Good ideas do not always come amid success. Game Development graduate Collin Chandler, the developer of the recently released iPhone app Lodestone, admits that he first imagined the game in Structures of Game Design — a class in which he first received an F. Now a member of web development team Clear Idea Technologies, Collin is celebrating the release of a game he programmed and designed the levels for alongside the visual design created by former classmate Celes Chang.

“It’s designed with a pretty simple concept. You’re a magnet, and there are magnets around the level,” Collin says, explaining the premise of Lodestone. “If you press on the right side of the screen you’re going to be attracted to the magnets that you’re in range of and if you press the left side of the screen you’ll be pushed away. So you use that to kind of navigate and collect the golden orbs placed throughout the level and avoid certain obstacles.”

If a certain kind of drive was missing from his first in-class attempt at game design, Lodestone was marked by a focused dedication. “I kind of did this at 5 o’clock after I was done with work. I’d run home, grab some food, and then come back and work until 1 or 2,” says Collin.

This dedication was inspired, Collin says, by of all things, his Final Project class at Full Sail.  “Final Project is where everything came together. I became a much more confident programmer and learned my own abilities, what I do well and what I need help with. And finishing a project—that’s a big thing.”

Another plus from his Final Project class? That would be meeting Celes, his future Lodestone collaborator, who Collin praised: “I would give her ideas of what I was picturing, and she would take that from there and make something really awesome.”

But would Lodestone, now available to purchase by millions of iPhone owners, earn a passing grade in Structures of Game Design? After a thoughtful pause, Collin answers confidently: “I believe so.”