Heads up: an iPad-specific version of Riven is still on the way, and it's going to include some key improvements over the original game, CEO of Cyan Worlds Rand Miller revealed in an awesome interview with Modojo.
A couple of "small new features" will be accompanied by a cleaner UI and cleaner images, animations, and video. From the interview:
"We have spent many months fine-tuning the Riven experience for the iPad, touching almost every aspect of the game. We have reduced the compression of the original images, we've improved the movies and animations, we've cleaned up the user interface, we've improved the sound and music presentation, and we've added a few small new features.
All in all we've worked really hard at making the best iPad version of Riven we could, and still squeeze it into the 2 gigabyte size limit."
Riven [$3.99] for iPhone appeared December 2010. It's seen some updates since, including iPhone 5 compatibility. The iPad version of Riven will be playable on every iteration of iPad, and that includes first-generation devices. Miller says it should hit within the next few weeks.
Riven is the critically praised sequel to Myst. It's probably safe to say that if you enjoyed Myst or realMyst, this'll be right up your alley.
It’s easy to get excited about iPad mini because it’s a different kind of iPad. Smaller, lighter, and thinner than every previous model, it’s surprisingly good for playing games. Its downsides are related to its tech, which is for the most part borrowed from the iPad 2, but it's still an incredibly capable device and its distinctive physical features have me preferring it over my full-sized iPad based on my time with the device thus far.
A device is nothing without software, though. So, over the weekend, I tried out a lot of games on my iPad, moving from control method to control method: tilt, swipe, one-tap, and even button heavy games. For the most part, it was smooth sailing. Games just feel different on iPad mini.
We've been hitting it pretty hard with coverage of the new 4th generation iPad and iPad mini launches today, and earlier we posted a list of the Top Ten Best iPad Game Classics For iPad Mini where we suggested some of our favorite iPad games that cover a lot of different genres and should be a nice fit on the smaller form factor of the iPad mini.
We thought it would be fun to show some real-life shots of those games running on the iPad 3 side-by-side with the iPad mini, so you could see just how the different size devices compare.
Sure, the iPad mini runs in the same resolution as the iPad 2 and has the same screen ratio as all the different iPads, so there really isn't much difference in how the games run from a non-technical standpoint on any of the iPad devices. However, what I found most interesting is that the iPad mini, despite being significantly smaller than the full-size iPad, doesn't actually feel that much smaller when playing games on it. None of these games had any issue with UI elements being scaled down, and in general it feels just like playing games on an iPad normally does just more compact and much lighter.
If you have any opinions on how you feel the iPad mini feels when gaming, feel free to drop them in the comments below or hit up our community iPad impressions thread in our forums and let us know what you think.
One of the coolest features of iPad mini is its form factor. It's smaller, thinner, and a lot shorter than a regular iPad, making it more comfortable to grip and easier to stow in a bag. But let's not get wrapped up and forget its most important feature: its access to thousands and thousands of video games via the App Store.
Turns out that iPad mini is a quite capable gaming device. For you new owners out there, and App Store veterans too, we've put together a list of the most awesome games to hit up on your brand new iPad mini. As with all our round-ups, clicking on the price of any game we link will take you directly to the App Store where you can purchase it. We also have reviews available in the text of these blurbs and videos for some on our YouTube channel.
Intentional or not, sometimes the iPad and iPhone version of the same game feel quite a bit different from each other. You can boil it down to size. On iPad, you've got a much larger screen area to work with than you do on iPhone. Because of that size and the way you hold the device as a result, you play games differently. It's just what happens.
iPad mini introduces an interesting wrinkle: it's smaller than an iPad, but larger than an iPhone. This differentiates it in the field of feel, introducing a new dynamic into an arguably cluttered mix of phones and tablets.
Will game creators be taking the size, shape, and feel of mini into consideration moving forward? Will we see any game design alterations as a result? Will we see any iPad mini-specific games? We asked some talented developers these questions.
"I believe some of the user interface elements might need to change once we see how the games 'feel' on the iPad mini. I think the new size is awesome, more portable, and more game friendly."
"After testing a few of our games on Kindle Fires and Google Tablets I think we're going to be good to go on the new iPad mini."
Screen resolutions are getting a little bonkers. There's a lot. New iPad and iPad with Retina display both support retina; iPhone 5 rocks a wide-screen retina display; older phones and iPod touches support a mixture of retina standard high-resolution; And now there's the iPad mini screen, which sits in the middle. Its screen isn't retina level, but the pixel density is quite high considering.
You've got to wonder: how is this screen going to be handled in future releases? Are game makers going to start throwing up "standard" versus "HD" releases? Or are they going to pack in everything that they can into one, lone Universal build? And if that's the route, how will the file size impact creators' ability to hit the over-the-air cap?
We've been considering these questions since earlier in the week and decided to hit up a selection of developers about them. Here's their thoughts on potentially breaking games into different versions, the over-the-air cap, and the mini as the kinda in-between iOS device.
"These days, HD versions only exist for commercial reasons. Luckily for us, Topia uses a lot of generated graphics and fits in well under the over-the-air cap. It'll be getting bigger soon but it'll be new features driving that size increase rather than Apple's variety of hardware."
Even before today's launch of iPad mini and iPad with Retina Display, there were a lot of different kinds of iPod touches, iPads, and iPhones out in the wild. Each has their own technical highs and lows. Game creators, for the most part, do a fantastic job with supporting just about everything with their games.
But with the introduction of iPad mini and iPad with Retina Display, we're seeing the performance discrepancy across the iOS line-up get crazier. iPad with Retina supposedly can push out 2X the graphics of its predecessor, making it something of a beast. While its counterpart, announced on the same day, supposedly has the guts of an iPad 2.
We asked some developers specifically about the new performance gap, and what their plans are moving forward, tentatively.
"Right now our plan is for most of our games to support iPhone 4 and up, with the highest end (iPhone 5 and iPad 4) getting extra special sauce like anti aliasing, bloom, and other effects where necessary."
"We may even be able to put higher-end models in."
"For a studio like Capy, handling performance differences is easy as pie. We're not interested in iOS from the angle of pushing tech TO THA XTREME. We're happy to leave that to the experts at Chair and other Unreal aficionados like Bit Monster, or studios that are keen to roll their own ultra high-end 3D engines. For us, iOS is about the creative potential of the device, and because of that we are very likely to avoid any of the issues caused by the fragmentation in device power. Further, I think it's worth noting that even the iPhone 4 is a very capable device, so the lowest-end device we're discussing is not massively underpowered."
"You know us, we always target the lowest device we can, so as many people can play our games as possible. Punch Quest was targetted for 3G devices and below for a long time, until we had to ditch it to support iPhone 5 widescreen. "
"The plan is to have our games run awesomely on all iOS devices that are being supported and sold, but managing everything about all of these different devices is getting increasingly difficult for a two-man studio like ourselves."
"It is getting hard to maintain now and you really have to have every device to test things properly. We have different shader quality for different devices, but Apple complicates things further by sometimes introducing new editions of existing devices with different IDs which may make them be misidentified.
In the case of the iPad mini, our games would automatically set all settings to full quality, which would probably cause True Skate to run slow unless we update first."
"We currently develop on A5-devices as the main testing devices, they have a very good balance of GPU performance vs. screen resolution. Older devices are checked at steady intervals and optimisations are made where necessary (usually this involves memory usage optimisations or texture format optimisations). A6-based devices do enjoy a performance headroom."
"Weirdly, the two new devices don't really change anything. For the stuff i'm working on performance is measured by (GPU performance)/(number of pixels), this will be true for anything pushing cool shaders or using a lot of translucency effects. The new iPad was a real spanner in the works of this equation because it was 2X iPad performance with 4X the pixels making it effectively half the speed.
If the iPad with Retina Display is really twice as fast as new iPad it means we'll finally have a device that can handle retina at the same speed an iPad 2 handles (1024x768.) iPad mini is presumed to be at least as fast as iPad2, if it is this means that the following devices all have approximately the same pixel-pushing abilities at full resolution: iPad 2, iPhone 4S, iPad with Retina Display, iPad mini.
This means that, arguably, iOS just got a little less fragmented by the new devices. Those four devices are definitely the sweet spot to target right now."
As you're probably aware by now, Apple announced a brand new smaller version of their iPad today, dubbed the iPad mini. Following the keynote address by Apple's executive team in San Jose, a hands-on session was held where members of the tech press could actually get a feel for this new, more diminutive tablet. Here's a brief roundup of hands-on impressions from around the web, and we'll update this post as more roll in.
"The smaller iPad retains much of the charm of its larger sibling, thanks to design decisions that make the most out of a much smaller physical footprint, and you’ll be amazed at how light and easy to hold it is."
"The 1024×768 display looks great, and seems larger than its 7.9 inches thanks to the narrower bezels on either side of the screen itself. And while it’s slightly trickier to hold as a result of that thinner strip, the screen seems to have a certain amount of false touch detection built-in, so that you won’t accidentally open apps or page through things while simply holding it."
"The thinness and sleekness of the casing cannot be overstated. It feels as high-end as the new iPhone, but even sharper in the hand - like a slice of solid aluminum. The chamfered edges present on the iPhone 5 have been continued here, as well as the all-black treatment seen on the latest phone. The display on the mini looks incredibly sharp, and even though the resolution is lower than the 3rd and 4th generation full-size iPad, it doesn't immediately seem like a 1024 x 768 display. The smaller, 7.9-inch surface area certainly helps squeeze the pixels."
"We just spent a good amount of time with the iPad mini and the easiest way to describe the device is that it's lighter than you'd expect. The build quality and finish both feel good as you'd expect, but the device is just considerably lighter than the iPad which results in superior in hand feel."
We'll update this post if anymore interesting hands-on impressions roll in, and of course be sure to click through the original links above for even more detailed impressions of the new device. Also, you can expect much more from us here at TouchArcade when we get our own hands on the iPad mini when it ships on November 2nd.
Following the surprise announcement of a speed-bumped iPad was the iPad mini. If you were following the rumor scene, most of what people were expecting turned out to be true. It comes packed with a 7.9" display, a similar A5 processor to the iPad 2, and a price point that starts at $329 for the 16GB load-out. It's got a 1024x768 display, is as thing as a pencil and light as a pad of paper, even optionally including LTE just like the "big" iPad.
It's going to be incredibly interesting to see what sort of implications this new form factor has on gaming. As mentioned in the keynote, the 1024x768 display will make the iPad mini work with all existing iPad software. However, I'm curious just how much (if at all) virtual controls will need to be tweaked to feel "right" on the device. Down-sizing everything means all those little interface widgets get smaller, after all.
The iPad mini is going to be available for preorder this Friday, and ships in early November with the LTE models coming a few weeks later.
Heads up: an iPad-specific version of Riven is still on the way, and it's going to include some key improvements over the original game, CEO of Cyan Worlds Rand Miller revealed in an awesome interview with Modojo. 
