In my fourth year of university, I took a class called Canadian Experimental Shorts. I wasn't optimistic going in (I mean, that title alone puts you to sleep, right?). On my first day, however, instead of handing out notes or instructions, the professor dimmed the lights and showed us something I had never seen before: a film without cameras. Barely longer than two minutes, it was animated entirely onto physical film strip, and packed with color that danced, twinkled, and exploded to the sound of classic jazz. Its name was Cameras Take Five, and it sold me on Canadian Experimental Shorts. Good news if you're looking for something completely original: Melodive [Free] is basically Cameras Take Five: The Game.
Fair warning: like experimental film, this one isn't the most approachable at first blush. Before embracing the game's persistent feeling of being lost, I felt...well...completely lost. Unable to understand the controls, not quite sure what shapes I was looking at, and disturbingly confused as to which way was up. Fascinated by the ambient noises and sea of floating jewels, I decided to re-read the instructions section and give it another go. And another. And then another. And while I can't say I ever fully came to terms with which way was up, it ultimately didn't matter soon enough.
Mobile games have left their roots behind, no longer relying on entertaining us with a dozen variations of Snake and Bejeweled. Our habits haven't quite kept up. For every one of us that sits and plays an iOS game for hours straight there are many more who will never load up a game for more than five minutes in a sitting. That's reasonable: these games are a diversion on the go for most people. It's just a shame because there are games that can't be digested in five short minutes. Take Lucky Frame's Wave Trip [$1.99].
I didn't fully grasp Wave Trip until I played with the level editor. The studio's latest comes off like a competent cave flyer that makes pretty music—to Lucky Frame's usual impressive standard of pretty music, of course. The scoring rules seem a bit opaque, and you're never quite sure what's coming next. In fact, what's coming next seems to change each time you start a level over. But open up the level editor for a few moments and the whole game unfolds before you.
Yesterday I sat down with fellow dragon enthusiast Brad Nicholson to play Dragons Dream [$4.99], a new cave-flyer style arcade game from Appshen Limited that uses artwork created by legendary fantasy landscapist Roger Dean.
You might be familiar with Roger Dean's body of work by way of his dozens upon dozens of album covers that he's created over the last 40+ years, most notably for just about every album from the band Yes and many from the band Asia. He's also done work in the world of video game box art, like the iconic box art for Shadow of the Beast from Psygnosis or the revamped Tetris art from Tetris Worlds in the early 2000s.
As for the game itself, it's actually rather fun. The cave flying mechanics feel incredibly tight, and obviously the artwork is wonderful. In fact, the visuals combine so well with the music and sound effects that it creates an experience all its own, despite the game being somewhat simplistic and light on features. I was quite pleasantly surprised by just how much I enjoyed the game myself in our review from earlier this week. If you enjoy fantasy artwork or are a fan of Roger Dean, then I think you'll have a nice time getting lost in the world of Dragons Dream.
Fans of both video games and music are likely familiar with the work of fantasy landscape artist Roger Dean. Since the late 1960s he's been creating album artwork for countless bands, most notably for the bands Yes and Asia, and that continues to this day. In the mid-80s he also became involved with video game illustrations, and created the iconic box art for Shadow of the Beast by Psygnosis as well as numerous others.
Roger Dean is an incredible artist and a legend in the field, and now he has another feather to stick in his cap with his own iOS game called Dragons Dream [$4.99]. It's a fairly simplistic cave flyer, and if we're talking strictly in terms of back-of-the-box features it won't set any benchmarks. It's got two modes – a 2:00 minute timed mode where you collect as many orbs as possible and an endless mode where you try to get as far as possible while nabbing the occasional wisp for extra points.
However, a feature list is not the reason you get a game like Roger Dean's Dragons Dream. You get it for the overall visual and aural experience; for the immersion into incredible fantasy worlds. And Dragons Dream totally nails that. From the tiny details like the animation of the dragon and menu sound effects to the collection of unlockable artwork (which you can save straight to your Camera Roll), Dragons Dream is a fantasy enthusiast's dream.
That's not to say that the core mechanics are bad though, even if a bit basic. The physics and weight of your dragon feel incredibly well-tuned, kind of a mixture between the smooth rise-and-fall movement of Jetpack Joyride [Free] and a more "tap-to-flap" style control. Once I spent a few minutes getting the hang of it, I found myself playing over and over again, hooked on beating my previous best scores and rising up the Game Center leaderboards. There's also a number of achievements to earn, which are tied into unlocking the game's artwork bonuses.
In the timed Arcade mode, scoring is based both on distance and how many orbs you can collect. Collecting orbs consecutively will increase a multiplier which can really send your scores sky high, though it feels like there's a ceiling given that it's a timed mode. The level terrain and orb placement is random each time you play, but even still there's only so many orbs you can collect in two minutes. The endless Free Fly mode is a much better test of your endurance and skill, with a nice risk vs. reward factor that has you deciding if trying to collect wisps for bonus points in your final score tally is worth taking your focus off the safest path.
Oh, one other neat thing I almost forgot to mention is that orb collection in Arcade mode is actually tied to the music. Collecting orbs keeps the main melodies going, and missing them gives you an eerie quietness that's a good reminder that you're screwing up, kind of like missing notes in Guitar Hero. It's just another subtle way that Dragons Dream sucks you into its immersive world, which is pretty cool. Check out the official trailer for an idea of what the game is like, but keep in mind that whatever capture software was used for it doesn't do justice to the game in person, which runs incredibly smoothly.
It might not be the most full-featured game out there, but the gorgeous environments, hypnotic music and sound effects, and attention to detail all make Dragons Dream a compelling offering, especially for fans of Dean's work. Similar to the recent God of Blades [$2.99], Dragons Dream is greater than the sum of its parts thanks to excellent artistic direction and style, and something about it is just plain fun in that minimalist Canabalt [$2.99] kind of way.
I'm hoping the game's developer Appshen Limited will see fit to continue adding new levels and unlockable artwork, but even as is the two included environments which have been created by Dean are a joy to soar through. Players in our forums have been digging it too, and if you have even the slightest love for fantasy artwork or Roger Dean's work, then Dragons Dream needs to be on your radar.
In the midst of the two year anniversary celebration of Halfbrick's Fruit Ninja [$0.99 / Free] which includes a huge new update hitting the App Store sometime tomorrow, the Australian developer hasn't forgotten about their five o'clock shadow-wearing bad ass Barry Steakfries, star of such iOS titles as Monster Dash [$0.99], Age of Zombies [$0.99 / Free], and Jetpack Joyride [Free]. They've just released a new trailer revealing Flash the dog, a helpful sidekick for Barry who is coming to Jetpack Joyride in a future update.
As you can see, Flash is a helpful pup, grabbing coins for Barry and riding along in his own doggy versions of the various vehicles in the game. Also part of this update is the new gadget the Dezapinator, which will cause some of the zappers in the game to fizzle out and fail, and the Turbo Boost which will drop rings that explosively propel your forward. Finally, new DJ Headphones are available in the shop and offer up a remixed techno version of the game's music.
The only bummer is we don't know just when this update for Jetpack Joyride is going to hit, but we imagine it will be really soon, and in the meantime you can get back to trying to teach your dog how to use a jetpack.
Update: Via Halfbrick's Twitter (and the astute commenters below) both updates are coming out today.
Updated update: All the updates are now available!
On the Wind is an eye-catching game. The interplay between the light, floral art and the chunky pixelized interfaces just begs for attention. t's hard to tell exactly how it plays from the trailer, but the gist is this: the screen scrolls by, getting faster and faster as you progress through the seasons. You control the gust of leaves with your fingertip, moving it around obstacles and through other leaves that scatter across the field. It feels a bit like a wire loop game with added speed and less sadism.
At first glance it's easy to assume that thatgamecompany's Flower is the obvious source of inspiration, but developer David Buttress says it didn't much factor into his design. Instead, he looked to The Helicopter Game, a classic Flash-based cave flier with simple, one-touch controls and a rather brutal difficulty curve. The idea for the leaves and flowing motion came from a more esoteric source: a in-depth look into Boids, an early artificial life program that models flocking behavior. He was particularly fascinated by the idea that such complex and beautiful motion could be created from a few simple rules, and he is bringing that organic motion into play in On the Wind.
Buttress is new to the iOS development world, having just recently launched his one-man studio, Don't Step On The Cracks. But he's coming from a long background in game development at Rare. Working with the other creative-types at the studio was often inspiring, but he had few chances to work on the small, creative ideas that cropped up. As with so many other developers moving from the console space, he found that iOS offers a great opportunity to play around with the concepts that had been building up while he put his time into larger projects like Conker: Live and Reloaded and Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts.
Buttress reached far and wide for inspiration while developing On the Wind. The silhouettes that make up the environment were initially inspired by Limbo. Rather than taking a similarly dark and pensive approach, he built on the idea, letting in riotous color for the leaves, flowers and backdrops. The sparseness of the sound is another carefully considered choice, like the auditory atmosphere in Shadow of the Colossus, which was usually formed only by the sound of the wind and the hooves of your horse.
For now, On the Wind is a concise experience meant for on-the-go play, one that runs through the seasons in short order before ending. Buttress is considering an update with an endless mode and powerups in the future, but for now he's happy to launch with a still-pure experience. Between the procedurally generated world, leaderboards and a series of clever achievements, though, fans should find plenty of reasons to keep going. We're certainly looking forward to playing more, having had a taste of the game. We'll be sure to let you know when it lands, hopefully in a handful of weeks.
Just a quick weekend heads-up on a title that will be arriving in 10 days that I've been eagerly waiting four long months for.
Back in July we previewed the cave-flyer / gravity game Lander Hero from Polygon Play. At the time, I called it a "charming" title, which is an odd descriptor and one I use rarely -- but it fits. So much is right about the early version that I played through, featuring just 13 test levels, that I came out smiling and wanting much more. It's just an awesome member of the genre.
Polygon Play has just let us know that Hero Lander has been approved by Apple and will be available for download on November 30th (iPad only, at least initially), at which time we will post a review to go along with it.
I have such a love-hate relationship with High Flyer Death Defyer [$4.99 / HD]. On one hand, I love the visually striking graphics which I think complement the sky-diving gameplay beautifully. On the other hand, the poorly done tutorial and lackluster controls hold back High Flyer Death Defyer from being even an above average addition to the genre. Whether you actually decide to pick up this skydiver is going to depend on how much you love graphics over, well, everything else.
At its core, High Flyer Death Defyer is a sky/cave diver with a heavy dose of exploration and collection quests thrown into the mix. You play as Arreon, a member of the Death Defyers: a group of skydiving explorers charged with discovering new islands (and treasure) in a post-apocalyptic world in which the only human cities reside in the sky. At the onset, High Flyer’s story is a bit convoluted and confusing, but as you continue playing through the story, you’ll get a better glimpse of what the heck is going on through the game’s comic book style cutscenes.
Developer ustwo™ doesn’t really consider themselves game developers, though they have dabbled with their series of “DOT” games, most recently DOT5URBO [Free]. No, most of their success and notoriety is from their utility and entertainment apps, and their extremely well-received interactive children’s app Nursery Rhymes with StoryTime [$3.99].
However, they’re preparing to jump head first into the world of games with their upcoming Whale Trail. A take on the endless cave flyer genre, Whale Trail gets the base mechanics of this type of game just right. You play as Willow the Whale, trying to escape an evil underwater monster who has invaded your ocean home. You realize that a magical whale trail gives you the power to float into the sky and escape his grasp.
Just a smidge over a year ago, Epic announced that the Unreal Engine would be hitting iOS. We've seen a great game or two developed in the UDK since (Infinity Blade [$5.99] being the obvious example), but most studios outside of Epic seem to still be feeling the engine out. Those cautious, early days might finally be coming to an end, thanks in part to Gyro13 [$5.99].
This game is sexy, pulling out most of the bells and whistles we've come to expect from the Unreal Engine. Textures, lighting and shadows are all top notch. But we've seen that before, and slick visuals don't make the game. Luckily, Gyro13 follows through with outstanding gameplay, an original soundtrack and even a hint of a story.
You play a pilot of a gyrocopter, tasked with rescuing people in a mine that's filling with deadly gas. In each of the game's 24 levels you're told how many miners there are to save and how long you have to save them before the gas overtakes you. You can survive it, but your cargo hold is unprotected and your passengers will die.
Speed is of the essence, but so is safety. Your ship is fragile, so a few slight bumps against the wall will blow you apart. Thanks to a complicated set of controls, avoiding the walls and obstacles can be a serious challenge. Your ship moves on a central axis, controlled by an on-screen slider. Slide to the right to tip your nose down and left to raise it up. That covers the steering, and a separate button controls thrust. You can also tap the screen to pulse certain obstacles in front of your ship. It's complicated, but that difficulty is fundamental to the game's success. It takes quite a while to get the hang of it, but practice enough and it'll click. When it does, Gyro13 comes together beautifully.
Rescuing the trapped miners takes skill. The mines they're trapped in are filled with all kinds of old equipment, explosives, wind tunnels and poisonous gas clouds. And those are just the early obstacles. The time limit is generous in most levels, but only if you can get through cleanly. Crash your ship and you'll be sent back to the last checkpoint, but with 5 more seconds on your total time. As time gets tighter and tighter, landing on those platforms to pick up the miners becomes an exercise in cost/benefit analysis. Is it worth it to save the miner who's so badly injured he can only crawl slowly to the ship? It might cost the lives of the other eight miners in your hold, and you might not save him either. Could you make the hard call?
It's an elegant experience, one made even better by the accompanying soundtrack. Tense techno beats increase the anxiety of the last moments of breathable air slipping away. A few other bits and pieces help Gyro13 stand out, including unlockable skins for your ship. Each level's introduction is voiced, too -- and while the voice acting isn't top of the line, I've certainly heard (much) worse.
Gyro13 isn't the most ambitious title we've seen built on UDK, but it is one of the best so far. I only have one major complaint: you can't see how much time you have left in a level, so if you've forgotten your time limit some of the hard choices become moot. Otherwise there's little left out -- even the currently-absent Game Center support is planned for the first update.
Still, this is a challenging title, and it's one that requires players to commit to an unusual control scheme. I grew to love those controls, but if you're worried they're not your style you can always get a few more opinions in our discussion thread. For the daring, though, there are miners to be rescued, and it looks like you're the only one who can do the job.
Back in May, we were quite taken with the crazy trailer for Techno Kitten Adventure [Free], mostly due to it featuring a large man in a horrible cat suit. Techno Kitten Adventure was released last year as an Xbox Live Indie Game, and has a pretty dedicated following. Developer Elite Gudz was in the process of revamping the entire game with shiny new graphics and playable kittens, as well as bringing it on over to the iOS platform.
A couple of weeks later, Techno Kitten Adventure did launch in the App Store, and got a solid stamp of approval from yours truly during our podcast that following week. In fact, that was the first inklings of the now world famous Jared’s Kitty Korner portion of our podcast, which makes Techno Kitten Adventure somewhat historically significant. (more...)
We've recently been given an exclusive heads-up on two interesting looking upcoming titles from Digital Concepts, who brought us the early iOS pick-up RPG Loot Master [iPhone] as well as the space age tower defense title Starfall [iPhone, iPad].
The first bit of news Digital Concepts' Douglass Beck shared with us should be of interest to all the Minecraft junkies out there. Doug is working on a game that started out as something of a "pet project," but is now evolving nicely and should make it to both App Stores (Mac first, then iOS) sometime down the road. The as-yet-unnamed title is a single- and multi-player Minecraft-like game that is already quite functional in its early state of development.
That's about all we can share right now in the way of media and details on the studio's Minecraft-alike, but we'll bring more before the game goes live. (more...)
One of my very favorite games of the distant past is good ole' Lunar Lander. There's a certain beauty to the simple proposition there -- it's just gravity and you. Lunar Lander, which got its start back in 1969, kicked off the cave-flyer genre that boasts many great games under its banner. iOS developer Polygon Play recently offered us an exclusive look at their upcoming iPad title, Lander Hero, that will join those proud ranks later this year.
Lander Hero brings a twist on the standard formula by incorporating puzzle-solving elements into the cave-flyer experience. The goal of the game is to navigate each labyrinthine level, from start point to end pad, collecting stars as you go -- you need to have grabbed at least 50% of the stars on any level in order to advance to the next. Along the way, you will encounter a number of obstacles that must be negotiated. These include moving boulders, I-beams, (tip: flammable) crates, force fields, bombs and the like. For example, a certain pathway cannot be travelled until you nudge a boulder rolling along a beam until its weight tips it out of your way. In addition to these challenges, your ship's fuel and damage levels are always working against you. Power-ups hidden about the caverns of each level must be found and collected to keep your ship in shape.
The game offers several different configurations of the on-screen touch controls, which are thrust-left, thrust-right, and thrust-down. In the beta build I'm playing with, clustered, one-hand controls are the default, but I find a two-handed button arrangement -- thrust-left/right at the lower left, thrust-down at the lower right -- much more to my liking. Having such simple controls, as cave-flyers often do, Lander Hero works just fine with the iPad's touchscreen.
Lander Hero really shines in the graphics department. The stylized rocky landscapes are bright, colorfully textured, and slide by as smooth as glass on the iPad 2 as you guide your ship along the twists and turns of each cavern. The whole scene, along with your cartoony ship and the little bespectacled scientist inside (there's apparently a backstory there), lend the game a whimsical feel. And the physics system, so critical in titles of the sort, is spot-on.
I've really enjoyed playing through the 13 finished levels in this beta, and am anxious to move through the rest of the 40+ levels (across two different worlds) that the initial App Store release will bring. The game is iPad-only, but the developer tells me he's considering bringing it to the iPhone, down the road. I'll be sure to let all the cave-flyer fans out there know when Lander Hero hits the App Store, sometime in late September.
iPhone developer Paul Carter has recently released a game into the App Store that will surely grab the attention of iPhone-toting fans of cave-flyers and gravity games. GravSpace [link] is basically an iPhone take on the classic cave-flyer, Thrust, that keeps fairly close to the original while adding a few modern treatments.
GravSpace puts you in the pilot's seat of a GravShip in a last bid for victory in the war against the evil Zyritons. Your craft has been designed specifically to capture the Zyriton energy pods that have been hidden deep within various planets across the galaxy. These pods, heavily protected by automated defense systems, must be captured and skillfully returned to space, towed through the planets' treacherous system of underground caves and tunnels. As if that wasn't rough enough, your ship has a finite fuel supply and stopping to beam up fuel from scattered fuel storage tanks is an unfortunate necessity.
The game utilizes a combination of accelerometer- and touch-based controls to guide your GravShip through the subterranean mazes. Steering is carried out by a tilt to the left or right while thrust, shields, lasers, and your proximity blast are handled via onscreen buttons. Sensitivity and orientation of the tilt controls can be adjusted.
As mentioned earlier, GravSpace strives to reproduce the Thrust experience, but with certain modern flourishes such as galactic bitmap backdrops, scrolling starfields, and particle effects across 14 missions. (The game also features 14 additional graphically sparse, bonus "retro" missions.) But, still, it's on the basic side as compared to more elaborate takes on the formula, such as Big Head Games' Retro [App Store]. And that's not said as a bad thing; perhaps my favorite Thrust experience is the indie remake for the Vectrex -- and that's pretty basic.
The initial release version in the App Store right now, v1.1, exhibits the occasional graphics glitch here and there on my iPhone 3GS test device. They're not show-stoppers, but they do need to be addressed by the developer, and we've no reason to believe they won't.
See the developers video:
I've spent significant time with this title over the past week and, as a particular fan of the genre, find it rather hard to put down. I think it's a no-brainer purchase for anyone with tastes similar to my own, and it's a nice opportunity for those unfamiliar with Thrust and friends, but who are interested in seeing what the cave-flyer excitement all about.
Of all the different ways I have of letting off a little steam during the workday, one of my favorites is getting involved in a quick, online match of XPilot (installed via Fink) on my Mac. XPilot, which likely many readers have not heard of, is a free X-Windows-based online, multiplayer space game in the spirit of Asteroids and various cave-flyers, that offers several modes of gameplay, such as deathmatch, capture the flag, base defense, and racing. It features minimal graphics and a server browser to choose from on-going games from all over the world. It's quite a lot of fun for those that don't require photorealistic graphics and surround sound and has a bit of a cult following in the *NIX gaming communities.
And thanks to 7b5 Labs' just-released iPhone port of XPilot [App Store], it's a game that can now be enjoyed just about anywhere. And not just over WiFi, but also over 3G and even Edge.
XPilot for the iPhone feels pretty much like the desktop version, but with a smaller play screen. It works, though. And just like the original, there's a chat feature, so you can talk smack to those you are schooling. (In fact, when I mentioned I was on an iPhone, three of the players in the match ran off to download it, allowing me to repeatedly destroy them -- mwahaahaa! I suggest this tactic to iPhone players everywhere...)
The iPhone version can be played in portrait or landscape mode, depending on the device's orientation. Control is handled via touch; a ring surrounds your ship, allowing for orientation control, with thrust kicking in the further you drag away from the center of the ship. Weapons and power-ups are controlled via tap. Controls work well, but are not quite up to the keyboard + mouse experience of the desktop original.
Features listed by the developer:
Pilot your ship through a world based on uniquely authentic 2D spaceflight physics: thrust, momentum, and acceleration are as vital to your survival as lasers and cloaking devices.
Navigate through an array of wild and devious spacescapes and arenas teeming with gravity wells, transporters, and automated cannons.
Collect items to build up your ship's capabilities.
Fire heat-seeking missiles, switch on tractor beams at just the right moment to throw your competitors off their game, remotely detonate proximity mines.
Team up to steal your opponents' treasure or simply indulge in random acts of chaos.
Those wanting to get a feel for the game before dropping $2.99 on the iPhone version can download free desktop versions from a variety of sources on the net. This is an automatic buy for seasoned XPilot fans, and a great chance for those unfamiliar with the game to get on board.
XPilot for the iPhone is based on the advanced XPilot-ng code branch, offering various enhancements over the original.
In my fourth year of university, I took a class called Canadian Experimental Shorts. I wasn't optimistic going in (I mean, that title alone puts you to sleep, right?). On my first day, however, instead of handing out notes or instructions, the professor dimmed the lights and showed us something I had never seen before: a film without cameras. Barely longer than two minutes, it was animated entirely onto physical film strip, and packed with color that danced, twinkled, and exploded to the sound of classic jazz. Its name was Cameras Take Five, and it sold me on Canadian Experimental Shorts. Good news if you're looking for something completely original: Melodive [Free] is basically Cameras Take Five: The Game.
