Ngmoco held a press event tonight at WWDC detailing their upcoming titles due this summer. The games on display included the just released Star Defense as well as unreleased titles including Rolando 2, Touch Pets and the first-person shooter formerly known as LiveFire. This was first time any of the press has had hands-on time with Rolando 2 or the new and improved LiveFire and we’ll cover those separately.
While we’d seen Ngmoco’s Touch Pets before, today’s build had progressed notably towards completion and the core gameplay remains the same. The game taps into the virtual pet market allowing you to own and care for your own virtual dog.
Simply petting your dog can be a very tactile experience on the iPhone by actually rubbing the screen with your finger. As you care for your pet, his or her caretaking, training and socializing scores rise, giving you a very happy canine. Neglect the dog, and well, you’ll have to put some quality time in to make up for it.
The game includes 9 different locations that you can play in, as well as various clothing items, toys and accessories for your pet. Special shirts, hats, colors and even advanced toys such as boomerangs eventually become available for use. One feature that I hadn’t seen before was the use of touch gestures to instruct your dog to do tricks. Swiping in a circle, for example, instructs your dog to roll over. And, as you advance, additional tricks are unlocked.
This basic care video provides a look at the game:
Touch Pets is due sometime this summer.
Meanwhile, we had a chance to speak to Neil Young of Ngmoco to hear his reactions to the upcoming iPhone 3G S. What we hadn’t been aware of was the fact that the demos during today’s keynote were actually run on the iPhone 3G S. And the biggest reaction from the Ngmoco founder was that the new device is fast. Both in execution and launch time, Young found that Star Defense loaded in entirety in 6 seconds on the new device, notably faster than on previous generation devices. He also observed that another developer’s game was running so quickly that they had to frame limit them.
We still don’t have specifics on what processor the new iPhone 3G S has, but it seems clear that the 2nd Generation iPod Touch is no longer on the top of the heap.
