TwinSky Games

An early concept image for the final layout.

Here’s the first game I made with Jacob & Paul Stevens and Abe Pralle, working together to form “Riverman Media.” This was the first time that I was involved in a game project where I wasn’t the central cog, so there was some tension during development as I struggled to find my place. I don’t care whether you’re working on a game with your best friend, your mom, or a stranger from off the street; as soon as you start doing fancy stuff like incorporating a company, using a new game engine, redefining roles and altering payment percentages, there’s going to be a lot of arguing. It was a little like being in a rock band, except without the sex, drugs, money, instruments, fans, or rock music.

Despite that, I’m incredibly pleased with how the game turned out, and feel lucky to be associated with such a talented group of people. Through this experience I know I’ve certainly grown as a game developer, and it’s been very pleasant to work with this group since.

Now then, about the game itself!

The original prototype for "Money Changer."

The premise is from a coin-matching puzzle concept I had been sitting on for years. The original name of the game was the punny “Money Changer.” In a rare state after getting several projects rejected by RealArcade, we decided to “sell out” a little and model the playfield after Bejeweled. This — in addition to the theme we decided on (a cow saving its own farm) — led to the significance of the new title “CashCow.”

So RealArcade accepted the game and we were poised to get CashCow on their site, as well as many other casual game portals. But irony of ironies, RA decided last minute that the game was “too different” to put on their own site. Honestly, this fact is a little bit of a relief; it goes to show that our games come out pretty different from the rest even when we think we may be “selling out.” It did confuse us however, since just previously our RA contacts shared how sick they were of seeing the same game over and over, just with a new theme. I guess they weren’t the ones with authority.

A fake promotional image.

They proceeded to get the game on many different sites (other than their own, of course) and take a big chunk of the profit. The way casual portals work is that each site sends it to several others, and each time there’s another middleman taking another 50% of the profit. So there are probably some sites out there with CashCow where we as developers only get like 2% revenue.

I’m happy to announce that at the time of writing this we’re finishing up the iPhone port of CashCow, and it’s great! So whether you have a PC or an iPhone/iPod touch, I encourage you to download and try a demo!

Download Money Changer

Read more about the making of CashCow!