Well this is a strange one- Early this morning THQ released the first season of Neighbours from Hell (Free) completely for free and (so far) there doesn’t seem to be any kind of IAP shenanigans to speak of. They are making a point to call this “Season 1," so it’s entirely possible they’re going to be doing the Telltale thing and releasing subsequent paid episodes of the game with this as the initial teaser of that? Either way, the game started as PC (and later a console game) in Europe in 2003, although in the US we only ever saw the PC release.
In Neighbours from Hell, you play as a man named Woody and seek petty slapstick revenge on your neighbor, Mr. Rottweiler. The game is set up as a hidden camera show, and you need to enact neighborly revenge in ever increasing ridiculous ways to increase ratings and have the show win awards. If the premise sounds absurd, well, that’s because it is. Here’s some gameplay from the PC version, which seems pretty similar:
The original Neighbours from Hell didn’t do super well in aggregate reviews, but, hey, I’m up for any old PC port on the App Store, particularly for $0. Personally, I’m still waiting for a port of Rocket Jockey. Anyway, for more first impressions on the game, head into our forums.
I love your rants, though.
Yeah the AppStore lacks in terms of visibility, still this article is pretty fussy imo. I mean Apple/Google/Amazon/etc. just give people the opportunity to sell their products. I think we would all agree, that selling things (no matter if its an Apps on the AppStore or a flat-iron on Amazon) consists of more than designing a good product. Don't get me wrong, this would be amazing BUT it simply does not work that way. W/o spending money/effort on marketing people will not even realise that you or your product exists no matter how good it is. There are just so many people releasing Apps every single day. Who do we count responsible for this problem?
I know of developer that gone to wall cause of free to play market and they had quality game.
To bad they don't give a little slice of that to certain really fantastic mobile gaming coverage websites.
What pay when they are already doing it for free
Interesting mario run is highlighted as a smash hit in the release :)
There is something hypnotizing in this money machine picture...
A bit Hypnotoadish.