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Vampire Survivors developer explores the story so far and what comes next
Vampire Survivors is a breakout hit on Android, but how did this happen?
In late 2020, Luca Galante — an unknown and unemployed programmer — began work on a new game. This wasn’t the first game he had started work on, not even the first game he’d finished, but this one would be different from the rest. This game was Vampire Survivors. But before the surprise success and the awards and the money, he was a student in Italy, just trying to make games anyway he could.
As 2019 ends and we enter a new decade, I felt the story of OnePlus deserved a bit more examination. In an email interview with CMO Kyle Kiang, I probed the history of a company that is often as shocking in its successes as it is in its marketing misfires. As it crests its sixth year as a smartphone vendor, it's more competitive than ever, coming a long way from the days when it could barely manage to build enough $349 OnePlus Ones using a tightly controlled and very annoying invitation system.
Yesterday, I had an opportunity to meet with Oculus VR at one of the company's numerous offices in Irvine, CA to discuss the company's partnership with Samsung on a piece of hardware you're likely aware of by now: Gear VR Innovator Edition.
Android fosters a wide and varied app ecosystem, enabling companies both large and small to produce compelling software. The ability to write an app and easily distribute it to most of the world has given rise to independent developers like Chris Lacy, the man behind Action Launcher, Tweet Lanes, and most recently, Link Bubble. Chris took some time to answer a few questions and tell us a little about his experiences developing apps for Android.
[Interview] Koushik "Koush" Dutta On Leaving Cyanogen, Inc. And His Return To ClockworkMod
Koushik Dutta, better known as "Koush" to the Android power user community, was one of the original Cyanogen, Inc. employees when the company incorporated last year. But he's been giving Android users some great stuff for much longer than that: most people's first exposure to his work comes from ClockworkMod, still one of the most widely-used custom recoveries available, not to mention various tools like ROM Manager, ClockworkMod Tether, and DeskSMS. Lately he's been expanding into more general apps like Helium Backup and AllCast.
Cyanogen, Inc. has been adding staff to its small but growing roster at a steady pace ever since the company had its big coming out party. And like its initial team, a lot of them have come from the Android modding and ROM community. Cyanogen's latest hire might be familiar to some of you: François Simond, better known online as "Supercurio." Mr. Simond was kind enough to let us break the news, and also pick his brain on topics like CyanogenMod, audio and video calibration, and mobile computing in general.
If you didn't read our interview of the man behind the @evleaks Twitter account - Evan Blass - last week, go check it out. If you did, you may remember we promised that Evan would answer some of your questions from the comments section of that article. Well, here they are.
The Backstory
Let's get the preliminary question off the plate first: who is Matias Duarte? Well for one thing, he oversaw the designing of a few small projects such as webOS, Sidekick OS, and Helio (the little carrier that could... be bought out). And, oh yeah, he also played a large part in Honeycomb's development.
When we published a piece reporting on the recent decision of game developer Bithack to pull its popular title Apparatus from the Amazon Appstore, we contacted Amazon asking for comment on the whole situation.
PowerAMP for Android appeared seemingly out of nowhere one day as a leaked beta and immediately captured attention of thousands of Android users who were impressed by its initial features, good looks, and overall polish. Fast forward to today - PowerAMP is one of the best selling Android apps in the Market with a 4.6-4.8-star rating, even at ~$4.99, which is considered pretty pricey for an app.
Google's web-based Android Market announcement earlier this week was by all means no surprise to anyone - we've been waiting for it to arrive ever since its announcement at last year's Google I/O. In the meantime, alternative web-based markets, such as AppBrain.com, have skyrocketed in popularity because they allowed Android users to browse apps and games from their computers rather than being confined to their small phone screens. Even more importantly, alternative web markets had full control over app presentation, which allowed them to develop their own app discovery mechanisms.
As promised earlier this week, Notion Ink CEO Rohan Shravan took time out of his schedule to answer a number of questions from Android Police. What did we ask the creator of the Android world's most anticipated tablet device? A lot of the questions you, our readers, wanted answers to - as well as a few of our own. The interview, in its entirety, below.
Like many of you, I am a huge fan of TweetDeck for Android. In my opinion, it is the best Twitter application on the Android platform, hands down. I use it on a daily basis and find it fast, fluid, and a treat to look at. This excellent piece of software fills in the missing holes of the of the official Twitter application, providing a unified social media experience.