Last week, Roboconn released BubbleChain, which essentially is a BlackBerry version of the popular iPhone and Facebook game app called ChainRXN. This FREE app joins many others in the family of BlackBerry games by Roboconn that are distributed through MobiHand.

MobiHand App-tivity Blog (MAB) had a chance to interview Robert Timm (RT), the president and lead developer at Roboconn. Here’s what he had to say:

MAB: Could you please provide some background on the RoboConn/Robert Timm family of products?

RT: I started writing BlackBerry games my freshman year of college with a friend. We were both learning to program in our introduction to Java course and took it upon ourselves to see what we could do with this new found knowledge. Since 2006 I have been fascinated with creating phone apps. The whole process of dreaming up, or recreating an idea, and giving it life is what excites me. Engineering is in my blood, and this is one of the best ways to date that I have been able to express myself and my ideas. Every app I write has new problems to solve and nothing pleases me more than occupying my mind with a problem and conjuring a solution.

MAB: How about doing a run down of the games you have in the MobiHand catalog?

BBTanks — A multiple player tank artillery game with many different weapons and features. $2.99

RT: BBTanks was born out of Pocket Tanks, a very popular PC game back in my high school days. Never thought physics would be such an important class until I started calculating trajectories!

Prank Berry — A prank in the form of a game, send it to your friends and watch them panic as their files delete!  $0.99

RT: PrankBerry…. [laughs]…. that app took me ten minutes to write. I was sitting at my desk one day and wanted to prank my fiancé. I got quite a few laughs out of that one.

Storm Lander — An old DOS game with a ton of new features.  $2.99

RT: Storm Lander is a recreation of Lunar Lander, a popular DOS game I used to play. In my opinion coming up with new game ideas is not always the best route. There are so many good games out there that just need updated.

StormSays — An old time memory game.  $1.99

RT: This was one of my first publicly released apps.  A great foundation to what I have done today. This game really helped my learn more about how the BlackBerry operates.

MAB: Which ones are the most popular?

RT: BBTanks and Storm Lander are by far the most popular.

MAB: What are some of the differentiating features from other games for the BlackBerry?

RT: My latest free game, BubbleChain, notifies my server every time it is used. Within the first day of releasing this app, my server is reporting over 2500 uses. Roboconn.com has the counter at the top of the page. I just learned how to use SQL and thought I’d give my latest game a twist.

MAB: Talk about the newest offering… BubbleChain. What is the background? How did it do in Beta? What have the beta testers been saying?

RT: BubbleChain is another recreation of the popular game ChainRXN for iPhone and Facebook. I play this against my roommate often and wanted to share the love with BlackBerry users. The game is all about starting a simple chain reaction, seeing how many chains you can create out of one single bubble pop. In my version I added a twist, as the chains get longer and the points get higher, the reactions get smaller, and harder to keep going. My roommate Jake Saxton, actually came up with idea. Beta went well this time! I ended up developing this app for BlackBerry Storm Generation 1 and found out it works great on Generation 2 as well! That was a pretty cool surprise, I must be doing something right. Beta was open to anyone interested -my server is still trying to recover from all the downloads.

MAB: Are you looking to develop for other platforms (i.e. Android)?

RT: YES! One day I hope to buy a Mac so I can develop for iPhone. I have already downloaded everything I need to develop for Android, I just need a testing device first! I refuse to develop for a device unless I can test it on the actual hardware. The new Droid looks like a pretty hot device to develop for. As of right now I have an iPhone and BlackBerry Storm for testing on. One day if Roboconn kicks off, I intend to be the guy with a drawer full of smartphones.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 8th, 2009 at 11:16 am and is filed under Developer Profiles, News You Can Use, What's New. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.