The History of Pocket RPG

The first time Pocket RPG was made known to the general public was in August of 2010, via a post on the TouchArcade forums. Developer Tasty Poison Games was founded that same year in Cape Town, South Africa, and Pocket RPG would be the team’s first official release. The idea was to make a stripped-down RPG experience that was part shooter, part roguelike, and part hack-and-slash action game. Initially planned for release later that year, the game ended up needing a little more time to finish development. Crescent Moon got involved with the game in October of 2010 and offered what assistance it could to help the developers finish and market the game.

One of the major issues that extended the development was the desire to add more RPG elements to the game. The team felt that the action and roguelike bits were working properly, but with a name like Pocket RPG, it needed more role-playing elements. More equipment and gear was added, among other things, a process that took a fair bit of time due to the small size of the team. Tasty Poison was also trying to make the game work on some of the lower-end iPhones of the time, a trying task due to the 3D visuals the game used.

After several months, Pocket RPG was finally ready for release. The iPad version would come first, followed the next month by the iPhone version. Fans who had been waiting for almost a year looked forward to the July launch with anticipation. The day finally came, but the game had to be pulled from the App Store almost immediately due to some nasty bugs that were discovered after the final build was submitted. An update was put together, and a few days later the game was finally available for real.

Reviews were generally favorable, and most agreed that the game achieved its goal of being a light, easy-to-get-into action-RPG. Later that year it was nominated for Gamespot’s Best Mobile Game of 2011 award, ultimately losing out to Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP. The response from players was quite positive all around, though some took issue with the game’s length and unusual upgrade system. No major content updates were issued, but the game did receive a few updates to address bugs and compatibility issues. It was ported to other platforms in subsequent years. The iOS version was finally brought to its knees when 32-bit support was removed, but has been updated and brought back as part of the GameClub library.