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Posts tagged with "games"

Apple Highlights Indie Games In “Indie Game Showcase” Section

Following a weekly refresh of the App Store’s featured content, Apple has started highlighting indie games in a section called “Indie Game Showcase” today, presented on the App Store’s homepage.

The new section, available on iTunes here, will presumably highlight indie developers on a regular basis, featuring a selected game from the development studio and offering a glimpse into the favorite games of an indie development’s team. This week, Apple started by featuring Simogo, the independent, award-winning studio behind Year Walk, Beat Sneak Bandit, and the widely acclaimed Device 6.

From Apple’s Indie Game Showcase page:

Often made up of just a few dedicated members, independent studios prove that what really matters is the size of your dream. In each Indie Game Showcase, we celebrate a popular game and its creative team, highlighting the developer’s titles along with their favorite games from other studios.

In featuring Simogo’s Device 6, Apple notes that the experience was “tailor-fit for iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch”, resulting in a game that was included in the list of runner-ups for the App Store’s Game of the Year collection in 2013 from a company that has made “outstanding games exclusively for the App Store”.

Apple’s Indie Game Showcase comes at the end of the Game Developers Conference, which saw an increased interest in indie productions by larger companies. Among various announcements, Sony unveiled improved development tools for indie developers on PS4, Microsoft showcased games part of the initial rollout of the ID@XBOX program, Nintendo showed the capabilities of its Web Framework, while both Epic and Crytek announced subscription services for their game engines, a move likely aimed at smaller, independent developers.

Alongside the Indie Game Showcase, Apple also featured its “10 Essential Indie Games” section on the App Store’s Games category page again, including recent releases such as Nyamyam’s Tengami and Sirvo’s Threes.

A Look At Temple Run Prototypes→

Eli Hodapp, writing at TouchArcade:

We met up with developer Keith Shepherd at GDC, and at a dinner the night before he was talking about how when they hire people now they go through the various stages of Temple Run’s development to give an idea of what’s possible in the mobile space after a day of work, a week of work, and a month of work.

Always interesting to learn about the process of making a game, especially a popular one such as the original Temple Run. The video at TouchArcade has a full interview with Keith Shepherd, who explains how the “free with In-App Purchases” strategy was born as a consequence of an experiment on the App Store, something that Imangi learned to optimize for Temple Run 2.

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Gameloft To Support Twitch Streaming On iOS with Asphalt 8 Update

Twitch

Twitch

With a press release (via Joystiq), Gameloft today announced that an update to Asphalt 8: Airborne will be one of the first iOS games to support livestreaming through Twitch on iPhones and iPads.

Earlier this month, Twitch announced a mobile SDK to allow developers of smartphone and tablet games to add native broadcasting functionalities to their apps. By partnering with Twitch, Gameloft will showcase features enabled by the Twitch SDK in Asphalt 8, which include live streaming, stream archiving, as well as the possibility to capture player audio and video through the front-facing camera in real-time. In pre-release screenshots shared by Gameloft today, Twitch integration is shown as a separate screen with settings for stream quality (low, medium, high), video and audio capture, and chat logs; during gameplay, chat messages will be displayed at the bottom of the screen in an animated ticker, with picture-in-picture support for live broadcaster commentary. It’s possible that the more powerful CPU and GPU found in the latest iPhone and iPad models will be required to render this kind of video enhancements for iOS games in real-time.

Live broadcasting represents one of the most important shifts in the way people play games,“ said Matthew DiPietro, VP of Marketing, Twitch. ”Twitch has quickly found a home on consoles, so by partnering with Gameloft to launch the first streaming-enabled mobile game brings us one step closer to being everywhere that gamers are. Also, being integrated into Asphalt 8: Airborne, one of the highest rated mobile games, should ensure it resonates with our community.

Twitch integration in Asphalt 8 will also come with discovery features to let players browse other streams from the same game directly within the app, an interesting move that could increase usage of Twitch as a social platform for gamers and not just a video broadcasting service.

The third update to Asphalt 8 will be released “soon” according to Gameloft, and it’ll be optimized for the iPhone 5s, iPad Air, and iPad mini with Retina display. For the Game Developers Conference this week, Gameloft will host a 24-hour livestream on Twitch to showcase Twitch support in Asphalt 8.

Rovio Shows Angry Birds Epic Gameplay In New Trailer

Following last week’s news that the Angry Birds franchise will get an RPG spin-off with turn-based gameplay for birds fighting pigs, Rovio has posted an official gameplay trailer of Angry Birds Epic. The video shows various characters engaged in fights with a classic RPG battle perspective; there’s a glimpse of the crafting system, which will allow players to create items and weapons. The game seems to borrow heavily from the tradition of turn-based RPGs: there’s a job system with classes such as Knight and Mage, a world map to explore, and stats to upgrade to make characters more powerful.

Angry Birds Epic has also received a new website, which confirms that the game will be a free RPG; Rovio hasn’t indicated how a possible In-App Purchase system will fit in the gameplay yet. While the Finnish game maker’s first hit and subsequent games used a paid model with unlockable extras, Rovio adopted a free-to-play strategy with last year’s Angry Birds Go, a racing-themed spin-off. The annoyance of several In-App Purchases through the game was mentioned in reviews, with The Verge noting that its design was “hampered by its free-to-play structure”.

Angry Birds Epic launches today in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand for iOS, with more countries to follow soon.

Twitch 3.0 Brings Search Improvements, New Player Layout for iPad

Videogame broadcasting service Twitch has today launched version 3.0 of its iOS app, which includes a new, cleaner UI for iOS 7, improvements to search and broadcaster profiles, and a new player layout on the iPad.

In terms of discovering content on Twitch, the changes to the search interface now enable the Twitch app to filter results by channels, people, and games. When tapping on a username in search, the app will reveal the updated design for broadcaster profiles, which display more information about a channel even if it’s currently offline.

Thanks to the iPad’s larger screen, Twitch can now show a live stream and chat panel side-by-side for an experience that’s consistent with Twitch’s offerings on PC and Xbox One. Live video is automatically resized when the chat is visualized in landscape mode, and new moderation and emoticon tools have been added to the chat to make it more consistent with the Twitch website.

Last week, Twitch announced a mobile SDK that will allow developers of mobile games to add live streaming features to their smartphone and tablet games, although no further details on platform availability and first compatible games were disclosed by the company. Twitch 3.0 is available on the App Store.

Edge On Apple’s iOS Gaming Revolution→

Much has changed in the two years since we called Apple “the hottest property in handheld gaming” and said that the company had “changed the videogame industry irrevocably”. Between E236 and today, Apple co-founder Steve Jobs has passed away, iPhone 5 has launched and bifurcated, Game Center’s poker-table felt has been torn off in favour of a spartan interface, and a wave of licensed iOS controllers has reached the market, drawing iPhones and iPads closer to the traditional world of videogame hardware. In other respects, though, nothing is different – Apple seems no closer to infiltrating the home console business through its set-top box, for example.

But crucially – at least for the people who have seen iOS platforms become integral parts of their gaming lives – it feels like the potential we saw in Apple’s devices to become a disruptive force has dissipated. Where we once saw a promising new marketplace of fresh ideas, unrestricted creativity, and daring new ways to play, the App Store of 2014 is swamped with cash-guzzling junk, shameless knockoffs and predictable sequels. Games worth discovering still exist, but they mostly dwell on the fringes and in the shadows, while endless horror stories suggest that paid-for games are simply no longer profitable and are dying out. What happened to the iOS gaming revolution?

Great story by Edge on the state of iOS gaming, free-to-play, App Store charts, and indie development in the age of freemium and Clash of Clans.

Time will tell whether the App Store can still accommodate developers who arguably make better games than the stuff that’s in the top charts or that Apple features. There’s hope, and I want to believe that somebody at Apple is reading Edge’s piece and wondering how they can make the App Store a better place for game creators who are not King or Supercell. Reducing the visibility of the Top Grossing chart and allowing games that cover political/religious/controversial themes would be a good start and an encouraging signal.

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Hand Circus Announces Seabeard, Coming Soon To iOS

Today, Hand Circus announced their new iOS game, Seabeard. Those who have been playing on iOS for a few years may remember Hand Circus for Rolando, one of the first big hits in iOS gaming (heavily inspired by LocoRoco). Seabeard will be published by Backflip Studios – another popular name in the scene (Ninjump, Paper Toss).

There aren’t many details on Seabeard yet, but it looks intriguing from a visual standpoint and it’s nice to see Hand Circus back with new material for iOS after ngmoco (the old publisher of Rolando) switched to a freemium model, which led to the cancelation of Rolando 3.

Seabeard’s first trailer (embedded above) shows a mix of Animal Crossing-style elements (build villages, manage population, go fishing) but also gives off a Wind Waker vibe with a focus on ocean exploration and boat mini games (not the first time Wind Waker has inspired an iOS game). In terms of character style, Seabeard is a continuation of Hand Circus’ PS3 game, Okabu.

From Hand Circus’ description:

Revive your trading empire - Set sail to discover lucrative trading routes and source rare and valuable items. Rebuild the legendary trading capital, Accordia and hire the finest market traders.

Conquer the seas - Set sail to encounter the challenges of the ocean, from feeding whales and rescuing shipwrecked passengers to battling with menacing sea monsters.

Further details on Seabeard’s gameplay aren’t available at this point, but Hand Circus is going to demo Seabeard at the GDC in San Francisco next week. From the trailer, it appears that the game will be Universal with iPhone and iPad support; it’s also not clear whether the game will be a paid download or if there will be freemium mechanics with In-App Purchases. According to Hand Circus, Seabeard is “coming soon” to the App Store.

Flappy Bird Creator Speaks Out→

As we talk into the night, hordes of agile pedestrians deftly dodge the Hanoi traffic, screens flickering in their hands like fireflies. It’s no wonder the world’s hottest game came from here. “When you play game on a smartphone,” he says, with an ever-present cigarette dangling from his lip, “the simplest way is just tapping.”

David Kushner of Rolling Stone managed to interview Dong Nguyen, the creator of Flappy Bird, for the first time since he pulled the game from the App Store. The interview is particularly revealing for the motivations behind Nguyen’s decision to remove the game, and whether it may come back or not.

Make sure to get to the end of the piece to know about Nguyen’s next projects.

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Retro Game Crunch Collection Released, Includes Seven Games

In November 2012, Shaun Inman, Rusty Moyher, and Matt Grimm launched a Kickstarter campaign for Retro Game Crunch, a project to develop and release six games in six months. As we wrote when the campaign was launched:

Each month backers (of $15 or more) will submit and vote on a theme and Shaun and his team will build the game that gets the most votes… in 3 days. Based on player feedback and Shaun and his team’s original aspirations, they will then polish and perfect the game for thirty days. Backers will then get to download a complete version of the game. This will happen each month for 6 months.

For each thirty days, or each game being developed, the Retro Game Crunch team will document the game process and progress with posts, screenshots and podcasts. Backers that contribute $25 or more will also get to download the entire Super Clew Land, which is a great game, when this project ends.

This week, the Retro Game Crunch team released their first official collection, made of 7 games created during the course of the initiative and based on feedback and input from the Kickstarter backer community. The games, heavily inspired by the 8-bit videogame era and chiptune music style, are Super Crew Land (the game that started Retro Game Crunch), End of Line, GAIAttack, Paradox Lost, Wub-Wub Wescue, Brains & Hearts, and Shūten. While the games were released separately during Retro Game Crunch, the new unified release brings smaller file sizes, a single download for all games, an app launcher to easily switch between games, and support for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 4 controllers.

The Retro Game Crunch Collection is available now for $11.99 (20% off) on the Humble Store and through the Retro Game Crunch website, it’s DRM-free, and made for both Mac and Windows (a Steam Greenlight campaign has also been launched to help make the collection available on Steam). For those who didn’t follow the original Retro Game Crunch initiative, a journal with details on the development of the games is publicly available here.