Paris based developer Int13 are experts in the field of augmented reality on mobile devices. They showcased this on iOS in late 2010 with the release of ARDefender [99¢], an augmented reality tower defense game. In terms of content, ARDefender was a bit one note, though it did receive a nice update this past October that fleshed out some of the features. However, despite being a pretty simplistic game, the actual tech behind ARDefender was really solid and incorporated into the gameplay better than almost any other AR game I’ve played before. Also, it was just plain fun to play.
Now Int13 is taking a break from the augmented reality for their next iOS release in order to pay homage to a genre they enjoy: manic arcade shooters. A project that originally started back in 2010, Shogun: Rise of the Renegade is a bullet hell shooter in the same vein as the classic shmups that were prominent in arcades in the 90s, and like the ones CAVE has been so generous with porting over to the iOS platform. I’ve been playing a preview build of Shogun for the past week or so, and am super impressed with the title so far. You can check it out in motion with the developer’s trailer for Shogun below:
The game is absolutely gorgeous in person, the video doesn’t quite do it justice. The gameplay is also really solid, offering most of the bullet-hell conventions you would expect as well as a few twists on the formula to differentiate itself from the pack. Shogun is already submitted and awaiting approval from Apple, which means we could possibly see it as early as Friday but most likely it will be sometime next week. It will be free to download and contain the entire first level, with the remaining 3 levels unlockable through in-app purchase. Oh, and here’s something awesome: Shogun will have iCade support baked in, something people have been dying for with other shooters on the App Store.
If you’re a fan of shmups, keep your eyes glued to this space as we’ll have a review of Shogun: Rise of the Renegade whenever it ends up hitting the App Store sometime in the next week or so.
