Today at WWDC, Touch Arcade met with Henry Ho and Dave Vallejo of Flying Dino to preview their upcoming multiplayer 3D mech battle game iMech.
iMech is a 3D, over-the-shoulder style combat game that puts the player in control of one of three different mech vehicles to engage in online battles of up to eight players per game, across five different maps. At the players’ disposal are five different weapons: machine gun, laser, flame thrower, missiles, and mines. Each player’s mech features shields and a jetpack boost feature (to make quick jumps through the environment) that share energy — so boost sparingly.
Control is handled via dual on-screen sticks with a tap to switch out weapons. The game offers an in-game chat feature where users tap to select a positive, negative, or neutral comment, with a second tap to select from a short-list of quips from each category.
We engaged in a three-way online match, running through Flying Dino’s local laptop server and were impressed with what we saw. (When the game goes live, there will be an East coast and a West coast server to handle community matches.) Gameplay was intense, with very nice effects and a smooth framerate, even on the original iPod touch.
Right now iMech is online multiplayer only, but a future update should bring a single-player Campaign mode as well as a Survival / Skirmish mode for quick, intense matches.
See our gameplay video of the multiplayer action.
3D mech battlers were huge a decade ago. Anyone who enjoys that sort of steel on steel crush should have a great time with this one. iMech should be submitted to the App Store towards the end of next week and will retail for $2.99.
