Simiotica, a Ukrainian iPhone development group, has announced the release of their iPhone and iPod touch game aMaze! via Installer.app.  aMaze! is an accelerometer-based adaptation of the classic game Labyrinth, similar to Labyrinth for the iPhone which we covered earlier this month.

Like the classic wood and steel Labyrinth, aMaze! challenges the player to maneuver a playfield filled with holes and other obstacles in order to reach a set goal location.  Some levels require the player to pick up bonus stars along the way, adding variation to the standard Labyrinth formula.  The game features over 70 levels, most of which can be completed in under 90 seconds, making it a rather ideal pick-up / put-down time killer.

Simiotica CMO Alex Dubov indicates that, while an Installer.app title right now, aMaze! will appear in the iTunes App Store when it goes online.

Large multi-touch screen, OpenGL ES and OpenAL support, built-in accelerometers make iPhone most powerful mobile gaming device on the market. We have developed aMaze to meet expectation of the iPhone owners for games with innovative gameplay not yet possible with other devices. While awaiting the launch of the official App Store, we make it available through the Installer.App to let iPhone entusiasts enjoy it as early as possible

A 10 level demo version of aMaze! can be downloaded for free, while 70 additional levels can be unlocked for a $9 USD registration fee.

The latest in 3D iPhone gaming comes from developer Marco Giorgini. He has released a pre-alpha version of Kingdom Lores, a 3D fantasy adventure game based on an OpenGL ES rendering engine of his own design.

The game presents an over-the-shoulder view of the player’s avatar in the 3D game world.  On-screen controls are used to negotiate the terrain, do battle with enemies, collect treasure, etc.  Both portrait and landscape orientations are supported and on-screen indicators keep the player aware of current health levels, selected weapons, etc.

The author indicates that Kingom Lores is and will remain a free game but he is uncertain as to whether it will appear in the iTunes App Store due to the fact that he has no Mac and, as such, no access to the iPhone SDK (the game is being developed using Win Toolchain on the PC).

The game is not currently available through Installer but can be downloaded here and manually installed via FTP/OpenSSH on any jailbroken iPhone or iPod touch.

A video of the game in action can be seen here (3:30 into the video).

A developer behind the iPhone port of the FPS classic DOOM recently spoke out regarding the port project as well as iPhone development in general.

Developer Psychochromatic explains: “Looking at the hardware specs, I knew iPhone would be able to play a simple game like Doom no problem as it was open-source and already ran on the click-wheel iPod running Linux. I knew Stepwhite, who I work with on Mac projects, and as he’d just bought himself an iPhone and was working with the unofficial tool-chain I jokingly told him he had one week to port Doom to iPhone, and all it had to do was run; he didn’t have to implement controls. One week later, he proudly linked me to his Doom port homepage.”

The first build of Doom saw 15,000 downloads on the project site alone, even without a way to control the game. Once controller input had been included that version received over 25,000 downloads.

Behind the ease of development lies the iPhone’s inherent support for a full scale OS. “The iPhone runs OS X. It’s a full UNIX system in your pocket, with brilliant Objective-C frameworks that make coding beautiful and powerful applications a dawdle,” explains Psychochromatic.

Psychocromatic is not the first developer to expound the virtues of the iPhone’s rich, versatile, open development environment.  While writing iPhone apps was once a challenge, Apple’s release of the free iPhone SDK has made such projects “trivial.”

Apple’s iTunes App Store launches in June and the list of games that will be available at launch grows daily.  Stay tuned to keep up to date on just what download to expect on launch day.

In a bit of news from Down Under, retro gaming fans waiting anxiously for June’s arrival of the iTunes App Store have reason to rejoyce.  Developer Stuart Carnie has used the iPhone SDK to port Frodo, a popular Commodore 64 emulator, to the iPhone.

It appears that in only three days, Carnie took his project from concept…

As an Objective-C / Objective-C++ / XCode / iPhone development learning experience, I have began porting the Frodo C64 emulator to the mobile OS X platform. I chose Frodo, as I have experience with this code-base, and there is a certain satisfaction of seeing the READY prompt for the first time.

…to initial success; he has a working Commodore 64 up and running on the iPhone simulator.  Carnie indicates that his next steps will be to create a user interface to manage the user experience, such as implementing save / resume states, a file browser, auto-launching for games, and an on-screen virtual keyboard and joystick.

Interest in retro gaming today is huge — a quick look at the large number of retro remakes on XBOX Live and the Playstation Network confirms it.  The Commodore 64 is the most popular computer in history and boasted arguably the best graphics and sound of any 8-bit home computer of its era.  As such, thousands of excellent game titles were developed for it — arcade conversions as well as orginals. The promise of being able to scratch that retro itch by firing up a few of these classics on an iPhone or iPod touch while on the go has us rather excited, indeed.

A potential roadblock to mobile C64 gaming bliss on the iPhone is Apple’s possible stance on distributing emulators through the iTunes App Store.  The experience of using an emulated C64 is, by nature, a cryptic one to most users.  What’s more, emulators of this sort are usually dependent upon ROM images of the emulated system’s firmware which usually cannot be distributed legally.  Apple may have reservations about allowing such an application into the store.  We’re keeping our fingers crossed that Carnie’s effort will not be resigned to use only on jailbroken devices.

Polarbit has released an early version of their Raging Thunder racing game for Jailbroken iPhones.

Raging Thunder is a gut-churning, tire burning racer developed for a broad range of mobile platforms and handheld devices. Race against time, CPU controlled opponents or up to three other speed addicts in this fast paced and exhilarating coin-op style racing game.

A Youtube video of the gameplay was posted to Modmyifone. The game is available via Installer.app (BigBoss repository) for those of you with Jailbroken iPhones.

Ok, it’s not Mercury…but it just might be the next best thing.  And it’s definitely more of a “classic” than Archer MacLean’s modern take on it.  It’s Labyrinth for the jailbroken iPhone and iPod touch.  And it’s awesome — my personal favorite iPhone game, right now.

Everyone has seen the classic, physical manifestation of this game, where the player controls the slope of a wooden labyrinth by way of two knobs, the goal being to get a steel ball from start to finish without falling into one of the many holes along the way.  Good fun and frustrating as hell.  We’re happy to say that the iPhone is quite similarly fun and frustrating thanks to the extremely accurate ball physics the author has implemented.  As can be seen from the video, the on-screen ball behaves exactly as one would expect from its real-world counterpart.

The game’s realism is furthered by the care the author has put into the graphics.  As of v1.0.3, sub-pixel rendering is utilized to increase the graphic realism and animation smoothness.  That’s effectively rendering the game at a resolution of 480×960 pixels!

Labyrinth is a free trial download and can be registered for $7 which funds further development and enables downloadable levels.  Don’t miss this amazing title.

While we expect to see some great iPhone games once the SDK is launched, there are still some developers working on unofficial Jailbroken games.  A particularly impressive example of this is a port of Kenta Cho’s Noiz2sa.

The game is a vertical shooter. The objectives are simple: Avoid the bullets, kill the enemies.  The game was ported by Lazrhog and an early version is available to Jailbroken iPhones via the iPodTouchFans repository.

The developer is also working on an OpenGL ES version with multi-touch support which is shown as a preview here:

The most recent version does not appear to be publicly available. While we certainly hope we might eventually see this become available through the iTunes App Store, there don’t appear to be any plans at this time.

We’ve repeatedly praised the iPhone SDK and its OS X frameworks for the paradigm shift in game quality they will bring to users of the iPhone, the smartest “smartphone” on the market.  There’s simply no comparison between what’s already been demonstrated on the iPhone and the kludgy, low resolution Java games that run on most cellphones and smartphones.  But hey, maybe it’s a case of “the more, the merrier.”  At least New Zeland firm Innaworks thinks so. They have announced AlcheMo, a technology built with the iPhone SDK that allows developers to “instantly” port standard Java mobile games to the iPhone and iPod touch with no code changes required.

AlcheMo opens the door for countless existing mobile games to land on the iPhone platform…but is this a good thing?  If developers go the extra mile of taking advantage of AlcheMo’s ability to utilize the iPhone’s accelerometer and multitouch technologies, it could be.

AlcheMo will open the door.  Time will tell if the neighbors are welcome.

Dope Wars, one of the more popular turn-based strategy games out there (with parents: less popular) has landed on the jailbroken iPhone and iPod touch in the form of iDope.

As Mobile Magazine reports,

A native application available through Installer, iDope is “an amazing accurate port of the popular Dope Wars game.” You get all the features that you’ve grown accustomed to, including the ability to “pay off loan shark loans, location hopping, a wide variety of ‘product’ to choose from, randomized police chases,” and much more. There’s even a “hospital” option for treating your injuries.

iDope brings all of the playability of the desktop versions to mobile gamers, including online leaderboards, thanks to its rich connectivity.

Adventure gamers of old will surely recall that some of the best adventures available were SCUMM titles.  No, not a slanderous term, SCUMM (or Script Creation Utility for Maniac Mansion) is a LucasArts scripting engine that was used for the creation of interactive graphical adventure games. And very good adventures, as it turned out.

Modern computers can play these games thanks to the ScummVM interpreter, and happily ScummVM has been ported to the jailbroken iPhone / iPod touch.  As Gizmodo points out, the arrival of ScummVM to Apple’s new mobile platform is really a marraige made in heaven.

After a long wait, here is the application that makes the iPhone absolutely perfect: ScummVM, the emulation engine that allows you to play LucasArts and Sierra graphic adventures, is now fully working on the iPhone. After trying it I can tell you that if there’s a platform designed to play these kind of games,it’s the iPhone. In fact, these are the only games that truly feel at home on the iPhone, thanks to its great touchscreen support, even better than Apple’s native software.

The list of fully supported games is long and of quality:

• Day of the Tentacle
• The Dig
• Flight of the Amazon Queen
• Full Throttle
• Gobliiins
• Gobliins 2
• Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis
• Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
• King’s Quest 3
• Loom
• Maniac Mansion
• Monkey Island 1: The Secret of Monkey Island
• Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge
• Sam & Max Hit the Road
• Simon the Sorcerer
• Simon the Sorcerer 2
• Zak McKracken
• Alien Mindbenders

And the control scheme is as close to a perfect touchscreen adaptation as one could hope for.

ScummVM fully supports multi-touch to simulate the behavior of the mouse using gestures. With a single tap you left click, but for a right click you hold one finger and tap with another. To toggle click and drag, which is necessary in some games like Monkey Island 3, you “hold one finger on screen, swipe another up from bottom to top.” Then you can drag something, lift your finger to drop it and it will automatically switch back to normal.

The games play wonderfully and bring to the iPhone and iPod touch some of the best adventure gaming moments the desktop PC has ever known.  Don’t miss the chance to experience these rich titles for yourselves.  (And on the go, if you like!)