Posts tagged with "games"

Firemint: Flight Control for iPhone Hits 4 Million Downloads, $2 Million Budget for Real Racing 2

Developer Firemint has always been one of the biggest “players” in the iOS gaming scene with hugely popular games and Apple Design Awards won at the WWDC, and they’ve been under the press spotlight again recently thanks to the release of Real Racing 2 HD – a version of their successful racing game specifically optimized for the iPad 2 improved graphics, processor and gyroscopic controls. With more updates on the way and a brand new iOS game announced last month, Agent Squeak, Firemint has become one of the top names in the App Store for iPhone and iPad games.

In an interview with Pocketful of Megabytes, Firemint’s Logan Booker has answered some interesting questions about what’s going on behind the scenes of Real Racing and their other game franchise, Flight Control. As revealed by Booker, Flight Control, released in 2009, recently surpassed 4 million downloads for iPhone, and it keeps growing. The game was the result of weeks of sketching and prototyping back in 2008 and early 2009, when the App Store was a relatively new platform and no one really knew whether or not Apple (and third-party developers) could turn a profit out of it. Read more

Angry Birds HD Updated: 15 New Levels→

Angry Birds HD Updated: 15 New Levels

Just in time for the release of the iPad 2, Rovio updated (again) Angry Birds HD last night to include 15 new levels and continue “the adventures in the frontier badlands”. A new golden egg has been included in version 1.5.3 as well.

Looking at early iTunes reviews, it sounds like Rovio also changed something in the “pause” screen of the app, putting a news section (some people say ads) in there and forcing users to wait for the animation to finish before resuming the game. If you’ve noticed this too, please let us know in the comments below.

Angry Birds HD is available here.

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Mondo Solitaire: Deliciously Beautiful Solitaire For Mac

There isn’t too much you can say about solitaire on its own. It’s the card game your coworker plays instead of writing formulas for Excel spreadsheets on Windows, but that doesn’t mean we can’t turn solitaire into something more than a time waster. Proof of concept: Mondo Solitaire from Ambrosia Software is solitaire done right. You aren’t just playing the same game of Klondike over and over - instead you’re offered over 300 variants of solitaire madness to choose from. If you include the beautiful game board that looks like it should bundled with Apple’s own Game Center, then you have yourself one premium handful of card games.

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Doodle Jump Closes Hollywood Deal, Movie Tie-In Version Now Available

Back in January we reported Lima Sky, the developers of popular iPhone game Doodle Jump, closed a deal with Hollywood studio Universal to develop a special version of Doodle Jump featuring the main character from the upcoming animation movie Hop, from the creators of Despicable Me.

The movie tie-in is now available in the App Store, and it’s a free universal app for iPhone and iPad. In 25 levels featuring the usual disappearing and breakable platforms, you’ll have to control E.B., the Easter Bunny’s son, in his quest to become the best jumper before taking over “family’s business” and becoming the Easter Bunny himself. Sounds like a terrible plot but at least the app is free and the cute little monsters from the classic Doodle Jump seem to be there, too.

If you like the idea of Doodle Jump mixed with a Hollywood movie about a bunny (perhaps your kids will), the app can be downloaded here.

iOS Games Now Listed on Metacritic

As noted by TUAW, Metacritic, the popular aggregator of movie / TV show / music / game reviews found online, announced yesterday full support for iOS games. For all the people “keeping score of entertainment” through the service, this means iPhone and iPad games are now listed in a dedicated section that displays the overall top-scoring games, and offers the option to filter down results by category and user score. The clean design of Metacritic and the ease of use of the system will surely come in handy to see what the web thinks of a specific game, as Metacritic basically works by aggregating average scores and reviews from highly visited websites like Slide To Play and Eurogamer.

Metacritic is proud to announce that we have added complete coverage of iPhone/iPad game reviews to our site. As many of you know, we have been publishing monthly IPhone/IPad games guides – recommending the best new iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch games available for a total budget of $30 — and this popular feature will continue to appear each month.

As the team behind Metacritic also notes, this change marks a major shift in the gaming community that has grown to accept iOS and the App Store as important distribution platforms for great games. The fact that gems like World of Goo (whose iPad version has been insanely successful), Real Racing, Tiny Wings and Aralon are being listed in the top games confirms many people’s theory that you can find all kinds of games on iOS nowadays.

The big names in the game development industry understand iOS is no platform to ignore, and just about any top console game now comes with an iPhone or iPad counterpart of sorts. On Metacritic you can now browse these games and check out what the reviewers are saying on the web, write a review yourself or even check out trailers and videos for a specific app. To see the new Metacritic page in action, head over here and start looking for your next favorite game.

Infinity Blade, Dead Space, Real Racing 2 HD: Now With iPad 2 Support

Just in time for the iPad 2 fever that has begun a few hours ago, three of the most popular iOS games have been updated to include optimizations and new features meant specifically for the iPad 2.

First off, Real Racing 2 HD: not an update, but a brand new version of Real Racing HD from Firemint that follows the steps of Real Racing 2 for iPhone to offer 30 licensed cars, career mode, local or online multiplayer. Most of all, Real Racing 2 HD comes with full iPad 2 support out of the box with enhanced graphics and gyroscope integration. You can find it here at $9.99. Read more

Angry Birds Seasons: St. Patrick’s Day Edition Now Available→

Angry Birds Seasons: St. Patrick’s Day Edition Now Available

As previously reported, Rovio has finally released a new update for Angry Birds Seasons, which now comes themed for Ireland’s St. Patrick’s Day. The update features “green levels” (green is Ireland’s national color), 15 new levels, new achievements and more.

Have the Luck of the Irish and Go Green with this episode of Angry Birds Seasons: The St. Patrick’s Day Edition! After the love fest of Valentines, Angry Birds Seasons is back with the greenest update to date. May Irish eyes shine upon you and as usual Angry Birds gives the most generous updates of any app!

Oh, you can also send St. Patrick’s Day cards to your friends. Go grab the update here.

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iOS Game Developers Excited About the iPad 2 Graphics

After the announcement of the iPad 2 last week, we reported developer Firemint, well known for its award-winning Real Racing series, announced they were seriously interested in updating their iPad game for the new device, and had actually been considering its tech specs for a while, even before the official announcement from Steve Jobs. Firemint sort of knew the iPad 2 would be thinner and lighter for a better handling, have a faster processor for improved graphics, and so forth. The iPad 2 has an Apple A5 CPU with graphic performances up to 9 times faster than the iPad 1 – a feature Apple is promoting and Steve Jobs mentioned multiple times on stage. With the iPad 2 available later this week, Firemint will be able to test its updated version of Real Racing HD with gyroscope support, better graphics and perhaps a new control system built around the new tablet form factor.

Firemint, however, isn’t the first game developer that’s excited about the possibilities offered by the iPad 2. MacNN reports industry-leading company Unity has announced that, in spite of their framework already working with dual-core processors like the A5, they’re going to “really fine tune and really optimize it to run fantastic on the iPad.” We guess iOS developers relying on Unity will take advantage of the new features available once the engine is updated with full iPad 2 support.

What about the popular Unreal Engine 3? Epic VP Mark Rein (Epic Games is the company behind the Unreal Engine, or games like Infinity Blade for iOS – based on Unreal) says the iPad 2 is already capable of taking advantage of the iPad 2’s improved performance:

You can see Unreal Engine 3, what happens as we get more power, you can take a PC and put a much more powerful graphics card in, and turn all the dials up in your game to get more detail, more textures, more shaders – things like that. Clearly those are the kinds of opportunities here. More CPU means potentially more physics and more enemies on the screen, a wider view of an environment. It’s just really fantastic.

These are interesting days to see how game developers are quickly announcing support for the iPad 2, unveiled last week and available “on short notice” this Friday. I wonder how many games with “iPad 2 support” in the changelog will be released next week, and how many will need additional weeks to pop up in the App Store. In the coming months, it would be nice to see Apple update its App Store interface to specify features only available for certain devices – it didn’t happen with the powerful iPhone 4, but we’re betting on the iPad 2 to bring an easy-to-read tech specs page to the App Store this time. [via TUAW]

Australian Government Wants To Classify Mobile Games

The Australian Government has today revealed that it plans to enforce a classification of review of any mobile games (and possibly apps) that are referred to the Australian Classification Board after a complaint. Any app referred for review would have to receive a rating of MA15+ or lower to remain on sale legally in Australia.

The Government has said that if the proposal goes through it would force Apple and Google to comply by removing any app that is banned by the Classification Board as well as ensuring that any app that has gone through classification would have its classification displayed for consumers to see.

Currently there is ambiguity over classifying new online content including mobile apps for the iPhone or for Google’s Android OS in Australia with some suggesting that technically every game should be classified, an impossible feat with the number of apps in the App Store alone. The new proposal by the Home Affairs Minister would only require classification of game apps that the Classification Board receive complaints about and the Minister believes that there would be “very, very few games” that would be refused classification (banned).

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