more questions in comments or in twitter.

What’s Underworld about?

Underworld is an innovative location based online game for handheld platforms (iPhone, for the time being). Game simulates the trade on the global black market which exists parallel to your everyday life. Using GPS inside your iPhone/iPod Touch, you move between real-world locations, trade various stuff and meet real people online.

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Finally, version 1.1 has arrived. Here is what we’ve got for you:

• Dynamic local economy — supply&demand situation in your area will change from time to time
• Player-to-player messaging & public shouts
• Map improvements — you can see drug labs & junkies in your neighborhood thus make considered business decisions
• Tiled game world structure, allowing dealers to interact even on the distance
• Human alike bots don’t exist anymore — everyone you could encounter in the game is either a druglab, a junkie or another real dealer like you
• Lots of interface improvements & minor bug fixes

No worries, all your character data will migrate to the new version (only few hours of your activity will be lost).

Now go to Cydia and download the update. To do that, open Manage section, find UW:DrugLords from the list of installed apps, then tap Modify, Update and wait until it loads.

If you experience troubles updating the game, try installing all the essential Cydia updates first or removing the game completely and installing it from scratch again.

Game help we’ve promised some time ago is on it’s way!

Ask questions or tell us what you think about the new version here in comments or in twitter, we like it too

If you are an Underworld addict, you might have noticed a few server outages lately.

Sorry for that, but there is a good reason — we are preparing the launch of UW 1.1. Yes, the one we’ve been advertising since February. Finally, expecting to push it live next week.

All your characher progress will happily survive the update, the only thing you will have to do is to download a new version from Cydia. You will get a message in the game when it happens.

There still some outages might happen during this weekend, follow us in twitter to be in touch.

Did you ever think about smuggling candies? ‘Cause that’s what we’d like to offer you to do in the AppStore version of Underworld.

After our survey on the AppStore friendly commodity pack was launched last week, we have got a lot more suggestions than we could imagine. It’s so exciting that the game isn’t even distributed officially and the community is already so big and active and ready to help. Thanks a lot, we appreciate the support very much!

We examined the whole bunch of ideas scrupulously and have finally chosen the "sweet" setting. The logic behind this is that we don’t want to wait two more months to get rejected by Apple and want to make the game much more fun instead by letting all the AppStore people join it. Good point, right? Many UW players have put the same idea to the suggestion box. So, this is our decision on the commodity pack.

Due to a large amount of participants we are going to award not 10, but 25 of you (randomly chosen). The winners will get a special bonus in the AppStore version of the game (you’ll be informed).

Finally, two more things you want to ask probably. First, we intend to maintain Cydia’s version of the game after the official launch. Second, AppStore launch is scheduled to happen in the middle of March. Yay! 

Just now, some of the most interesting features you have suggested were added to an open roadmap. Keep on voting, we wanna know what’s hot!

Couple of words about this roadmap we are running. There are some opinions that we don’t care enough about the features you push to the top of the roadmap. Which is just not true, of course

First of all, there are features requiring quite a while to be implemented and our resources are very limited for the time being. Secondly, there is some stuff which is not present in the list and yet soooo important to the gameplay and fun.

Considering that, believe us that we care about the roadmap a lot. It helps us filter great and wanted stuff from the boring and unuseful one.

Notice that Messaging & Chat features were put out of the list as we already decided to implement them in the upcoming version of the UW. It’s gonna be legen… wait for it… dary!

This has finally happened — we have got a response from Apple, referring to the well known Section 3.3.12 of the iPhone SDK Agreement ("obscene, pornographic, offensive or defamatory content, etc."), which states that Underworld cannot be posted to the AppStore in the way it is.

Well, we have to change the way it is and yet not to spoil all the fun, right? And that is why we would like to hear from you now After the game was launched in Cydia, we have got tons of insightful feedback, this is really working! Now we want your ideas on the reskin. Please let us know, which commodities would you like to see in the AppStore version of the game!

You can drop a note either here in comments, or in twitter if you like. The same survey was opened in the game, check the About screen to participate.

We’ve been pretty quiet lately. Which is because our hands are full with Underworld improvements. Thus it’s time to finally reveal what are we working on.

Well, our first priority is to make the world economy run faster, smoother and more transparent for players. Glad to say we already have a new version in an internal testing featuring all of this. Hoping to push it live next week.

Now to the sexiest and the long-awaited stuff. Thanks to all the feedback we’ve got from you, our development lab is now preparing the three most wanted features, as follows:

• death to the bots (AI players)
• the ability for the real players to interact even on some distance
• and… the messaging, eh!

Won’t promise any strict release date for this yet, but we want this stuff as much as you do, so…

Please don’t stop with suggestions and other feedback, we’re loving it so much! More, even more, make us beg you to stop :) An open roadmap (the one you can vote for) is going to be updated in the next couple of days.

It’s been two hot weeks since Underworld has been first presented to the beta testers community. The time was pretty exciting for us, and there are reasons for that

First of all, the game world’s population is now over 4,000 real players and growing, which is even more than we’ve anticipated for the beta testing period (sorry folks if you’ve noticed some network related delays - the world got overcrowded, and we wanted to give everyone a chance to play).

Secondly, we’ve received a hundreds of feature suggestions and some real useful feedback, which we wanted so much in our effort to improve the game. Thank you all for that and please don’t stop!

It is clear for us now that the concept and the execution of UW were taken very well, and it’s time to make the game even better.

Which brings us to the next point of this topic: game client update (1.0.1) was just pushed to Cydia. Changelog:

• fix: installation errors on some devices
• fix: random crashes on the first run on some devices
• fix: map screen crashes
• feature: map screen usability&speed improved
• feature: new game start (Profile->Edit->New Game)
• bonus feature - Jailbreakers’ Special - true commodity names

Go to Cydia’s “Changes” tab, the brand new shiny UNDERWORLD update will be waiting for you there.

Enjoy and don’t forget to let us know how did it go for you

* * *

We are going to put more light on our nearest roadmap soon. Stay tuned.

It’s been almost two months since Underworld was submitted to the AppStore for review. With thousands of other applications being reviewed, we still have no idea when the UW going to be reviewed.

Whilst we are all holding our breath, we have decided it’s time to start polishing the game beta, which is, of course, impossible without real players. So, if you are a Cydia user, you are welcome to check out Underworld right away!

Repository URL: http://a-steroids.com/cydia/

Enjoy and don’t forget to invite your friends (the more players you have around, the more fun you get :)) We are looking forward to hearing your comments, reports and ideas. It’s possible to submit a comment from within the game.

P.S. We know, there is still a lot of people who want to play the game badly but don’t have Cydia. Well, this beta release for Cydia Jailbreakers’ community doesn’t change our plan to become available in AppStore soon.
* * *
UPDATE. If you had troubles entering a nickname at the game start, check again, should be ok now.

For those of you, who waited impatiently for the game to arrive, we have terrific news! First release of the Underworld (which you probably know as DrugLords) finally goes public: today it was sent to the AppStore and waits for approval.

As we promised before, it’s going to be free and available for all generations of the iPhone and iPod Touch, although for last one you gonna need Wi-Fi to play.

Since the game was last reviewed by Olly at PocketGamer we made an effort to improve both game visuals and functionality. So now we’re really looking forward for all of you to check it out and give us a load of feedback

See ya rollin’ in the Underworld!