Never one to let EA steal the spotlight for very long, Gameloft also is having their own sale today with a few of their games reduced to 99¢. We're not sure how long this is going to last, so if you've been thinking about picking any of these up it probably isn't a good idea to wait as they likely won't get any cheaper than this.
In the turn-based strategy world, few games are as vast as Battle for Wesnoth [App Store]. Originally released as an open source project in 2003, Wesnoth has collected a massive following of fans that contribute to the code base, create new art and sound assets, and/or write the campaigns themselves.
The computer game is a free download, and will run on Windows, OSX, Linux, and several other more obscure operating systems like the AmigaOS4 and OpenSolaris. Its system requirements are modest enough that the game will run on nearly any computer made in the last five years, and because of this Wesnoth seems to be a favorite among netbook gamers.
Kyle Poole, along with the support of countless fans, decided to take on the massive task of bringing Wesnoth to the iPhone. After months and months of work, Battle for Wesnoth is finally available for turn based strategy fanatics on the App Store. If you look at the game strictly with regard to its faithfulness as a port, it's absolutely phenomenal.
Nearly everything from the original has been preserved on the iPhone, and instead of just simply one or even two campaigns like most similar games, Wesnoth's initial release comes with 14. These 14 campaigns consist of nearly 200 individual scenarios which will provide hundreds of hours of playtime as you wage war in the mystical land of Wesnoth with multiple different battle locales, races, factions, and classes.
Like most turn based strategy games, utilizing your units intelligently along with taking advantage of the benefits offered by different types of terrain is key in winning any battle. These terrain types work exactly as you would expect-- For instance, units attacking from forests are harder to retaliate against than units standing on open ground. I could go on detailing the various parts of the game, but they've already done that and then some on the Battle for Wesnoth wiki which I really recommend checking out before either downloading the free computer game or the iPhone version.
Unfortunately, while the game is a fabulous port of the original, not many concessions were made in its first release to make it a good fit for the iPhone. Most of the UI elements seem to be taken straight out of the PC version, with buttons and widgets that are often far too small to comfortably or accurately hit. Also, the different campaign levels themselves can take upwards of 30 minutes and needing to take a single phone call means losing all your progress since the last time you manually saved your game.
Normally these kind of things would really make me think twice before getting involved in an iPhone game that seems to forget that many people will be playing it on their phone, as interruptions will likely be unavoidable. Not only that, but reports of game performance on previous-generation devices have ranged from decent to unplayable.
Wesnoth's saving grace that has me on the verge of disregarding many of its flaws is its amazing implementation of multiplayer. Not only can you play online, but you can also play against the desktop version of Wesnoth. iPhone games with online multiplayer are few and far between. But iPhone games that not only have online multiplayer but also complete cross-platform compatibility are a rare find indeed.
Developer Kyle Pool is actively participating in the Battle for Wesnoth thread and plans to release an update soon addressing most of the issues mentioned above along with other complaints of forum members. Largely because of the spotty performance on devices other than the 3rd generation iPod Touch and iPhone 3GS, it is probably a good idea to hold off on buying Battle for Wesnoth until these issues are ironed out and the update is released.
If you're willing to put up with these issues to play the game now, your perseverance should be rewarded with the most in-depth turn based strategy game available for the iPhone. If this is your genre, Battle for Wesnoth really is a game that you must experience, if not on your iPhone then on your computer.
EDGE developer Mobigame has just released their multi-touch puzzler Cross Fingers. Cross Fingers is perhaps best described as a hybrid of TanZen and Blocked but with some additional multi-touch elements.
The goal of Cross Fingers is to combine the provided pieces into the silhouette provided. The pieces come fragmented in various shapes that must be recombined in just the right way to fill out the proper silhouette much like Tangrams. The added twist, however, is that all the pieces are not freely moving. Instead, they are housed in a wooden structure and must be slid past one another in order to make it to the final destinations. As a result, there is a puzzle aspect in figuring out how to move the pieces around properly.
The game really feels like you are playing with a physical object and comes in a very nicely packaged application. Aside from just moving the shape pieces around, there are also board elements that must be moved out of the way. These elements will spring back to their original locations so multiple fingers must be used to successfully navigate those levels.
The game comes with 120 levels across Easy, Medium, Hard and Pro difficulties and even offers an unlockable Arcade survival mode once you have solved the included levels.
We've really been enjoying the game. With fun gameplay and a ton of content in a polished package for only $0.99, it comes highly recommended. There is also a free Lite version available which includes 30 levels which offers a generous sampling of the game. A bit of warning, however, there appears to be a bug in the Lite version only that affects playability for 3GS owners. Mobigame appears aware of the issue, and the full version does work properly on the 3GS.
Secret Exit's latest iPhone game has finally arrived. Stair Dismount was released tonight and represents their 3rd iPhone title after Zen Bound and SPIN.
Stair Dismount Touch is a ragdoll physics game in which your job is to push a crash test dummy down a series of stairwells in an attempt to maximize your score by maximizing the damage on the dummy.
The game itself is rather simple though wrapped in a nicely polished and visually beautiful package. You are given 6 different nicely rendered 3D stair cases as starting points from which to dismount your dummy. You get one hit anywhere on the body, so you have to choose your spot wisely. Meanwhile, the power of the push is determined by an oscillating power meter that you need to press at the right moment.
Once set in motion, you can change your perspective by swiping/pinch-zooming on the screen as the dummy crashes his way to the bottom. Your final score is basically a sum of all the damage inflicted. The game incorporates Facebook and Photo album integration for both adding someone's photo to the dummy as well as sharing mid-action photos.
The first version of the game lacks an online leaderboard so you are left trying to beat your previous high scores -- a task that is easy to get sucked into as I did find myself mindlessly replaying levels over and over.
Stair Dismount, however, borders on "toy" rather than "game" in that most of the enjoyment comes from watching the dummy get damage inflicted on it as it tumbles down the stairs. Your influence on the outcome also feels limited as you only have a few choices to make (location of push and power). For example, it would be nice if they had also given you the ability of adjusting the starting placement of the dummy.
So, with this in mind, while Stair Dismount can be an enjoyable "experience", it's not really what you'd consider a typical game.
PopCap previewed the iPhone version of Plants vs. Zombies to a local Fox affiliate and revealed it should be arriving in the App Store in December.
Plants vs. Zombies is a tower defense game for the PC and Mac that has been well received by critics and so far has sold more copies since its release earlier this year alone than any other game PopCap has published. In the game, players plant various types of plants to stop an army of zombies from reaching your house. As you survive through the different levels, you encounter new zombie types and unlock new seeds for your horticultural arsenal.
Indie record label Delicious Vinyl has released self-themed rhythm game which includes a number of hits from their catalog.
We don't expect this one to have much appeal amongst our younger audience, but some of you are going to really enjoy the song list:
Young MC, "Bust A Move"
Tone Loc, "Funky Cold Medina"
Tone Loc, "Wild Thing (Peaches RMX)"
The Pharcyde, "Passin' Me By"
Masta Ace, "Born To Roll"
Mr. Vegas (feat. Pitbull & Lil'Jon), "Pull Up (Club Mix)"
Masta Ace, "Slaughtahouse (Eminem RMX)"
As a rhythm game, it offers a reasonably fun experience (on the harder difficulties) with additional sound effects (samples, scratching) when you hit the note properly. Unfortunately, the actual experience of scratching along with the music just isn't nearly as satisfying as hitting more traditional beats. The timing isn't as obvious and the audio/visual feedback is more limited. But if you're a big fan of the music, you're not going to find these songs in Rock Band.
A week back, we posted an exclusive preview of the upcoming iPhone remake of Jeff McCord's classic '80s dungeon-crawler, Sword of Fargoal. This weekend I had the opportunity to interview Jeff along with his partners in crime on this project, Paul Pridham (who brought us Saucelifter) and Elias Pschernig, about their imminent release. (An edit of the IRC-based interview with the three can be seen after the jump.)
Along with the interview, Jeff has posted the first in a series of in-depth gameplay videos that should give gamers a very good sense of what the game is all about.
In a nutshell, the Sword of Fargoal places the player within the top level of a deep series of dungeons with the quest of seeking out the legendary "Sword of Fargoal" and escaping with it from the depths of said dungeons. Complicating matters is the fact that the layout of each dungeon level is randomly generated when the player enters it, and that the dungeons are all initially bathed in darkness, revealing themselves only as the player explores. Those lucky enough to locate the sword have only 2,000 seconds to find their way out of the dungeons which, even on the way up, are randomly generated…. Not a proposition for the meek.
I've spent some real time with pre-release builds of Sword of Fargoal of late and have really been enjoying the game so far. As I mentioned in our preview story, the iPhone adaptation of this classic is rich on gameplay but a bit more casual in some respects than the typical roguelike, making it nicely approachable to those who have found other games of the sort a bit too "hardcore."
If you've ever wanted to make a treacherous journey deep into the heart of a dungeon full of all manner of ghastly creatures, now's your chance -- or soon, anyway. Sword of Fargoal has just been submitted to the App Store and should be available by mid-December at an introductory price of $2.99 (regular $4.99).
Read on for the interview with Jeff, Paul, and Elias.
Illusion Labs is easily one of our favorite iPhone developers. Each of their iPhone titles so far have taken clear advantage of the platform's unique abilities in order to produce compelling gaming experiences. Illusion Labs has been responsible for the sort-of-platformer Sway as well as the finger skateboarding game TouchGrind. Both of these titles used multi-touch in a well-thought out control method that really complimented the gameplay of each.
When you look back at their first iPhone game Labyrinth, you may now consider it to be relatively primitive, but at the time of its release, Labyrinth really set the standard for ball rolling games. According to the developers, Labyrinth has been downloaded over 10 million times since its launch.
For their next game, Illusion Labs is going back to these early roots and is finally producing a sequel to the original ball roller with Labyrinth 2. After having spent some exclusive hands-on time with the game, I can already say it's great.
Like the original game, the goal of Labyrinth 2 is to get the silver ball from the starting point to the goal while navigating walls and avoiding the holes. In the first version, that was pretty much all there was to it. Labyrinth 2, however, adds a number of new elements that graduate the game from simple wooden toy simulator to arcade game.
These elements include cannons, bumpers, doors/switches, magnets, fans, resizers, merry-go-round, duplicators, lasers and more. Navigating the levels still require careful tilt control to avoid falling to your death, but are also more puzzle/goal driven as you must also figure out how to make it to the exit. Levels are timed as before so beating your individual high scores remains the motivator to play a level again. This time, however, they've added a ghost ball representation of your best time for you to directly compete against.
Beyond the compelling core gameplay, the developers have also added a couple of additional features that should extend the game's life indefinitely.
Like the original, players can create their own levels with a fully featured web-based editor. These free user creations can be sorted by popularity and rating and can be downloaded directly to your device. Finally, the game offers a very nice local multi-player setup over both bluetooth and Wi-Fi. This lets you play up to 4 people on the same board. In this case, all of the player's balls will appear on each other's screens -- similar to ghost ball replays, but played in real time. All players movements are reflected on everyone else's devices so you know exactly how far ahead or far behind you are. First to the goal wins, and a running score is kept as you continue playing across any of the levels. I suspect this feature alone will cause the game to spread like crazy amongst offices and schools.
The developer's intro trailer starts with a cinematic and later shows actual gameplay:
There's been no official release date, but Labyrinth 2 should be coming soon and it's definitely one to look forward to.
After months of approval delays and resubmissions, Apple has finally allowed IUGO's A.D.D. game to appear in the App Store. The $2.99 game is a WarioWare-like game with an adolescent sense of humor.
The content is reflected in the 8 warnings that is listed under the App Store description of the game. The app had been submitted multiple times with a paring down of mini-games to 70+, presumably due to the rejections from Apple. IUGO had released a Lite version of the game a number of months ago, but due to the long delay of the full version, they have since pulled it. We're not sure if it'll be coming back soon.
Here's a video of the game back in June. While specifics may have changed, the general gist of the game is captured:
Gameplay involves simple tasks using the iPhone's various control systems set in various humorous scenarios. These mini games are presented in rapid succession and part of the challenge is figuring you what you need to do. The game does tip you off with what control mechanism needs to be used (tilt, shake, tap etc…).
We reviewed and enjoyed the first release of Kris Pixton's PathPix back in June.
PathPix is a simple puzzle game that has you drawing lines to connect numbers. The iPhone version of the game is based on the PC version of the same name but also resembles Link-a-Pix (Web) and Pic Pic's Drawing mode (Nintendo DS). The rules are simple:
Draw paths with your finger, connecting pairs of colored numbers. The length of each path must match the numbers on the two endpoints. Draw backwards or double tap to correct mistakes. There's only one way to do it, and all squares will contain a piece of a path when the puzzle is solved.
The original version of the game came with 144 levels which would have offered a fair amount of gameplay though PathPix addicts were soon asking for more.
Pixton has appeased those individuals with a new Pro version for experienced players. For $2.99, you can get 300 more levels ranging form Medium to Extreme difficulty. We really enjoyed this game and found ourselves quickly immersed in the gameplay. If you've never played it, give the Lite a try as we highly recommend it.
This week Eli traveled to Gameloft's headquarters in Paris for a media event demoing their upcoming games. We departed from our usual podcast format and instead Blake, Arnold and Eli spoke about the trip and the upcoming games that were shown.
Movie tie-ins have long been cautiously received by gamers, owing to the dearth of quality games based on such popular licences in the past. It is fortunate however that Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs [App Store] has placed its well-known pre-historic characters and setting in the capable hands of Two Tribes, known best for Toki Tori which we thoroughly enjoyed.
Two Tribes has created of the movie licence a puzzle platformer in the same vein as Toki Tori; the player assuming control of the cute-but-accident-prone Scrat, a sabre-toothed squirrel on a tireless quest for the greatest acorn he has ever laid his eyes on.
Puzzles essentially take the form of block pulling and pushing to navigate Scrat through treacherous terrain. There are 36 levels in Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs spanning four individually themed chapters that present their own obstacles and mechanics to help and hinder Scrat in his journey. Puzzles involve breaking and sliding ice blocks, floating bubbles and toxic gases, nasty spikes and lava pits, together with a range of hostile dinosaurs to avoid that would love nothing more than to make Scrat dinner. This only scrapes the surface of what Scrat will need to interact with to rescue his dream acorn; puzzle elements being continually added to as the levels progress.
Similarly (and fortunately), the controls in Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs borrow heavily from Toki Tori, a simple tap will see Scrat take the shortest path to reach the desired location. This makes complex actions such as climbing a number of ladders quickly and directing near-bursting bubbles through the air effortless, ensuring the difficulty lies not in the controls but in correctly solving the puzzle at hand. There are no limit to retries and checkpoints are frequent and unobtrusive, rewarding you with a save point after each puzzle is solved.
This is particularly important seeing as how the levels in Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs are quite long, much longer than your average Toki Tori level; platforms often span a number of screens in various directions. Subsequently, there are a number of hours to be had working through the often mind-numbing puzzles for even puzzle geniuses out there; far more hours undoubtedly necessary for the everyday gamer. To achieve 100% completion and collect each level’s many smaller acorns will likely consume many waking hours for those eager do so, a feat rewarded with the unlocking of a final, Expert level.
Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs boasts an outstanding all-round presentation; the graphics gorgeously rendered and animated, with some of the larger, more recognizable dinosaurs from the movies providing some additional visual treats. The music and sounds accompanying each level are of a similarly excellent quality.
For puzzle fans, particularly those that enjoyed Toki Tori, Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs can be thoroughly recommended. For those not so easily convinced, Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs can be quite a challenging and repetitive game when you are stuck on a puzzle, but its frequent checkpoints, unlimited lives and in-game hint-signage afford a generous measure of forgiveness to encourage further attempts.
As critics of Gameloft will no doubt mention in nearly every post we make about Gameloft games that are "inspired" by other popular franchises, but in the case of Driver, Gameloft has taken a sharp turn from these types of games to bringing a remastered version of one of the best PC driving games of the late 90's to the iPhone.
In Driver, you play as an underground NYPD detective who was chosen by the force for his impressive driving skills to infiltrate the filthy underbelly of four in-game cities. You will be tasked with a series of missions that will have you racing around the city, evading the police, and generally doing most of the things you do in Grand Theft Auto games without the ability to ever get out of your car.
Gameloft has brought nearly everything from the original Driver to the iPhone, including the exact same physics and driving engine present in the PC original. As players of the PC version may remember, the game was fairly dark with low-resolution textures-- Gameloft has completely spruced up all the original graphics making for a much more colorful and visually impressive game than the original.
As a faithful port of the PC classic, Driver will have a complete car damage system and four in-game cities-- each being larger than the whole city in Gangstar. All of the UI elements that would require a keyboard or mouse have been refined to be touch friendly, and the game can be controlled using tilt, a virtual joystick, or a virtual D-Pad.
Other improvements from the original include a GPS system to help gamers find their way to each objective, and the checkpoints themselves have been made much more obvious. Essentially, everything that was great about the original Driver has been preserved, and everything that wasn't so great has been brought up to today's standards.
Regrettably, the only thing that is missing from the PC original is the replay editor. Gameloft felt the UI was just far too cumbersome without a keyboard and mouse, and having played the original, I tend to agree with them. The best thing about Driver is it is by no means a mobile game. In its day, Driver was an excellent PC game that provided over 6 hours of gameplay that gamers happily paid full PC game price for.
Fans of the original no doubt remember its difficulty level which could be best described as "brutal", and Gameloft having recognized that gamers today might not be too in to the idea of redoing missions dozens of times has included both an easier mode along with the original difficulty level configurable in the game's options.
All of the cinematics and voice-overs are preserved from the 1999 Driver, and as a fan of the original, I am extremely excited to have one of my favorite games of the 90's on my iPhone. Gameloft is hopeful to submit Driver to Apple soon and plans to have it on the App Store sometime next month.
While it seems the entire world is blanketed in advertisements for the upcoming movie, Avatar, Gameloft has thrown its hat in to the Avatar ring and has produced a fairly impressive adventure game based on the movie. So often the quality of movie games seem to range from bad to mediocre, as they try to emulate the plot of the movie and instead of focusing on gameplay, they lean heavily on the movie to prop the game itself up. This doesn't seem to be the case with Gameloft's Avatar, surprisingly enough.
The game itself merely takes place in the Avatar universe, and tells the tale of the events leading up to the movie as a sort of prequel to the film itself. Gameloft apparently had complete access to all of the assets behind the movie, as well as recording some original voicework by the cast for use within the game-- Creating an experience that (to this skeptic of movie games) was quite shocking.
Avatar somehow manages to stand on its own, and instead of feeling like a game that was created for the sake of yet another marketing avenue for a movie, it feels like a game that just happens to take place in the same world as the movie. Controlled using a mixture of a virtual joystick and on-screen buttons, there are portions of the game that are reminiscent of traditional 3D platformer games like Mario 64 or Crash Bandicoot, with a combo-friendly combat system straight out of games like Hero of Sparta.
Other areas of the game players will explore include doing quests for friendly villagers, which will often have you on the back of a six legged horse racing around the countryside from checkpoint to checkpoint. Avatar has even more variety in a Panzer Dragoon inspired shooter level, where you fly on the back of a banshee (a winged creature from the movie) avoiding obstacles and taking out enemies.
The different play styles go together quite well, and seem to provide an experience beyond most movie-inspired games. (Particularly mobile movie games which generally are exceptionally bad.) There are 15 included levels, each of which will take players anywhere between 20-30 minutes to complete. Checkpoints seem to be everywhere to save your progress if you need to quit the game.
The graphics of Avatar are impressive, and show Gameloft's continued efforts to push the limits of the platform. If you're playing on an iPhone 3GS, the draw distance is surprisingly vast. Like all Gameloft games, the game will scale to all devices, and even 1st generation iPod touches and iPhones will be capable of playing, although with a much lower draw distance.
Avatar has been in development for nearly a year now, and Gameloft has plans to release the game simultaneously with the box office release of the movie on December 15th.
In the turn-based strategy world, few games are as vast as Battle for Wesnoth [
