Visit WordSearchLittleBooks.com to download now!

I am very happy to announce that Word Search - Little Books, my latest game, is now available for all Android devices on Google Play here. Word Search - Little Books is a word search game. What makes it unique from the many other word searches out there is that it utilizes both touch and stylus input. As best I can tell, Word Search - Little Books is the first word search game on any mobile platform to support stylus - don't worry, the touch support is great too. It also brings a bit more depth to the genre which is currently mostly puzzle generators and little more.

(click 'read more' below to continue)

In my last blog post on XNA for Windows Phone 7 I said that I was working on a game in both Silverlight and XNA, and that if I got a chance to test out performance I would report back. As you can see in the image below, I got a chance to test out my Silverlight game on a real device last week at ReMIX Atlanta - so this post is to cover some insights gained.

me testing my game prototype on a Windows Phone 7 device

First off, if you are trying to get a basic understanding of when to choose between XNA and Silverlight for WP7, you should take a look at this post by Michael Klucher. Michael lays down the basic differences between the two platforms - Silverlight has great controls with great tool support for styling them, and XNA has a crazy fast sprite rendering pipeline which supports full 3D.

But, let's say that you don't need controls for your game, and you don't need 3D - is Silverlight good enough for writing a basic 2D game? After playing with a device briefly last weekend I can tell you the performance of Silverlight on the device looked great - but you will need to analyze the game you're creating a bit before making the ultimate decision.

(click 'read more' to keep reading..)