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Interviewed: Zach Gage

Feature by Ben Briggs, October 01, 2009

We've recently covered Unify, and decided to conduct an interview with the game's developer - Zach Gage. Additionally, we've shot some new screens of the game which has a great array of colour schemes - these can be found in the media section after the full interview. Enjoy!

Unify has quickly become one of my personal favourite games - it makes very natural use of the iPhone's touch screen, and is a breath of fresh air when it comes to the world of block shifting puzzlers. How did you come up with the concept for the game?

Thanks! I'm glad you're enjoying it so much! To be honest, I have never really loved block dropping games, but lots of my friends play them. This whole project started after I finished my last iPhone app - synthPond, a sound toy in the vein of electroplankton. I wanted to try to make something with broader appeal for my second app, and a casual block dropping puzzle game seemed like a good possibility.

[The iPhone is] such an innovative piece of technology in so many ways that I think it's surprising how few games really try and build mechanics around it's attributes.

The only block dropping game I've ever loved is Puyo Puyo, so I started with that concept, and tried to think of a way to adapt it to the iPhone. I tried as many block puzzlers as I could, and noticed it was an uncomfortable motion trying to slide blocks downwards. At this point the idea popped into my head to try a landscape block dropping game. The only way I could think to make landscape mode make sense was to split the board in half, and so Unify was born.

What was the development process like for this concept?

Long. The first prototype of the game took a day or two, but refining the controls and difficulty curve took a few months. The difficulty took a long time because I've never made a puzzle game (or any game really) before, and I wasn't sure what to expect. Trying to make a game that appeals to hardcore gamers as well as casual gamers is especially difficult.

Getting the controls to be perfect took a really long time too. I'm a little obsessed with trying to make apps that explore what the iPhone can really do. It's such an innovative piece of technology in so many ways that I think it's surprising how few games really try and build mechanics around it's attributes. Games like Eliss that did look at the iPhone and build around it really impress me. Because of this obsession it was really important to me that the controls in Unify felt perfect and natural, and this took a lot of tweaking. Additionally, managing two things at once is kind of a mind-bending concept to grasp for a lot of people, and having perfect controls goes a long way in making such an unintuitive thing intuitive.

The last two months of development time were spent polishing it up, testing it with as many people as possible, and fixing bugs. All in all it took about 6 months.

Yeah, I was very impressed with Eliss - or indeed, games in general that feel like they're made for the iPhone. Is this what made you want to become an iPhone developer, the broad range of games that you can create and the hardware capability - or another reason?

Yes. The hardware capability specifically. If I was forced to label myself I would say I'm a new media artist, as that's the field that the majority of my work has been in. Developing and selling games was never really my goal. I initially got into iPhone development because it seemed like a great platform to explore and experiment with artistically, and the games just kind of grew out of that.

How's your experience with the App Store been? I know it's early days for Unify but can you share some of your thoughts on that?

It's been pretty good. I definitely feel like I need to hire a marketing director. It's tough because you have to plan so far in advance. Initially I did a lot of marketing for Unify but then it was delayed by a bad keyword. Recently it got onto New and Noteworthy which was really exciting, but it was bogged down by some bad reviews about the crashing while I waited for the update I submitted to be approved. I guess I should work on getting it perfect the first time! The nice thing about the App Store is that the market is so large that it's really forgiving.

Definitely, you can find some real gems in there. Is it too early to discuss what's coming in the pipeline? Updates for Unify? Or a brand new project?

Oh, so many things in the pipeline!

Of course an update to Unify that should add some really nice features is in the works. I'm also working on a secret project with the other artists from the rhondaforever project which should come out soon. Also I'm working on refining my Face It concept which was covered a bit on Touch Arcade. Beyond that I have a whole bunch of project ideas that I'm playing with, some further along than others... but nothing to reveal yet!

Great! Looking forward to those. Last thing I'd like to ask is do you have any favourite App Store titles right now, other than Eliss and your own?

Of course! I mean, standards like Echofon, NPR, and NYTimes. Spider was pretty great. Lately I've been really impressed by Squareball. Spent a lot of time with Space Invaders Infinity Gene, and the port of Flashback.. classic.

Have you got anything you'd like to close with?

I just wanted to give a shout out to my friend Carlos Hernandez who did all the audio for the game. We grew up together trying to make games in hypercard when were were like 8 years old, so pulling this project together has been kind of a realization of a dream for both of us in some ways. The soundtrack I think is pretty amazing, and the sound effects give a real physical weight to the pieces. I think in both subtle and not so subtle ways the audio goes a long way in making Unify what it is, so I wanted to give him some due credit here.

That's it!

Thanks Zach, you've been a super interviewee and we look forward to your new projects!

Don't forget, you can follow Zach on Twitter for all things Unify.

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