Developers: try out Simon Squared, my multi-player Windows Phone 7 game, for free

If usage is like oxygen for ideas, then my Windows Phone 7 game, Simon Squared, must be pretty blue in the face right now. It’s not on the Marketplace yet, you see. Sure, nearly 25 people have download the source code. But how many of them will have bothered to compile it? Well, as of now, I’m demolishing your excuses: here is the Xap file - so you developers out there with unlocked phones can deploy the game and try it out.

Remember, the game has a multi-phone multi-player mode: and I’ve pre-configured the Xap file to run against our Windows Azure hosted server. So challenge your office mates! It doesn’t matter where in the world they are.

Let me know what you think – but don’t do it here: write your comments on the Simon Squared competition entry page so Red Gate can see what you think.

A reminder: Deploying Xap files to your phone

Building a project in Visual Studio and having it deployed to your phone is straightforward enough. Deploying a Xap file by itself is not quite so obvious, so here’s a reminder of how it’s done:

1. Remember to fire up the Zune software
2. Browse to C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Windows Phone\v7.0\Tools\XAP Deployment – drop the (x86) if you’re not on Windows 64-bit
3. Load the XapDeploy tool, select Windows Phone 7 Device as the target, browse for the Xap file, then hit deploy.