Kitty Solitaire - Upcoming Games

Heya Spanglers.

It's been a busy week here at KittyCentral. Lots of good work done on the upcoming Kitty Spangles Solitaire 3.1, including:

High Scores

Yes, now you'll be able to settle arguments about who does the dishes at your place.

Gain domestic supremacy with hard numbers. Clickety click.

New Games

If you have a favorite game you'd like to see in a future Kitty update, now is the time to let us know! Here's one game you'll definitely be seeing in 3.1:

Pyramid is very a popular matching game where the goal is to pair cards so that their values total 13. (e.g. placing a 10 on a 3). It requires strategic thinking, and makes a nice change for the old noggin.

Languages

By the way, if you're fluent in a language other than English and you'd like to help Kitty improve her skills, she'd love to hear from you.

Kitty Solitaire 3 Feedback

It's been a week since the release of Kitty Spangles Solitaire 3, and we've been getting lots of useful feedback.

David Simmer II, brilliant commentator on world events (his words) and unseemly lover of monkeys (my words), called it right:

"bestest computer solitaire card game ever"

Scarily, this was going to be our marketing message. But the chief testers stomped all over that idea, didn't they? Oh well, we can always use it on MySpace*

Now, we like David and his monkeys a lot, even the butt-monkeys, but they can't be trusted:

A million voices suddenly squeal out in terror

So, when David bitched about the new look Kitty's cards, we wrote it off as the loon ravings of a pig butcher. But, some other players shared his views (about the cards, not pigocide) and wanted to know why we had changed Kitty's looks. The changes were made for very good reasons (honest), but we understand they can take some getting used to.

Kitty circa 30,000BC. Click for olde fashioned nostalgia.

The new, svelte, swanky, ultra-uber Kitty. Click for awesomeness.

But fret not, dear constant reader, for even now our Oompa Loompas are working on version 3.1. They'll be tidying up the typography and making the symbols clearer. Also, we'll be acting on a suggestion by Kitty-lover Clyde Burnham: the card suit in the top-left of each card should be bigger, making for more readable cards.

If there's any solitaire games you'd like to see in 3.1, or you have comments, suggestions or excess money, just let us know.

* MySpace - Where Design Goes To Die™

Stats - Who loves Kitty, where?

Sales factoids!

We love seeing stats about indie Mac companies. Other people do too, so we thought we'd share:

Country breakdown for registered players of Kitty Spangles Solitaire

Kitty was localized in French, German, Spanish and Italian for version 2 (released July 2006).

Since localization, players outside of the US have accounted for about one-third of all Kitty adoptions. French and German adoptions, although small in number compared to the US, have really started to climb. German players in particular have responded strongly to the localized Kitty.

The Italian market is a surprise though, with very little change in percentage terms. We're also lagging in Japan, no doubt due to the lack of localization for that country.

We'll have more stats soon, and we encourage other Mac developers to share their stories.

p.s. the stats are provided by Transaction, a great Mac OS X app by Stan Busk over at maxprog.com

Kitty Solitaire 3 is here!

Grab it now!

This is a free upgrade for registered players. If you've lost your serial number, no problem, simply renew it here.

Also, check out the new, sparkly site for game rules, piccies, buried treasure, etc.

Big, big thanks to our chums:

Steve Ramsey and Liam Doughty who spent, possibly, billions of hours testing Kitty and teaching her manners. If she's not house-trained by now it's their fault.

and gracias, merci, danke and grazie to Kitty's translators: Ale Campa, Mathias Catala, James Hughes, Simone Nicolo and Davide Osto.