With its comic book aesthetic, dark detective story, and double-layered title, the upcoming Framed is unapologetic in its noir influence. Somewhat less obvious is that this is the first independent project of three ex-Firemonkeys developers, who’ve teamed up to form Loveshack Entertainment.

TouchArcade was invited around to the Loveshack office in Melbourne, Australia for an exclusive first look at Framed. We sought to find out: what is this unique-looking puzzler about, anyway? What is independent iOS development life like after the Firemonkeys days of highly priced racecars and cheese-stealing mice? Can a narrative-driven puzzle game survive with free-to-play becoming such an abundant practice?

Our gameplay session was just ten minutes long, but polished and promising; it was the first six chapters of an eventual experience that lead coder Josh Boggs described as “movie-like,” both in its length and its mood.

“I had an idea of having actions that were predefined, and rearranging them so that the meaning would change,” Boggs explains. “In the narrative, the meaning behind a scene comes from the actions and context – so I wanted to play with the context, rather than the actions.”

Before me, an iPad showed me a sequence of images arranged in comic book panels – a key hanging from a hook, a door, a hatch in the floor, a bloodied body in a basement. Upon hitting the “play” icon on the first panel, our silhouetted hero began to move through the panels from left to right, top to bottom. He strode obliviously past the hanging keys, coming to a stop when he reached the hatch in the floor with no way to open it.

It was now my turn to rewrite the story. Two of the frames remained unmovable, as indicated by a small lock icon in their upper-right corners. This suggested to me that my goal in this chapter was to reach the body in the basement; it was up to me to reorder the actions to facilitate reaching this goal.

The remaining unlocked panels wiggled to indicate that I could move them. By dragging them around, I changed the order of actions. This time, the detective walked through the door, collecting the keys as he emerged from the other side, before proceeding to unlock the hatch and move into the basement to make his grisly discovery. Despite the wordless, purely graphical depiction of this detective’s journey, I felt oddly powerful, playing a part in the way his story panned out.

“There’s a strong undercurrent of narrative in there, but you’re never beat over the head with it,” Boggs says. “’For sale: baby shoes, never worn.’ Six words. There’s a narrative right there. We don’t need tons of dialogue or lore to communicate a powerful story to the player.”

Though this reordering of the panels is Framed’s current sole mechanic, Loveshack’s developers – whose collected previous game credits include SPY Mouse [Free / Free (HD)] and Real Racing 3 [Free], as well as PC gaming classics Theme Hospital and Syndicate Wars – have been experimenting with other mechanics as they work on the difficulty and puzzle progression. The ability to rotate panels might be a future feature, as well as panels that expand when dragged into a larger area, revealing more context to the action they depict.

Boggs and his two fellow Loveshackers, Ollie Browne and Adrian Moore, left Firemonkeys recently following the gradual disillusionment they experienced in the year following the studio’s acquisition by EA.

“At Firemint we had a lot of creative control,” Boggs recalls. “Things got a lot tighter after we became part of EA. That’s business; I completely understand it. But I began to miss working in a smaller team.”

All three worked together on SPY Mouse, and though their staggered departures from Firemonkeys weren’t engineered with the intention of opening a new studio, their natural synergy saw them reunite early this year to work on Framed.

Still, it’s quite a leap, going back from a big-budget studio to the quiet indie scene. In the current terrain of free-to-play titles and in-app purchases, Framed represents a much more classic, refined gaming experience. It’s beautiful with its moody colors and elegant execution – but can it survive?

Browne believes that there will always be a place for a game like Framed.

“The music industry became free-to-listen a long time ago, and there’s still musicians surviving,” he points out.

“The free-to-play mechanic will never be massaged enough to where it’s not somewhat confronting to the player. But there’ll always be a place for premium games. Some people just want to be left alone to experience the game [without being interrupted by free-to-play mechanics].”

“You don’t need to dilute your vision to sell a successful game,” Boggs finishes.

Framed is currently on target for a late 2013 release. It’ll be available on the iPad and iPhone.

Phosphor Games' moody hack-and-slash Dark Meadow [$5.99] was great and all, but people sort of forgot about it just as quickly as they got behind it (until the free to play fiasco, anyway). It blasted up the charts, then it fell down, never to see its highest highs again. This is why Phosphor decided to partner with Zynga for the release of its next game, Horn. On paper, Zynga might be able give the game some oomph over the long haul, making it possible for Phosphor to turn a profit with Horn and continue doing the thing it would like to do: make original mobile games.

Horn is the first Zynga Partners game. It seems that Partners is a publishing initiative. In exchange for something, Zynga gives third-party game creators access to some of its tools. As we understand it, Partners will prop up Horn by flushing it with users who play Zynga games, which should be beneficial to Phosphor. This could be a solution to its Dark Meadow problem, although it remains to be seen if Zynga's casual player base will be interested in something as "core" and gamer-centric as Horn will probably be.

We spoke with Phosphor about the Partners program and how it might inform the creation of Horn. It also walked us through why it started hunting for publishers and why Zynga is going to be a good fit, while cautiously avoiding discussing any significant details.

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Crabs and Penguins [Free] is a whimsical 3D runner. In the game, you control a crab on a quest to return a soccer ball to a bunch of kid penguins. Along the way, you'll collect stars for points and avoid dangers like, say, crab-eating fish. It's a simple game, but also a gorgeous one. Oh, and it's funded by Coke.

It's easy to be a jerk about Crabs and Penguins. At first glance, it seems like it's just a playable Coca-Cola commercial. You imagine that all of its ideas and mechanics were dreamed up in a board room, and the only reason it even got into that room to begin with is because a guy who wears jeans with his sport coat managed to convince all the old people that this was a good idea.

Maybe these things never happen like that, but you get my point: advergames tend to be lifeless experiences so it's easy to lump every new one you see into that pile. But if you play Crabs and Penguins, you notice that it's different. It's an OK game, and Coca-Cola angle isn't offensive -- in fact, the connection feels kinda organic.

It just doesn't feel like an advergame.

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WarGames: WOPR [$99¢] is a tile matching game that has you linking up as many tiles as possible in order to do damage against your opponent. In the game, you play as a supercomputer named WOPR with a machine brain so advanced that it can boil down a real-world nuclear war reaction simulation to a trivial matching exercise where the currency is RAM and the most important tiles you can match are nuclear warheads.

The WOPR supercomputer's inability to see its simulation as more than just a game is one of the more interesting aspects of WarGames the film. Released in 1983, it's a movie about a hacker who accidentally taps into the WOPR and buys into the supercomputer's logic. Thinking its simulation was created purely for entertainment, the hacker and a friend start a real-life war game with it and the WOPR responds to their pretend moves by prepping actual silos.

It's rare when a licensed game "gets" its source material as much as WarGames: WOPR does. But regardless of quality, the thing all licensed games always get is attention, which is the reason why this game exists. Creator Be-Rad Entertainment tells TouchArcade that the decision to make a game based on a licensed property had a lot to do with all the noise on the App Store. The studio needed something to stand out, and it had an exciting idea for a prototype.

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Keith Shepherd and Natalia Luckyanova were just tourists the first time they visited Pixar Animation Studios. The next time? They were game developers, pitching ideas to Disney and Pixar for an upcoming collaboration called Temple Run: Brave [$0.99].

Keith and Natalia are two of the three people behind Imangi Studios -- the house that built Harbor Master [$0.99 / Free (HD)], Max Adventure [Free], and Temple Run [Free] to name a few. Speaking with TouchArcade earlier this afternoon, the husband and wife team expressed just how cool it was to work with Pixar, and they dug into how a collaboration between a massive company and an already busy three-man studio was made a reality.

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London-based design studio ustwo created a heck of a game in Whale Trail, but it's failing as a commercial entity. It'll never hit the App Store top 10. The face of its bubbly and wide-eyed mascot, Willow, will never grace products like panties or fruit snacks. And at its current pace, it'll be awhile before it generates a decent profit.

The studio has huge expectations that aren't being met, and just based on trends, it's clear that Whale Trail will continue not meeting them. It's a failure in this life. But will it be one in its next? Again, ustwo is spending money on Whale Trail, giving it a second wind via creative mouth-to-mouth. It's retooling and redesigning the oddball flying game as a free-to-play title in a high-bandwidth effort to attract the casual audience that the original version failed to reach, but managed to brush.

The hope is that this model, alongside some fresh content, will finally put the game over the top and onto hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of phones and tablets across the world. It's a crazy plan. Crazy, however, is kinda its project lead's thing.

On Conversion, Failure, And Journeys

I've been speaking with ustwo co-founder Mills about the upcoming transformation. Mills is like a bizarro Clint Eastwood. In the face of adversity he has the same grit and air of determination, but instead of a cowboy hat and a killer squint Mills rocks a long, flowing red wig and eyeglasses with thick, black frames. When he talks to you, even via e-mail, you feel his warmth, energy, and passion. He's funny, too, and you see a lot of his brand of humor in his game. As we talk, he refuses to call the original Whale Trail a failure despite being able to produce evidence indicating as much. Instead, he calls it a "succailure" and the process of making it a F2P title a "journey."

"Whale Trail was our first proper game release," Mills tells TouchArcade. "Full heart, full passion. The launch was a success for our studio, showering loads of eyeballs on us but something didn't quite click. Although we were hitting 12,000 downloads a day at launch, it tailed off pretty quick."

In fact, Whale Trail has just hit over 188,000 total sales, and it shifts around 250 units a day across Android and iPhone and iPad. These kind of numbers would be enough for a lot of studios, but ustwo spent oodles of cash on the game. It needed Whale Trail to be up there with the Angry Birds and Fruit Ninjas and the Cut the Ropes of the world.

How those titles manage to stay up top is a matter of debate. Mills doesn't believe that featuring, reviews, or exposure brings in new downloads. He thinks that word of mouth is now driving sales. As evidence, he notes that the game's trailers still get around 500 new views a day and the music video for the theme used in the game drives interest, too. Riding on a wave of featuring, however, Whale Trail managed to light up the charts for a short period. Mills shot us the following handy chart, for those of you into the numbers:

Learning about why the game didn't keep selling at its initial, breakneck pace is an important component of its upcoming transformation. Mills is soaking up everything he can. He frequently frames this entire ordeal as a learning experience.

"We went back to the drawing board and dove deep into the blue waters to understand why Whale Trail wasn’t quite able to take off. We had made a wonderful experience but there wasn’t enough ‘replay’ value in the current game. The new challenge levels added in iteration release two and three helped, but we needed more. Much more," he adds.

The new version of the game is, indeed, functionally different. As you collect bubbles and travel, you'll collect an in-game currency called Krill. With Krill, you can buy new powers, "useable treats," costumes for Willow and its five new playable friends. If you want this stuff without the grind, you can buy Krill straight-up.

"The game is so much better. Players are now in full control of their destiny and each play rewards them. This was missing before," he says.

If you've already purchased Whale Trail, Mills says you'll receive a "BIG" bag of Krill when you update to the new version. Additionally, you'll receive a message designed to make you feel "special." Mills worries about how the current install base is going to react to this massive change, since the regular version will essentially die after this update. Perhaps that's why this message to fans will be "like finding a bag of money in your house that you can use to pimp it right up 50 style" or "like finding a bag of candy that is so sweet, yet so sticky."

When I bring up failure, Mills says I have a point, but he describes the experience so far as a "journey." His studio has had opportunities to sell off the IP or actually make money, but ustwo as a whole is more interested in learning at this point.

"You can look at it as a failure, but I see it as journey," Mills says. "Each iteration of Whale Trail has created a new buzz and has engaged the players more. It's been a big lesson for me especially in regards to releasing something I wanted and releasing something that the majority of players want. We were very successful at creating buzz, we were very open about the whole experience and the story of Whale Trail will now be told via Penguin," he tells us. He means the publishing company, not an actual penguin.

"We had two Whale Trail acquisition offers for the game as it currently stands now, but we were not interested in money. We were interested in better understanding what we could do to make the game better. I couldn't walk away from it now, knowing it was not the game we wanted it to be. The game we have since built and are testing now with players is the game we should have released back then but didn’t realize it at the time."

Even though the Whale Trail flopped, Mills notes some positives. It gave his studio new business opportunities, a higher-profile in the development community, and a lot of good will. These things, however, aren't going to make new Whale Trail sail. A balance of IAP and fun mechanics are the only thing that'll save it.

"I want to know more about free-to-play," Mills says. "We are not being aggressive with the monetization potential. Players need never spend, but the joy they feel should allow the game to be pretty viral. We get a small social virility through Twitter right now, but the potential at the higher numbers is unreal. I guess the plan is for Willow to find some real Whales!"

We'll have to see if the new version of Whale Trail hits the heights that Mills thinks it can reach. Regardless if it does or not, it's going to be hard to call this iteration a failure. To Mills, success is all about what you do as you try to succeed.

"We didn't set out to make something generic. Success is about crafting something you believe in and telling that story, granted it may never be a smash hit as the very concept of a little fat flying whale called Willow who lives in a psychedelic land is too far out for many to stomach, but we made something we are so proud of."

We'll have hands-on impressions in the near future.

In an age where game studios are talking to behavioral psychologists and hiring retention experts and monetization specialists in a rush to juice the most out of free-to-player gamers, there's at least one studio developing free-to-play games that doesn't care about metrics, compulsion loops, and user acquisition. Game business never informs game design at NimbleBit. Fun is first, the mechanics of free-to-play are secondary.

Pocket Planes is the next big thing from the two-man studio, and it's philosophically linked with its other titles. Without shaking a virtual change cup in your face, Pocket Planes gives you a vibrant and customizable world and ownership over it as you ferry a fleet of planes from one airport to the next. Designers David and Ian Marsh believe that these components will be enough to organically drive the free-to-play aspect. No business trickery is required.

The Art Of Good Free-To-Play

"[Our] philosophy is to consider monetization as little as possible during the design of the game," Ian tells TouchArcade. "The in-game currencies are balanced to be a natural part of the game without the option to even purchase more during design and beta," he points out. "Adding IAP and deciding how much to charge is always one of the last things we do before launch. We take care to make sure that everything in the game is accessible and achievable without every purchasing IAP."

Ian and David proved that this approach works with Tiny Tower. The game made money even though monetization aspects weren't a focal point. The game also did well with critics, earning all sorts of amazing reviews and even a Game of the Year nod in 2011 from the editorial team at Apple. Millions of people played Tiny Tower, too.

Pocket Planes is still deeply in beta, but I'm as hopelessly ... hooked on it as I was Tiny Tower. Every ten or so minutes I pick up my phone and plan more flights. When I'm not playing, I spend time thinking about new planes and creative ways to expand my cash and transport flow. Should I grind in my current selection of airports until I can buy New York's airport? Or should I keep expanding with much smaller airports to broaden my empire, and slowly build up the necessary resources to acquire international hubs? What if I converted all my fleet to four-seat airplanes? How much could I earn then?

These are the questions running through my head, in part because the simulation aspect of the experience is so good. But I'm also just straight-up invested in the world that I'm creating, and I want to keep making it bigger and better. There are so many small, yet beautiful touches in Pocket Planes that drive my mania. I can name all my planes and customize each of my pilots. My passengers post their thoughts on an in-app Facebook client called "BitBook." I can buy any airport that I can afford, and I can also upgrade it to make it bigger and better. I can build my planes and when I watch them fly, I can collect the game's two currencies randomly floating in the air. Pocket Planes also knows when I'm flying. The day and night cycle is synced to the real world. When I receive a Push notification, my phone emits a soft airplane cabin ding.

These are the aspects that David and Ian believe drive users to spend. These are the things it spends all of its time developing. There is no conversation about loops or feedback. The duo spend their time making games with character, real progression, and meaningful stuff. Their games have a soul.

"I'm not sure if there is some kind of secret sauce, but we definitely focus a lot of time on adding lots of things to our simulation games that make them feel like a functional little world inside," David tells us. "I think the stronger the feeling that there is a buzzing simulation going on inside the game, the more fun it is to influence it and use your actions to mould and direct it."

"I agree with Dave completely," Ian says. "The more detail and emotion you put into these little worlds the more immersed players become and the more they enjoy spending time with it."

"I think the customization has a lot to do with it as well," he continues. "That isn't just a plane flying in the game, it is your plane that you named yourself and spent time finding the perfect paint job for. In Tiny Tower, it isn't just a generic bakery, it's Brad's Bread with interior decoration of his choosing and hand picked employees that took work for him to recruit."

David explains that Tiny Tower and the feedback blowing up NimbleBit's inbox is actively informing the development of Pocket Planes. Users are lauding their game design ideals and are actually thanking David and Ian for making a fun game first.

"I think we definitely are trying to strike the same balance and attitude in all our future free-to-play games because it resonates with players and matches the type of games we prefer to play ourselves," David says. "The other thing we have learned from Tiny Tower and also Pocket Frogs is that the more we can stimulate players imaginations the better. The kind of fan art and fan communities that have grown around those games is amazing and that is a target we are always aiming for."

Pocket Planes is shaping up to be a tremendous game and my praise is coming at a time when more and more new free-to-play games continue to feel like skinner boxes instead of fun things to play with. Ian and David are doing important work here, proving that free-to-play doesn't need to inform fundamental game design.

"Even without spending a dime, players become heavily invested in these worlds because of their character and charm -- not some carefully crafted compulsion loop. That is what keeps them coming back," Ian says.

Fun doesn't need to cost a penny, and that's what NimbleBit strives to make a reality with each release.

This is a promo image for Solipskier, which was used when Mikengreg revealed the game to people.

When a game developer creates an awesome game, we expect its next release to be just as good. This works both ways. Greg Wohlwend and Michael Boxleiter of Mikengreg fame have told me what it feels like to have to work on something new with the expectation of past success in the background. It isn't just noise -- it's having an effect on the development on its new title, Gasketball. From ideas to coding, the shadow of the success of an arcade skiing game called Solipskier [$.99] looms. It makes decisions harder. It ramps up the scope and quality. It's making the stakes higher at a time when the studio is looking to do something totally different.

We discussed two kinds of pressure: external and internal. Mike and Greg said that they don’t feel any external heat as they build Gasketball. Solipskier got into a lot of hands, but that hasn't given the studio the kind ravenous base that other great independent developers, like Team Meat of Super Meat Boy fame, enjoy. There aren’t throngs of people  expecting mastery in the follow-up from Mikengreg, in other words, so the bar feels low.

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The new iPad and its gorgeous high-definition display has been in our lives for over a week. Game developers have had one for the same stretch of time. Undoubtedly, you're into new iPad, but what about the guys who make the media you consume on it?

Over the last few days, we've been asking a smattering of the highest profile iOS developers out there what they think of the new device now that they've had the time to use the thing. We've also been inquiring about commitment: will these major players support the Retina screen in updates and future releases?

Below is a list of who we've been talking to so far and their responses. As you'd suspect, everyone is still excited about the possibilities of the new iPad's beefier hardware. Also, many updates are on the way.

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Working with someone else's baby is hard work, but Mass Effect: Infiltrator isn't Iron Monkey's first rodeo with another company's high-profile IP. Earlier in 2011, it busted out an amazingly true Dead Space experience on iOS. Horror, action, dismemberment: this thing had it all. "Soon," Iron Monkey will release Infiltrator into the wild, as console fans prepare for the next the huge game in the Mass Effect franchise, Mass Effect 3. We don't know yet if Infiltrator will feel as pure and focused as Dead Space, but we did get a chance to chat with the game's design director Jarrad Trudgen to get a better idea.

Consider us stoked.

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Simogo's new office. Look how busy these guys are!

Simogo doesn't make games like most studios. It doesn't do design docs, meetings strike it as silly, and it doesn't get rattled when something isn't working as intended or a game needs to be delayed. It can be different because its games are the product of an improvisational style of development that sheds structure when it impedes an organic flow of ideas, analysis, and feedback. Simogo calls this "jazz development." It’s a good name.

Simon Flesser and Magnus "Gordon" Gardebäck are the two dudes behind Simogo. They’ve been working together for over five years across two different companies. They make mobile games now in Malmö, Sweden. Their office is a lively place with a pine-colored floor, a massive window, a radiator, and rainbow colored throw rugs.

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We recently brought news of the BulkyPix announcement that the much anticipated iOS port of Eric Chahi's Another World will be landing in the App Store on September 22nd. Xavier Liard of DotEmu, the studio developing the iOS version, put us in touch with the game's renowned author to discuss details of the upcoming release.

As we indicated yesterday, Another World for iOS will feature both the graphics of the original game as well as re-mastered "HD" graphics done specifically for this release. (A two-fingered swipe up the screen will toggle the visuals at any time.) In speaking with Chahi, I learned that this 20th Anniversary Edition of the game is running a tweaked version of the core script from acclaimed 15th Anniversary Edition, as executed by Chahi's own custom script interpreter that has been converted from 68000 assembly to C++. All of the sounds in the game have been re-mastered as well, to deliver an enhanced audio experience as compared to the original.
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Junk Jack is the latest super ambitious and super promising independent game to catch our all-seeing eye. At its core, it’s an adventure-ish game that borrows a lot from another indie darling, Minecraft. It also seems to draw from its side-scrolling cousin Terraria. In it, you’ll be tasked with gathering materials and putting them together, but mostly, you’ll be left to your own devices to explore and survive inside a world filled with treasure, Red Bull, and whatever else the two-man team, Pixbits, decides to drop into it.

Inarguably, Junk Jack is derivative of Mojang’s and Re-Logic’s respective titles, but I think you’ll be surprised when you hear that the team didn’t even know about Terraria when the game and it’s iconic smoking miner, Jack, were initially sketched out. Since then, the team has embraced that work and has allowed it to inform development.

“...we tried to get some inspirations without being too trivial,” Pixbits told us in a recent e-mail exchange. “When you develop for the iPhone you have to think about the fact that everything goes in a different way compared to a normal desktop game, controls are different, game experience is different, and also the time pattern you spend while gaming is different, so our focus in this regard was to develop a slick and fun gameplay, while maintaining the sandbox experience that users love and that we all know.“

“We don’t want to go beyond, since we really both respect Minecraft and Terraria (we play together to both of them), we just like to offer a similar gameplay experience to entertain with when you are not at home.”

Junk Jack is being developed with procedurally generated worlds in mind, and so a good chunk of time is being spent in the actual coding to ensure a smooth experience. The final world size hasn’t been decided quite yet, but you’ll get three different save files for three different worlds, none of which will trade usability in exchange for size.

Games like Minecraft typically lack structure, and that’s something Pixbits wants to provide in its open-world, exploration, and crafting game.

“We can say that the main goal of Junk Jack is to explore, craft and survive inside a procedural generated world full of features that we plan to add constantly. We were unsatisfied with the ‘only-sandbox’ approach, just because we felt that an iPhone game should give players secondary tasks to entertain themselves.

“That’s why, for example, we have implemented a simple yet effective mail system that allows the player to craft his own mailbox and use it to accept fun quests asked from various people which need to retrieve their lost items, providing rewards in exchange.”

Pixbits tells us that the mailbox is just the beginning of some sort of quest line -- the studio will continue to add tasks and give people something to do inside their respective worlds. Also, the studio will be looking to fans for ideas for future updates. To hear Pixbits tell it, users will have an actual stake in the game and will guide their hands after release.

Junk Jack is planned to hit at some point this September. The version you're seeing here is strictly for the iPhone and iPod Touch, but an iPad version isn't out of the question. It's just not on the docket at the moment.

When I talked with Chair Entertainment's Donald Mustard the other day about Infinity Blade I couldn't let the opportunity to talk a bit of Shadow Complex slip past me. If you don't know, Shadow Complex is a brilliant Metroidvania-style action title that I still consider to be one of my favorite games ever. How could I resist asking Mustard if Shadow Complex could ever be released the iPad? I want it everywhere at anytime.

I told Mustard before I even fired off the query to be prepared to hear something stupid. Shadow Complex is in no way a touch screen type of game. In fact, I can't think of a single way the game could be ported to iOS and end up playing as well as it does on Xbox Live Arcade. I think I caught him a bit off guard with my steamy, hot fanboy desire. He ended up asking me initially in response, "What do you think? How do you think Shadow Complex would control on the iPad?"

I replied, "I don't know! I just want to hear you say it," I exclaimed. We both laughed and then Mustard shared his thoughts on the matter.

Yeah, I mean, for me, I don't know," Mustard said. "I think for Shadow Complex to show up on a touch device would mean we'd have to figure out a way for it to control really, really tight and really, really awesome. I'm not saying that can't be done. In my few minutes of thinking about it I'm kind of like, 'well, I don't know. We'd have to compromise a lot of the tightness that came with the control scheme of Shadow Complex.'

As Mustard said, Shadow Complex for the iPad could happen. But for it to be a reality, Chair would have to feel comfortable with the way the controls translated to the device. It would have to feel perfect, just like the XBLA version does.

For me -- that's what it comes down to, if it can't be amazing, then I don't want to do it. I don't want to shoehorn controls in. I don't want to force it. Again, I'm not saying that it can't be done, but we'd have to come up with a way that it would still feel like Shadow Complex and still feel that tight. To me, one of the things that really made Shadow Complex feel good was that the controls were extremely responsive and worked. I'd have to be able to pull off a triple jump while shooting a foam gun while turning on my friction dampener to turn on so I could run across ceilings all with the touch pad. I dunno. We'll see. If anyone out there has a brilliant idea on how to make it control great, let us know!

Infinity Blade is Chair's first game since Shadow Complex. I tend to think sequel whenever a game hits with as much acclaim and sells as well as Shadow Complex did, so with this in mind, I asked if IB was the game Chair wanted to make following Shadow Complex. In short, yeah, it was.

This is the game I… when someone came to me and said, 'we would really like you to make a game for iOS devices and we'll have four months to do it…' What would you do? This is the game I would make. Absolutely. Given those constraints and that opportunity, yeah, we think this game is awesome for that.

But will Chair stick with the iPhone after the release of IB? We'll see. Mustard and Chair are committed to making strong games on every platform.

For us, we just want to make awesome games. We want to make games people like to play, that entertain people and make them happy. I'm pretty device agnostic. To me, every console there's opportunities to do really unique, cool stuff. We will continue to make games for every device and console that makes sense to make games for.

Infinity Blade, which is an actual iOS game created by Chair Entertainment releases this holiday on the iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, and iPad.

It's easy to get the gist of Chair Entertainment's Infinity Blade by watching a sizzle reel or by reading the various impressions pieces on the web. It's a medieval action RPG that pits you against various titanic foes in pitched battles that'll require you to approximate sword slashes and parries with swipes and gestures. But what you won't get from these mediums are specifics.

This is why I contacted Chair for an interview about IB. The game looks so great, looks so promising, that I just had to know more about it. The man I spoke with, Chair creative director and lead designer on IB Donald Mustard, filled me in.

It's More Of An Action Game
Think of the RPG aspects of Infinity Blade as a strategic compliment. The action part of the game, which has you reacting to attacks from large and small foes, and then dispensing your own punishment composes the core of the game.

When we sat down to look at the device and we had an opportunity to make a game for it we kinda had this idea kicking around in our heads for awhile about how could we make a really cool sword-fighting game that actually felt like you were sword fighting as opposed to mashing buttons. We thought that the touch screen on these devices would be the perfect place to do something like this.

Right down to its core, we thought it'd be really fun to have a game where I could have a big, nasty enemy on the screen that's coming at me with a sword -- a sword that could be coming from any angle at any time. And because I have a touch screen, I could swipe my finger exactly where that sword is coming at me and parry it away and knock that guy's blade back and then swipe at the guy.

As for those RPG elements, they come from how you customize your character with items like swords, shields, and armor found in the environment. Every sword and shield has EXP attached to it -- as you use the item, the EXP drains into you and into your overall EXP pool. You'll also master the item once it is drained. When you level up, you'll gain skill points that you can then apply to your character, so draining an item is something you want to do. Unless, of course, this happens:

You'll find yourself with a mastered sword that's pretty cool, but... let's say you have an ice sword that you've mastered and you're coming up to an enemy that's weak to ice. You've got a fire sword equipped currently that you're gaining EXP from. You're like, 'Well, do I really want to re-equip my ice sword that I'm not going to get EXP from in this fight? I really want to use it on this guy because he's guarding a treasure. I know can beat him easier that way.'

I should note that you can also use magic rings to cast spells. You'll have to draw the symbol of the spell on the screen. These can level up too and become stronger.

You're A Knight In His Version Of Gannondorf's Fortress
Interestingly, IB kicks off where most games end. You're an aging knight at his end goal ready to square off against the God-King and his last remaining Titans. It's an interesting twist that we'll learn more about as we play the game.

It's Not On Rails
There's a lot of speculation about IB being on-rails, as in the game will do the walking for you. That phrase has stigma attached to it, despite the fact that several games have managed to be great, guided experiences. IB is not an on-rails title, but it does plainly point out where you need to go via "nodes" in the world. To me, it sounds like Myst with some actual guidance.

In IB, you'll be able to move your character in the game world with a simple click on a destination, which is probably why it's commonly thought to be an on-rails game. The point of this streamlined method of control, though, had more to do with ease of play as opposed to a specific point of level design at first.

We really wanted to come up with a way to navigate the castle that was different than games I've played on my iOS device. We're not huge fans of games that try to emulate what a controller would do on the touch screen. We're way bigger fans of games that use the touch screen in a unique way that's more suited for that device. We tried with everything we did in Infinity Blade to make it a game that you can be play with one finger. That was our mantra.

When it came to navigation we settled on more… we call it cinematic click navigation. So, basically, I can use my finger to look around the environment by just holding down on the screen as I swipe back and forth to move the camera. And then I can click on certain points in the environment, kind of more like Myst or some adventure game, and then my character will cinematically move towards that location. While that's happening, I could be picking up gold or see other nodes to go in different ways.

The Multiplayer Won't Just Be Knight On Knight

Post release, Chair plans to release an update that will add competitive multiplayer to the game via Game Center. This component won't just be knight on knight action and furious swipe fests. Chair will try to put you in the shoes of some of the monstrosities in game to make things different.

We've got some cool ideas, how we could make it different than what you'd expect, to make it fun. One of the things that will be key to that is not just having it be 'my knight fights your knight.' But having it be more like, 'How can we have multiplayer that is a knight versus the boss?' We want to give people the opportunity to play as the big, 15-to-20-ft. tall titan. How do we make that work in multiplayer and have that be fun and engaging and balanced?

Epic Citadel Was The Show-Off App, IB Is The Game
Epic Citadel [free], which was the first App to use Epic's Unreal 3 Engine, was a commercial. IB will be the first Unreal 3-powered game. I want to make sure you're aware of that distinction because it's very clear that Chair is really behind IB and working as hard as it can to make a functional, iOS-specific and friendly title.

I think there's room for lots of different kinds of games on every console. Our personal taste is that we tend to gravitate more towards games on any console that are designed more specific to that console. So, if I'm making Shadow Complex on the Xbox 360, I'm going to do everything I can take advantage of what the Xbox 360 does well, whether that's the way it renders graphics or the way its controller is layed out. I'm going to utilize every tool on that device to make it cool.

The same with a touch screen device. There's a lot of things you can do with a touch screen that I can't do with a traditional joystick. And we tried to focus the game design to really take advantage of swipes and clicks and different things you can do that are cool as opposed to try to shoehorn in a traditional control scheme. I think ultimately that makes for a more seamless, more unique experience.

Infinity Blade is due out this holiday for the iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, iPod Touch, and the iPad. Updates will, as Mustard said, follow soon after its release.