Believe it or not, Bungie's latest didn't take that long to develop -- oh, you read the headline? Well, aren't you perceptive! Yes, Crimson: Steam Pirates (not to be confused with ) only took 12 weeks to create, believe it or not.
It's the subject of a Gamasutra postmortem by developer Harebrained Schemes' Aljernon Bolden, who worked in the trenches over those dozen weeks to create what is one of the top free iPad apps. His diatribe recounts the last month (it launched on September 1, remember?) and how a team of seven people was able to meet deadline. Did you know the game uses animations originally created as flipbook animations in Flash? Just one of the many interesting tidbits to be discovered!
Do yourself a favor and give it a read. It's not only a great read to learn how a first-time developer was able to come up with high-impact, low-cost solutions to achieve its goal, it's also fascinating stuff for budding developers -- and in this App store world we're living in, that should be at least 75 percent of you.