One of the problems with iOS development is the first time you find out about many games is the day they go live on the App Store.

The history of Aralon: Sword and Shadow has been the complete opposite however.

With videos ranging from the earliest prototype phase through gradual improvements to an almost finished product, the love child of indie outfit Galoobeth - boosted halfway through by help from experienced RPG developer Crescent Moon and artist Mark Brown - it's provided a fascinating view on how games can be made.

So with the title now submitted to the App Store, we caught up with Crescent Moon's creative director Josh Presseisen to get his take on the travails and joys experienced along the way.

Pocket Gamer: When did you first hear about Aralon?

Josh Presseisen: There was a trailer posted on Touch Arcade's forums back in March. It was rough, to say the least, but the gameplay was compelling enough for us to talk to Galoobeth and get a build to try out.

We were really unsure of the project at first. Obviously, there was going to be a lot of work involved, on both sides, to get the game looking and playing great. Yet there was a big enough core game that we decided to take the plunge. We had no idea what was ahead of us.

Why did you want to get involved in the development?

We saw it as an opportunity to work on a very deep RPG project, which was something that people had wanted out of Ravensword. Galoobeth are great people to work with too. The whole development process felt very seamless.

How did you get hold of Mark Jones?

Actually, Mark Jones got hold of us. After Ravensword was out, he sent me an email, saying "I love Ravensword. How can I help out with future projects?".

I saw it as an opportunity to have a video game legend work on our games. Not only has he worked on most of the Elder Scrolls series, but he also did many Amiga games, and the graphics for Arkanoid for the Commodore 64.

The collaboration started small at first, with him developing some assets that had been intended for Ravensword 2, but when Aralon came along, we had him jump on that.

How easy was it to do joint work on a game that was already a substantial way through development?

Getting to know the project was probably the hardest part. It's got so much content, it was four months before I'd seen every piece of it.

We started by just redoing some of the levels, or areas, but then it grew into more than that. We added new characters, items, armour, customisation, and animations so over time a drastic transformation took place. Even on the code side, we worked with Galoobeth to enhance features and add new ones.

How hard a decision was it to limit support in terms of omitting older iPhone hardware?

We knew right off the bat that we couldn't support first generation devices. Second generation is also very hard to support, because of the limited memory. Using iOS 4.0 on an iPhone 3G, you only get about 10 MB of memory. How do you fit a game the size and scope of Aralon into 10 MB? The answer is - you don't.

What we are doing is some support for second generation iPod touches, which many of the testers have been able to get running fine. However we spent the majority of time testing for third and fourth generation devices.

What was your discussion about pricing? And if $6.99 is the launch price, what's the actual price?

The actual price will be $9.99 so I urge everyone to pick it up this Christmas while it's still available at the launch price. For the amount of content in the game, I don't think there's any other 3D game that can compete with us.

What was the most difficult thing to get right?

The animations were probably the hardest thing. I'm very pleased with them now, but the whole animation system and fine tuning was very tricky.

We also have a day/night cycle. That was pretty labour intensive to get working right. Everything had to sync with that cycle. For instance, chirping birds during the day, cricket sounds and lit windows in houses at night. Equally, some quests are only available at night, while in the city, ruffians come out at night and terrorize the citizens. This also fed into the sky system, including the sun and the moon.

To get everything this looking good and acting correctly was pretty tricky, but it's important to create a more immersive experience.

What part of Aralon are you most proud of?

To be honest, that we actually finished it in the amount of time we had.

A Christmas release is tough. The pressure is on, there are tons of other new releases coming out, and you're trying to keep your head on straight - while people are requesting different things and new features all day long.

Jason, Aralon's programmer, did an incredible job as a one man show - getting everything in - and more.

Thanks to Josh for his time.

Aralon: Sword and Shadow is due out on December 16, priced $6.99, €5.49 or £3.99 at launch.