Iceland-based CCP Games is best known for EVE Online, a ruthless, Byzantine MMO set in the cold, vast reaches of a universe called New Eden, where player-led factions and alliances vie for political clout, territory, and the resources necessary to power their massive war machines.
EVE is a relatively niche MMO -- it breached 500,000 subscribers only recently, after ten years of operation -- but its players are devoted and loyal, and the game’s revenue has allowed CCP to expand consistently. They just released Dust 514, a free-to-play PlayStation 3 shooter that ties into EVE’s universe and in-game economy, and they’re working on World of Darkness, an MMO based on White Wolf’s legendary Vampire: the Masquerade pen-and-paper game.
CCP’s newest frontier, however, will be mobile development.
“We’ve been dabbling in mobile for a long time,” erstwhile EVE Online executive producer Jon Lander told me last month during CCP Fanfest 2013 in Reykjavik, Iceland. “But we’ve never really focused on it. We’ve never taken the time to put a clear strategy together about how these things fit in with our universe.”
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.
Unsurprisingly, like anything with even a hint of Minecraft mixed in, Foursaken Media'sBlock Fortress [$0.99] is absolutely ripping up the iTunes charts. Brad and I bumbled around a bit in game for a TA Plays, there's a stupid-huge thread in our forums, and we've even had the developers share some tips. Well, TouchArcade reader and apparent Block Fortress pro-level player who goes by "Giggles Grimm" sent us some of his tips, and we figured we had to share them with the rest of our community. Keep in mind, these tips are a little more advanced with some assumed knowledge that you as a player have spent some time with the game. Trust me, it'll all make sense once you do.
Just before Christmas, Karateka [$1.99], Jordan Mechner's modern re-envisioning of his 1984 Apple II classic, landed in the App Store. Karateka is a game that tells the story of Princess Mariko held captive in the fortress of the evil warlord Akuma, and of the vow of her three love-sick suitors to bring her to freedom.
Shortly before the iOS version was released, we had the opportunity to chat with Mechner about his new release, as well as his work 30 years ago on the original game and its follow-up, Prince of Persia.
One of my favorite thing about the iOS world is how many AAA industry veterans are returning to their roots of indie development, potentially bringing decades of experience with them. This is the case with Glenn Corpes, whose 20+ years in video games has had his hands in Populous, Dungeon Keeper, and a ton of other great games. On the App Store, he's released Ground Effect [$2.99] and is hard at work on Topia: Age of Creation.
Anyway, in a recent interview with PocketGamer.biz Glenn explains that even though the iPhone 4S looks identical to the iPhone 4 on the outside, the internals represent an even bigger leap than the one between the iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS. Corpes calls A4 devices "irritating," as they had tons of potential utilizing shaders, but were ultimately too slow at processing the actual pixels. Things were only made worst by the Retina Display, as App Store customers quickly became disinterested in anything that didn't push all 614,400 pixels.
He explains that some of the cool shaders we've seen in Infinity Blade 2 could be done at a lower resolution, but you just can't release games like that. A5 devices, on the other hand, are powerful enough to use shaders that would have only been useful on PC's and current-generation consoles before. While fully utilizing the 3GS required code rewrites, developers can take advantage of the 4S by simply using better shaders. Even more spare horsepower can be utilized with anti-aliasing, post processing effects, and other things A4 devices weren't capable of.
I imagine just like the 3GS, it'll take some time for developers to actually start taking advantage of all the new capabilities iPhone 4S. I can't wait.
Burrito Bison is one of the thousands and thousands -- if not millions -- of web-based games available on the Internet. You can try the popular “fling” game now with a mouse for $0, or soon you can give it a go on your favorite Apple handheld for a price.
My eyes gloss over when I peruse flash game libraries. There are a lot of games with great ideas, but rare is it when you stumble upon a title that has the mega important hallmarks of a solid game: coherent vision, polish, and sharp execution. I can count on my fingers the number of titles that fit this bill.
Burrito Bison is etched on fist. It’s a solid, realized game that I’m excited to see come to a platform and a wider audience. I got into contact with game creator Juicy Beast late last week to talk about the inspiration behind the title, as well as some specifics about the iOS port, which is slated to come later this summer.
So, by now you’ve read the reviews for Dead Space [$6.99 / HD]. The game is good. Real good. But on top of sharing my thoughts about it, I wanted to get some inside perspective on the three pillars of the game: its world, its scares, and its action. For that, I went straight to the source, which happened to be lead designer Jarrad Trudgen.
Let’s start with the scares. Dead Space is unusual in that it’s able to make the predictable or obvious scare as impactful as the sudden kind. It’s all in the tension, the build-ups to the event. Scripting and the placement of precursors and mood setters are a big part of how the team succeeds in this regard. The other part is leverage. This game is able to use any mechanic, any trope no matter how insignificant, to scare you.
Of course, touch screen and the power of the iPad and iPhone can be barriers. So, I asked how the limitations informed the design of the horror elements, in addition to asking for comment about how some of the more clever stuff was developed.
“Scares are a big part of survival horror games and Dead Space is no exception. I still fondly remember jumping out of my skin when those zombie dogs jumped through the window in Resident Evil on console,” Trudgen said. “So, including some similar moments was a high priority for me personally.
“For the first time in our studio’s history we developed a scripting system that allowed designers to set up scripted events using triggers, sound cues, animations, enemy spawn controls etc. -- basically all the tools a designer would use on a console title.”
“This allowed us to have a good variety of scripted scares and atmospheric scenarios play out over the course of the game. We also employed teleport and asset switching scripts that allowed us to produce some truly startling and disorientating hallucination sequences that I can’t wait for players to experience.”
Dead Space has a lot of scares. The general knock on them is that they’re too predictable. I don’t necessarily “get” this criticism because I feel like Dead Space always does a fantastic job at keeping you at a level of alertness that makes you jump at whatever goes bump or thump in the game. I especially dig how these scares are worked into basic tropes, like the Necromorph room I spoke about in the review.
“As far as leveraging game tropes against the player you are absolutely right. In order to keep things fresh we play with misdirection a lot. You set up an expectation for the player like, ‘Dead Slashers always pounce on me,’ or, ‘I’m safe in this type of room.’ Then you let that expectation set in and finally, once you’ve got some mileage out of it but before it gets stale, you violate that expectation... or don’t.”
Yesterday we chatted with Id Software's John Carmack, a gaming legend who has been pumping out popular video games and next generation graphics engines for over 20 years. His latest title, RAGE [99¢ / HD], hit the App Store late Wednesday night, and since then discussion regarding the game has exploded on our forums.
To start things off, we picked up where we left off with John in our last interview, asking where in the world the previous games he mentioned were in Id's release schedule. Carmack told us that he badly wants to get back to releasing Quake Classic, adding even more to Doom Classic, and potentially even bring QuakeLive to the App Store but he's just not sure where to find the time to do it.
In order to get some perspective into what goes into making a game like RAGE, John explained that it was built by an entire new mobile team put together at Id, and during the two full-time months he worked on it, he was the most involved he has ever been in a mobile project. They wanted to be extremely careful, since this was the first taste that gamers were going to get of a much larger RAGE universe, and everyone at Id is both very happy with how it turned out, and anxious to roll their experience with the title into another even better game.
We had to ask the inevitable question that has been burning up our forums-- Why the game is on rails when other developers such as Gameloft have seen phenomenal levels of success and staying power on the top selling charts with full free-roaming first person shooters. John began by saying that he thinks they could do a great job with a full first person shooter, but there are many reasons why RAGE is the way it is.
First off, it's really pushing the limits of the entire iOS device lineup from a technical standpoint, and they wanted to create an extremely approachable curated experience that everyone interested in the RAGE universe could get a taste of. He explains that what they wanted to make was a fun pick up and play game that leaves you with a "Wow!" feeling, and he believes they accomplished that goal. John went on to say, "You can't ever be everything to everyone. You can't please everyone," and mentioned that the game was designed from the ground up to be a rails shooter. According to Carmack, the question of why is RAGE on rails istead of free roaming "is almost the same as saying, 'Why isn't it a tower defense game'?"
When asked what about enabling a free roaming mode like some on the forums have suggested, John went on to tell us that there are many things in the game that wouldn't work out as well once you take the train off the rails, so to speak. For instance, all of the textures in game have been sampled from the perspective that you see it from on the rail. If you jumped off the track, and went to look at a rock in the corner, the texture which appeared sharp from a distance would now look blurry. Of course this is all possible to correct, but it involves a massive increase in file size which likely isn't realistic for the iPhone as every texture included is high resolution, and performance could even suffer. John also explained that many of the cool things about RAGE involve scripted sequences and enemy movements that either wouldn't work, or wouldn't look anywhere nearly as good if the player were able to sneak up on a batch of mutants from the side.
Carmack considers the game to be feature complete from a content standpoint, but is considering a mode that will allow you to pause your movement on the rail to look around because there's a lot of cool stuff that at this point you just pass by. He calls it a "tourist mode." In summation, John explained that there won't be a free roaming game with this generation of technology within the forseeable future. However, If Rage the franchise is a success, there are tons of elements of the console game that they could bring over to the iPhone in potentially more free-form games.
In regards to updates, Carmack plans on addressing game center support and some various tweaks and fixes from the thread, liked the mirror mode that was suggested, and even mentioned possibly running the levels in reverse as well. John also explains that some things (such as the battery meter display) were a direct result of the thread on TA. Aside from that, the RAGE team is moving on to their next project.
John openly admits that they're still experimenting with the App Store. So far Rage has been very successful in the few days it has been out, but they're still waiting to see the long-term results of a shorter, lower-priced game. He explained that it's still a point of discussion at Id as to whether the next games are going to be bigger and higher priced, or smaller and lower priced like RAGE. Id is anxious to see what kind of staying power RAGE will have on the charts which will likely weigh heavily on the direction of their next game.
Two more games are in the works that takes place in the RAGE universe, although it sounds like no final decisions have been made yet. John told us that the world of RAGE is vast, and home to extensive outdoor environments which could be used for numerous different types of games, citing a buggy racing game of sorts as an example.
Looking to the future, John is looking forward to seeing how many people with older devices are still buying games, since the HD version of RAGE is drastically outselling the SD version. Dropping older device support would greatly benefit their future titles as they could utilize OpenGL ES 2.0 across the board, resulting in even better looking graphics that flat out cannot be accomplished on previous-generation devices. Carmack was peeved that Apple wouldn't provide them with any kind of device specific data, as he wanted to make the call to drop support for the old devices for this RAGE release. He suspects he made a mistake by including legacy device support, because the game could have been "a little bit faster, a little bit better, and a little bit cooler by dropping the older devices."
At the end of the day, it seems that the resource Carmack lacks most is time. When asked what he'd like to do next and what he'd like to bring to the iOS platform, he explained that there are many things he'd like to do, but between all of his responsibilities at Id (which were are an incredible list in itself), Armadillo Aerospace, and his family, most of those projects are outside of his reasonable to-do list.
Just don't expect the update to hit in the immediate.
According to developer Martin Pittenauer, The Coding Monkeys haven't started work on the larger version of the game. Instead, they've focused their efforts on the iPhone and iPod Touch versions slated for release in May.
"The iPhone version will be released this month and we plan to start work on the iPad after that," developer Martin Pittenauer told us via e-mail.
"We poured a lot of love into the game already and feel the iPad version deserves the same level of attention, so it's hard to make promises for a release date right now. But we plan to have the game universal later this summer."
Universal updates allow handheld Apps to run natively on the iPad, which avoids creators from having to juggle two similar Apps on the Store at the same time.
The Carcassonne update will be free for purchasers of the App, but the price of the whole package will be raised from its initial $4.99 price point once the update goes live on iTunes.
"Once the app is universal we will end introductory pricing and sell the game for $9.99," Pittenauer told us in a later e-mail. "So, if you buy early, you essentially get a discount on the version that runs on iPhone, iPod, and iPad."
As a followup to yesterday's inteview with ngmoco CEO Neil Young, this morning we spoke with Freeverse President Ian Lynch Smith to hear what the recent purchase of Freeverse by ngmoco means to them. The full audio is attached below, but here is a summary of the talk.
Originally founded in 1994, Freeverse's earliest titles were Mac shareware games. They later branched out in to games for Windows, XBOX Live Arcade, and most recently the iPhone. Freeverse's MotoChaser was one of the few 3D games that launched with the App Store. Also immediately available were Big Bang Sudoku and Jared. They then went on to release a catalog of great iPhone games, both developed in house and and by outside developers published by Freeverse.
Since the surprise announcement yesterday of ngmoco's purchase of Freeverse, what we've all been wondering is what is going to change. Ngmoco has recently shifted gears to an entirely free to play business model, while Freeverse has been happily releasing massively successful 99¢ games like Skee-Ball and Flick Fishing while working on highly anticipated games such as Warpgate.
The short answer of what is going to change initially is almost nothing, with very little changing in the future aside from the shift in payment models. According to Ian Lynch Smith, they wouldn't have done the deal if it wasn't for the shared vision between both companies, as each of them focus on the iPhone and iPhone OS. This doesn't mean they're abandoning the Mac games, applications, and everything else they do either. Freeverse will remain its own company in Brooklyn, just as a wholly owned subsidiary of ngmoco.
In addition, Freeverse will continue to publish the works of other iPhone developers, with the same level of quality and care we've seen in the past. As Smith put it, "[Ngmoco] did not buy Freeverse to make radical changes. They bought us because of our success, and they bought us because of what we've been doing right."
From Freeverse's perspective, the main motivation behind agreeing to this deal is the immense potential for growth. Through the years they've done everything they could to reach a larger audience, originally starting with shareware, then making the jump to retail shelves, then bringing their games to both the PC and XBOX, and finally jumping on the iPhone.
In regards to ngmoco's recent push to "freemium" games, Smith said, "We wouldn't have done this if we didn't think there wasn't more growth and more possibilities to reach more people in the free to play model." He cites people (now teenagers) who have grown up playing high quality free flash games as well as the massive successes seen in Asian markets as proof that the free to play model works.
Ian seems open to all forms of free to play games currently, including a one-time purchase to unlock all the features and functionality of a game-- Something often requested by forum members regarding ngmoco's TouchPets and Eliminate. Freeverse has no intention of "nickel and diming" gamers, and plans on just being smart about how these things are implemented.
While he was reluctant to comment on future game development, when asked if they were still going to provide substantial gameplay experiences for gamers to enjoy instead of Farmville-like games, Smith simply responded "Yes" and mentioned a "substantial game" being discussed behind the scenes.
Freeverse admits they have much to learn about the free to play world, but with the combined expertise of ngmoco, they hope to release compelling games that can be played at no cost to the player, while providing optional in-game purchases for players who spend hours a day playing. They're hoping this will result in games that see the same exponential growth that the iPhone in general has enjoyed, instead of the current linear growth patterns Freeverse sees now.
Prior to this recent acquisition by ngmoco, Freeverse has never had investors and has been profitable on their own for the last 15 years. According to Smith, the main motivation for agreeing to the purchase was to "swing for the fences" and feels we're at a major moment in time, an inflection point, where we're going to see an explosion of mobile gaming.
"At the end of the day, we are just trying to sell our games in a way that lets us grow and continue making more games," Smith explained.
We recommend listening to the entire interview yourself, which is included here.
Ngmoco's CEO Neil Young took some time to speak with TouchArcade about their just-announced acquisition of Freeverse. The response to the acquisition in our comments and forums has been very lively both about the overall move as well as the adoption of the freemium model.
In the interview, we addressed their choice of Freeverse as a target, as well as their move into freemium content. The full audio recording is included in our podcast format, while a summary is transcribed here.
Addressing why they choose Freeverse, Young was very complimentary about the company and described them as "wonderful people" who shared their vision and values while also having a pool of talented people and intellectual properties that complemented Ngmoco. Freeverse will remain functionally independent and retain the Freeverse brand. According to Young, to the outside world, things won't look very different initially.
One hot topic amongst our readers is Ngmoco's recent move towards a freemium model -- where games are free to download and revenue is generated through in-app purchases. The reason for this move was a combination of factors according to Young. Despite the running speculation, the move was not in response to the high piracy rates on the iPhone.
Instead, there were two main factors. First, they felt that there was a large pool of App Store customers who only participated in the free-download side of the store that were not being captured in the traditional model. Young cited download numbers 10-20x higher for the top free apps compared to the paid apps. And, second, in looking into the future of the App Store, they saw a general trend away from higher priced premium games, and towards these type of games that can be played over time.
Interestingly, Young admits that the first incarnations of their freemium models for Eliminate Pro and Touch Pets Dogs were somewhat "clumsy" and "1.0" versions of the model (and to be followed by 2.0, 3.0 etc...). Part of this is attributed to the fact that neither game was originally conceived to be freemium. Young said, however, they have continued to learn and made ongoing adjustments to the model for their upcoming games including God Finger and We Rule, and beyond.
Finally, Young confirms that Freeverse's existing games including the upcoming Warp Gate won't be affected by the acquisition, but that future games will be designed around the freemium model.
We recommend listening to the entire interview yourself, which is included here.
Venan Entertainment is the creator of the recently released Space Miner: Space Ore Bust, which we absolutely loved in our review. Space Miner is the first game from Venan, but we liked it so much that we decided to feature them in this week's developer profile.
Brandon Curiel, the CEO of Venan, was kind enough to agree to be interviewed by us, and I got the chance to find out a little bit more about him, his company, and his games.
Touch Arcade: Could you give us a brief history of the company? How did you start off?
Brandon Curiel: Venan started in the summer of 2002 in my spare bedroom. We had just left a dot com bust, and having worked in games prior to that, the five of us we decided we wanted to get back into that market. Our initial target was the Xbox, and we spent a year working on a game demo and shopping it around, but didn’t have much luck. So with our savings getting low, we decided to switch gears and aim for something more modest – mobile development. Our first game, Super Putt Classic, got sold into Sprint by Mforma (now Hands On Mobile) and from there they started offering us contracts to do new games. One game led to another, and to another, and eventually we built up our business being a third party mobile developer.
We got started on the iPhone pretty early with a contract from EA to bring Monopoly over, which we had done on mobile and the regular iPod. It was like a breath of fresh air after having to deal with the fragmented Java/Native landscape for so long. Since then we’ve done four iPhone games, three for EA and one for Sega, but Space Miner is the first one we’ve developed as an internal title. We’re hoping to be able to dedicate more resources to internal titles going forward.
The Venan Entertainment crew
Touch Arcade: What was the inspiration for Space Miner?
Brandon Curiel: Space Miner is an interesting story, because there was no direct inspiration for it. Initially we were just trying to prototype a control scheme. The idea was to use the accelerometer to determine the device orientation such that when the user turned the device, we’d take the world and pivot it around the player. Seeing some of the success smaller developers were having, we thought we’d knock out a quick game with this nifty control scheme idea, so we brainstormed for some ideas that might work. Eventually we settled on a classic asteroids style game.
Since we’re not talking about the game I just described, something obviously didn’t work. To be blunt, the whole idea was a colossal mess. I can say that, since it was my idea! There were so many problems, like not having anywhere to put a UI, getting tangled up in headphone cords, and the undeniable fact that flipping the device around like that was just not fun and liable to get it dropped. So, having developed an asteroids “engine”, we had to rethink what exactly we were going to do with it.
Having to start over again I think made us take a deeper look at the App Store to figure out what exactly was out there and where we could be different. What we found was that there were a lot of “snack” type games, but not a whole lot of the type of deeper games like those you’d find on the DS or a PSP. So, we decided to be different. Instead of going in the same direction as everyone else on the App Store, we decided to do back to our roots and just blow out the whole asteroids concept into something we’d want to play. And that meant narrative, RPG elements, and all the things that you see in Space Miner now.
Space Miner, the first game from Venan
Touch Arcade: What's a game that you'd love to make in the future?
Brandon Curiel: Dark Blossom. It’s a name that means nothing to anyone (it shouldn’t at least), but it’s a classic fantasy RPG we’ve had kicking in the background in one form or another for at least five years. Prior to Space Miner, we had been working on it as an original DS title, but gave up because the market there is very tough if you aren’t Nintendo. I’ve personally always wanted to make an epic fantasy RPG, so hopefully we’ll get the chance someday to port it over to the iPhone and try reviving it once more.
Also, Space Miner II. First since that will mean the first Space Miner was successful. But really we always have had a plan for a sequel and have tons of ideas we couldn’t get in the first one.
The Venan Entertainment offices
Touch Arcade: Who wrote the dialog for Space Miner? Can you tell me a little bit about the decision to make the game humorous in nature?
Brandon Curiel: The story was primarily a collaborative effort between me and Alex Kain, an associate designer here. I dealt more with the story elements and the arc, and Alex handled the actual writing (and re-writing) but we both did some of the other as well. We also brought in an extremely funny writer we worked with on Ninjatown, Robbie Telfer, to help “funny it up.”
As for humorous, well, I think that was a natural fit. Once we hit on the mining angle, it took all of 1.5 seconds for Uncle Jeb to be created in our minds, and that character is just funny out of the box. We wanted this to be fun, light, and accessible. We were just so sick and tired of all the dark, gritty stories you see in these games that have just been done to death. So the tone was very conscious, from the UI, to the plot, to the dialog, to even doing the space station as a bobbing 2D billboard.
Here's a gameplay trailer for Space Miner:
Touch Arcade: What's an interesting fact about your company?
Brandon Curiel: There’s an ongoing agreement with the employees that if we sell 100,000 units of Space Miner, I’ll get them a pinball machine. We have a long way to go though…
Daniel Zandelin, who is apparently a big fan of Mario Kart DS
Donut Games is the developer/publisher of well over a dozen iPhone games including fan-favorites like Rat On A Scooter XL, Comet Racer, and Cows in Space. Officially titled "Swedish Game Development Group AB," Donut Games has all of their games available in flash form on their website, where they can be played for free. With a arcade-like menu and three-star rating system for the levels in all their games, Donut Games has earned a large fanbase by consistently providing simple, quick experiences that draw players in for more, usually with a focus on increasing high scores.
I got the chance to find out a little bit more about one of the important faces behind the company, Daniel Zandelin, one of the founders of Donut Games.
Last month, we previewed an upcoming iPhone game from True Axis called Jet Car Stunts.
Jet Car Stunts was described as "a fun, over the top, 3D driving game, with massive jumps, mid-air hoops, floating platforms, spiral roadways, outlandish maneuvers and impossible environments." Controls are accelerometer based along with mid-air flight controls to nudge the angle of flight or adjust speed with air braking.
We loved the look of the game video, but had some questions about the game's playability from that video alone. We've since had a chance to interview Luke Ryan and Andy Coates of True Axis about their upcoming racer. They also provided this exclusive hands-on video showing their game and controls in action:
TouchArcade: We understand Jet Car Stunts is based on the True Axis Physics SDK. Can you give us a little bit of history on this game engine and the company?
Luke Ryan: The True Axis Physics SDK was a bit of an accidental development. It started back in 2002 as part of a game demo I was developing. The physics engines back then were not good enough, and I already had a few years experience involving lots of physics programming, so I made a much better one. I started getting a few requests to make it commercial. In-between doing contract work for mobile and handheld games, I did all the extra work necessary to commercialise it, which was the reason for the formation of the company, True Axis.
Since then, the physics engine scene has changed unrecognisably. I'd always kept in touch with the mobile gaming scene here in Melbourne and I started to fall back into that. I met my co-owner at True Axis, Andy Coates, while I was helping out at Firemint. In 2008, I decided to take True Axis into independent game development which has always been my dream.
It didn't take us long to fall in love with Tiger Style's first game, Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor [App Store]. It has a beautiful simplicity to it: you are a spider, and as a spider you spin webs and eat bugs. You can choose to explore the various rooms of Bryce Manor, or you can ignore your surroundings and just go on an insect feeding frenzy.
28 hand drawn levels paired with great music and a clever method of storytelling puts Spider pretty high on my list of personal favorites, and judging by the forum response, I'm not alone. If you haven't heard of the game yet, check out our review and watch this trailer that was recently put together by the developers:
After playing through Spider, we wanted to know more about the people behind it and what went into a game that is currently sitting at 146 5-star ratings on iTunes. We tracked down Randy Smith and David Kalina, the two people behind Tiger Style to ask them a few questions about their past, the development of Spider, and what's in store for the future.
TouchArcade / Eli Hodapp: Can you tell us more about your backgrounds in video game development and how your development team was assembled?
Randy Smith: My first project in professional game development was as a designer on Thief: The Dark Project back in 1997. This game was made at a legendary, now-defunct, design boutique called Looking Glass Studios, at which I was very lucky to kick off my career. Since then, among other things, I have been the Project Director of Thief: Deadly Shadows, and a Creative Director at Electronic Arts Los Angeles working on a video game collaboration with Steven Spielberg. I also have the good fortune to write a monthly column in the UK’s finest gaming magazine, Edge, and I am a frequent speaker at the Game Developer’s Conference, the Montreal International Game Summit, and similar conferences.
Iceland-based CCP Games is best known for EVE Online, a ruthless, Byzantine MMO set in the cold, vast reaches of a universe called New Eden, where player-led factions and alliances vie for political clout, territory, and the resources necessary to power their massive war machines.
Unsurprisingly, like anything with even a hint of Minecraft mixed in, 
