Simogo, makers of some of my favorite games for iOS (Year Walk and DEVICE 6), have announced their next game, The Sailor’s Dream, launching later this year. The Sailor’s Dream will be a “challenge-free experience in which you explore a non-linear story through words, music, sounds and illustrations”, and, based on the trailer and screenshots seen so far, it looks like Simogo is once again trying to redefine the scope of innovation in mobile gaming.

Don’t miss Leigh Alexander’s interview with Simogo at Gamasutra, which provides background and context on the studio’s latest creation:

“We want it to feel both relaxing, like diving into a tiny little world in which you can enjoy just interacting with, looking at and listening to things,” Flesser continues. “But then there’s also this element of exploring a quiet story, and tying it together in your head. So in that way it is like a dream, exploring a strange world, with tiny bits of reality breaking through in different ways.”

You can watch the trailer below, and check out the game’s first screenshots at the official website. You can read my review of Year Walk, Simogo’s hit from 2013, here.

BioShock, Irrational Games’ masterpiece originally released on Xbox 360 in 2007, is coming to the iPhone and iPad this summer with a mobile port developed by 2K China, the same studio that handled XCOM: Enemy Unknown for iOS devices. BioShock is considered one of the most important games of the last generation of home consoles, and, for the upcoming mobile version, Polygon’s Brian Crecente notes that it “feels very much like the original, especially when played on an iPad and with a controller”.

In order to fit within the size limitations of the App Store, BioShock’s graphics and effects have been toned down, which, according to previews of the game published this morning, results in visually inferior experience for those who remember the original game on Xbox. Here’s Ben Gilbert, writing at Engadget:

Yes, BioShock doesn’t look as good on iOS. It’s the truth. In-game lighting and shadows are cut down pretty dramatically, as are art assets. The grandeur of Rapture is distinctly less grand, which sucks some of the life out of one of my personal favorites. The first thing you’ll notice is “iOS fire.” The game’s opening – a plane crash – puts main character Jack in the ocean surrounded by some hideously ugly fire animations. It’s the first hint that the iOS version of Rapture has been shrunken down to fit within Apple’s app store file size limitation, and it’s a nagging issue that I couldn’t shake in my hands-on time.

Over at TouchArcade, Jared Nelson has another preview of BioShock for iOS with a hands-on video:

One thing that struck me about playing Bioshock on a mobile device is that it’s a very intimate experience. Over the last decade, high end televisions and home theater systems have become common, making for incredible environments to play through immersive and atmospheric games. And Bioshock is one of the most atmospheric of all time. However, there’s really something to be said for having your very own little screen running the game, right up in your face as close as you want it to be.

BioShock was released in 2007, in the formative years of last-gen consoles. Based on the previews and first impressions published today, it sounds like modern iOS hardware would be capable of handling the original game’s graphics and assets, but file size limitations are preventing developers from putting a full console experience into an App Store download. Considering Apple’s push for console-quality game technologies such as controller frameworks and Metal, this seems fairly anachronistic.

BioShock Mobile will be released sometime this summer for iPhone and iPad at a “premium price” with no In-App Purchases, and it will include a digital art book and Game Center integration. Make sure to check out the hands-on video at TouchArcade.

From Unreal Engine’s blog:

Unreal Engine 4.3 includes greatly improved mobile support, awesome new rendering features, improved Blueprint workflows, and strides toward an excellent experience on Mac and laptops. Be sure to check out the new World Composition tools, spline features, and the preview of Paper2D, our 2D toolset! Today we’re also shipping SpeedTree 7 support, our work on Metal API for iOS 8 to date, and new Oculus Rift features such as time warping.

Unreal is one of the most popular engines used by game developers today. With iOS 8 and new devices on the horizon, I can’t wait to see what kind of advancements Metal will bring for mobile graphics.

Developed by Game Oven in collaboration with the Dutch National Ballet, Bounden is a new iPhone dancing game for two players. The game uses the iPhone’s gyroscope and lets you “twist and twirl elegantly, or get entangled with a friend” in an experience that seems reminiscent of Game Oven’s previous work with Fingle and Bam fu for iOS, both games aimed at blurring the line between multitouch and physical interactions in iOS games.

Bounden looks like a unique concept, best explained by the promo video above and the developers’ description:

Holding either end of a device, you tilt the device around a virtual sphere following a path of rings. You swing your arms and twist your body, and before you know it, you are already dancing.

Bounden is $3.99 on the App Store, and Game Oven published a series of Making Of videos in a Vimeo album showing the game’s evolution and first demos with professional dancers and game journalists. Also worth reading: Kill Screen’s preview of the game from a couple of months ago.

Mike Bithell’s classic indie puzzle platformer Thomas Was Alone has been released on the iPad today. The game, ported by Surgeon Simulator developer Bossa Studios, features 100 levels, a new on-screen control system designed for iOS, and the same narration by Danny Wallace for which the British filmmaker and actor won a BAFTA Games Award in 2013.

Thomas Was Alone is one of the best games I’ve played this year. I bought the PS Vita version a few months ago, and I’ve been constantly impressed by Bithell’s tasteful level design and focus on collaboration between characters to get through stages. In Thomas Was Alone, you control a group of AIs who have become sentient and want to escape the computer mainframe they’re trapped into; the AIs (Thomas and his friends) are rectangles, and each one of them has a special ability, whether it’s higher jump or the ability to float on water. To complete stages, you’ll have to think in terms of collaboration rather than individualities: there are platforms that can be reached only if one character helps another jump onto it, while water-based sections require the AIs to proceed on top of the one that can swim. The way AIs, game mechanics, and narrations are intertwined makes for a classy, precise, and elegant game that always requires you to think of platforms as puzzles that can be solved by collaborating instead of running towards the end of a level. I love Thomas Was Alone and I can’t wait for Bithell’s next game.

Polygon has an interview with Bithell in which he explains the new controls for iPad:

“On either side of the screen, we have these color balls that you put your thumb on in order to select which character you want to use,” he said. “It’s a really intuitive, easy thing that you can basically play the entire game without moving your hands.

“That was the thing. It’s on iPad. If you’re holding the iPad, I don’t want you to ever have to move your hands from flanking either side of the iPad in your hands. I don’t want you to have to put the weight of the iPad in one hand and then use your finger for something else. It’s all played in that kind of default gamer position of the two thumbs, ready to do stuff on the screen.”

Thomas Was Alone for iPad is available at $8.99 on the App Store.

A great passage from Christian Donlan’s piece for Eurogamer about the E.T. landfill in New Mexico and lack of restraint on modern app stores:

But with that access - and without curation by companies that actually appreciated games - came a race to the bottom, where much of the good stuff was then buried by an endless deluge of miserable clones and cash-grabs that were allowed in because the gatekeepers didn’t care. Free-to-play is not the problem - it’s that publishers and platform holders and sometimes even developers let the deeper value of a game erode, that there was often a failure to find the correct free-to-play model that enhanced a game - and that some people apparently think it’s fine to refer to their most valued customers as whales.

The difference is that, thirty years from now, there won’t be a New Mexico landfill to recover old apps from.