History of the Fruitfall game
In 2002, Warrington developer Game-Play Studios Ltd closed down.
Managing Director Tony Williams (also known in the games industry as Tiny Williams), had the vague idea that casual games were the future.
After a couple of months deciding what to do with his career, he set about designing a game so simple that anyone could play, with rising
difficulty to test even the staunchest of gamers. Having worked with Nintendo's Game Boy Advance, this was intended to be the target platform.
The starting point was a top-down view puzzle game, with the play area tilting to move the objects.
Then one day, the idea of rotating the whole screen and letting gravity do the rest came along.
Initial development - the R & D stage - was started under the name Blockfall.
Having no access to Game Boy Advance development hardware, initial work was done in Windows.
After recruiting Paul Dossis to provide graphics - and some enviable experience in game design and indeed game playing, then proving the concept, proper development started. After a few months, levels were created, graphics added, and code updated.
Testing was originally done by Tony, Paul and Tony's wife Val all playing the game. Given the simplicity of the game, luckily there were not too many bugs to deal with.
In December 2002, with a completed Windows game - originally destined for Game Boy Advance - and apparently no other route to market, it was decided to release the Windows version as shareware.