US games and app start up Eyedip has released plenty of content.

Yet it's two games, Pocket Devil and Flight Doodle, that have caught the attention, in part due to their respective similarities to Pocket God and Doodle Jump.

We hooked with co-founders Steven Fleisher and Jeremy Adelman to find out their plans for the studio and the difference between inspiration and clones.

Pocket Gamer: What was the inspiration behind Eyedip?

Steven Fleisher: The idea of Eyedip was born in early 2009. Jeremy and I both had coinciding entrepreneurial itches and were looking for something different than the typical corporate jobs we had been doing.

Because of our shared interest in the exploding world of mobile applications - with me being an avid gamer and Jeremy being a great believer in the mobile phone revolution - we founded Eyedip.

Jeremy Adelman: At the time, Apple's App Store was rapidly redefining the role of mobile phones in everyday life. After a glimpse at the possibilities of what applications could do, we were immediately captivated.

For the first time in our lives, we began to professionally follow our hearts, dreams, and creative passions by welcoming Eyedip to the party. We both knew that with our backgrounds, we had the insight and ingenuity to develop innovative entertainment and lifestyle applications that could help us reach millions of consumers, in a market that appeared vastly unsaturated. This was just the beginning of a worldwide phenomenon, and we wanted to be part of it.

What do you think characterises Eyedip games?

Steven: The apps that we create are enjoyable, addictive and polished for users of all ages and skill levels.

Whether it's my four year old nephew, a college kid or my grandfather who's 95, we develop games that appeal to a broad audience and are overwhelmingly inclusive. We strive for simplicity. All of our products are highly intuitive so players can jump in and play with little or no instructions.

Our market landscape analysis has shown that people are constantly looking for new apps to pick up and play and keep them engaged. Our goal is that everything we develop at Eyedip is embedded with humour, fun and attention grabbing content that is designed to be super addictive and of the highest quality.

Pocket Devil is inspired by Pocket God and Flight Doodle by Doodle Jump so how do you define the difference between taking inspiration from and copying?

Steven: Doodle Jump and Pocket God are awesome games and they certainly inspire us. We feel the whole app industry is an inspiration for all developers.

For instance, the hand drawn look of the doodle art theme has almost become a hallmark of indie games. It illustrates that we can make games that people love without getting bogged down rendering hyper realistic lighting with crazy polygon counts and dynamic shadows. Tons of apps embrace this style and use it in all new ways. That isn't copying and that's where we see the differentiation.

There are fantastic games creating new genres and introducing great mechanics that the community loves. Pocket Devil and Flight Doodle build on and enrich those genres by offering features and gameplay that other games don't have. 

Steven: Over the months, Pocket Devil has grown to be vastly different than Pocket God, if only by the very nature of iteration. Some of our fans have come to view Pocket Devil as a bit of a mischievous counterpoint to Pocket God, which wasn’t really our intention, but it’s certainly fun within the context of the heaven and hell theme. You can also pick up Pocket Devil for the iPad.
Flight Doodle has a ton of differentiating features that make it great fun. You can grab shield and shrink power ups, as well as customisable balloons and there are several mini games that bring a lot of extra content. That said, we think Doodle Jump players will love Flight Doodle.

Do you worry about getting negative feedback from some fans of the other games?

Steven: We take all positive and negative feedback seriously. Any comments we receive assist us in the development process and help us to improve the quality of our products.

What do you think are the most important things about iPhone games in terms of gaining an audience?

Jeremy: First, the product itself has to be fun, innovative, addictive and rewarding so that people come back time and time again.

Second, through aggressive iteration we refine our applications with each iteration based on user feedback and always providing new content to keep fans and new customers engaged.

Third, in order for audiences to continue to grow, there's nothing more powerful than word of mouth marketing. Word of mouth growth makes the experience interactive, and interactivity is the key to growing audience. When a user picks up Flight Doodle or Pocket Devil and feel like they'd need like to show off our apps to a friend, or share an achievement or accomplishment highscore with a buddy, it becomes contagious.

Social media helps spread the word about our apps, and ultimately grows our audience to a more dispersed and more interactive one. Being able to post a score to your Facebook, page or tweeting a picture of your very own creation, as on Flight Doodle, creates a chain reaction that rapidly elevates the level of exposure of our apps.

How important do you think regular updates are for iPhone games?

Steven: From a development perspective, iteration is key because we love adding new content for our players and improving the quality of our apps.

Pocket Devil is designed to be continually updated with new original content, which the users are expecting, and these new offerings are always story driven. Updates are free, so when new content and features are added, it's fun to keeps users engaged and coming back for more.

For Flight Doodle, we have three completely unique, new mini games we’ve released in the month since launch, along with a few performance and other gameplay optimisations.

With all of our apps, we are always considering ways to enhance the user experience for our fans.

What's Eyedip's set up in terms of how and where you develop your games and apps?

Jeremy: In this embryonic industry, to keep our competitive edge we like to keep the ingredients to our secret sauce under wraps.

What do you think is most exciting thing about being a developer?

Steven: I will never forget the day when I was working from home, laying back on my couch testing an early iteration of Pocket Devil. I started laughing out loud at the thought of what I was doing. I couldn't believe it; it just hit me, "This is my job?!" I play games for a living. Life is good."

Do you have any plans to bring your games to other mobile platforms?

Jeremy: We’re currently developing apps for other platforms and plan to have them launched before the end of the year.

Our business model is about delivering our apps to as large an audience as possible, and this absolutely includes platforms beyond Apple’s App Store.

Thanks to Steven and Jeremy for their time.

You can check out what Eyedip get up to in future via its website.