This week's episode of the TouchArcade Show is way more ... irreverent than usual. It was a "slow" week overall, as studios are zipping their lips, so they can blow off our socks at Game Developers Conference 2012. The top of the podcast is a mash of talk that covers an insane range of stuff -- from Android to muscles, it's there. Towards the middle segment we do dip into games, and at the end we talk a little bit about iPad 3.

If this is your first show, wow, you picked an awesome week! To give us a listen, just hit one of these convenient links. If you like what you hear, consider subscribing to us on iTunes or Zune. It's free, it's awesome, and we love our regular listeners.

iTunes Link: The TouchArcade Show
Zune Marketplace: TouchArcade.com Podcasts
RSS Feed: The TouchArcade Show
Direct Link: TouchArcadeShow-041.mp3, 43.1MB

Here are your show notes:

GAMES

• Zombies, Run! [$7.99]
• NBA King of the Court [Free]
• Ziggurat [$.99]

JARED'S KITTY KORNER

• Cat-a-gory [$.99]

FRONT PAGE

• Apple's iPad 3 Event Happening March 7

"Soon" means “timed to the theatrical release.”

Hunger Games: Girl on Fire sounds about as good as it looks. This afternoon, we nabbed a few in-game images of the runner-meets-shooter for our audience's viewing pleasure. Girl on Fire, is of course, the "teaser" tie-in to the upcoming Hunger Games flick, which is based on the first book in a massively popular book trilogy. We've been advised that the events in this game will actually take place "towards the beginning" of the series.

Right, the images. Below, we've got an actual in-game look of lead protagonist Katniss Everdeen, as well as a shot of a level. Adam Saltsman, a member of the indie dream team heading up the title, describes Girl on Fire as a runner-y, shooter-y kind of thing. Like us, we think you'll understand the categorization immediately after peering at the level specifically.

Katniss in 16-bit. Gotta love how Lionsgate decided to go indie.

We had a Pitfall flashback when we first looked at this.

Two years and a handful of weeks ago, we posted our review of FDG Entertainment's Across Age [$.99 / DX / HD]. It was, and still is, a thoughtful Zelda-like dungeon crawler with some hip moments and some fairly interesting time travel tomfoolery. The title caught fire in our forums, and we're pretty sure the number one question since its launch has been: "hey, when will we see Across Age 2?" After all this time, we've got an answer. Probably.

Earlier this afternoon, FDG blasted us the following image, which showcases two of the game's characters within a big-old fat 2012. We're not betting men because it seems like putting all our money on black never works, but if we were to rejoin the gamblers of the world in their activity, we'd slam down some change on Across Age 2 hitting this year. Fingers crossed!

Working with someone else's baby is hard work, but Mass Effect: Infiltrator isn't Iron Monkey's first rodeo with another company's high-profile IP. Earlier in 2011, it busted out an amazingly true Dead Space experience on iOS. Horror, action, dismemberment: this thing had it all. "Soon," Iron Monkey will release Infiltrator into the wild, as console fans prepare for the next the huge game in the Mass Effect franchise, Mass Effect 3. We don't know yet if Infiltrator will feel as pure and focused as Dead Space, but we did get a chance to chat with the game's design director Jarrad Trudgen to get a better idea.

Consider us stoked.

Oh, Geth. You're always messing things up.

TouchArcade: Could you give us the elevator pitch for Infiltrator? What are you trying to bring to the table here?

Jarrad Trudgen: Mass Effect: Infiltrator is the definitive third-person, cover-based shooter on iOS. We set out to faithfully recreate the look and feel of the Mass Effect universe, with a particular focus on combat, and raise the bar we set with Dead Space iOS for art quality, technical fidelity and touchscreen controls. We put a lot of effort into creating rich, immersive experiences employing the high production values typically associated with console games so sound design is another area where we try to innovate on the platform.

Infiltrator tells an original story with an all new protagonist (voiced by VO legend Jay Anthony Franke who played JC Denton in the original Deus Ex games, no less) that runs parallel to the events of ME3 and offers players a chance to see events from a different perspective. Ultimately, we want to make a game that appeals not just to hardcore Mass Effect fans, but also to anyone who enjoys quality mobile gaming.

Anyone else hate lasers? We hate lasers.

TA: What's it like working with Mass Effect? We're sure there's pressure. Then again, you guys also handled a Dead Space title, which was no small task, surely.

JT: We’ve been incredibly fortunate to work on some high profile franchises in collaboration with very talented studios. It’s always daunting working on an IP that you’re a big personal fan of; there is a huge sense of internal pressure to not screw up as no-one wants to be a blemish on something they love. Luckily, both Visceral and Bioware are great creative partners -- they had plenty of time for us and were always supportive and keen to collaborate.

TA: What's the creative process like when you're working with someone else's baby? Do you have bounce builds and ideas back and forth constantly? I'm trying to get a sense of your work flow.

JT: We worked closely with executive producer, Casey Hudson, and Lead Writer, Mac Walters, to establish the high level goals for Infiltrator at the beginning of the project: what features to focus on, the setting, main characters and broad stroke narrative. Those guys are very passionate and hands on about the franchise. Once these defining goals were agreed upon they handed us the reigns and largely left us to fill in the gaps. We’d provide our latest draft of the script and fairly regular builds for feedback and there was always great support channels there for our questions and requests. Teams need to feel empowered to get the best out of them and we’ve been fortunate to build great relationships with IP holders so there is a level of trust to give us freedom within the universes they have created.

Sadly, this series keeps its characters from going full Robocop.

TA: How does your studio's personal experiences with Mass Effect inform what you're doing with this project?

JT: Already being a fan of something obviously makes it easier to work on it; you already understand the lore of the IP and hopefully have a good understanding of what makes it tick. However, there are risks too, especially when creating an entry for a radically different platform. You don’t want to just slavishly imitate as what works on console may not work on a touch device. For example, our combat is designed to satisfy in shorter bursts than on console – we employ a slow-mo chaining feature and a ranking system which results in a more arcade style experience that is really replay friendly. Again this ties into our goal to make a game that is deep and satisfying for Mass Effect fans but still accessible to players less familiar with the franchise or genre.

TA: What's next?

JT: Next up, we’re planning to bring Mass Effect: Infiltrator to Android devices.  We don’t have any specific dates to share quite yet, but Android users can stay tuned for more news from us on that front.

I love it when a logo explains it all.

You put on your shoes, and turn on the app. In the background, you hear the throaty hum of an engine and the voice of a pilot speaking into her comm. As you walk out the door, she tells you that you're on a mission. She doesn't know what kind, and she doesn't seem to care, either. Your target is Abel Township, one of the last two remaining strongholds within 100 miles of this area. This is weeks, maybe years after a zombie d-day. Right as you hit outdoors and start an honest jog, the story takes a turn. A missile slams into the helicopter. You hear the crunch of metal, warning beacons, and gears grinding.

You're three miles out of Abel, and maybe a quarter of a mile out on your run. You're told to jump, so you do. And then you hear the groans of the undead.

Horror and athletics don't usually mix, but with a heaping of pure passion, these two things can gel just as well as sweat and iron. Zombies, Run, is an exciting fitness app from London-based studio Six to Start. Its goal is to tell you the story of a fractured world as you jog, and put you firmly in the thick of it. You participate as a silent and athletically gifted protagonist that the survivors of Abel dub "Runner 5." Runners have a single job: run -- run to find new materials, or pick up packages, or trade with others. Each mission in the game presents a new piece of scripted story. Each segment is broken into chunks that are cleverly bookended by your own workout playlists.

The stylish Zombies, Run! poster that was given to its backers on Kickstarter.

The effect is sort of like what would happen if Stephen King's The Mist 3-D ever melded with Nike Plus. The narrators, who hiss into different sides of your earbuds as you run, provide a rough context as to where you are and what you need to do. They bump out pieces of story intermittently, as you picture wandering through the bowels of a messed up hospital or explore an air drop outside of Abel base. After each mission, the app turns into something similar to Fallout’s radio stations; it plays your music alongside radio-style commentary and news from two Abel survivors.

There's a much more mechanical game part to Zombies, Run, too. As you run, you'll pick up items that can be used to boost Abel Township's hospital, food stores, communication station, armory, residential areas, or recreational facilities. It's a simple mechanic, but it feels like a treat after an awesome run.

Sometimes, you'll hear the groans of the undead in your ear and have to run faster in the real world to get away from the game's zombies. This specific part of the experience is its interval training, which is an important element that sets this apart. Most fitness games are horrible at getting you to new heights. Even the good ones like EA Active are bad at this. Band exercises have limitations, and running in place isn’t going to get your bigger or stronger or faster. Pushing yourself safely with intervals in a real world scenario is an important component to any kind of serious training, and Zombies, Run has that.

That’s a great element, but what I really think makes Zombies, Run work, and work so well, is its soul. The studio has one experienced runner with a history of using fitness apps and a staff filled with people who dig and understand proper storytelling. They want to deliver something special. As an organization, Six to Start seems like the perfect fit for this kind of app.

The Origin

Adrian Hon is one of the brains behind Zombies, Run. He’s the runner of the office. He tells me that he's wanted a better kind of running game since the iPhone made its debut. He's used a lot running apps, like Nike Plus and Runkeeper, as well as a couple of more visual-oriented apps. The problem he sees with these apps is legion. Running while looking at a screen is dangerous, stopping to see your progress is counterproductive, GPS can send you to bad places, and there's not an element of fun.

Hon says he used to hate running when he was younger. He, literally, "Couldn't think of a worse thing to do." This all changed when he discovered Garmin GPS, which added an element of fun to the mix. Because of this app, he still runs, although its more of a seasonal thing because no-one likes getting out on ice.

There's a Zombies, Run store that sells these.

"One of the things I really liked about the Garmin was the 'ghost mode,' where you could race against yourself." Hon says. "It made me think there was quite a lot that could be done with fitness games. And I think that physical activity -- and of course, sports -- is inherently fun and good, so it really shouldn't be that hard to make a game out of them." He laments what studios are doing now with their fitness games.

"However, developers have been more focused on the more reliably profitable, yet massively competitive, genres of casual games lately. And more experimental folk find it more difficult to combine tech and physical interaction in a way that doesn't make you want to shoot yourself when you try to play."

Zombies, Run was the answer to Hon's issues with fitness apps and a riff on Ghost mode. It's a viable one, too, because it treats your phone as if it were an iPod Nano. It only spits out audio when you select a mission, and it never asks you to take a gander at it while you exercise. Aside from random zombie horde events, it also lets you decide when you want to push yourself. A lot of fitness games, if they're not taxing, they're just screaming at you. It can be a really counterproductive factor in a workout. It's easier to get hurt this way. Zombies, Run allows you to take care of your body while also torturing your mind.

Zombies, Run was a project that floated around in Hon's head since his Garmin days. He and Six To Start had a lot of ideas bouncing around, but they settled on this one, as it artfully combines super simple play alongside an actual story. The narrative is something Hon obviously enjoys, too. "It's a shame that so few developers have made more than a token effort to put proper stories in their games," Hon says. "I understand that Triple Town and Bejeweled don't need stories, but then again, I quite liked Puzzle Quest, so there's a lot of room in mobile for innovation, but we're still seeing the same old stuff, even from indie developers."

This is the first promotional image for the game on the App Store.

Six to Start is all about story. If it isn’t obvious from the fact that it created an audio-based running game about the end of the world, check out its web site.

"We are next-gen storytellers," the studio proudly states. "Great storytelling and great gameplay is at the heart of what we do. Storytelling is a huge part of the world’s culture, and great stories have always had the ability to move and excite us, whatever the medium. Play means a lot to us, too. We draw inspiration from video games, boardgames, casual games and playful applications and services."

Six To Start believes that through play, people can learn and discover new experiences. When story and play are combined, it gives Six to Start "the opportunity to deeply engage with our audience get them to do new things -- as a large single group or individually." It's getting me to run away from zombies, and think about the world they exist in as I kill my body, so this place is obviously doing something right.

Six To Start and Hon's baby became 3,464 people's baby, too. Zombies, Run was funded via Kickstarter. The team put up the game's idea, asked for $12,500 and then received over $70,000 in return. The project was funded in six days alone. Backers received all sorts of neat prizes, including their names in the game's credits, a poster, or the chance to name something in the game after themselves.

Hon has prior experience with Kickstarter, so it wasn't a big moment when the idea of putting Zombies, Run on the popular crowd-funding service came to him. However, the decision was also a great way to vet the game's core idea. "Plus, we thought that the public would be easier to convince Zombies, Run was a good idea than the usual gatekeepers."

Everyday I Hear Zombies Moan

I usually stick to high-impact weight lifting. I don't run because I'm afraid that I'll lose my precious muscle mass. Call it a tic. The truly awesome thing about this app is that it is capable of embracing your routine, no matter how weird it is. I normally use the elliptical for my needs, for example, and I can use Zombies, Run. All I have to do is turn off the GPS features and turn on its experimental accelerometer functionality and I can play just like a runner might. Conversely, I can also just chill with it, and listen to the story, although this method isn’t preferable.

I'm taking Zombies, Run into the gym every day. That's huge because it's proving to be a tool. On my calf and thigh days, it's pushing me, reminding me not to fall into casual or relaxed grooves. I need that because I’m usually only interested in sweating if I’m lifting something spectacularly heavy.

I guess games end up changing a lot when the budget suddenly skyrockets.

Plus, the story is tremendously well told. This isn’t a blown-up, bombastic tale of a few survivors just making do. There’s subtlety to its characters and its world, and just like The Walking Dead, there are moments of intense action, bookended by periods of drama and character building. Zombies, Run wants to actually tell you a story. It isn’t afraid to do so, and that comes across, even if you might be slightly too tired to care in sections. I never feel like an idiot while listening to it, either. It’s told with a straight face and with enough touch to make it feel like an honest story, and not just some weird nerd fantasy running app. There’s interesting stuff tucked into each mission -- stuff you want to tune in order to learn more about the world Six to Start is building.

Also, of note, this isn’t a trainer. It doesn’t scream at you. It might nudge you with the zombie horde attacks, but the app doesn’t get in your face. It let’s you do your own thing in your own way. It was designed specifically to do this.

"We want to enhance people's lives by making their workouts fun, not turn into nagging machines," says Naomi Alderman, the writer of Zombies, Run. Mission accomplished, I think.

Zombies, Run is available now on the App Store for $7.99. An Android version is coming down the pipes, too. Currently, the game has a total of 20 missions. More missions are slated to come down the line as IAP. Check it out if it even vaguely interests you. I think you'll be surprised by its purity -- and its scares.

If you value productivity, don't make the same mistake that I did. Don't fire up Tobe & Friends' Hookshot Escape [$1.99]. Just don't. Trust me on this. I know what you're thinking. You're an App Store veteran. You've survived a Tiny Tower addiction. You're on top of your game. One round won't hurt.

Well, the cake is a lie, my friends. Tobe & Friends Hookshot Escape sucks you in in all the right ways. It's simple, it's easy to get into, and it has the whole unlockable things down pat. There's a rhythm to Secret Base’s cloyingly cute endless vertical runner that would do Beat Sneak Bandit proud - it's all too easy to get lulled into a pattern of discovery.

Read the rest of this entry »

On Valentine's Day last month, League of Evil 2 [$2.99/Lite] launched in the App Store and into our hearts. The sequel to one of the best iOS platformers around didn't mess too much with what was a winning formula, and instead offered up over 100 new levels of similar bite-sized hardcore platforming wrapped up in shiny new HD visuals. Whether you liked the new graphics or preferred the original's pixel art, one thing that was certain was that League of Evil 2 offered up a ton more great platforming gameplay, something we appreciated in our review.

The one caveat to this was a curious omission of a feature from the first game. In the original League of Evil, you could run off of a platform and then double jump right out of the air, something that was essential in beating some of the extreme level times in the game. In League of Evil 2, you could still do a mid-air jump, but just one of them. Needless to say, this change caused a pretty big headache for people who were used to that feature, and since the League of Evil games are based around twitch gameplay, it was difficult to not instinctively try double jumping in the air over, and over, and over again.

Ravenous Games has heard this feedback and as of today's update the original mid-air double jump is back in business in League of Evil 2. Another big change is a reworking of the 3-star completion times for many of the levels. The first League of Evil could be face-meltingly difficult, but this sequel was even harder, and in some cases impossible. Ravenous has gone back and ensured that the 3-star times in all levels are attainable now. Hopefully nobody out there banged their head into the wall too hard while trying to obtain 3-star times prior to this update.

There is the usual plethora of random tweaks and fixes in this update as well, but the big ticket items are the double jump fix and reworked level times. If you've been holding off on really diving into League of Evil 2 until things felt back to normal, you should be good to go after grabbing the new update.

I personally never felt like I was good at shooters. However, being good at them and loving them are two entirely different things. While I marveled at friends that could blast through Ikaruga from start to finish without ever coming face to face with the game over screen, I plugged away at old classics like Konami's Life Force and Sexy Parodius, hoping each time I'd improve by some miniscule increment. Practice makes perfect, they always say.

Seeing Orange Pixel's latest title, Neoteria [$1.99], made me realize my days of shmup practice back in the day would be tested once again. A smart-looking little game with retro-inspired graphics, it foregoes deep story in favor of what we're all here to do when it comes to shooters: blow things up.

Read the rest of this entry »

In early February, EA finally launched Battlefield 3: Aftershock in the App Store with nary a mumble of hype. The reason for the silence was likely because Aftershock was a buggy, barebones, borderline-unplayable mess. This poor effort was extremely puzzling too, not just because Battlefield is a flagship IP for EA and one of the biggest brands currently around, but because we had seen previews of Battlefield 3: Aftershock at various points for the better part of the past year and saw a very different title with lots of promise.

The version that released didn't have any of the single player campaign stuff we had previously seen, and consisted of a single online multiplayer mode on 1 map, with just 4 weapons to choose from. It was free to download, but came with unremovable ads as well as heavy branding for the recently released movie Act of Valor. To top it all off, the online matchmaking – basically the single thing the game was supposed to be able to do – was barely functional.

Read the rest of this entry »

A game icon. On iPad 3.

Let's pretend that rumor is fact, and iPad 3 is going to rock a high-resolution, Retina Display screen similar to the one we have on our phones. What will our games look like with it, and how will developers tackle the new hardware? The latter is a question a lot of studios are asking themselves and there's no clear answer. The former is something a developer named Kevin Ng of WordCrasher Blitz [Free] fame is blogging about, and he has a few tantalizing pictures to share.

For a little context, the following are shots from Food Run. That's Kevin's upcoming iOS title. It's being created using vectors instead of bitmaps, so the art can be scaled to any size, including a 2048 x 1536 resolution, which is popularly believed to be iPad 3's screen resolution.

Read the rest of this entry »

Prepare for a new, much more modern version of Myst [$4.99 / Lite] to hit this spring. Earlier this morning, we caught an awesome video from Cyan Worlds demonstrating the first footage of its next release, "RealMyst." In brief, it's a fully 3D, real-time version of the title being made exclusively for iPad 2. The version of Myst currently on the App Store is a straight-up port of the original title, which only sports static images and some pretty limited navigation. Back when Myst first hit, it'd take a supercomputer to render to do what this newer version is doing, and it's coming to a device that fits in our laps.

In the below, you'll notice some improvements. The lighting model seems better, as well as the texture filtering and all of that kind of jazz. We're stoked, though also a bit frightened by the prospect of getting stuck in Myst all over again. What was the formula for the circuit breaker puzzle again?

Read the rest of this entry »

The first time I booted up ZiGGURAT [$0.99], I was lying in bed, in the dark. I was hoping for something relatively simple  to unwind with, but the pulsing music and unending creep of monoptic aliens made that impossible. Just playing Ziggurat felt clunky the first time I tried it, forcing me to sit upright in bed.

There's no pause button in Ziggurat, which speaks volumes about its design. Ziggurat demands attention.

Tim Rogers -- a game designer under the Action Button Entertainment moniker and professional Kotaku.com word-puker -- also demands attention, or at least an attention span. His reputation is for sharp criticism (his own reviews site is particularly brutal) buried under sprawling, maximalist writing, but Ziggurat is beautiful in its simplicity. In its own way, it reinforces all of the fundamental, paradoxical truth of the "endless" genre: infinite potential married to inevitable failure.

Read the rest of this entry »

One of Apple's more "magical" features in the past year is AirPlay, which allows you to stream the screen from  your iPhone 4S or iPad 2 wirelessly to an Apple TV and right onto your HDTV. Soon, the new OS X Mountain Lion will allow you to do the same thing with your Mac, beaming whatever is on its screen to your TV wirelessly. In terms of gaming, AirPlay offers an additional avenue for playing iOS games – wirelessly on the living room TV – and some titles like Real Racing 2 HD have taken it a step further and offer a custom interface or additional features for playing the game that way.

While Apple has made it incredibly easy to beam the latest iOS devices to a television, and soon will be able to beam a Mac to a television, it's strange that there's not also the ability to stream an iOS device right onto a Mac. Someone else must have thought that was strange too, as there is now a new Mac app called Reflection that allows you to do just that. Streaming to a Mac using the Reflection app is just as simple as streaming to a television with an Apple TV. Just run the program on your Mac, and choose the AirPlay option on your iPhone 4S or iPad 2 and just like that it's on your computer screen.

Read the rest of this entry »

Definitely no stranger to dual-stick shooters, Chillingo is back with their latest one called Mafia Rush [Free], a (duh) gangster-themed addition to the action-oriented genre. While Mafia Rush doesn’t offer much in terms of innovative or unique gameplay, it still gets the job done and is free to check out.

As a dual-stick shooter, Mafia Rush’s gameplay is relatively simplistic. Missions are divided into four different scenarios: Robbery (grab sacks of money and take them to a getaway vehicle), Defend (protect said vehicle full of cash from baddies), Attack (find packs of C4 and bomb an armored cash car) and Survival (survive waves of enemies gunning for you). Missions only last several minutes each, with each completed mission earning you an 'Ace.' Collect enough aces and you unlock additional locales.

Read the rest of this entry »

I had originally met Zarksoft at Macworld 2011 when the industry veteran turned iOS developer showed me a demo of Empire of the Eclipse, a massive online multiplayer 4x strategy game created from scratch for the iOS platform. At even that early state, the scope of Empire of the Eclipse blew my mind, and considering Zarksoft was comprised of just a few people I had my doubts whether the team could pull off the kind of game that they envisioned.

At GDC that year I was able to get an even more in-depth hands-on demo with the game, which had been coming along quite nicely in the months since I'd last seen it. Initially the developers had hoped to have the title done by the end of that same month, but in April we got word that after some feedback from folks who saw the game at GDC they decided to make some changes to the game which would delay their intended submission date.

Their new goal was to have the game shipped by summertime, but that never came to be, and aside from the update in April pretty much everything on the Empire of the Eclipse front had gone totally silent.

Read the rest of this entry »