On this week’s BONUS episode of TAS, Eli and Brad grill the brothers Marsh, the two co-owners of the two-man studio NimbleBit. You know these guys, right? We’ve been raving about Tiny Tower [Free] for a couple of weeks now, and in the past, we’ve said many a good word about their other titles like Pocket Frogs [Free], Scoops [Free] and more.
We hit several awesome points in an otherwise offbeat discussion revolving around the studio, how it got started, forgotten NimbleBit games like Zero Gear, what informs the Marshs’ idea of how to execute a free-to-play game, and Jon Romero. Turns out that even though Dave worked with the man, he never got the chance to oil his hair. Seems like a missed opportunity to us.
There's a number of ways you can listen, either by subscribing either on iTunes or the Zune Marketplace, direct to our RSS feed. Alternatively, if you're not into the whole automatic download scene, you can grab the raw MP3 or just listen to the flash player embedded below:
Next week we’ll be chilling with Halfbrick, so feel free to throw us any questions you may or may not have about the studio. You get extra credit from us the more offbeat and odd the question is.
Good news if you’re a Konami fan: the Japanese publisher and creator has received the July 4th memo being passed around, and as a result, most of its titles on the App Store are now listed at a paltry $.99 instead of their standard prices.
For a limited time the over-the-shoulder shooter based in the Metal Gear universe, Metal Gear Solid Touch, as well as Silent Hill: The Escape, and Castlevania Puzzle: Encore of the Night are up on the price-chopping block. These are easily the brightest of Konami’s various releases, but there’s some other goodies being offered, too, including the arcade brawler X-Men, which just came out a month or so ago.
Not a bad list at all. Even though it’s older, I highly suggest Metal Gear Solid Touch, if only because it's based on Metal Gear Solid 4's ludicrous story. You'll learn what "crazy" is after you give that thing a spin. X-Men is a good one, too.
Some of the App Store’s best simulation racing games have received a price slashing as the US prepares to celebrate its independence with drink, food, and things that blow up and make pretty colors. For the third or fourth time only, the Real Racing series is up on the sale block, each title receiving an 80 percent to a 30 percent cut from standard price.
You’ll not be wanting for a Grand Turismo-like experience on your little touch devices if you decide to grab one of these, as we’ve written in our respectivereviews for these two outstanding iOS racing jams.
If you’ve somehow missed Flight Control HD, well, that’s on sale, too. Firemint dropped the price from $4.99 to $.99 for the next 48 hours alongside the Real Racing series. The PC and Mac version of the title on Steam is also on sale, if you’re interested in that.
Sales are kind of a big deal right now. If you're in the market for an EA, a Com2Us, an Adult Swim Games, or a Gameloft game, hit up our posts for each. EA is blowing everyone out of the water by having its entire catalogue up for 99 cents, but there's other attractive deals out there from these aforementioned publishers.
This week on TAS, we discuss more games than news due to the startling lull in App Store controversies, craziness, or compelling offerings. Pocket Academy takes the first spot, as we go deep on what makes it so good. Then, we follow with a light Puzzle Agent 2 discussion, followed by Street Fighter 4: Volt, 8-Bit Rally, and Amazing Breaker.
Somehow, we get off the rails hard enough to have a legitimate discussion about the Xbox LIVE beta program and classic online PC gaming. Also, Jared’s puffy and beautiful beard gets a notable mention among other tangential riffs.
As always, you can check us out via the download link just below or on the iTunes music store for music and other things, as well as the Zune Marketplace. If you’d be so kind, we would really like to read more of your questions or comments on air, so throw us e-mails at our inbox: podcast@toucharcade.com. You can also hit us up on Facebook and the Twitter, though your longer-form thoughts are always appreciated.
Thanks for listening, guys, and have a (safe) and fun long weekend. We'll be back on Monday with another BONUS episode and Friday, of course, with another regularly scheduled show. Don't forget to e-mail us!
As we mentioned in January, we're bringing back our monthly "Best of" roundups. Much like the February and March, the end of May and the beginning of June hit right smack dab in the middle for preparing for and attending both E3 and WWDC-- Two incredibly busy events that also landed on the exact same week, something I hope never ever happens again. So, just like before, we're doing an extra large double month double feature.
Our ratings for games we reviewed in both May and June are now in place, and we now present to you the ones that are on the top of the heap. Each game reviewed receives a 1-5 star rating relative to the other games from that month. Generally, a 3 or higher is considered a "good" rating.
Our final scores are not the product of any traditionally objective measures such as graphics or sound, but simply reflect the games we would most recommend to others.
Graham Annable’s Puzzle Agent [$4.99 / HD] shook up Telltale Games’ widening, but creatively dim portfolio with its differentiating tone, art direction, and mechanics. It wasn’t adventurous: it was Professor Layton with a fresh coat of paint. Puzzle Agent 2 [$4.99 / HD] is no different. It picks up right where the original left us, and brings into the fold more puzzles, more unnerving citizens of Scoggins, Minnesota and similar frustrations. While it is a more polished title, its predecessor’s missteps -- deceptive puzzles, bad hints, and frame rate woes -- still haunt the overall experience. It’s a good game, just not the best it could be.
Puzzle Division agent Nelson Tethers just can’t get over how his initial experience in Scoggins ended. Despite the FBI considering the case of Scoggin’s Erasers mysterious closure case-closed, Tethers uses his vacation time in order to investigate the isolated and dreary town’s secrets and discover where a missing man has gone.
It’s a weird setup that gets even weirder once Tethers is visited by a spaceman who says the person he’s looking for doesn’t exist. But this is Scoggins; it’s a character just like Nelson is, except it’s colder, more mysterious, isolated, and has feverish secrets like this one to share. Odd Scoggins is just as much of an informant to the game’s tone and art as is it’s own writing and the Grickle universe. Puzzle Agent 2 benefits from this much like the original did -- this place has an effective air of mystery and wonder, which are drivers that’ll keep you moving between plot beats.
Where it stumbles sometimes is, oddly enough, the puzzles. The Layton-esque tack taken disturbs momentum. Like in the first game, they can be showstoppers that chew at your soul with their abstract solutions. Some are just plain easy. You’ll be tasked with a rough approximation of the classic three-water jug quandary, as well as other twists, takes, and riffs on basic and advanced logic and math problems including number pattern recognition, Tetris-like path blazing, and more. Despite the frustration that can come with not figuring some of these out immediately, the challenge is nice; there’s no better reward than the “A-ha!” moment, as Portal 2 so poignantly pointed out earlier this year. Just be aware you're going to get stuck... Or turned off by the simplicity. It's a weird dynamic.
The chewing gum hint system returns, but again it dishes out vague hints that’ll have you continuing to throw your hands in the air. Out of the three hints you get, the third really needs to just give you the answer. There’s no point in stretching out befuddlement. Like last time, these pieces of chewing gum are scattered all over the environment.
Sharp writing and good dialog punctuate the atmospheric world Annable is drawing us into with each new release. This one really fleshes out Scoggins in particular, but it also makes a lot of smart callbacks to the original and brings in familiar people, places, and puzzles in smart, satisfying ways. It’s like you had an effect or something!
I almost want to patent this as the “Telltale Technical Paragraph” since so many people are worried about each new release, but just as a note here, Puzzle Agent 2 runs poorly for the first hour or so on the iPad. At this point in the development cycle, and as non-intensive as Puzzle Agent 2’s visual design is and animations are, there’s no excuse for this. It brings down the experience. Also, a side-note here, we’ve seen additional reports that the game is garbage on 3GS devices and the like, too, and doesn't even run on devices older than that, so be careful.
Anyway, Puzzle Agent 2 is a competent continuation of the franchise featuring solid wit, devilish puzzles, and one of the most inventive adventure game characters: Scoggins. If you’re a fan of Puzzle Agent, there's no need to skip this. If you're a newcomer, you’ll find it, at first, a bit uninviting, but quickly you’ll be drug into its odd little world.
In celebration of the release of Duke Nukem Forever, Remedy Entertainment has once again slashed the cost of its over-the-top racing title Death Rally [$.99]. For a limited time, it’s just $.99 instead of its usual $2.99. Also, it’s been updated with Nukem-themed frills to go alongside the iconic character’s appearance. Specifically, a new survival arena called “Duke Match” has been added as well as a fresh Monster Truck.
I’m not sure if we’ve addressed this before, but the reason why Duke is in the title has to do with Remedy’s, 3D Realms’ and Apogee's relationship. The trio worked with each other for awhile and Duke wormed his way into the original release of the game.
Bug fixes and other tweaks are a big part of this update, too. More boss voices have been added alongside a new radar indicator for boss cars and a new explosive icon. Missiles no longer “make impossible turns,” voice-over timing has been improved, and several other key fixes have been made. Hit up the official blog for the full notes if you’re interested.
This is an odd update for a couple of reasons, foremost being that Duke Nukem Forever has been met with negative critical reception across the board. It might have taken a good chunk of our lifetimes to make it to market, but it still needed more time in the oven. This game, on the other hand, is actually fun. Check it out -- Duke or no Duke.
I stumbled across Amazing Breaker [99¢] a few days ago, and since then it's been sucking up a surprising amount of my time. I think the quickest way to describe the game is that Amazing Breaker is Angry Birds' cousin, twice removed on its mothers side. It's a catapult-style flinging game with multiple types of ammo, a three star grading system, and a bunch of levels to play through. There's just enough of that Angry Birds style gameplay in it that if you like those kind of games you'll love Amazing Breaker, but it still feels distinctly different... Which is something that's hard to say for a lot of these types of games on the App Store.
The goal of Amazing Breaker is to use a variety of bombs to destroy the ice sculptures that make up each level. Aside from the standard bomb that explodes on contact, there's two variations of bombs that split into three smaller bombs, and a "ghost bomb" of sorts that can pass through the ice instead of hitting the edge. Using these explosives, you must destroy at least 90% of the ice to go on to the next level. Also, as you blow up the ice, realistic looking cracks form to provide a surprising amount of graphical flair to the game.
The sculptures that make up each level not only look cool, but are all shaped differently to become increasingly difficult to destroy. Early levels are very straight forward, and can all be clear with simple straight-on shots to a (mostly) solid block of ice. Later levels, however, require carefully placed shots that bounce off the side of the play area to reach a particularly vulnerable spot on the ice to cause maximum damage.
Much like Angry Birds and other similar games, getting three stars on a level can require quite a bit of trial and error, especially later in the game. If you don't get the initial shot perfectly, you might as well start over, which brings me to my only real gripe about Amazing Breaker: Load times. Each time you retry a level to perfectly aim that first shot, you need to sit through the same loading screen that you did when you loaded the level for the first time. While the load times aren't particularly bad, it feels like when you're shooting for three stars you spend more time waiting for the game to load to try again than you do actually playing.
I suppose this load time "problem" will only be an issue for the obsessive three-star-hungry players out there. If you're exceedingly patient, or don't often find yourself endlessly retrying levels in games like this to perfectly clear each level, Amazing Breaker is an effortless recommendation.
In case you didn't know, TouchArcade is part of one big happy internet family with MacRumors which is the place to go for Apple news and rumors as well as AppShopper which catalogs the App Store and actually provides quite a bit of the glue behind the scenes that makes a lot of things on TouchArcade work. If you're already familiar with AppShopper, you might be aware of most what I'm going to go over in this post, so consider this a PSA for those who aren't in the know.
The AppShopper site itself is incredibly useful because it makes browsing through the App Store quite a bit easier (and often times quite a bit faster) than just using iTunes. For instance, part of what I do every morning to find games to cover on TouchArcade involves going through the listing of all the new games that have appeared on the App Store. Similarly, you can see all games that have had a recent price drop and all paid games that recently got switched to free. That second link is particularly useful, as since it's generated as close to real time as possible you often can scoop up awesome free games hours (or even days) before they appear on the various free app promotional sites.
If you're only interested in iPad or universal games, there's toggles for that. Also, if viewing everything the App Store has to offer is overwhelming (which it totally is at times) you can mash the "Popular" switch to only show things that the 1,000 monkeys on the 1,000 typewriters powering AppShopper have deemed as such. Where things get really useful in all this is that every view of AppShopper has its own custom RSS feed, so if you're an RSS kind of person, you can add specific views such as popular universal games that dropped to free right in line with whatever else you've got in your RSS reader of choice.
The reason for this particular plug of AppShopper is due to a recent update to the AppShopper App [Free]. This app does everything the AppShopper site does, and more, packed into a slick native application. It's got a bunch of cool features, but what people will find the most useful around here is the wish list functionality with push alerts. If you read TouchArcade on a daily basis, you'll totally be inundated with cool games you'd like to check out. You also likely have more games than you even know what to do with already on your device which can make buying everything the instant it comes out at full price a little silly (and potentially expensive).
If this describes you, you should really give using the AppShopper wish list as a way to "bookmark" games a try. Here's how it works-- You see a game you thing looks cool, but don't necessarily need right away. You add it, then when it drops in price you'll get a handy alert telling you so... Both reminding you that a game you thought was cool still exists, and that it's now on sale.
If you're already a faithful user of the AppShopper app, here's some great news: It's been recently updated to be even better. The app now includes links to TouchArcade reviews as well as reviews from our friends over at 148apps. Also, you can customize when push alerts get sent, so you won't be woken up at 3:00 AM anymore to be alerted that a game you've been keeping your eye on went free. (Unless of course, you want to be awoken for something like that, of course.) In addition to app ratings being implemented, there's all kinds of new filters for searching within the app.
The AppShopper app is totally free and is ad-supported. If you're the kind of person who hates ads, a single 99¢ in-app purchase will get rid of them forever.
EA doesn’t kid around when it comes to App Store sales. During Christmas 2010, the publisher offered up much of its catalogue for 99 cents. It’s doing the same right now in celebration of the US’ Independence Day, and I’m guessing it’ll net similar results: total App Store chart domination.
Around 90 of EA's titles have hit the 99 cent floor with this sale. Just below, we've listed the ones whose prices were slashed in honor of this holiest of holidays. The blurb in front of each game isn’t specific on the dates the sell will run, so buy now if you’re into anything the publisher has. And there's a lot to like here -- Dead Space, Battlefield: Bad Company 2, and older (but still quality) titles like Mirror's Edge are all being featured.
Other studios are running sales, too. Gameloft, Com2Us, and Adult Swim have cut the cost of a lot of their libraries and even smaller developers are getting into the mood. Stick with us today and we'll definitely bring you that information.
Yuji Naka, the former head of Sonic Team and now co-owner of PROPE, has dropped a new Unreal Engine 3 thing on the App Store. Note the hesitance.
It’s called PD - proper discoverer [$2.99], and it’s remarkable because it doesn’t jive with what PROPE has released in the past. It’s not a Let’s TAP mini-game title, in other words.
It's experiential. Like Epic’s showpiece of the engine’s power, Epic Citadel [Free], PD has you walking around a castle and its grounds in first-person. The goal is to see everything PROPE has rendered. In order to do that, you have to collect hidden cards scattered in the environments.
PD strikes me as little more than a tech demo. And for better or worse, it's a demo that PROPE is monetizing as it learns the ropes of Unreal Engine 3 and what it can offer in terms of lighting, shading, and all that technical jazz.
In the past, we've seen many other studios experimenting with Unreal Engine 3 take and twist Epic Citadel in a similar manner. Just a couple of months ago, actually, I played a poker game with an Epic Citadel-y vibe and structure. Yeah. It was weird.
It’s interesting to see a Japanese developer experimenting with Unreal, no less Unreal for tablet and smart device games, but will PROPE continue using the engine? I’ve blasted over a note to the studio in hopes to learn of its long-term plans, or at least its goals. I’ll let you know when or if I hear back.
We've all been hearing a lot about gamification, lately. As the theory goes, if you take a mundane task and wrap game design elements around it, everyone will want to do it. You can gameify health, education, employment, you name it. Now ASYNC Corp. [$0.99] is here to show us what that gamified future will look like.
As a member of the ASYNC Corp. team, your job is to create and send packets. Packets are made up of units, which are laid out on two grids. You can tap a unit on one grid to move it over to the other grid, but only if the change will create a packet--a square or rectangle made up of at least a 2 x 2 group of color-matched units. To send a packet, you can tap on its happy, smiling face.
A stimulated employee is a happy employee, so ASYNC Corp. has kindly provided several ways to complete your task. The first is Quota mode. In Quota mode, you simply do as instructed: create packets and send them. Your shift ends when the Quota meter fills up. In ASYNC mode, you must create full ASYNCs in every available color. This is a packet that fills an entire grid. This mode is more relaxing - it requires thought, not speed. Zoning mode requires the most speed of all, as you level up and increase your score by filling the Zoning meter. Finally, there is Freeplay mode, which isn't scored and only ends when you decide to punch out.
As you create and send units, your productivity will be ranked. At major milestones you will receive a promotion, and a reward to go with it: a new color theme. ASYNC Corp is also dedicated to your well-being: the company often sends tips and inspiration to your (in-game) inbox to keep you happy and productive.
Sadly, that's all the reward you'll see. There are no leaderboards or achievements to work toward here, though the game does keep track of your high scores. There's also no multitasking, which is brutal in a long-form puzzle game like this. Normally I'd expect an update to fix those omissions, but that may not happen here: apparently the development team was laid off as soon as the game was submitted. I'd like to think that if it does well enough, Powerhead Games will find some way to get those missing features in, but there's no guarantee.
It's really a shame, because this is easily one of the most compelling puzzle games I've played on iOS. The whole package is fantastic, with cheery art and music, and creative color-matching gameplay. The memos from ASYNC Corp. are odd, and have me curious about this company I find myself working for. I can't put the game down, but I also can't help wishing it had been given a little more development time. It could have been flawless.
Our forum users are enjoying it, but are torn over whether it's worth a purchase in its current state. I'm certain it is. If you absolutely must have multitasking or achievements, obviously this isn't the game for you. But if you're willing to overlook a few missing features, you'll soon find that the biggest challenge is leaving your job at ASYNC Corp. to get back to the real world.
Developer Cowboy Rodeo was kind enough to port the classic Amiga pinball game Pinball Dreams [$4.99/Lite] to the iPhone all the way back in February of 2009. The port was very good, with physics that accurately represented those of the original and ever so slightly enhanced graphics. In fact, Pinball Dreams was almost better on the iPhone thanks to its elongated screen that didn’t need to scroll as much as the original did to show the entire table. Pinball Dreams was followed up shortly after by its sequel Pinball Fantasies [$5.99], which was given the same wonderful treatment in the transfer over to iOS as the first game.
Somewhat surprisingly, and nearly two and a half years later, Cowboy Rodeo is set to release a brand new remake of Pinball Dreams called simply Pinball Dreams HD. What differentiates this version from the original is that each of the game’s 4 pinball tables have been recreated using entirely 3D graphics. Fans of the original may cry foul at this notion, but the developer has clarified that the game logic is identical to the original game and should play exactly the same, and the new graphics are a cosmetic change only.
In the above images you can see the Steel Wheel table in the original iPhone version on the left next to a screen from the iPad version of the new Pinball Dreams HD on the right. Down below are 3 additional screens that show the new versions of the other tables in Pinball Dreams HD. Click any image to enlarge.
What prompted Cowboy Rodeo to remake Pinball Dreams after all this time? I really have no idea, but as a huge fan of both Pinball Dreams and Fantasies, I’m really interested to check out Pinball Dreams HD. Cowboy Rodeo has stated in our forums that Pinball Dreams HD is already submitted to Apple, so hopefully it won’t be too long before it’s released. If the new version turns out to be a success, I’d love to see the same treatment given to Pinball Fantasies down the line too. And hey, Cowboy Rodeo, can you please finally bring Pinball Illusions to the App Store while you’re at it?
I'm late to the party on this one, but if you have any room in your heart for bullet hell shooters you should take a look at Danmaku Unlimited [$1.99 / Lite] You might know that already, but there's a good chance you don't. Maybe you've been living under a rock. Maybe you don't venture beyond Cave's fantastic stable of shmups. Or maybe you'd like to play these games but you're intimidated by the difficulty. Whatever your excuse, you should really give this one a shot.
If you're a bullet hell newbie (like me, I have to admit), here's how it works. You control a ship flying over a scrolling 2D backdrop. Enemy ships fly at you and shoot waves of bullets in your direction. Bosses are especially efficient at filling the screen with projectiles, often leaving you to work out patterns in their fire to slip though. That's the "hell" part of the genre, and it's the part that usually drives away casual players. Luckily, Danmaku Unlimited offers up a kindness to those of us who can't memorize patterns and react instantly: a generously simple Easy mode. It's not dead simple, but it's far less hellish.
Normal and Hard pose plenty of challenge for hardcore players, however. Later bosses are intense enough that the game can get laggy on third generation devices (it isn't compatible with earlier generations). And to play your best, you need to be willing to take some risks. The hit box of your ship, the part that will cause you to lose a life if you get hit, is tiny - a glowing gem in its heart. Get hit anywhere else and you earn grazing bonuses, which increase your multiplier and eventually trigger a Danmaku Trance. While trancing, you can easily destroy everything in your path.
Beyond that feature, you'll find a fairly traditional bullet hell shooter. But Danmaku Unlimited stands out not just on mechanics, but on looks. This game is gorgeous. The bullets themselves are crisp and colorful, and even the ships and backgrounds look great. The enemies and bosses get a little repetitive, but they look fantastic no matter how many times you run into them. The controls also work quite well. You slide your finger around the screen to move your ship. The small hit-box makes the game a little more forgiving than other entries in the genre, and the touch-sensitivity is adjustable.
As with other bullet hell games, making it through the game's 5 stages is only the beginning. The real goal of Danmaku Unlimited is to earn higher and higher scores, and to do that you need to play as perfectly as possible. Your ship is supplied with bombs that will automatically trigger when you're hit. It'll save you a life, but it also resets your multiplier. Worse, if you run out of bombs and get hit again, your ship will be destroyed. This not only resets your multiplier, it also resets the tokens you earn. Die enough times to need a continue, and your score will get reset too. If you just want to limp past the finish line, this is a fine way to play, but if you want to compete on the Game Center leaderboards, you're going to need to conserve your bombs and lives, and avoid needing to continue.
The tokens I mentioned can be used to upgrade your ship, increasing your firepower and adding extra bombs, lives and continues. You can also choose from three different firing spreads for your ship each time you start a game. Once you complete Arcade mode, you unlock that difficulty level's Boss Rush and Free Play mode, adding a little longevity to an already substantial game.
Danmaku Unlimited is a gorgeous 2D shooter that offers up challenging stages and lots of competition. I can't wait to see what comes next from the developer, who's hinted at an upcoming shmup project in our forums.
If you have a fairly good memory, then you may recall when Square Enix announced way back at E3 2010 that Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions would be hitting the App Store with an expected release before the end of the year. Then in December, they officially delayed the release and gave it a new target date of Spring 2011. Back in May Square Enix once again slid the release date back, stating that Final Fantasy Tactics likely wouldn’t make it in time for Spring but should be ready for late June or mid-July.
However, on their Facebook page yesterday, Square Enix pushed the release date back yet again. Apparently they are going to need just a tiny bit of extra development time, and rather than mid-July, Final Fantasy Tactics producer Shiina expects the game to finally be available July twenty... something, or perhaps the very last couple of days in July.
To ease the pain a bit for this additional delay, Shiina offers up some info on the upcoming game. He states that the performance of the game is fast and it’s very comfortable to play on the touch screen, and there should be a new video demonstrating this soon. He also says that it will not be a universal game, and that a native iPad version should be launching about a month after the iPhone version. Additionally, the game will require at least a 3rd generation device to play.
Shiina then explains how the game will save your exact state when exiting or being interrupted by a call or text, and that this function was tricky to implement and has added to the extended development time considerably. Finally, Shiina notes that there won’t be any kind of multiplayer in the game, and at this time there are no plans to release add-ons after the game comes out, which seems a bit odd.
I love Final Fantasy Tactics just as much as the next guy, but I’m definitely ready for the game to stop being delayed and just release already. Hopefully this new late July timeframe will hold strong and we’ll all be playing the game in about a month.
On this week’s BONUS episode of TAS, Eli and Brad grill the brothers Marsh, the two co-owners of the two-man studio NimbleBit. You know these guys, right? We’ve been raving about Tiny Tower [Free] for a couple of weeks now, and in the past, we’ve said many a good word about their other titles like Pocket Frogs [Free], Scoops [Free] and more.
This week on TAS, we discuss more games than news due to the startling lull in App Store controversies, craziness, or compelling offerings. Pocket Academy takes the first spot, as we go deep on what makes it so good. Then, we follow with a light Puzzle Agent 2 discussion, followed by Street Fighter 4: Volt, 8-Bit Rally, and Amazing Breaker.
As 
I stumbled across Amazing Breaker [
If you have a fairly good memory, then you may recall when Square Enix 
