The Princess Bride is a beloved movie that tells a classic fairy tale, with swordplay, giants, an evil prince, a beautiful princess and yes, some kissing. 

As part of the 25th anniversary of the film’s original release, local game development house Gameblend Studios is releasing a game that allows players to recreate the classic scenes from the film on their mobile phone or tablet.   

“We have Cliffs of Insanity; the Wrestle a Giant (against Andre the Giant); Fire Swamp; Battle of Wits (with wine and Iocane powder); Cliff Top Duel with Inigo Montoya and more coming,” said Scott Balaban, cofounder of Gameblend Studios (See Balaban’s multimedia picks in this issue’s InfoJunkie, page 11).   

“I noticed [an agency group we work with] had The Princess Bride license, and they did not have a licensee. They did a PC title a few years back, and it did not set the world on fire,” Balaban said.

Balaban negotiated the contract to develop the game for iPad, iPhone, Android and Kindle Fire.

“The game will have eight core scenes from the movie,” he said. “We have created a game where you earn images and sounds clips from the movie, achievements and awards.  

The major problem is that we are such fans of the movie that we had trouble editing ourselves to only eight scenes. It is one of those movies that has a lot of great, super classic scenes, and if we ship a game without a specific scene, we would upset someone.”

Balaban said this might be the biggest project they have done for their own company.

Gameblend has built larger brands such Lord of the Rings and Star Wars for other studios, but this project is being funded and distributed by Balaban’s company.  

“It is the biggest brand we have taken on directly and published,” Balaban said. “It is really amazing to dig into high-quality images of how the movie is made. It takes a bit of the magic away, but the movie is still holding up pretty good.”   

The game will be a single player game but will include features that allow players to post high scores and achievements to Apple’s Game Center to compare scores with friends.

The game is scheduled to launch sometime in December after it is complete and the marketing plan is executed.   

“The most challenging part has been the actual coding, and this task has fallen on my business partner Eric Stein, who is based in Massachusetts,” Balaban said.

The company will promote the game after completion via the movie’s Facebook page, which has more than 2.2 million fans. That number is a testament to the film’s enduring popularity when you take into account it came out in 1987 – 17 years before Facebook launched.

When published, the game will be available directly via the online stores connected to the devices – Apple App Store for iOS, Amazon Store for Kindle and Android Marketplace.    For games updates and news about project, Gameblend’s website directs people to its Facebook page (www.facebook.com/gameblend).

Solving the Rubik’s Cube

Forrest Maready has a dream to teach the world to solve the Rubik’s cube.  

Invented in 1974 by Hungarian sculptor and professor of architecture Erno Rubik, the puzzle game is widely considered to be the world’s best-selling toy, and Wilmington resident Maready has created a new product that he claims will help anyone solve the cube. 

Maready’s day job is as a creative technologist at Durham-based advertising agency McKinney, and he developed the product while teaching his fellow staff members to solve the cube. 

His idea was “if I taught two people at McKinney, they would have to teach two people. I thought how cool it was for anyone at a meeting could solve the cube.” Maready explained. “What I realized is people think you are so smart if you can solve the cube. I think people really get a kick out of being able to solve it. If you can solve it, you look like you are really smart.”

Maready’s system is called the Ultimate Cube Trainer and includes a DVD with a comprehensive walk through of the technique, a booklet with short cuts and print version of the DVD and special training stickers. The removable stickers are used to hide the unimportant facets of the cube to make the cube less intimidating and easier to solve.

“We can safely assume the less than 1 percent of people know how to solve it,” Maready said. “It takes about seven discreet [types of] moves to solve it. Maybe 80 [total] moves to solve it.” 

According to Maready, of all the ways to solve the cube, you can break it into three categories. “The way I solve it is the easiest, but the slowest method, solving it layer by layer.” 

The fastest method, employed by competitive speed cube competitors, requires memorizing the patterns. “The really hard one is basically solving it the same way a computer would,” Maready said. “You are memorizing 50-60 permutations and recognizing the patterns. They fly out of your fingers. The middle version is a hybrid version of the two.

“The fastest I have ever done it is 47 seconds. I would not even qualify for a competition. To win you need to be in the 6-7 second range.” 

The world record for solving a 3x3 cube is currently 5.66 seconds and was set by Feliks Zemdegs at the Melbourne Winter Open 2011 in Australia.

Maready is convinced that his product will sell because of the large demand for information on solving Rubik’s cube. He pointed out that more than 300,000 people a month search Google for information on how to solve the Rubik’s cube, and books are the only product targeting the market. 

“Nobody wants to read a book; they want it to be easy,” he said.

The Ultimate Cube Trainer will be available later this fall on Maready’s website at UltimateCubeTrainer.com. Maready also thinks that teaching people to solve the puzzle would also be a good corporate team building exercise. Maready said he hopes  “to sell them on Amazon and though the store and get some speaking engagements with companies that are interested in having people learn en masse.” 

Area IT group to meet Nov. 8

The University of North Carolina Wilmington will host another Wilmington Area IT Professionals Breakfast Panel at 7:30-9:15 a.m. Thursday, Nov. 8 in the Madeline Suite. 

Panelists will be: Joe Norris, CTO of New Hanover Regional Medical Center; Max Robertson, IM leader at GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy; and James Streeter, head of global business engagement and delivery teams at PPD.

The panel will cover strategies that IT professionals need to consider to make themselves and their firms more productive, said Tom Janicki, UNCW information systems professor.

“Everyone from CIO, to CTO, to department managers to rising IT professionals in their organizations should attend,” Janicki said.   

The cost is $25, which includes breakfast. Preregistration is required at www.uncw.edu/wilmIT.