The State of TheCodingMonkeys

As announced indirectly via the new website I'm back at the helm at TheCodingMonkeys.

The first public act in that role was to announce that we have to remove Carcassonne from sale beginning March 1st 2020 (grab it while you can, it's awesome!), which is a very emotional good bye for me. On release in 2010, Carcassonne was a huge milestone for TheCodingMonkeys as a company: It was the first App for us that really solidified that we made it as a company. To me personally it was kind of the perfect storm: Being allowed to make the best UI I could, on a medium I loved (iPhone/iPad) in a genre I grew up with (Boardgames). And while stressful, nerve-wrecking, and financially putting us to the limits, it succeeded in more ways that we could dream of.

All of this brought me to rewatch @cabel's fantastic XOXO talk and think about the potential endings. And I thoroughly decided against a "fading out" ^.

So what is next?

In a first wave with the kind help of @ellduin we put on some well deserved maintenance. We did an update Lost Cities to restore Voice over functionality and also improve the basics on iPhone X Max sizes. We also took the risk to do a last but deserved update to Carcassonne to fully support the whole range of iPad screen estates.

SubEthaEdit is open source and healthy, and will see some additional support this year.

On the games front we're happy to announce the first part of @sightwise's hope will be fulfilled really soon. We are very excited about it, and happy how it turned out. But as the german saying goes: "Erst Ei, dann Gack!" (roughly: first lay the egg, and only then you squawk).

There is also more stuff being set in motion. So stay tuned – I, for one, am looking forward to this reboot of TheCodingMonkeys.