Fireglow sets the story for Plumeboom The First Chapter,
Orniland is a paradise for birds. Thousands live here in peace and harmony. But two villains, Crowbeak the Wizard and his servant, Cornix the Scientist, seek to undo the tranquility of the land through darkness… with an evil potion that they spread across the country using conveyors. The potion turns birds into Warriors of Darkness serving the villains. Only Plumeboom the Peacock can destroy the system of conveyors and save Orniland! Help him in his mission!
No solid date has been given for Plumeboom’s arrival in the App Store. A taste for the gameplay of The First Chapter can be seen in a demo video of the PC version.
As Gamasutra reports, Electronic Arts has announced that Need For Speed Undercover, the twelfth installment of its popular racing series, will be released for the iPhone and other platforms.
According to EA CEO John Riccitiello, Need for Speed Undercover will bring better innovation and gameplay than the series’ previous incarnations.
Also notable is the fact that the game will star Mission Impossible III actress Margaret Quigley.
As a handler, she will recruit and guide players as they go undercover to infiltrate and take down an international crime syndicate. Players will complete dangerous jobs, compete in street races, and take part in cop chases along the way.
Need for Speed Undercover is set to ship to stores in North America on November 18 and in Europe on November 21. It is unclear at this time whether the game’s appearance in the iTunes App Store will occur in that same timeframe.
See the teaser movie released by EA for a loose glimpse of what’s to come.
Swedish game developer Resolution Interactive has released a preview of their forthcoming flight / action / sports hybrid Clusterball 2.
Clusterball 2 for the iPhone is a conversion of the developer’s existing PC title (pictured) and offers unique, fast-paced gameplay that, as the demonstration video illustrates, translates well to the iPhone’s accelerometer-based control systems.
Clusterball is a high-paced, adrenaline pumping flight sport demanding skill, tactics and ball control - designed as a first person shooter but without the splatter and gore. Played in midair with high tech aircraft, your objective is to gather and score as many balls as possible while trying your best to keep your opponents from doing the same. As your tail grows longer, your ship will gradually slow down, making you more vulnerable to attacks. Thus, each extra ball gathered involves a calculated risk.
According to Resolution Interactive, the game will feature various online components including gamer profiles, public scoreboards, and challenger features and sport graphics that are above and beyond what is available for the iPhone today.
Clusterball® 2 for iPhone will aim to make a mark on the iPhone market by offering the highest quality of graphics and maneuverability through the gyro controls. With a fast-paced gameplay and obstacle rich environment, Clusterball® 2 for iPhone will be an adrenaline filled experience for young and old alike.
“Clusterball® 2 for iPhone is very exciting, and will be a new start for us.” Say Lars Lindstrom, founder at Resolution Interactive. “We look forward to present our new demo as well as our coming titles at the GC convention next week”.
Resolution Interactive will be demonstrating the title at next week’s Game Convention in Leipzig Germany where we hope to hear additional details including an App Store release date. Stay tuned.
A demo video of the PC version offers an additional glimpse at gameplay.
MTV’s Multiplayer blog reports that Sega is working closely with Apple on an update for Super Monkey Ball [App Store] to improve its controls.
Despite Super Monkey Ball’s immense popularity, one of the biggest complaints is the difficulty with the accelerometer control sensitivity.
The patch should (at least) introduce the ability to tweak the “dead zone” in “Super Monkey Ball.” The dead zone is the orientation at which you could hold the iPhone to stop moving. As it stands, it’s almost impossible to find the “dead zone” without dying multiple times.
Super Monkey Ballsold over 300,000 copies in its first 20 days.
No timeframe for the update has been revealed, but we’ll let you know as soon as its released. As with all updates, it should be free for existing owners.
Animal Crossing: Wild World, a life simulation game, was one of the Nintendo DS’ most significant early titles. It alone moved many DS units. It looks like the iPhone has it’s own take on this theme set to land in the App Store early next year.
As Pocket Gamer reports, Astro Ranch from TAG Games is basically Animal Crossing meets Harvest Moon set in a 1950’s sci-fi universe.
You play Sindy Starlight, an intrepid space explorer who crash lands on an alien planet, and has to start her own ranch, while exploring the planet and making nice with its inhabitants.
It’ll be part strategy game, with you building up your ranch, and part action title, with sections where you pan for gold by shaking the iPhone, and also build fences and lasso runaway animals by tapping the screen.
The game will feature a user-controlled camera, and an original music score. But here’s another exciting element: connected features will let you trade items, and send presents and messages to friends who’re also playing the game.
Astro Ranch is slated for a March release on the iPhone with versions for the Nintendo DS and N-Gage handset to follow.
As Pocket Gamer reports, TAG Games is also working on an iPhone port of Rock’n'Roll, which will debut sometime in the next few months.
HandCircus has posted a small update with a few new screenshots for their upcoming game Rolando. The developer writes that the game now features “slime pits, cannons, piranhas, evil spiders, torches and much more”.
For those who missed it when we first covered this game back in July, Rolando is a physics puzzler that is featured in this impressive trailer:
While the game has been compared to Sony’s LocoRoco, the developer says that despite the visual similarities, the gameplay is quite different:
Rolandos mechanics (and I can understand that there isn’t enough time to pick up on these in the short trailer) allow you to pan around the entire level, selecting and controlling individual Rolando or groups, and issuing them commands (ala Lemmings, MvsDK2). You can also directly manipulate level elements by dragging, sliding, rotating, pressing buttons and much more. Some of the bonus levels do just allow you to rotate the level using the accelerometer - the closest to this is most likely Cameltry on the SNES.
The developer has promised another trailer soon. When we contacted HandCircus recently, they reported they were still working hard on the game and that it is on track for an early September release.
At the recent iPhoneDevCamp 2 in San Francisco, Neil Young of ngmoco delivered his keynote presentation iPhone is Greater Than… in which he shared his thoughts on the significance of the iPhone platform in mobile gaming and his vision, from a development standpoint, for realizing the device’s potential.
Young is a former Electronic Arts executive who left the game giant after 11 years to form the iPhone-focused game company ngmoco. During the presentation Young likened the iPhone’s potential for revolutionizing the mobile games industry to the manner in which the famed British home computer, the Sinclair ZX Spectrum, did just that for home gaming in the UK back in the early ’80s. Compared to the current mobile gaming kings, the Nintendo DS and Sony PSP, the iPhone offers the gamer far more, Young indicated.
“This device is about as powerful as a Sony Playstation Portable but unlike a Sony PSP it has a whole host of other functions. You can deliver new types of gaming experiences–converged gaming experiences that use the surface of the device in different ways.
You have frictionless direct distribution–no more carriers to go through. And it’s a simpler device to address. If you’re making video game for a cell phone today, more than 60% of the cost of that is spent on porting and more than 90% of the man-hours are spent on porting. If you compare and contrast to the other mobile gaming platforms, the Nintendo DS and Sony PSP, this device is connected. You have a direct relationship with a customer.
If you make a game today for the DS or PSP, you submit it to Sony, it’s manufactured, it goes into a warehouse, its shipped to a store, the customer goes to the store, they try to find it and they bring it home. Its [the iPhone] extendable. That software that you make for the PSP or Nintendo DS–once it’s done, it’s done. You’d have no opportunity to change it, you have no feedback loop with the customer. You can’t extend that software over time.”
Young feels that developers should look to Nintendo and its extremely successful DS, which has trounced the more technically capable Sony PSP in the mobile gaming market, as a guide for how to build the right games with which to realize the iPhone’s full potential. He further expressed a belief that iPhone developers can tap into the PSP, DS, and cell phone game markets to create an $8 billion per year “uber market” for iPhone games.
During his presentation, Young announced the creation of nglabs, a program through which the company will fund the development of 10 free iPhone games that are progressive, social, and could only be done on the iPhone. Each accepted application will receive $10,000 in funding and ngmoco will work closely with the developers to help produce each idea to its fullest. Ngmoco will publish and promote the finished products and the developers will keep the intellectual property.
iPhoneDevCamp 2 was a not-for-profit gathering to develop applications for iPhone and iPod touch using both the native SDK and web standards. It was a follow-on to last year’s iPhoneDevCamp.
MotionX has released a free application called MotionX Dice [App Store] which uses the same technology as MotionX Poker [App Store] to provide realistic dice rolling physics.
This free version strips out all the game elements found in their Poker game but still leaves you with an impressive technology demo. The app can also be used to simulate 6-sided dice for your at-home game such as Yahtzee, Craps, Monopoly, etc…
The full game of MotionX Poker is surprisingly entertaining and worth the $4.99 purchase price. Our full review provides more details and a demo video.
Meanwhile, this free app is a good trial for those who were curious about MotionX Poker, but not really interested in the actual game.
Steve Jobs recently revealed in an interview with The Wall Street Journal that, users have downloaded more than 60 million applications from the iTunes App Store in its first month online. While most apps downloaded were free, Jobs revealed that the App Store saw $30 million in sales over the first month, averaging $1 million a day.
Game titles account for over 25% of the App Store’s current catalog of 1620 apps and game downloads were no small part of the overall sales. SEGA saw over 300,000 downloads of its popular accelerometer-controller maze game Super Monkey Ball [$9.99, App Store] in just 20 days–that’s $3 million in sales.
“That’s a substantial business,” says Simon Jeffery, president of Sega’s U.S. division. “It gives iPhone a justifiable claim to being a viable gaming platform.”
Mac Rumors recently reported that Eliza Block, a PhD student and independent developer who created the popular 2 Across [App Store] crossword puzzle game, saw early sales of around $1,800 per day.
The iTunes App Store and its large library of quality applications created with Apple’s free iPhone SDK make up what is certainly the most significant component of “iPhone 2.0″ and truly set the iPhone apart from other smartphones and mobile devices. At the current rate, Apple stands to see the store generate $360 million a year in revenue. “I’ve never seen anything like this in my career for software,” Jobs commented.
With the iTunes App Store, Apple has removed the barrier to entry for developers and transformed mobile application deployment–a heretofore woefully archaic arena–into a painless user experience. It’s really no wonder that the App Store has been so well received. We’re anxious to see what the bright future hold for iPhone games and applications.
TeemSoft, Inc appears to be doing everything they can to boost sales. After releasing a free demo version of their CubicMan game, they have now dropped the price from $4.99 to $2.99 for the full version, CubicMan Deluxe [App Store].
The new price appears to be permanent as there is no indication that this is a one time sale.
Readers should, of course, try the 10 level demo version called CubicMan Lite [App Store] which is available for free.
We previously reviewed the full title and found the game to be fun and challenging.
As IGN reports, game developer Fireglow Games is partnering with Mac games publisher Virtual Programming to bring the Plumeboom franchise to various mobile platforms including the iPhone and iPod touch.
As 
Swedish game developer Resolution Interactive has released a preview of their forthcoming flight / action / sports hybrid Clusterball 2.
Animal Crossing: Wild World
At the recent 
