It’s been a little more than five months since our first title was released into the App Store. With each title after that, we’ve tried to improve each game, as well as our market assessment, development, marketing, support and other internal processes, as we try to build a sustainable business making casual apps for the iPhone OS (and eventually other mobile platforms).

One obstacle that we and seemingly most other indie developers run into is how to get visibility to users among the over 150,000 apps in the App Store. We tried different approaches to get visibility both within and outside our apps, with modest success at best.

A couple weeks ago, we released Emily’s Girl Talk, a fun story-telling app with charming graphics that included four games in one (MASH, Lemon and more), and which we thought that younger girls and nostalgic adults in particular might enjoy. Based on feedback from users, it seems that the core of v1.0 hit our target market, and we immediately started working on planned and requested additions for the first major update to Emily’s Girl Talk.

Still, despite the general praise and enthusiasm that we heard for the game, Emily’s Girl Talk was not reaching nearly the number of people we had hoped in its initial few weeks, hovering at or just outside the Top 25 Paid Word Games category. Then, enter Apple.

Today, we were delighted to discover that Apple featured Emily’s Girl Talk among the “New and Noteworthy” in the App Store. Within a few hours, Emily’s Girl Talk appeared within the Top 20 Paid Word Games category.

Although we might just be a lucky, random recipient of great fortune, it also feels like we received a little validation from Apple, with the hopes that market validation will follow. If we’ve built a solid product in Emily’s Girl Talk like we (and some early fans) think we have, and can benefit from a little in-app virality, Apple’s feature might just be the spark that helps us over the hump. At the very least, we are reassured that we’re not so far off, as we continue to refine our apps and processes and search for a more dependable method of distribution and marketing. And, in the meantime, we’ll enjoy our week in Apple’s spotlight, and report back with anything significant.

Beer Toss is now in iTunes for the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad!

This game is dedicated to fans (of drinking age) of beer, leprechauns, flicking games and more! Travel the world as you satisfy beer lovers in four unique locations, and earn special trophy brews for your Beer Fridge. Also, compare scores with players around the world, as you try to deliver as many beers in a row as you can to become the Beer Toss champion! Watch out though, you’ll get hooked faster than you can say “Frank the Tank”!

* Click here to check out Beer Toss in iTunes today

* Below are a few screenshots:

* The Beer Toss trailer is now available for viewing!

We’re excited to announce that Emily’s Girl Talk is now in iTunes for the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad!

This charming story-telling game features 4 games in 1: the classic M.A.S.H. (Mansion, Apartment, Shack, House), the hilariously unpredictable Lemon, as well as the fortune-telling Cootie Catcher and the exciting Love Game. It also includes an in-app journal that automatically records entries for reading and sharing later as well as a sticker album that displays the cute stickers earned while playing the game.

* Click here to check it out in iTunes

* Below are a few screenshots:

* Here is the EGT YouTube gameplay video, narrated by our co-founder Emily:

Hope you enjoy it!

Happy new year! The end of 2009 gave us a convenient time to mark our progress as a company, and to review our goals and upcoming projects for 2010, so this blog post will provide highlights of both.

Yesterday, we held our first holiday/new year dinner with family and friends of Broken Thumbs Apps. It was a nice reminder of all the teamwork and collaboration it took to go from (i) being completely new to the mobile space to (ii) having three apps in the Apple App Store (Snaked, Chasing Colors and Santa’s Run), each being enjoyed by users across the US and the world, and all in about half a year. With each app, we learned more and more about product development, distribution, marketing, support, engaging our target audience of casual app users, and the iPhone/mobile space in general. So, we ended 2009 on an upward trajectory, and look forward to building on that momentum heading into 2010.

As we begin 2010, Broken Thumbs Apps is focused on our next two upcoming apps, including Zombie Duck Hunt – an arcade-style iPhone shooter which should be in beta testing this week. As with last year, the most important part about being an app developer, other than actually making apps, is getting noticed by iPhone/iPod Touch users, which have collectively downloaded over 3 billion apps to date, as Apple announced yesterday. We are implementing some of those ideas with Zombie Duck Hunt and will roll-out others in the months to come, as we spread the word about Broken Thumbs Apps and our apps. If we can continue to develop engaging, intuitive apps for the casual user, there’s a good chance that we will experience many breakthroughs in 2010 and beyond.

Thanks for your support, and don’t forget to join us on Twitter and Facebook to keep up to date on our latest developments!

As this year draws to a close and the next one begins, we just wanted to take a moment to send our best wishes to all our family, friends, users, collaborators and other fans and supporters. Please enjoy this short video we made, which includes some pictures related to our company and is set to some nice music: Holiday Video. Happy holidays!

Chasing Colors Lite, the free version of our iPhone and iPod Touch game of the same name, is now available in the Apple App Store!

It’s a fun, quick game to test your reflexes and includes the Colors Galore mode with four difficulty levels: Easy, Medium, Hard and Progressive. Try it today, and compare scores with players from around the world!

For a direct link to iTunes, please Click Here

Christmas came early this year! Broken Thumbs Apps is pleased to announce that Santa’s Run is now available in the iTunes App Store! Easy to learn, but difficult to master, Santa’s Run will be sure to get you into the Holiday spirit and bring you hours of joy. Click Here to help Santa deliver gifts and spread Holiday cheer today!

And, as always, please keep the feedback coming, so we can continue to improve our games and enhance your experience. Don’t forget to join us on Facebook and Twitter!

Broken Thumbs Apps is pleased to announce that Snaked just received its first review from an independent third-party iPhone app review website. The iPhone App Review gave Snaked a 9 out of 10, and their detailed review, “Snaked Hatches New Fun with Old Game,” can be found here: http://bit.ly/KOmn2.

And, the following is a sample of what reviewers have said about Snaked in the iTunes app store:

✭✭✭✭✭ 5/5 Stars
“Found this game today. Lots of fun. Tried a few snake apps this is by far the best.”

✭✭✭✭✭ 5/5 Stars
“This is a fun little app. Once you start playing it’s hard to stop! Easy to use and well-designed. Overall, five plus stars!”

✭✭✭✭✭ 5/5 Stars
“The game is fun with multiple ways to control the snake … If you like the old snake type games you will love this one!”

✭✭✭✭✭ 5/5 Stars
“good clean fun. unless you’re the rat! very addictive.”

We hope that as Snaked gets more and more of this kind of exposure, iPhone users will find out for themselves that Snaked is a worthy and solid casual game for the iPhone, as well as one of the best updates of a classic game for the iPhone. If you haven’t already, click here: http://bit.ly/6nrme to try Snaked today!

And, don’t forget about the current contest for Snaked, where you can win an iTunes gift card by posting the highest score in the online global leaderboards in Snaked mode for the month of October! For details, please visit the Broken Thumbs Apps Facebook fanpage here: http://bit.ly/2nQoa8, where you can also sign-up to hear about future updates and contests as well.

On Monday our first game, Snaked, was officially approved by Apple. We are excited to finally have Snaked approved and available for purchase through the Apple App store. Now we want to hear from you. What are your impressions of the game? What worked or didn’t work?  The more feedback you can give us, then the better apps we can design for you.

To buy Snaked, click http://itunes.com/app/snaked or from within the Apple App store type snaked in the search bar.

We are also pleased to announce that last Friday we submitted our second game, Chasing Colors, to the Apple App store. This is a quick reaction game. We will be uploading a YouTube video of Chasing Colors soon, and we’ll be adding screenshots of Chasing Colors to our Facebook fan page.

Stay tuned. There are more games to come from Broken Thumbs Apps.