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Posts tagged with "games"

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.

Twitch Announces SDK For Mobile Games

Twitch

Twitch

Video game live streaming service Twitch has announced a mobile SDK, which will allow developers of smartphone and tablet games to add gameplay recording and broadcasting functionalities to their games, taking advantage of many of the features that Twitch supports on the web and home consoles. As reported by Polygon, the mobile SDK hasn’t been released yet, and Twitch’s official press release doesn’t clarify whether or not it’ll be available for both leading mobile platforms, iOS and Android.

Twitch, which passed 45 million unique monthly viewers at the end of 2013 and 10 million installs for its official mobile app, is seeking to expand on as many platforms as possible, building a platform that lets players easily record and broadcast gameplay, while allowing viewers to watch streams and chat through various community features. Launched in June 2011 as a subsidiary of Justin.tv, Twitch now comes pre-installed on Sony’s PlayStation 4; on March 11, a Twitch app will officially launch on Microsoft’s Xbox One with more functionalities than the PlayStation’s counterpart such as video archiving, a split layout for streaming and text chats, and media achievements for spectating games.

According to details shared by Twitch so far, the initial version of the mobile SDK will more closely resemble the experience offered on PC and Xbox One: besides the ability to record gameplay video and audio, Twitch will allow players to capture video from the front-facing camera, capture audio from an internal or external microphone, and archive videos for immediate streaming on Twitch. The SDK will come with settings to control brodcast quality, and there will be chat integration and discovery features to browse and follow live streams from other gamers.

“Facilitating the ability to ‘broadcast anywhere’ by bringing live streaming functionality to mobile has the potential to convert millions of Twitch’s passive viewers into active broadcasters,” said Michael Pachter, video game analyst, Wedbush Securities. “Now that Twitch has cornered the PC and console markets with turnkey broadcast integrations, given the proliferation of gaming due to the massive penetration of mobile devices, they are in a unique position to change the game once again.

The addition of mobile games is interesting for Twitch: the service isn’t available on the 3DS and PS Vita portable consoles, and Twitch has typically been associated with longer, more articulated gameplay experiences granted by dedicated home consoles and PCs. While new console-quality games can be found on Apple’s App Store and Google’s Play Store and ports of older console games are common at this point, it’ll be interesting to see if developers of mobile games that are usually played in short bursts of time will consider adding Twitch streaming functionalities to their games.

On mobile devices, Twitch will also have to take into account technical aspects such as cellular and WiFi streaming, battery life, and hardware fragmentation. On iOS, Apple has traditionally been against solutions to record videos of the device’s screen, although it’s possible that, by leveraging streaming rather than local video archiving, Twitch has figured out ways to enable this sort of functionality.

Details on release date and platform availability of the Twitch mobile SDK aren’t available at this point. You can read Twitch’s press release here, and wait for updates on the Twitch developer website.

Releasing Games Through Apple, Valve, Nintendo And Sony’s Digital Storefronts→

Swedish indie development studio Image & Form has released games for iOS, Nintendo devices, and Steam; next month, they will release Steamworld Dig for PS Vita and PlayStation 4. CEO Brjann Sigurgeirsson spoke to Edge about the differences between digital storefronts, suggesting that Apple could do a better job at selecting and working with indies:

The developer’s experience with Apple – or rather, the lack of it – suggests that the App Store’s greatest strength is also its greatest weakness. “So many games are coming out every day and the largely DIY submission procedures are so effective that it’s impossible for Apple to keep up personal relations,” says Sigurgeirsson. “A year and a half after having released a Game of the Week I met my first Apple representative in person, and many developers probably couldn’t tell you who ‘their’ person is. The ‘right’ Apple e-mail addresses used to be hard currency, real bargaining chips.”

In throwing its doors open and welcoming all comers, Apple has made it easy for developers to release a game, certainly, but perhaps it’s too easy right now. Sigurgeirsson would like to see Apple raise the entry level to the App Store – “make it a tiny bit harder to become a licensed developer, so that the average quality of the games goes up,” he says.

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Flappy Bird Clone Made with Pythonista On iOS→


Following the unfortunate demise of Flappy Bird, hundreds of developers are rushing to release clones of the game on the App Store. Over at the Pythonista forums, however, user “bashedcrab” has created a working clone of Flappy Bird called “Jumpy Octopus”, made entirely with Pythonista (pictured above).

This started out as a Flappy Bird clone (can be done in under 100 lines of Pythonista), but I let my son do a bit of a redesign. He decided an underwater setting involving an Octopus was much more enjoyable.

The game play and physics are tuned to replicate the original Flappy Bird as closely as possible, so it is hard! If you want to make it a bit more fun for young kids, make the gap larger (Default is 360. 450 is much easier but still a challenge for young kids).

The game is available as a Python script here, which can be copied in a new file in Pythonista and run to play the game. Jumpy Octopus has sounds, keeps tracks of high scores, and uses iOS emojis as characters for the underwater setting. Of all the Flappy Bird clones that are coming out, this is an impressive open-source implementation based on Pythonista’s game creation features.

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Eric Pramono’s Tips for Threes→

If you’ve been trying to get high scores in Threes, you’ll want to check out Eric Pramono’s tips and explanation of the point system.

The game score is determined by the numbers and types of tiles you have at the end of the game. Each white tile is worth three times the score of its previous number, for example the 768 tile is worth 19,683 points whereas the 384 tile is only worth 6,561 points.

Fair warning: this may require an even larger investment of your time to play Threes, which is a great game.

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Threes: A Game of Multiples

Threes is a game of multiples. It’s a game of combining pairs of numbers to make even bigger numbers. It plays on idea of a sliding puzzle, except the board becomes more populated the longer you play. A new piece falls onto the board after every slide, until the board is completely populated. The end goal is to end up with a board full of large numbers, hopefully in the greater double digits, and maybe even a triple, for a high score.

You play on a 4 x 4 grid, shaped like mahjong pieces, where you slide pieces up, down, left, and right. The game doesn’t really start until you begin combining your blue ones and red twos to create threes. Threes combine to make sixes, which combine to make twelves, etc. Every time you combine two numbers, the result doubles. Only multiples of three count towards your end score, thus the name of the game.

While Threes is largely a game about numbers, there’s lots of little touches in the game, including an unintended achievement system, where creating bigger multiples of three unlocks new personalities. Each multiple of three has a different face, and they’ll smile at each other if they can combine. Threes maintains a history of your previous scores, and includes a toggle to reduce animation frame-rate to save battery life if you’re out and about.

If you love games like Letterpress and Dots, you’ll love Threes. It’s easy to grasp and hard to master. It’s classy.

Threes is $1.99 on the App Store.