November 10, 2011

Mystery Ball Launch Party a Successful Start for Red Nova Labs Games

Rocky start turns into a promising launch weekend

Westwood, Kan. — A new iOS game called Mystery Ball hit the App Store on Nov. 4, and that night Red Nova Labs celebrated its first game release with an all-ages launch party.

The party celebrated Mystery Ball creator David Howe and the debut of Red Nova Labs Games division. Mystery Ball is a universal iOS adventure/strategy game featuring a frightened, confused ball named FRED, who is the subject of a strange professor's experiment. Players help FRED play through 30 3D levels, collecting bravery badges and tools that help him in future levels.

The game faced challenges in its first day on the App Store, so Red Nova Labs employees – particularly Howe – were ready to blow off steam and have some fun.

“Those first 24 hours were rough,” Howe said. “Our whole team was poised to share news of the launch when I found a minor bug relating to iCloud support. So when we should have been selling, we were waiting for Apple to review the fixed version instead. As anyone who has released an iOS game or app knows, timing is everything with a launch, but Apple does things at its own pace. All one can do is wait and hope. But things turned out all right in the end. I’m looking forward to building on.”

In the game’s first hours in the App Store, it had been downloaded a few hundred times and received an average 5-star rating. A review on the iPhone gaming site ifanzine called Mystery Ball "An aesthetically simple but fantastically designed ball roller," and rated it four stars.

The Mystery Ball project started six months ago when Howe approached Red Nova Labs' executive team with the idea. Red Nova Labs’ CEO Dan Miller, who dressed for the occasion in a tuxedo, bow tie and Mystery Ball t-shirt, spoke briefly about the project’s background. He then presented Howe with a Steampunk-themed pocket watch and thanked Howe’s wife for her support with Mystery Ball wine.

“As a metacompany working on several entrepreneurial ideas at once, Red Nova Labs has faced our share of startup challenges,” Miller said. “So when someone or something here overcomes all those hurdles and finally makes it to market, a celebration is in order.”

Howe demonstrated several levels and treated guests to a run-through of the interactive credits, which include the names of many beta testers and contributors to the game’s launch. Several iPads were loaded with the game so that party guests could play at their leisure. The younger guests flocked.

“The game is made up of levels of complex puzzles, so we wondered what age was too young to enjoy it,” Red Nova Labs’ CMO Carrie Royce said. “Gauging by the intense expressions of the six, seven and eight year olds that saddled up to play, Mystery Ball has a pretty wide range of appeal.”

In fact, the game found an unexpected fan in Rachel Mast, a 12 year old with Down syndrome and a beta tester who’s included in the game’s credits. Rachel said the game was hard, but that she loved it.

“The opportunity to attend the Mystery Ball launch party was a uniquely exciting event for our family,” said Rachel’s father, Jonathan Mast, Emerging Media Manager at Black & Veatch. “The highlight was seeing Rachel’s face when she saw her name in the credits for being a beta tester. She had a “wow I am famous” look on her face. She has shared this with her friends and family.

“Though we don't think Down syndrome defines Rachel,” Mast added, “we think the game is awesome for fine motor skills and analytical problem solving.”

The kids who attended, Rachel included, spent most of the party lined up to play Mystery Ball.

“The only thing that pulled those kids away was the opportunity to beat piñatas to a pulp,” Royce said. “We were sweeping up tissue and paper mache from every corner of the lounge.”

FRED – the neurotic ball – and his ‘frenemies’ Mr. Pail and Mr. Thud had been built into piñatas filled with rubber balls. The Professor, a main character in the game, also made an appearance and narrated the game’s side of the presentation in the requisite Austrian accent. 

Red Nova Labs served Mystery Ball Brew, a stout beer crafted to commemorate Howe’s accomplishment by local nanobrewery startup Wilderness Brewing Company, and 1919 small-batch rootbeer, which was a party favorite among the younger crowd. Guests received imprinted pilsner glasses and t-shirts.

“Mystery Ball’s launch was a great learning experience,” Howe said. “I’ve been extremely fortunate to have the help of the Red Nova Labs team, my family, friends, and a great community of testers in getting this game off the ground. The party was a chance to stop, take a breath, and thank everyone for their support. But now my nose is back to the grindstone. The Field of Dreams adage ‘If you build it, they will come’ definitely does not apply to iOS games. There are campaigns to conceive, and levels to build, and upgrades to invent if Mystery Ball is to succeed. This is just a beginning for Red Nova Labs Games.”

Mystery Ball is on sale for 99 cents on the App Store. To learn more about the game, visit the Mystery Ball website.

About David Howe
David Howe has been building games since age 10, attended DigiPen and worked at Handheld Games as a designer and coder. He is the Product Architect for the Game divsion at Red Nova Labs. Howe is the creator of Curator Defense and Mystery Ball, the first release from Red Nova Labs’ Games Division. 

About Red Nova Labs
Red Nova Labs was founded and self-funded in 2009 as a web development and marketing agency as well as a technology think-tank, creating original, cutting-edge systems for web and mobile. On the service side, the company supports interface design, backend programming and online marketing. On the product side Red Nova Labs invents, builds and launches its own web-based platforms for various applications and vertical markets. To support both business models, its growing team of development engineers conceives resourceful code generators which add practical ease to complex programming—enabling unprecedented speed in creating vibrant, multidimensional environments and utilities. Once a product is launched, each business operates autonomously as an independent unit, with full engineering and marketing support from Red Nova Labs on the back end. The company is open to collaborative opportunities.