Michal Ždanský Although we are a small country, we can find a large number of talented developers who have dedicated their careers to creating apps and games for iOS or Mac. For example, Petr Jankuj was among the first five hundred developers who appeared at the opening of the App Store in 2008, and the Czech studio Madfinger Games, for example, is among the world's top independent game developers.
All these Czechs enjoy the attention of foreign technology media, and rightfully so. Among the latest successful applications is the one released today TeeVee 2, which has already caught the attention of major American Apple websites and has reached the top ten most downloaded paid applications. We have therefore prepared a smaller overview of successful Czech applications that were able to establish themselves abroad.
Audio Notes
The Audio Notes application by Petr Jankuj was one of the first apps in the App Store ever. Thanks to almost non-existent competition, it became a hit rather quickly. In the second major version of iOS, there was no native recorder application, so a third-party effort to record audio and thus turn an iPhone or iPod touch into a voice recorder was in high demand.
Today, the application is no longer very relevant, especially when Apple competes directly with it, fortunately, Petr Jankuj gradually started to develop other applications, which include, for example, IDOS, which is popular in the Czech Republic and contains online timetables.
AirVideo
Development team InMethod came up with a unique application in 2009 that allowed streaming any video from a computer to an iPhone, preserving quality during conversion and supporting subtitles. In the year of release, there weren't many apps that could play higher definition videos smoothly, AirVideo therefore, it was one of the best solutions for home use.
Later came the extension for iPad and especially the key support of the AirPlay protocol, which made it possible to stream videos from a computer to an Apple TV through an iOS device, which was one of the few ways to play videos in a non-native format on a TV with an Apple device. No converting to MP4 or jailbreaking the Apple TV, just have AirVideo running along with a small utility for Mac and Windows.
e introduced AirDrop in OS X 10.7, allowing files to be shared wirelessly between Macs, but forgot about iOS. This hole in the market was used by Czech developers from TwoManShow, who introduced Instashare. This app made it easy to share files between iOS devices and Mac, a feature that users have been clamoring for for a long time.
The newly introduced iOS 7 now enables AirDrop for iOS, which unfortunately means the death knell for Instashare, yet during its existence it brought something that we have long wanted in an elegant and intuitive application, and thus deserved a lot of attention from the media, both Czech and foreign .
Piictu
Piictu was not a purely Czech application, however, a large part of the TapMates team participated in it, including the well-known Czech graphic artist Robin Raszka, who moved to New York in the US for success. Piictu was a response to the successful Instagram that offered a different interaction between users, but it was a similar social photography network.
The project managed to get several investors as well as the interest of the American media. Recently, however, Piictu announced the termination of service as a result of the acquisition, the authors thus apparently found the exit they were looking for.
Shadowgun
Madfinger Games belongs not only to the Czech, but also to the world's leading game development studios. It came to the market with an adventure series Samurai, however, the studio's biggest breakthrough came with the game Shadowgun. It is a third-person action-adventure game inspired by Gears of War. To date, the game is among the most graphically sophisticated game titles on both iOS and Android and is often mentioned in the media as an example of a quality title.
Madfinger Games recently released a multiplayer spin-off DeadZone, which Google named as the best game of 2012, for example. In the meantime, the developers managed to bring to the world the shooter Dead Trigger, where you fight hordes of Zombies from a first-person perspective. The high graphics level of Shadowgun was achieved by the developers thanks to the Unity engine, which is currently the best (and probably cheaper) alternative to Epic's Unreal Engine.
Machinarium
Game Studio Amanita Design managed to revive the point&click adventure genre with the game Machinarium, which gained worldwide acclaim mainly thanks to its beautiful hand-drawn graphics. In the mechanical world, Josef is like a little robot (probably a tribute to Josef Čapko, who invented the name "robot", which his brother Karel used in his work RUR)
The game was first released as a flash application, (i.e. multi-platform), later it also appeared for the iPad. Later, Amanita Design came up with another graphically precise game, Botanicula, which, like Machinarium, gained great interest from the media and players, and the Czech studio is thus one of the most successful game developers in our country. Incidentally, Amanita Design also participated in the creation of the movie Kooky Returns, around which an interesting case regarding illegal sharing broke out today.
Total Finder
OS X 10.9 will probably take some of the wind out of the sails, because Apple introduced panels in it, i.e. one of the key functions of Total Finder. Nevertheless, it continues to be a popular utility that extends the capabilities of the Finder, which also often appears in bundles for Mac.
And what other successful Czech games do you know that you would add to our list? Share with others in the discussion.
Pencil camera HD
Now I would probably add TeeVee 2. :)
Now I'm working on a racing game in Unity... maybe one day I'll also get on this imaginary list of successful CZ developers :)