Talking Zombie Chav Hunt and 99c App Store games with CobraMobile

One of the many mobile developers that have branched out to become publishers of their own iPhone and iPod touch games, CobraMobile seems happy to vary its output.

Alongside mathematical match puzzlers such as Numba, cheese-based route puzzler such as Mouse About, and WipeOut clone Low Grav Racer, the Dundee-based studio had just released the first in a planned series of 99c/59p bite-sized snack games.

The provocatively titled Zombie Chav Hunt (for non-UK readers a chav is English White Trash), it's a 2D touchscreen shooter that sees you selecting between sniper rifle, shotgun or uzi to rid the world of chavs who have become zombies. Think The House of the Dead meets cut-price Burberry (the clothing brand favoured by said EWT).

Such details aside, however, we caught up with 'Fearsome' MD Mark Ettle to find out more about the company's App Store plans.

Mark Ettle: We've spent almost a year with the iPhone and since the App Store launch have seen a wide selection of games and content come to pass.

Now that our technology for iPhone development is very mature, we can get great, fun game ideas to market very quickly. And depending on the development time and depth of gameplay, we can take those products to market at different price points.

Zombie Chav Hunt is part of our snack gaming range, and at 99c/59p we feel it's great value for money and has bags of pick-up-and-play potential. And who doesn't like shooting zombies and chavs?

Yes. Where we can and where we can bring a sense of fun to the matter. We have a whole series of snack games coming out this year. Some are really crazy ideas that just work well on the iPhone and some are ideas that just play well on the iPhone. The point is all these games will retain the same overall attention to detail and quality.

The 99c/59p price point can work based on the volume of sales. The return on investment on Zombie Chav Hunt is low compared to some of our other games, but having a proven internal technology solution in place allows us to reduce the overall development cost for a title.

We were looking at some similar genre games, and we thought what kind of hunting game would we like to play? Everyone loves shooting zombies, but zombie chavs, now that's funny and socially incorrect. And if you listen to the game's audio, you'll get a feel for our sense of humour.

The weapon count was kept small to not over complicate the game. We wanted to get the right level of accessibility so people could get straight into the action and start blasting chavs. We know that Zombie Chav Hunt will be played in short sessions so we wanted to make sure there was enough there but not to much.

No. I think you can charge more if those games offer value for money, are well presented, and fun to play. You only have to look at Low Grav Racer as a key example of new non-licensed IP that's being well received and is successful on iPhone at a higher price point.