It still feels hard to believe that ten years has gone by since Alto’s Adventure landed on the App Store and changed my life forever.
I shared some reflections on Twitter and wrote a little excerpt for a Snowman blog post:
It’s hard to wrap my head around the fact that Alto’s Adventure has been out for ten years. In some ways, it feels like we launched it just yesterday – I still remember waking up at 4am and seeing the tweets pouring – and we hadn’t even officially announced the game. In other ways, it feels like a lifetime ago. The game has taken us on so many unexpected journeys, introduced us to incredible people and opened doors we never could have imagined.
When you make something digital you don’t necessarily get to interact with people who use the thing you made but with Alto (because it’s been quite far reaching) it actually happens from time to time. It’s these personal stories that people have shared that really stick. Every once in a while I’ll encounter someone who tells me they grew up playing Alto or it got them through a tough moment in their life. It’s always a bit hard to believe.
Most recently it was a barista at my local coffee shop. Her and I have had pretty in-depth conversations about life every week or two for the last few years but what I do for work never came up. Recently it did and she pulled out her phone and showed me both games. She said she’s been obsessed with the games ever since they came out and has beat every goal in both of them. Then there was the time I was in a car with an 18-year-old family friend who, after an hour of small talk, asked what I did for work. When I told him I worked on Alto, he practically lost his mind – he and his friends had spent hours playing it at school.
These kinds of moments – though few and far between – are always surreal. We made Alto because it was something we wanted to play ourselves – but knowing it’s become a part of so many people’s lives is something I’ll always be grateful for.
I haven’t really been writing on this site anymore – but maybe that’ll change in the coming years. Who knows. Either way I wanted to log this here for posterity.
“Wow. It feels like just yesterday that I wrote this. Truth be told, I had no idea what I was doing. I knew I had an idea that I was passionate about (Checkmark) but had no real plans beyond that. The idea was that I’d quit my job, we’d finish the app, we’d launch it, I’d probably go relax on a beach in Thailand for a while, and then–and then who knows. I was young, naive and hadn’t thought about the future in any real way.
Well, things didn’t exactly work out that way. Checkmark came out, and while it was profitable and well-reviewed, we didn’t exactly hit the jackpot. One thing led to another and we got into making our first game (Circles). Another thing led to another, and we started working on a more “real” video game. A game which we cancelled. But that led us to start working on what became Alto’s Adventure, and, two and half years later when the game came out, so much changed. We had a hit on our hands and started to think about what was next. What were we going to focus on for the next few years? The stars aligned and we teamed up with my good friend Sam Rosenthal on Where Cards Fall, which accidentally kicked off our quasi-publisher journey.
So here we are, ten years later. We’re closing in on thirty people and we’re busier than ever making things I’m really proud of. We hope we’ll make a difference out there, even if it’s in a small way. Our team has become a second family (and set of friends) and I’m truly grateful for each and every one of them. Not just the people working here today, but even those who have come and gone throughout the years. I’ve learned something from every single one of them. Your team is everything, and so today I want to celebrate our team more than the products we’ve made or the brand we’ve built. A huge thank you to each and every one of you on the Snowman team, past and present included. It’s also been an incredible joy to partner with some of the most talented indie teams in the world like Land & Sea, The Game Band, Agens, Slingshot & Satchel and more. Thanks to our customers, our players, our business partners, the media, the platforms and everybody else who’s supported us over the last decade.
It’s been a real pleasure to revisit a game that has probably had the single largest impact on my career, and in many ways, my life. Many fond memories of our early years came rushing back and I’m really glad we’ve had the privilege of working on this series for almost 10 years now. It means a lot that Alto has stuck around this long, and in some ways it still feels like just the beginning.
I can’t believe Alto’s been around for almost a third of my life. Everything started with Adventure, and so it’s truly a pleasure to revisit something that’s had such a profound impact on my life.
The Alto series has always been about capturing that feeling of getting out in nature, exploring an unknown environment and following one’s passion for discovery. At a time when we may not be able to fulfil this desire in the real world, we hope players may find some sense of adventure in The Lost City.
Today we announced Pok Pok, a brand-new company we’ve been incubating at Snowman for almost three years now.
While I don’t have kids myself, I’m extremely passionate about education and how it relates to curiosity, creativity and imagination. As someone who dropped out of college myself, I’ve always found that there are so many ways to learn things.
One of the most memorable TED Talks I can remember was Sir Ken Robinson’s “Do schools kill creativity?”. Near the end of his talk he says:
I believe our only hope for the future is to adopt a new conception of human ecology, one in which we start to reconstitute our conception of the richness of human capacity. Our education system has mined our minds in the way that we strip-mine the earth: for a particular commodity. And for the future, it won’t serve us.
Now and in the future more than ever, I feel like creativity is going to be one of (if not THE) most important things a person can develop. Computers, technology, machine learning and artificial intelligence may take over existing jobs, but it is our creativity that will enable us to manifest new ones.
It is because of this that our mission with Pok Pok is simple:
We want to help raise the next generation of creative thinkers.
Pok Pok alone won’t do this, but if we can even play a tiny part, we’ll be proud of our work.
As I mentioned in my blog post recapping the story behind Alto’s Adventure, I grew up playing skateboarding games.
Not only were they a huge part of my childhood and growing up, but also part of my coming of age journey. I think Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater was truly my first “real” introduction to music. I spent so much time playing that game day and night. It was my entertainment, my escape, my introduction to music and also my training. I also got into EA’s Skate, but I think that came a long a little later when I had less time to play games.
In any case, it feels truly surreal to now be launching a skateboarding game on the very consoles I grew up playing on. Never in a million years did I think I’d be working on video games, let alone making and launching one myself on these platforms (with the fine folks at Agens and the team at Snowman of course).
So head over to your console (or PC store) of choice and check out Skate City. While it’s quite different than Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater or Skate (perhaps it’s a little in between the two) I hope you enjoy it! As always the game is also available on Apple Arcade.
After almost a decade since it first began in a college dorm room at USC, Where Cards Fall has won an Apple Design Award!
Our hats go off to Sam and his entire team at The Game Band who worked incredibly hard and passionately on this masterpiece of a game. It truly is a special experience, and one that really resonates with me personally.
We’re incredibly grateful to be among such great company at this year’s Apple Design Awards, and to have received an Apple Design Award for the second time.
While we couldn’t be together to celebrate, we look forward to doing so when we can.
Five years ago I woke up at 4am after sleeping for a few hours. Before I passed out I hit the “Release This Version” button to release Alto’s Adventure into the wild.
When I woke up I was in shock as there were over 500 new tweets for “Alto’s Adventure” on Twitter – and we hadn’t even announced the game was out yet! This wasn’t our first app launch either (it was #6), and normally things were quiet until after we announced the launch. This was different, and it certainly felt so.
Fast forward five years and here we are today, launching Alto’s Odyssey on the Mac, a new line of merch, and of course having a sale to celebrate. I can’t believe how many things have happened and how drastically my life has changed since the launch of Alto, and I’ll be forever grateful for it.
It still feels quite early here and we’re working on some really exciting things at Snowman that we can’t wait to share with the world. Here’s to the next five years.
We’ve been quiet about Skate City for quite some time now, and haven’t shared much about Where Cards Fall lately either.
Today we are thrilled to finally share that we have not one, but two games launching exclusively on Apple Arcade this fall; Where Cards Fall and Skate City.
I had the privilege of watching today’s Apple Event live from the Steve Jobs theatre. It was my second time there, and just as special as the first time.
For the last few months we’ve been quietly watching the world anticipate the launch of Where Cards Fall, and we can’t wait for everyone to finally get their hands on it this fall.
Today, we are excited to announce that Skate City will be joining Where Cards Fall on Apple Arcade.
Skate City is a creative collaboration between Agens and Snowman that aims to capture the heart and soul of street skating in a new light.
In 2014, Agens developer and skater Daniel Zeller channelled his love of the sport into the concept for a new Skate game.
He reached out to me with some questions about the game he was making, and we serendipitously connected on some fundamental levels. We all wanted our approach to a new skateboarding game to set ourselves apart from other entries. It was important to us that we create some of that magical feeling of being immersed in a place, to be truly present and lost in time.
As someone who grew up skateboarding I couldn’t wait to get involved with such an enthusiastic, talented team in any way we could.
It’s been an exhilarating journey and we couldn’t be more proud to launch Skate City this fall, exclusively on Apple Arcade.
When I first met Sam Rosenthal in 2013 we both shared things that we were working on with each other that weren’t announced. For me it was Alto’s Adventure, and for Sam it was a game called House of Cards. I always knew it was going to be something special, and the more I got to know Sam in the coming years, the more I knew it was something we’d love for Snowman to be a part of in some way.
We finally got to meet in person in 2015, and we immediately got along. We kept in touch, and in the summer of 2015 we decided to start working together on the game. We obviously had to find a new name for the project, but the soul of the project was the same.
Over the years that have followed, collaborating with the amazing folks at The Game Band has been a great adventure. As we move closer to the home stretch, we couldn’t be more excited for what’s to come, or more grateful for the incredible people we’ve worked with along the way.
Today was incredibly exciting for all of us, and now we’re headed toward the home stretch. We have a powerful story to tell with Where Cards Fall, and we can’t think of a better way to share it than with Apple Arcade.
