Khang and Arash – I definitely agree with you. I think Harbor Master’s current success is the result of a year’s worth of lessons learned, a lot of community building, and a tremendous amount of luck. We feel incredibly fortunate to have made it this far. Although there’s definitely no sure-fire recipe for success on the App Store, some things definitely work better than others, and it took us a long time to figure those out.

After I joined Keith full time, our main goal for the year was to expand our catalog – make more small, polished, addictive games, and aim to make each one a hit. I also needed to get up to speed on Objective C so that I can contribute to all parts of the process. So while Keith was developing Harbor Master, I was actually making Photomarkr, a watermarking app that was a great way to ramp up my Objective C. I also really stepped up the marketing efforts on Harbor Master, engaging the community at least a month before Harbor Master’s release. And I did all of Harbor Master’s music and sound effects.

In the end, it’s really hard to contribute Harbor Master’s current success to any one thing either one of us did in particular, but being able to focus without the distraction of a day job and give it 100% of our time and effort definitely helped. And, like I said, a whole ton of luck. The App Store works in mysterious ways

Good show indeed. Cheers.

Great story but just wanted to point out to anyone thinking that their success was accomplished over a span of three months, really it’s not. Keith was laying the groundwork a year into it before they had Harbour Master.