Michael Lysons is a former writer for The Sixth Axis, who's now making iOS games with Touch Junkies.

A couple of weeks ago, we launched our first iOS game on the App Store. The launch of Super Smoothies brought to an end a four year journey as we moved from writing reviews of others' games, to waiting nervously to hear what others thought of ours.

Ancient historyRewind over four years and you'll arrive at a time just prior to the UK PlayStation 3 launch. I'd emailed Alex, the other half of Touch Junkies - although we weren't that then - to ask if he wanted to build a PS3 site.

I wanted to do it to get real experience of designing .NET websites, and he wanted to do it so he could run a site full of PS3 news, previews, reviews and, as it turned out, stories of dog sledding.

The site was TheSixthAxis. I wrote early reviews for Motorstorm and Resistance, he did pretty much everything else. As a coder I was interested in the programming, new features and the like. For two years we worked on the site together, but I became less engaged as, after a year of using my custom-built .NET solution, we switched to WordPress.

First steps

In late 2008,  we made an abortive attempt to design a game for the Xbox 360 under Microsoft's XNA program. Coding again was good, but what with commitments on TheSixthAxis (TSA) it never panned out.

Despite TSA's success, I left to pursue my ambition of creating games in 2009, not long after purchasing an Apple Mac Mini to begin iOS development on.

I taught myself the basics of Objective-C and had a couple of rudimentary apps running on my phone, but I never got beyond that. Objective-C is not for the faint hearted, and despite it being a great language once you get to know it, I didn't feel like getting to know it that well.

Quantum leap

Fast-forward to early 2011 and the discovery that finally acted as the catalyst to our iOS development: Ansca's Corona SDK.

Here was a tool that harked back to the days of coding in AMOS on the Amiga. A very simple, yet powerful SDK, Corona gave you the tools to create 2D games easily and quickly, with a small learning curve.

The only thing stopping us now was ... the lack of a good idea.

Whilst Alex was off at E3, I did some noodling around with Corona. I had a vague idea about mixing colour according to RGB rules. Within a day I had a prototype running using rudimentary vector graphics. I emailed him a screenshot saying "E3's biggest hit?"
Super Smoothies was born.

Even Rocky had a montage

What followed was four months of effort: coding, talking, designing, arguing, rejoicing, sulking, laughing, virtual high-fives.

And at the back of our minds the whole time is this feeling of being the reviewee, no longer the reviewer. I thought about bad reviews past and wondered how I'd feel being on the end of a bad review. And let's put this into perspective, our game was two guys over four months: Imagine how it must feel when two years of your life is dismissed with a five out of ten?

Also, the big thing you learn upon releasing a game into the App Store is that your job has only just started.

Without sufficient promotion your game will disappear into the depths, buoyed briefly by reviews and ratings from friends, but then sinking under once more. In reality we already knew this would happen, but even so we weren't prepared for how quickly a labour of love would be left drowning in a sea of apps.

Looking backwards

Has it made me think differently about how I'd review a game in future?

Yes. I'd temper my thoughts with the knowledge that developers don't make bad games on purpose. They don't make strange decisions just for the laughs. But, mistakes are made, and bad games, or games less good than they should be, are released all the time.

I'd never shy away from delivering a less than complementary verdict, but I'd always remember that somebody somewhere created the game and that my witty, disparaging invective may not be necessary.
For more information on Touch Junkies, check out its twitterfeed. 

You can make Michael happy by buying Super Smoothies (99c) here.