Posts tagged with "games"

Play Games Using The iPhone 5c Case

Speaking of Australia, how cool is this game by Stuart Hall and Dave McKinney? It is a variation of the classic four-in-a-row game that uses the iPhone 5c’s case as a grid, cleverly taking advantage of the case’s dots to show interface elements and let you tap on the screen.

The game is called Flipcase and it’s free on the App Store. It also uses UIKit Dynamics for some delightful animations and physics effects. Very clever.

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Unity Adds Support for iOS 7 Game Controllers

From the Unity blog:

Like most mobile games developers, we’ve been closely following what important additions and changes the recently released iOS 7 update has made. One of the biggest and most exciting of Apple’s initiatives is the standardization of game controllers for iOS-based platforms. So we’re happy to tell you that, in addition to several important bug fixes for Xcode 5 / iOS 7 (Build&Run, WebCamTexture and status bar), Apple Controller support is included with 4.2.2! This blog post aims to answer most common questions this addition will raise and serve as a short tutorial on how to add support for iOS Game Controllers to your game.

With iOS 7 now approaching its first full month of public availability, game companies are starting to show their support for iOS 7’s new Game Controller APIs. Besides Unity, ClamCase announced their first official controller and leaked photos showed one from Logitech.

With an Apple media event reportedly scheduled for October 22, I have to wonder if further game controller announcements will be held back until that date. Apple likes to invite developers on stage, and third-party controllers for iOS 7 and OS X Mavericks would certainly make for an interesting demo, perhaps showing compatibility for both iOS devices (new iPads are rumored to be announced at the event) and Macs.

As I argued in June, there is great potential for game controllers and AirPlay, and I’m curious to see if and how Apple will start promoting this feature more aggressively.

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John Siracusa On Nintendo

John Siracusa:

But if the time of the game console is not yet at an end (handheld or otherwise), then Nintendo has a lot of work to do. It needs to get better at all of the game-related things that iOS is good at. It needs to produce software that clearly demonstrates the value of its hardware—or, if that’s not possible, then it needs to make new hardware.

Any advice that leads in a different direction is a distraction.

A lot has been written about Nintendo this week, and I feel like several articles and tweets miss the point of understanding Nintendo for what it is: not Apple. Not a software company, not a regular game company, and certainly not a company that likes ceding control of its destiny to others. I think that viewing Nintendo through the lens of Apple and just as another company that could make games for the App Store is the wrong approach.

John understands Nintendo. Here’s an excerpt from my interview with him published earlier this year:

Second, in my own experience with my 8-year-old son, Nintendo games still have an unmatched ability to capture the hearts and minds of kids. My son has been exposed to a ton of iOS games, on the iPod and iPad, plus PS2, PS3, and even PC/Mac games. But he chooses to spend the vast majority of his gaming time on a Nintendo console, playing both “casual” games (Wii Sports, Nintendoland) and long, deep games (Zelda, Mario).

This is not to minimize Nintendo’s woes. The threat from iOS gaming is very real. But it is heartening to know that the things we love about Nintendo are not entirely based on nostalgia.

A common argument that I’ve also read this week is that Nintendo isn’t making good games anymore. My experience mirrors John’s: I know children and teenagers who play iOS games but also own Nintendo consoles to play Mario, Luigi’s Mansion, Fire Emblem, or Mario Kart. There is something about the magic of Nintendo games that is unmatched by the App Store.

Nintendo has work to do – I even said as much in November 2011. Their problems aren’t new but they have been exacerbated by the Wii U’s failure and it’s time to fix them. For instance, refusing to launch a Wii U Ambassador Program is confusing, as Nintendo should cater to its most loyal fanbase, and reward those who bought a Wii U in times of crisis, like they did for the 3DS.

I believe that applying the same standards of the tech industry to Nintendo is a flawed process; Nintendo should face the threat of mobile gaming by being Nintendo at its best. I’d like to see more articles about this, not the App Store.

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The Boy Who Beat Ocarina of Time in 22 Minutes

This link isn’t strictly about Cosmo Wright’s Ocarina of Time speedrun – which, by the way, is incredible to watch. Make sure to read Computer and Video Games’ feature on it as well.

Rather, I’d like to point out these two tweets by Sonny Fazio in response to Peter Hajas, who originally shared the link to Cosmo Wright’s speedrun last night:

This is an interesting side effect of the App Store that I didn’t think about. Speedruns are an extremely fun-to-watch, but niche use case that, as Fazio notes, are generally facilitated by glitches and bugs in the source code of games. This goes beyond the App Store and extends to games sold on online platforms like Steam and PlayStation Network as well. Because of updates and patches, will it become increasingly difficult – if not impossible – for speedrunners to analyze and play through games in their original form decades from now?

In the video I linked above, for instance, Cosmo explains that a major glitch in Ocarina of Time took 13 years to be discovered and used. That was only possible thanks to the fact that a) Nintendo 64 cartridges are still physically available today and b) Nintendo’s conversion for the Wii’s Virtual Console is a 1:1 port of the original – bugs and glitches included. Can you imagine someone still playing an iOS game in 13 years?

Twenty or thirty years from now, will we see speedruns for iOS, PS3, or Xbox 360 games? Sadly, I think that a mix of retrocompatibility issues, OS and app updates, and lack of physical access to games will hinder speedrunning. Not to mention Apple’s current state of affairs with games and the gaming community.

Overall, Digital preservation is the bigger topic we should be discussing.

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Rymdkapsel

How do I even begin to explain Rymdkapsel?

First there’s the tetris pieces, the various rooms you add on to your ship at any given moment. You can assign these pieces to rooms that create materials, or rooms that create sludge which can be used in a kitchen. These pieces intertwine to create the foundation of your ship, complete with weapons rooms, reactors, and quarters where new minions can be spawned. Vast corridors are needed to connect all of these tetris pieces together, making it necessary to create little microcosms of civilization that live in different sections of your ship.

Next there’s the little pixels, the minions and materials that you’ll watch travel around the ship as they man guns and carry materials to their proper destinations. No single minion is managed individually — they’re just dragged between the available resources on your ship. None of them are individually important, but all of them are equally important. There isn’t necessarily strength in numbers. Do you create a lot of minions and a sprawling city, hoping to complete your defenses on time to protect your civilization? Or do you keep your ship small and narrow, relying on a brave few to explore your surroundings? I chose the former.

Then there’s the enemy. As soon as you begin building you’re attacked and forced to defend yourself. As the game progresses enemies become much more numerous and dangerous. Without the proper defenses you could lose a swath of minions, having to dedicate a significant amount of time into growing sludge and working the kitchens so you can generate more little pixels in their quarters. It’s almost pathetic how helpless they are when they’re exposed.

It’s these enemies that control the pace of the game. You don’t have an infinite amount of time to build your ship and build resources. Instead the enemies come in waves and you must carefully keep an eye on a meter that informs you of when an attack is imminent. Your minions must travel the length of the corridors to reach a weapons room, and if they’re not properly protected the enemy will have their way.

A tutorial is given, but I don’t think the it does the game any justice beyond inviting you into the world. You’re walked through the general concepts of the game as events unfold and things happen, but it’s not until you start experimenting with the pieces that you’ll really begin to understand how all of this stuff fits together. And once you do, you begin to realize that Rymdkapsel is very much like and unlike a lot of our favorite games.

It’s Tetris. It’s an RTS strategy. It’s a tower defense game. It’s a race against the clock. It’s endless. It’s all of these things.

I don’t know how to summarize the game and how it makes me feel. An overreaching atmosphere of tranquility masks impending panic. You want to build quickly to meet objectives, but it’s easy to stretch yourself thin. This is evident when you become aware of how important time and distance are. Rooms have limited space and there has to be a balance when deciding how to expand your ship. Don’t forget that you’ll have to find more resources once your extractors are empty; will you have enough materials to continue on? Your minions are all separate pixels doing their own things, such as building rooms or idling, but they’re managed just like a resource would be. There’s all of this complexity and micromangement but it happens at this macro level and the game is actually really simple. The whole thing works so well and once it clicks you cannot put it down.

Rymdkapsel’s own description as a “meditative space strategy” is perfectly apt. It’s so good. Featured by Apple this week, download Rymdkapsel from the App Store for $3.99.


BioShock Infinite Coming To OS X This Month

Juli Clover:

BioShock Infinite, the third game in the first-person shooter series, is set to be released for the Mac on August 29 through a collaboration between Aspyr Media, developer Irrational Games, and publisher 2K Games.

Infinite is one of my favorite games of 2013 (so far). The game comes with an incredible storyline and solid action-oriented gameplay – but my favorite part remains Columbia, the city in the sky where the game takes place. Just this week, Irrational Games announced a series of DLCs for the game – the first of which, Clash in the Clouds, should be available by launch day with the Mac version. Eurogamer posted an interview with BioShock creator Ken Levine, who explained the motivation behind Clash in the Clouds and the other DLCs that will follow later this year.

BioShock Infinite will be available through Steam, the Mac App Store, and GameAgent, where pre-orders have started today.

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Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP Sales

Interesting numbers from the developers of one of the most unique iOS games in recent years that was later ported to other platforms. The last chart, iOS revenue by region, shows the importance of Japan, as also outlined by Apple in the Q3 2013 earnings call. I would love to have more details on revenue over time though – such as the impact of making an iPhone version or sales in the first two weeks of Google Play compared to the same period on the App Store.

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EA And The App Store

Jeffrey Grubb at VentureBeat:

The mobile-based future is here, and publisher Electronic Arts is reaping the rewards. EA reported today that it made more money through Apple’s App Store than any other retail distributor. That includes its own Origin digital-download service.

Here’s the thing: I don’t like EA’s shady practices (especially in Real Racing 3), I think that most In-App Purchase-based games should offer more value, but this is working for EA and others (see: Candy Crush Saga). And who’s to blame: consumers for being too credulous? EA and King? Apple? If anything, shouldn’t we be happy because Apple’s strategy is working out?

I, and thousands of old-school gamers like me, don’t like this modern idea of free-to-play games and nickel-and-diming players. I like to think that, eventually, Apple will start caring about quality games. But it’s when I read stories like EA’s that I conclude that, today, Apple doesn’t want to change In-App Purchases, at all.

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