iPhone Apps: PRO casino games
At the Columbus CrunchGear Meetup in December I met Brad Dunnington, CEO of Avalinx, a local software development company that makes the PRO series of card games for the Apple iPhone. I met Brad for lunch a couple weeks later to learn more about the PRO series, as well as Avalinx as a company.
One of the more interesting things I heard at the Meetup was that Avalinx was a .NET development shop. Why, then, were they making iPhone games?! As Brad informed me, everyone at Avalinx eagerly watched the initial iPhone launch, and agreed that it represented a real breakthrough in handheld computing. They were all excited about the possibilities afforded by such a device. When the App Store was launched, Avalinx decided to get involved by writing applications that they wanted to write. The development team all had prior experience with casino game software (no names were divulged to me due, as I was informed, to contractual obligations), so writing casino games for the iPhone was an easy decision: they already had familiarity with the subject, and it was something they all actually enjoyed.But anyone could write a card game, and Avalinx didn’t want to produce “just another card game.” They wanted to produce something of sufficient quality that it looked good on the iPhone, matching the polish and sophistication of the iPhone itself. Thus, the PRO series of card games was launched, which currently includes 21 PRO, Baccarat PRO, Let ‘Em Ride PRO, and 3- and 4-card poker. The latter three games were all announced after the Meetup. Brad informed me that on average, they’re working on 4-6 week development cycles for the PRO series games.
Rather than review the games individually, I thought I’d look at these games as a collective, and examine the ways in which they stand out from their competition.
