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Inside Ikoni: Mathematics!

We will freely share that higher level mathematics have not been a required knowledge base for the development of our games (so far). No need for any calculus, linear algebra, differential equations and so on. Beyond basic arithmetic, the occasional elementary algebra has been all that has been needed.  However, during the development of Ikoni Word Search there was a very, very unexpected need for geometry and trigonometry! It’s rather amusing because you think after high school (or college) you would never have any use for such math again. Like, how are you ever going to apply trigonometry in real life? Or, when will you have to use geometry to solve for the hypotenuse of triangle as an adult? Well, if you try to build a mobile word search game you’ll soon find out! Ikoni Word Search’s game board display is built on a grid, a grid made up of 120 identical rectangles.  Each rectangle holds a single letter of the word search puzzle. These rectangles create a challenge: when the player solves for a word diagonally, what angle should the word bubble be displayed at?  Let’s get into the math by examining an individual rectangle on the game board. Each rectangle can be split diagonally into 2 right triangles. Remember from geometry – a right triangle is a triangle that contains a 90 degree angle. You may also remember from geometry that the sum of the three angles within a triangle equals 180 degrees. Since this is a right triangle, we also know the sum of the other 2 angles equals 90 degrees. We don’t want to bore you with all the intricate details of the game display, but suffice it to say we know rectangle’s width and height based on the device size. Now beware – even more geometry is incoming! Since we know the height (a) and the width (b) of the triangle, we can now use the Pythagorean Theorem (a2 + b2 = c2) to solve for the hypotenuse (c) of the triangle. Now that we used geometry and have the length of each side of the triangle (a b and c), we can next use trigonometry to solve for the angles (x and y) inside the triangle. If you remember, there are three major functions in trigonometry: sine, cosine and tangent. Let’s focus on the tangent function. The tangent function of of an angle is the ratio of the length of the opposite side to that of the adjacent side. That’s a mouth full, so in other words tangent theta equals opposite over adjacent, as shown below: Now we have everything we need to create the word bubble in the game! We can use the hypotenuse to calculate the length of the word bubble and the tangent formula above to calculate what angle the word bubble should be displayed at. These are the exact steps we preformed to figure out how to display the various word diagonal bubbles in Ikoni Word Search. It was a surprising challenge that this level of mathematics would be needed for the game!

Celebrating MLK Jr. Day

Today we want take some time out to do more than just post a quote or like a MLK picture on social media. As an African-American owned and operated company we recognize that if it weren’t for the effort, determination and sacrifice of Martin Luther King Jr. and countless others who came before and after him we would not be in position we are today.   Black people, White people, young and old, male and female, North and South all came together to march, sit-in, boycott, etc. just for civil rights, just for the right to be treated as an equal. They fought and sacrificed for the rights for African Americans to vote, equal access to education and employment, safe housing, for the decency to ride at the front of the bus, to walk trough the front door of a business, to eat at lunch counter and the list goes on and on and on and on.     The Civil Rights movement headed by Martin Luther King Jr. and others transformed American society, but it did not end the fight against racism and discrimination against Black people in the United States. Unfortunately you don’t have to look very far in the news (or perhaps in your real life) to find examples of police brutality, housing and/or employment discrimination, unequal outcomes in the justice system and again the list goes on and on and on.   We at Ikoni Studio do not take the sacrifice of those who came before us lightly. The countless others who fought for freedom from enslavement up to those who fought for, and continue to fight for, equal rights for African Americans. If it was not for these courageous people we would not be in the position we are in today to create and operate Ikoni Studio. We would not have the access to education to learn to code, we would not have the access to capital to fund the business and perhaps we would not have the right to engage on media platforms   With the understanding of our history, we are committed to use our Ikoni Studio platform responsibly, to only publish content that celebrates and uplifts Black people. There will be no room in our games for any content that diminishes the intelligence, creativity and beauty of Black people. That is our commitment to those that came before us.  

A Review of 2022

A lot has happened for Ikoni Studio in 2022, it was truly a monumental year. By far the greatest achievement was the launch of our flagship game Soulitaire to the Google Play Store in February.   We’d be lying if we said that after the launch everything was smooth sailing! Unfortunately, we had to roll out more then dozen updates to the game throughout 2022. It was at times a grueling effort, but we wanted to ensure Soultaire was providing the optimum gaming experience for all our players. Although these efforts impacted the growth of the audience for the game, it has been a great learning experience for us as game developers.   Another highlight for 2022 was our experience with working with a number of artists from around the globe. We’ve had the pleasure of working with artists in Nigeria, the United Kingdom, Greece, the United States, etc. These artists contributed beautiful artwork to Soulitaire and to our fledgeling social media accounts.   What’s Good for 2023?   We hope that 2023 is really big year for Ikoni Stiudio, one that puts us on the map! We wish to exponentially grow our daily active players and number of games played per day. To reach those goals we have a long road ahead of us and a lot of work to do in this new year.   We have a plan to launch 3 new game titles this year, bringing our total count to 4. We hope to launch our second game – KISIO – in early 2023. We are really excited about releasing this fun word game to the world – so stay tuned!   What comes next after KISIO us under wraps for now. We have lots creative ideas, we just have to sort them out!