Freeverse’s Flick Sports Bowling and Big Bang Chess Previewed
posted August 20th, 2008 11:31 AM EDT by arn in News, Upcoming GamesFreeverse has provided us with some preview videos of their upcoming titles, including Flick Sports Bowling and Big Bang Chess.
Flick Sports Bowling
This title is still in the early stages of development, but fulfills an earlier promise from the company that we would see a series of Flick Sports games including Baseball, Soccer, Bowling, and Golf.
Big Bang Chess
Big Bang Chess is just one of several board games planned for an early September release. Other titles are expected to include Chess, Checkers, Mancala, 4-In-a-Row and Tic-Tac-Toe. Freeverse expects to support Apple’s Push feature (background tasks) as a free update to provide online multiplayer capabilities.
Freeverse currently offers four iPhone titles in the App Store including MotoRacer [$9.99], Big Bang Sudoku [$4.99], Jared [Free], and SimStapler [Free].
August 20th, 2008 at 12:12 pm
The bowling looks awful IMHO. What’s with the “roll the ball and then control where it goes” crap? They should have gone wii-mote with it and you roll the ball by “bowling” with the iPhone.
Chess could be good if they lose the annoying voices and cartoonish stuff and made it a serious game. It’ll definitely be awesome to see the long-game multiplay via the push method. I don’t personally have any interest in playing against a computer.
August 20th, 2008 at 12:41 pm
@ryan I’m not sure I’d want to have to full swing my iPhone to play a game.
August 20th, 2008 at 1:11 pm
I agree - tossing a $30 Wii-mote and having it fly off your hand isn’t as disconcerting as throwing a $300 with a $60+ monthly-subscribed device that has no lanyard and inadvertently letting go.
As for the bowling game, that’s just what the doctor ordered. The only competition, if you really want to call it that, is 300 Bowl. If they have decent physics for the pins, the game is a definite sale on my iTunes account.
August 20th, 2008 at 1:17 pm
@beyondthetech: not considering the $300 aspect of it, I don’t know if I’d feel comfortable playing full-swing bowling while standing in line at the DMV or whatever.
August 20th, 2008 at 2:05 pm
Where’s the sound in the Bowling game?
August 20th, 2008 at 2:51 pm
The bowling looks nice. You still flick the initial throw to aim, which I hope is better in the final version, but from first glance, they let you put some spin on it while it’s rolling. So you might plan to aim a little off on purpose and correct with a spin.
Didn’t Tiger Woods golf games have a feature like that, adding spin to curve the shot after you already hit it?
August 20th, 2008 at 6:50 pm
I’ve been waiting for a more visually appealing bowling game to hit the iPhone and this looks like it could be it. The mechanics remind me of the PC bowling game “Gutterball”. You controlled your spin with you mouse after you had “thrown” the ball in that game too and it worked great.
Hopefully they add a deep story/leauge mode on top of standard free play and 2-player modes. (They get +1 for every Big Lebowski of King Pin references they make!)
August 20th, 2008 at 9:00 pm
Actually, I think the voices and whatnot actually make the chess game look more, not less, appealing, at least for me anyway. I’m not a serious chess player and something like that would be more my speed.
As for the bowling, I like the controls for that one, looks like a fun game!
August 20th, 2008 at 10:09 pm
I think the bowling game looks good, but they need some multiplayer feature. Either by wi-fi or network.
August 21st, 2008 at 7:42 am
Golf and Baseball have my interest. A good portable golf game is a thing of beauty.
August 21st, 2008 at 10:24 am
I don’t want to choose my bowling ball after every throw.
I don’t want to click the screen after every throw.
Spinning POST release is silly.
Go with the SilverStrike Bowling approach.
To add spin, pull back to the SE, and push forward to the NE.
Just saying.
August 24th, 2008 at 8:26 pm
Seems rather unfair to be able to change the direction of the ball after your roll it. I’ve never actually seen anyone that was able to do that on a bowling alley. Unless they have some sort of telekinesis.