I've been developing and publishing Mysterious Castle for about 15 years!

When I first started, I was enamoured with the new platform of the iPhone. It looked so promising as a user interface, simplicity and power combined. So when I started working on Mysterious Castle, every aspect of design and development was selected to build a perfect iPhone game. The user interface was constantly refined to be touch based, gestures were experimented with, performance was tuned for iPhone processors, and the aspect ratio was set for playing with one hand while riding the bus.

Since then, the phone gaming landscape has changed, a lot. Phones are now way bigger, more powerful, and more annoying than anyone could have imagined. The app stores of both Apple and Google are littered with bottom of the barrel "free to play" trash, quick asset flips, and games with the depth of puddles. The deeper games that exist seem to have interfaces designed for desktops or consoles clumsily jammed into a phone form factor, with oversized HUD's, virtual D-pads, and finicky controls. Of course, there are lots of exceptions, great games that really leverage the new medium well, but these are often drowned out by a torrent of poorly designed games with expertly designed trailers and screenshots. 

I tried from the beginning to make Mysterious Castle not only work as a phone game, but to be a mobile-first roguelike game. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out, and I still like playing it on my phone more than on my desktop. But I've always left out one major demographic... Android users. As a hobbyist I've always had to make hard decisions on where to spend my effort, and Android development scared the shit out of me. Since reviving my work this past year, I've decided to double down on the mobile-first approach, and work is underway on an Android version of Mysterious Castle. There are a few hurdles to jump over, and much beta testing to come, but I want to share what a thoughtful mobile roguelike can be with a wider audience.