As we mentioned in our preview of Stardash [$1.99], developer Orange Pixel set out to make a game the way Nintendo would. The result? A lovingly-crafted tribute to Game Boy platformers of old. It may lack the polish Big N gives its games, but pulls off a challenge more common to a time when creators didn't worry about keeping the lowest common denominator up to speed.
Stardash is a simple game with a simple formula. It's divided into 40 levels over the course of 4 worlds, and each level can be completed in as little as 20 - 40 seconds. The levels don't call for much exploration -- they're just series of platforms and baddies that do whatever it takes to bring you down. Unless you're a platforming superstar, they'll probably succeed. This game is made with equal measures of love and sadism.
It's almost a certainty that no one who considered themselves a Mac gamer in the late '80s or early '90s could be unfamiliar with John Calhoun's Glider.
Perhaps the quintessential early Mac game, Glider was first released as a black & white shareware title in 1988 under Calhoun's Soft Dorothy label. The game challenges you to fly your paper glider from room to room through a series of houses while avoiding a wide range of obstacles and using only basic controls and updrafts from floor air vents to keep yourself aloft. It sounds simpler than it was, and what it was was a whole lot of fun. After the original release, Calhoun followed with several new versions of the game -- Glider 3 perhaps being the most well known -- and finally, in 1991, partnering with now-defunct Casady & Greene for the commercial release of Glider Pro (which is now available for free).
We're happy to report that iOS gamers will soon have the chance to experience the magical little game that is Glider in Calhoun's upcoming App Store release of Glider Classic. I recently had a conversation with Calhoun, who left Apple after 16 years this past summer in order to bring Glider to iOS, to find out more about his coming release.
After parting ways with Apple, Calhoun wasted little time jumping into the iOS game scene, releasing Lab Solitaire [App Store], a photo-realistic version of Free Cell, last month. After that was out the door, his full focus moved to Glider Classic, which is now complete.
The iOS version, from a play mechanics standpoint, is something of a mix of several of the early versions of the game. (The developer, and a number of the game's fans, felt that Glider Pro deviated a bit too significantly from the spot-on formula of the original.) All of the graphics used in the game have been re-created with pen and paper, through a process that Calhoun details on his blog, giving the game a very clean look, evocative of the original's artwork.
Glider Classic features tap-based controls and is a universal application that runs natively on both the iPhone and the iPad. In the first release, iPhone 3GS and 3G iPod touch devices will be the minimal supported platforms, though earlier devices will gain support in an update soon to follow. Calhoun indicates that a Mac App Store release of Glider Classic is also likely at some point, given that Glider Pro for the Mac is PowerPC-only and will not run under OS X Lion. In fact, we might one day see a desktop "house editor" emerge, allowing players to create their own houses for both the iOS and the likely Mac OS X versions of the game.
Calhoun told me that, from the view of an old-school designer, he absolutely loves iOS as a game platform. He got out of game writing way back when largely because the "big guys" came in and basically stole the show from indie developers like himself. He sees iOS as an excellent opportunity for indies to get their work out there and embraced by gamers, and it's a notion backed up by so many one-man home runs we've seen since the App Store went live. Calhoun has a number of other iOS projects in mind to follow Glider Classic, and I'm anxious to see what we've got to look forward to.
In addition to Glider, Calhoun released several other games for the Macintosh in the distant past, including Glypha III (there's an iOS version by another developer), Pararena, and Stella Obscura. For a bit more history on John Calhoun's days as a Mac game maker, I recommend checking out Bitmob's excellent article entitled "Dreaming of a thousand-room house: The evolution of Glider," as well as MacScene's twopart interview with the man in question.
Glider Classic is expected to arrive in the App Store this week at a launch price of $0.99. We'll post a closer look at the game when it lands.
On this week’s episode of The TouchArcade Show we’re joined by Jim Sterling. He’s the reviews editor over at Destructoid, the host of the re-launched Podtoid, The Escapists' The Jimquisition, and an all-around great dude who knows his video games and doesn’t mind toilet humor. It takes a few minutes to pull away from a great Gears of War 3 discussion, but when we do, we dive into the hottest and latest in iOS and handheld news, discussion, and all the usual. Expect a lot of games talk and also a lot of user question answerin’ this week.
If you’d like to listen (and really, who wouldn’t?) you can do so right below via streaming or direct download. If you want to get our podcasts the very SECOND they’re uploaded onto the Internet you can do so by subscribing to us on iTunes or the Zune Marketplace.
The eternal question of what do you get when you combine inspiration from both Pan's Labyrinth and Infinity Blade with a team of iOS-centric Unreal Engine experts is getting dangerously close to being answered. Phosphor Game Studios' The Dark Meadow is an action-adventure monster slaying game set in a supremely creepy abandoned hospital.
The Dark Meadow is coming next month, and is boasting some incredibly compelling features such as gesture-based combat, "console-level" story and production, and a six-ish hour campaign that will need to be replayed multiple times if you want to see all the game has to offer.
Check out the full launch trailer:
For more information on the game, you can take a look at the initial teaser trailer, as well as additional details from the developers. We're ridiculously excited for this game, and for good reason too. There needs to be more projects like this on the App Store, as sometimes it feels like a waste to be playing simple 2D physics games on iOS devices when they're totally capable of this.
It’s not a holiday weekend, but EA doesn’t need one in order to drum up a sale. Proof: until the end of this very weekend, you can grab a huge assortment of the publisher’s iPad-specific titles for up to 70 percent off their normal value. In the case of games like Tetris this translates to several, several dollars worth of savings, which is always pretty cool. Here’s a big fat old list of everything it’s marking off and the original price point:
If you're in the market for some wholesome family-oriented entertainment, this is definitely your kind of sale considering the amount of board games available on the cheap. Dead Space, though, will continue to be our number one pick whenever EA throws these sales -- it's mad good, guys. Mad good.
We've been incredibly excited for Madfinger Games' Shadowgun since we first saw it actually running on an iOS device back at E3. Before then, the games' Gears of War-like graphics seemed almost too good to be true. Either way, I'm loving this engine war that's starting to brew between Unity and the Unreal Engine on the App Store, as it seems both are totally capable of jaw-dropping graphics on mobile devices.
Take a look at the trailer:
If all goes as planned, and trends from previous weeks stay true, we should have Shadowgun in our grubby little hands next Wednesday at 11:00 PM Eastern. If you're to the east of North America, you'll potentially have it much earlier. Exciting, right?
I want to tell you about Do Do EGG! [$0.99], the newest title from PONOS. They're the studio behind Mr. AahH!! [$0.99 / Lite] and several other fine titles, and I'd hate for their newest to get ignored just because it happens to a bit like a match 3. I want to tell you how tangled and twisted my brain got trying to understand this game, where matching too many of the same color is a good way to lose. I want to tell you about the impressive amount of content Do Do EGG! has, with puzzles, an arcade mode and multiplayer right out of the gate.
Instead, though, I'm trying to get this bad taste out of my mouth.
You see, Do Do EGG! is a good game. And what you get for your $0.99 isn't too shabby: 20 puzzles, one arcade mode and both single-device and Game Center multiplayer. You also have the opportunity to unlock three more arcade modes through skilled play. If you look at it in that light, the value proposition is pretty darn good.
Later this year in Japan, Namco Bandai plans to capitalize on fresh hardware fever with a launch iteration of Katamari on the PlayStation Vita. It’s also giving us iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch owners a little something, too, with Katamari Amore this Thursday. Slated to hit in both paid and free-to-play versions, this latest Katamari looks to put you in some familiar shoes: you’ll play as the Prince’s Katamari and, as usual, be tasked with wrapping up various items to increase its size.
Expect 24 missions at launch, six of which are “completely new stages.” Also, expect to play across four different modes, including a regular campaign, a time attack mode, “Exact Size Challenge,” and “Eternal Mode.” For you Pac-Man fans out there, Namco is rolling in a special themed level complete with dots, ghosts, and a controllable Pac-Man. Neat!
The free version of the title will include Time Attack mode, while the full $3.99 version (special price) will have all of the aforementioned launch content from the get-go. Namco has promised that more content is on the way, too, which is cool because if Amore is able to overcome the technical woes its predecessor I Love Katamari [$6.99] had, it should absolutely rock. I mean, the last one did until the framerate took crazy dives, at least.
After writing reviews for Feed Me Oil [99¢ / HD / review] and Sprinkle [99c / review] earlier this year, I was keen to check out the latest liquid-based game from Disney Mobile, the people behind Jelly Car 3 [Lite / 99c]. Their popular new game, Where's my Water? [99c] is based on 'Swampy the Alligator', who lives in the sewers and enjoys taking relaxing baths, but unfortunately the other alligators keep sabotaging his water supply, so he needs some help.
Our job is to guide the water to Swampy's bath, by swiping tunnels through the dirt, to direct the water's flow. Along the way the water can collect three rubber duckies to unlock subsequent worlds and levels. Your score is based on the time taken to full the bath, number of rubber ducks collected and a bonus for water overflow.
If you're not already familiar with Mobigame, that's one problem we're going to fix for you right now. They're likely best known for the Edge series of games, and right now you can own their entire catalog for less than the price of a single Subway foot long. Anyway, you can feel safe blindly mashing the "BUY" button on all of these games, especially the free ones:
Edge, $2.99 - Infamous for the drama caused with trademark troll Tim Langdell, Edge spent most of its early life bobbing on and off the App Store as Mobigame and Langdell duked it out. Whenever Edge popped back onto the App Store it'd shoot up the charts from all the people waiting to snag this fantastic isometric puzzle platformer.
EDGE Extended, $2.99 - Half sequel, half expansion pack, Edge Extended takes everything that was great about the original Edge and kicks it up a notch. I'd start with the original Edge first, as the improvements made in Extended make the first installment feel old and busted, comparatively.
Perfect Cell, $2.99 - I feel like Perfect Cell is the secret love child of Chair Entertainment's absolutely fabulous Xbox Live Arcade title Shadow Complex combined with aliens and gesture controls that really shine on iOS devices. The game can be played covertly using stealth, or you can turn the entire compound into a total bloodbath completing the game by force. (Or a mixture of the two.)
Cross Fingers, $0.99 - Tangram puzzles have been done to death on the App Store, but Mobigame manages to make Cross Fingers feel new (and dare I say, exciting?) through clever puzzle design, great graphics, and an incredibly challenging arcade mode.
Truckers Delight: Episode 1, $0.99 - This game is based on the first segment of the entirely ridiculous and potentially not-work-safe video Truckers Delight. Originally there were plans for episodic games based on the rest of the video, but I'm guessing the Apple approval process got in the way of that.
Orbit1 [Free] is an incredibly minimalistic game. It doesn't have Game Center or achievements, it doesn't have game modes, it doesn't even have levels. If you have an iPad, though, you're going to want to pick this baby up. It's the perfect game for playing around the table with a few friends, and even better -- it's free.
Caffeine Monster Software has put together the game I wanted when I first got my iPad. When everyone wanted to take a look and see what cool things I could do with it, this was the cool thing I had in mind. It's an arena game for one to four players, and it has insanely simple one-touch controls. If you're ever in a situation where you need a way to kill time with a handful of people without explaining complex rules and controls, this is your game.
We’ve been working pretty hard in the background on the site this week preparing a cool and helpful new way to discover iCade games: toucharcade.com/iCade. We’re using this now instead of our front page in order to give you a much more comprehensive look at quality titles that support the device. As you’ll see, each game has its own “blurb” as well as links to relevant content, including its original review, its “iCade Angle” write-up, and its forum thread.
That page will forever be a work in progress. Not only are older games rolling in support, but so are fresh games. You can click “refresh” on it to your heart’s content, but we’ll also do round-up posts every once in awhile pointing towards the new additions.
Speaking of that, actually, several games have added support for the iCade. Here’s a small listing of the games we’ve added since you last saw our list:
If you know of other awesome games that support the iCade or if you're a developer of an iCade-supported game, feel free to visit our support thread and add your game to the growing list. We'll catch it and definitely roll it in. Oh! And just as a house-keeping note, here, Orange Pixel says its Meganoid [$1.99] is also iCade ready, but as of right now, the support doesn't work.
This is a weirdly light week for iOS releases, and I've a theory as to why. The Diablo III beta has started, Gears of War 3 is out, and R.E.M. broke up. I'm suspecting that iOS developers that had planned releases for tonight called 'em off in favor of exploring the depths of hell in Diablo while farming multiplayer experience in Gears and grief-strickenly listening to their favorite R.E.M. tracks. That seems reasonable, doesn't it? Or maybe everyone is just too busy giggling at the @qwikster drama to bother mashing the "RELEASE!" button in iTunes Connect. That's probably equally likely, if the retweets in my own Twitter feed are any indication.
Anyway, all of these games should be available at 11:00 PM Eastern, or potentially much earlier if you're the kind of person who lives east of North America:
Here’s a bit of neat news for old-school RPG nerds out there: Rocketcat Games’ lo-fi RPG, Mage Gauntlet, is presumably worming its way through the Apple approval process as you read this post. The studio notes on the game’s web site that it has re-submitted this afternoon after having to, unfortunately, yank a build that was also submitted today, too. If all goes well this go-around, we should be happily plucking away at the Secret of Mana-ish title later next week at the earliest, but the possibility of delay is always there with these things.
Considering its delightful look, its inspiration, and Rocket’s pedigree, it’s no surprise to us that its had a share of buzz among our community. Let’s add one more trailer to the drool-inducing pile. In addition to sharing the aforementioned news with the world, Rocketcat has dropped a new trailer that you can view just below this text stuff:
One of the coolest things about Mage Gauntlet is that it’s subscribing to the “more action, less grinding” school of design, meaning you get to spend more time doing meaningful things in the game. Also, it seems pretty self-aware of the genre and that’s expressed mechanically, which is a fourth wall-breaking twist a lot of studios say away from. Needless to say, we’re excited about this and definitely want to give you more details as soon as possible. Stay tuned!
With how much praise the entire internet has heaped upon Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP [99¢ / $1.99], I find it to be almost impossible to believe that anyone around here hasn't heard of the game… But, in case you've spent the last year on a cave in mars with your eyes closed and your fingers in your ears, you can check out our incredibly exhaustive review that covers everything you'd ever want to know and then some.
The cause for celebration today is the Autumn Equinox, which has resulted in the price of the "micro" iPhone-only version to dropping to 99¢, while the universal version saw a similar drop to $1.99. If for some strange reason you still don't have this game yet, now is a great time to get on board.
Also, Jim Guthrie's fantastic soundtrack that accompanies the game is also on sale. Head on over to his band camp site where you can name your price (or pay nothing, if that's how you roll) to download the album.
As we mentioned in our preview of Stardash [$1.99], developer Orange Pixel set out to make a game the way Nintendo would. The result? A lovingly-crafted tribute to Game Boy platformers of old. It may lack the polish Big N gives its games, but pulls off a challenge more common to a time when creators didn't worry about keeping the lowest common denominator up to speed. 
It's almost a certainty that no one who considered themselves a Mac gamer in the late '80s or early '90s could be unfamiliar with John Calhoun's Glider. 
I want to tell you about Do Do EGG! [$
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If you're not already familiar with 
Orbit1 [
We’ve been working pretty hard in the background on the site this week preparing a cool and helpful new way to discover iCade games: 
This is a weirdly light week for iOS releases, and I've a theory as to why. The 
