iPhone Game Developer Snares Success With Spider

"The iPhone game market is incredibly competitive, with literally hundreds of new games hitting the market each month," said Kalina, a former food writer for Austinist. "While we believed that our game was fun and interesting and different, you never really know for sure until the game is released and the public reacts."

The sheer fun of Spider's gameplay is evident in the trailer, as you swipe and jump to build webs and snare hornets, mosquitoes, dragonflies, and moths. But when you look closer at the beautifully hand-illustrated, Edward Gorey-style backgrounds, you get a hint of the deeper mystery beneath the game's 28 levels.

Getting the visual style and the movement of the spider into their final states involved a lot of trial and error, Kalina said.

"We started development with a tilt-driven control mechanism, but when we delivered a version of this control scheme to our playtesters back in late February, they hated it. Playtesting our game early and often -- and listening to the playtest feedback -- was a big key to getting the mechanics right," said Kalina, who will team up with Smith at the Austin Game Developer's Conference on September 15 to tell their story of going from working on big-budget console games to building their own company.

After funding Tiger Style out of their own pockets since January, Kalina and Smith can now afford to pay themselves modest salaries, pay their contributors, and best of all, look forward to their next game. A sequel to Spider is practically a certainty at some point, but Kalina said they're also planning a different title as well.

"Spider will continue to occupy our time over the next couple of months," Kalina said. "Beyond Spider, we intend to start working on Game 2. We intend to demonstrate our creative range on the next project by working on a completely new and different property."