A word in support of history

This post is not about me. It is about Jason Scott.

My Secret Hideout: available now

I am delighted to say that My Secret Hideout -- first mentioned here a couple of weeks ago -- is available right now on the App Store. Runs on iPad and iPad 2 (iOS 4.2 or later).

Really, it's been available for most of a day -- in some time zones. You may not know this, but Apple treats its App Store as a separate store for each country (or a bunch of countries, anyhow). Apps appear in a given store at midnight in that store's time zone. So from my point of view, My Secret Hideout was released to the New Zealand App Store at 8 AM on Monday. It's been cruising across the hemispheres all day, and it just hit the US a few minutes ago. (Maybe up to an hour. Don't worry, you can get it even if you live in California.)

The down side is, I don't have any sales reports yet, so I don't know how it's doing. But the up side is that I don't have to figure out tax compliance in 90 countries.

I'm glad I don't have to organize everything, is what I'm saying.

No; strike that. What I'm saying is:

My Secret Hideout is a wacky, creative thing set in a treehouse. It’s not like any app you’ve seen before. Buy it! Play around with it!

My Secret Hideout has no goal, no score, no trophies. Explore it, or play with it, until you find a result you like. Will your treehouse be simple or complex? Can you guide it? What will you discover inside?

That's the blurb. There's the link. Go for it.

And as always, please rate the app if you try it out. Ratings are what keep the sales going, and income is what keeps me going. (I mean, yes, the hacking and the laughs are what keep me going -- but also the income.)

Thank you for your continued generosity. More project news soon.

The Night Circus

I never got around to playing Echo Bazaar, despite a weltering wave of friends who washed through, happily tweeting little fragments of louche Victorian storyline. I had a day job at that point, and I didn't want any addictions that could embarrassingly sneak up on me at the office. (The brownie bars from the cafe down the block were bad enough.)

Now the company has released The Night Circus, a smaller -- I assume smaller -- game in the same model, as a licensed promotional thing for an upcoming book. The boss is no longer looking over my shoulder (his head is now firmly positioned on top of my neck) so I figured it was time to give the thing a try.