During a chat at Birmingham's Launch 2011 event, ustwo's CHIEF WONKA mills revealed some of the thinking behind the upcoming update to Whale Trail.

Said revision will see 32 new levels for players to get to grips with, delivered via a new challenge-based format designed to sit alongside the standard 'endless' mode.

Indeed, mills went as far as to suggest the game's endless nature has actually hindered it, highlighting the likes of Canabalt, Tiny Wings and Jetpack Joyride as stars of the genre.

COD and shots

"Phil Larsson [of Halfbrick] said to me, 'mills, I got to 300,000 points and realised that to beat that score I'd have to spend about 10 minutes playing. I don't have ten minutes'," mills explained.

He went on to suggest that, while it's all well and good for console gamers to get their teeth into a deep and immersive world in a game like Call of Duty, on mobile all players really want are "shots"; short, sharp bursts of satisfying gameplay.

That's something he acknowledges Jetpack did successfully.

Great expectations

Not that Whale Trail is performing poorly.

The game recently passed 100,000 paid downloads in 25 days on the App Store, but that's still 200,000 short of what mills states will be the game's break even point - figures mills has touted  during his promotion of his 'succailure' concept.

That's 'success plus failure' if you hadn't already guessed, and the word mills currently uses to describe ustwo's games venture.

"We didn't expect our money back," he said.

"You can only assume that [numbers of daily downloads] will go down," he added, adding that he's optimistic about the game's potential on Android, due to be released at the same time as the update to the iOS version.

R.I.69p

Mills is also disappointed by the 69p price point on the App Store – a dead price point, in his view, or "R.I.69p" as he put it.

Freemium isn't the answer either, he mused, as paying for a game lends it an air of legitimacy that he argued can positively affect user retention and help raise titles above all the "fucking clutter" in the minds of players.

IAP is certainly an avenue ustwo is inclined to explore, however, in Whale Trail and beyond.

An additional level unlocked via an IAP is coming to Whale Trail with the forthcoming update, with plans to launch games equipped with IAP rather than bolting them on via an update in place for the future.

"Users are starting to understand that IAPs aren't evil," he concluded.

Mission possible

Overall, however, mills' main message was life on the App Store is hard.

Even with what he described as a "great game", a series of App Store 'game of the week' promos and "great press coverage", Whale Trail is still struggling to break even. As such, mills expressed sympathy for developers who are unable to exploit Apple's marketplace.

However, he stressed, such success was actually ustwo's second aim.

Mission one, he concluded, was to make a great game the studio could be proud of, and that's a mission he believes has been firmly accomplished.
Thank you to mills for his time.