It takes a special kind of game to pull off surviving exclusively through tilt controls. That goes double for games that attempt to do it and are only available on the iPad. Sure, the iPad’s accelerometer has got to be used for something, but some folks (and rightfully so) find the idea of having to tilt your tablet every which way just to play a game to be a bit daunting. Pod Odyssey [$2.99] is the latest attempt at a tilt-controlled iPad exclusive. While its controls aren’t perfect, there’s certainly enough here for an enjoyable experience with some caveats.
Pod Odyssey isn’t a game with a particularly engrossing story. In fact, all you know is that you’re piloting a ship (that looks strangely like a squid) that is exploring various alien planets in labyrinth-like levels. The game gives off an abstract Lunar Lander sort of vibe. Each level has a primary and secondary objective, and your goal is to successfully complete both without dying (i.e. running out of energy for your ship). Standing in your way is a variety of structures that shoot projectiles at your ship. Those projectiles are anything from dumb missiles to land (space?) mines to heat seeking bombs that attempt to follow you.
In further BMX-related news this morning, those handsome Swedish chaps from Illusion Labs have gone and made their multitouch masterpiece Touchgrind BMX [$4.99] Universal in a brand new update. Touchgrind BMX launched back in May and we liked it a whole bunch in our review. It retained the same impressive technological aspects of the original Touchgrind [$4.99/HD] with its 3D visuals and smart use of multitouch, but offered a much more varied set of levels to perform your tricks and a much more favorable behind the back camera angle.
The Touchgrind BMX berry only became more plump and juicy with updates that we detailed when we sat down with Illusion Labs at WWDC this year, namely proper Retina Display visuals and TV-Out support. Now you can add Universal iPad support to that list as well, and this is actually the very first Universal game from Illusion Labs. I wouldn't mind seeing this trend continue.
Galaxy Express [99¢/Free] from Arctic Empire is a strategy game which involves navigating your spacecraft around a 9 x 12 grid, to deliver mail to the destination planet. Instead of steering controls, you're given a limited supply of direction-arrows to place within the grid. Once you're happy with the positioning of your arrows, you simply tap the START button and watch your craft journey along the chosen route.
If you've got it right, your craft will navigate around all the obstacles and will reach the planet to deliver the mail, successfully. And the fewer arrows you use, the better your score. But, if your craft is shot, rammed by an alien, sucked into a black-hole or stuck in an endless-loop, you simply shift some arrows around and tap START to try again. You can choose the gameplay speed, from 1x to 8x velocity, which helps speed up your multiple attempts. This game is about trial-and-error, so there's no lives to lose and no timers. You just keep trying until your strategy works and the mail eventually gets through.
Fans of the Stickman Skater [99¢/Lite] and Stickman BMX [99¢/Lite/HD] titles should definitely pay attention to Fun Mob Games' upcoming Pocket BMX. I’m actually a huge fan of the Stickman games, and I love how they’ve managed to cram all the complexity of pulling off tons of tricks and combos and distilled it down to a 2D platformer with simple touch screen controls. But, as much fun as those games are, they’re extremely mechanical and stiff. Your flip tricks and grinds are really just canned animations tied to different control stick directions, and it’s missing a certain layer of interaction that makes you feel more involved in the game.
Kairosoft’s Grand Prix Story [$2.99] feels more like Game Dev Story [$3.99 / Lite] than any of the other studio’s subsequent releases following the launch of the overly-cutesy and absorbing simulation game about making games. In both games, there’s a lot of overhead before you can see any practical applications or meaningful progress. There are also a ton of hidden systems and mechanics to find and discover as the game moves you along with its forty foot stick with a dangling carrot on the end. Also, in both games your race to be the best is often determined by the time you put in being the worst. You have to click with and then master both games’ mechanics in order to see profit and, yeah, that can be a tall order for mobile.
Grand Prix Story specifically is a painfully slow-burning simulation with a familiar set of problems that plague almost every Kairosoft release -- lack of feedback, too many hidden or unexplained systems or mechanics, a bad tutorial, and a steep difficulty curve -- but it’s also a fun title that hits all the notes that it needs to. Its systems are deep and defined enough, the racing is oddly entertaining even though its just a conglomeration of dice rolls, it’s burst-y, and the overall atmosphere, action, and theme play well off each other. (more...)
Musical game-like apps have had a great life on the App Store. Smule seemingly launched the genre of musical toys with Ocarina [99¢] (if my memory serves me correctly) and later expanded out to fully licensed titles like Glee Karaoke [99¢] and I Am T-Pain [99¢]. Songify [Free] was one of the next major musical crazes to hit, which made the auto tuning process found in I Am T-Pain even easier. Tonight, Harmonix, creators of Dance Central and Rock Band up the ante even further with VidRhythm [$1.99].
In VidRhythm, you can quickly and easily create video remixes of a series of videos you shoot to have a product that's vaguely similar to some of the incredibly in-depth video remixes found on YouTube. The process couldn't be more simple. You shoot a small handful of clips, the app suggests what you should try to make one sound like, and then it auto-magically makes a video like this:
There's a number of different themes you can use, and exporting then uploading the videos to YouTube, Facebook, and/or your camera roll couldn't be simpler. I'm amazed at both how easy this whole thing is and how well it works. I mean really, it can take the weird sounds my dog makes and turn it into a coherent musical video. That's pretty awesome. I can only imagine what people will start creating once people with actual musical talent grab hold of the app.
Seriously, if you've had fun with these weird musical game-y apps in the past, you need VidRhythm. I've been having a blast with it. Also, if you like my weird dog videos, you'll lovemy dog's Facebook page.
Man, after so many of these Wednesday night release features I'm really scraping the bottom of the barrel for relevant thumbnail images to accompany 'em. I mean, I suppose I could go image-free, but why stop a good thing? So today is Bead Table Wednesday. Will I be able to tie beads and tables into all the games coming out tonight? Well, I guess you'll just have to read on to see!
All of these games should be immediately available tonight at 11:00 PM Eastern, and earlier if you're in a region that's east of North America-- Potentially much earlier depending on how much farther east you are.
We've already covered the vague unveiling of Tiger Style's upcoming Lost Mars, but this afternoon they released a gameplay video which connects a lot of the dots in the mysterious screenshots. Give it a look:
We'll go into much greater depth this coming Monday when we have the developers on our bonus podcast, but Lost Mars is an "action farming" game set in the caves of Mars. With similar controls to Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor [$2.99], moving is all accomplished by touching on screen in the direction you want to go. Seeds are collected and thrown into fertile ground to satisfy goals to progress to the next area as you spread alien life throughout the caves. We've had our hands on a very early preview version of the game, and you can definitely see where the game is headed, even in its early form.
Stay tuned for the bonus podcast on Monday, where you'll be drowning in Lost Mars details.
Back at GDC we had our greasy hands all over Éric Chahi's iPad which was running a very promising looking early build of Another World. Today publisher BulkyPix announced that the game will be available as a universal app on September 22nd for $4.99. The iOS port will sport a choice of both remastered "HD" graphics as well as the original pixel art, along with both touch controls and a virtual D-pad. In addition, Another World comes with three difficulty levels: the original, as well as a harder and an easier setting.
Originally released in 1991, the game was known as Out of This World in North America. It was among the first games to rely on cinematic effects, sounds, and cut scenes to tell the story, and has since gone on to be ported to a ridiculous number of platforms. The original game has a difficulty level which I feel comfortable describing as "brutal," as you'll die in one hit, and a big part of the game is discovering and learning what can kill you and how to avoid it. I'm concerned with how the controls will translate to the touch-based interface of iOS devices, but remain optimistic that Another World will play just as awesomely as I hope it will.
We don't often post about Kickstarter stuff, but lately three separate vaguely related projects have caught my eye. Just for the sake of clarification, I'm not posting these to encourage anyone to contribute to the projects (unless you feel compelled to, of course) but rather, to raise awareness of awesome indie game stuff in the works that I think both iOS gamers and developers will appreciate. With that out of the way, behind door number one we've got Star Command:
Maybe it’s just me, but I have a hard time getting into trailers anymore. Spend enough time following the games industry and you eventually develop an elephantine level of skin thickness to ward off promotion and hype. Even being as jaded as I am towards anything but gameplay footage, every so often, I see a video or promo and I just know in my gut that I’m going to love the game.
It happened for me on the PC with Magicka’s brilliantly funny video campaign earlier this year, and when I saw the trailer for Radballs [$2.99] a gigantic smile spread across my face. I knew that if the execution of the gameplay was even half as clever as Glow Play’s promotional efforts that I’d have a pretty wicked time on my hands. Now that the game is out? Well, I shan’t mince words any longer; my expectations were both met and exceeded.
It was just yesterday that we heard about the Atari Arcade Duo Powered joystick peripheral for the iPad, but it looks as if the folks over at DVICE have already gotten their hands on one and given it a proper review. While yesterday’s info on this interesting add-on was limited to a small promotional shot and a single line of an App Store description, DVICE has unearthed pretty much every unknown about the Atari Arcade joystick. Unfortunately, this also leads way to some facts that make the peripheral sound not quite as cool as we initially thought it might be.
The first thing that was assumed about the Atari Arcade joystick based on its promotional image was that it would work in landscape as well as the portrait position it was shown in. Apparently this isn’t the case, though, as the joystick actually connects to the iPad via the official Apple 30-pin connector. This means that unless some sort of extension type of cable can be provided, there’s no way to use this joystick with a landscape oriented game, aka fighters and side-scrolling beat ‘em ups, aka exactly the types of games that would rule with a joystick. Bummer. Even the rival iCade can support a landscape iPad device, though not in an official, secure fashion.
With such a huge selection of platforming games on the App Store, the debate is always raging as to what the best “Mario-like” platformer is. For my money, it’s Pizza Boy [Free], and not just because of the main character's glorious beard and the fact that I myself used to deliver pizzas. In fact, currently you don’t even need money to see for yourself if you feel the same as I do. Pizza Boy is free for today, September 7th, to celebrate its one year anniversary since release.
In case you haven’t heard, Pizza Boy is an exceedingly cute and colorful platforming game done up in the classic 16-bit style. It contains all the coin collecting, enemy killing, and platform hopping that you would expect from such a title, and it really nailed the proper feel of speed, jumping and character movement that gave it that Mario vibe.
1112 Episode 3 [$4.99/HD] is the latest addition to the graphical mystery adventure game series from Agharta Studio. It's also the best of this ongoing series, as it delivers more: More game-play, more puzzles, more characters, more locations and a whole lot more mystery.
We first meet the games protagonist, Louis Everett the antiques dealer, in Episode 1[$4.99/Lite/HD]. Louis bears a striking resemblance to Johnny Depp, but he's having bad dreams, marital issues and work stresses. As you help him complete his daily tasks, it becomes apparent that something weird and mysterious is going on. There's a gap in his memory which Louis can't explain, and the number '1112' seems to keep recurring in his life. This game is about solving that mystery, but don't expect a final outcome yet, as each episode concludes with a cliff-hanger ending, to entice you into the next release.
In speaking with a representative with Big Blue Bubble, we get the sense that the studio’s follow-up to Burn the Rope [$.99 / HD], Burn the Rope: Worlds, is a blow-it-out-of-the-park iteration, as opposed to a “well, we need to do this so let’s just improve what we can” kind of sequel. A lot of thought has been put into the actual value proposition, and as a result, you’ll get more Burn the Rope classic content, fun twists, and even some bonuses.
A new teaser trailer for the upcoming title seems to confirm what we’re gathering. According to it, the follow-up will boast a total of four worlds, 100 new levels, four new kinds of flames, and an added “Endless Mode,” which bears a mechanical resemblance to Snake, but obviously adds a little something extra to an overall package that seeks to change up the formula a hair or two while still giving fans more of what they want. (more...)
It takes a special kind of game to pull off surviving exclusively through tilt controls. That goes double for games that attempt to do it and are only available on the iPad. Sure, the iPad’s accelerometer has got to be used for something, but some folks (and rightfully so) find the idea of having to tilt your tablet every which way just to play a game to be a bit daunting. Pod Odyssey [$2.99] is the latest attempt at a tilt-controlled iPad exclusive. While its controls aren’t perfect, there’s certainly enough here for an enjoyable experience with some caveats.
In further BMX-related news this morning, those handsome Swedish chaps from 
Man, after so many of these Wednesday night release features I'm really scraping the bottom of the barrel for relevant thumbnail images to accompany 'em. I mean, I suppose I could go image-free, but why stop a good thing? So today is Bead Table Wednesday. Will I be able to tie beads and tables into all the games coming out tonight? Well, I guess you'll just have to read on to see!
With such a huge selection of platforming games on the App Store, the debate is always raging as to what the best “Mario-like” platformer is. For my money, it’s Pizza Boy [
