Meet the Creator

Hello,

My name is Sandon Guild, and I am the founder and current owner of Sandstorm Command. I’m from Mississippi, USA and at the time of writing this am a junior in high school. I love math and grammar (hence Make It Eight and Nitro Tap) but strongly distaste writing, so expect this to be short ;) . Most of my free time is spent doing homework, working out, coding and other app-related things, or playing the occasional video game. I also like board games, but it’s usually a stretch to get more than one of my family members to play, especially if it’s chess.

websitePhoto.jpeg

A Brief History of Sandstorm Command

By Sandon Guild

From the moment I first attempted New Super Mario Bros. DS in 1st grade, I became fascinated with video games and was continually coming up with ideas for how to improve the ones I enjoyed most. Often times when I was bored while riding in the car, I would look at license plates, street addresses, and phone numbers on billboards trying to mentally turn the series of numbers into 8 (add, subtract, multiply, and rearrange). Then, one day in 8th grade while coming home from school, I decided that this would be a relatively simple concept to test for my first app. For a while I had no clue where to begin with making apps, so I didn’t. Then, the summer before 10th grade I started searching online for coding tutorials until I came across a 3 hour Swift course taught by Chris Ching (Coding with Chris). This led to a series of whatever online tutorials I could get my hands on until the eventual discovery of Udemy. Within the first week of the new year, I had begun Angela Yu’s iOS 13 and Swift 5 course, which I completed by mid March. Afterwards, I started my second attempt at Make It Eight (the first more or less being a disaster back in January) and found that the game, as well as coding itself, was far more complicated than I had initially anticipated. After an immense number of hours I wish I had kept track of, I decided to switch gears to another idea I had and hoped would prove a little easier to create: Nitro Tap. Inspired by the online racing game Nitro Type, Nitro Tap was meant to test each player’s texting abilities and help reduce reliance on autocorrect. Nitro Tap was in fact simpler than Make It Eight (much to my surprise), and I completed a playable version of the game in just over a month accompanied by a huge sense of accomplishment. With this renewed desire to code and countless hours of free time thanks to the 2020 coronavirus pandemic, I finally completed Make It Eight. When iOS 14 was introduced, the local multiplayer aspect of both Make It Eight and Nitro Tap underwent some serious rewriting but have hopefully since been fixed.

  • 2017 - Make It Eight Idea

  • Summer 2019 - Coding with Chris Tutorials

  • November 3, 2019 - Nitro Tap Idea

  • January 4, 2020 - iOS 13 and Swift 5 Tutorial Started

  • January 26, 2020 - Make It Eight Attempt #1 Started

  • March 21, 2020 - iOS 13 and Swift 5 Tutorial Completed

    - Make It Eight Attempt #1 Abandoned

    - Make It Eight Attempt #2 Started

  • April 18, 2020 - Nitro Tap Started

  • May 20, 2020 - Nitro Tap Completed

  • July 14, 2020 - Make It Eight Attempt #2 Completed

  • 1-17-2021 - Make It Eight Local Multiplayer Fixed

  • 1-21-2021 - Nitro Tap Local Multiplayer Fixed

  • 1-21-2021 - Classroom Roulette Started

  • 4-23-2021 - Enrolled in Apple Developer Program (apparently you have to be 18)

  • 4-28-2021 - Sandstorm Command Chosen for Company Name

  • 4-30-2021 - Classroom Roulette Finished

  • 7-8-2021 - Make It Eight Lite Released

  • 7-8-2021 - Nitro Tap Lite Released

  • 7-19-2021 - Classroom Roulette Released