Archive for the ‘4.0’ tag
TouchArcade at Both WWDC and E3 This Month
We are going to be attending both in San Francisco as well as this month. WWDC runs from the 7th to the 11th at the Moscone Convention Center, and E3 goes from the 15th to the 17th at the Los Angeles Convention Center. Readers can look forward to an avalanche of news, game previews, and other interesting things from both events.
Coverage from these events in 2009 is viewable either by taking a look at the E3 Expo 2009 or WWDC 2009 categories.
WWDC will likely bring about the official announcement of the new iPhone, even more iPhone OS 4.0 details, and potentially several other things floating around the Apple rumor mill during the keynote on the morning of the 7th. While game coverage from WWDC will likely focus on games by the various indie developers in attendance, the big players of the gaming industry will be in full force at E3. We're expecting a Sonic 4 hands on, and many other exciting developments from well known console game developers/publishers throwing their hats in to the iPhone ring.
If you're a developer or publisher and would like to meet up at either WWDC or E3, send us an email at tips@toucharcade.com or send me a message via AIM 
to schedule an appointment. Our event schedules usually fill up very quickly, so don't wait to long if you have something you'd like to show us.
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Exclusive ‘Aralon: Sword and Shadow’ Details – A Crescent Moon Games RPG Extreme Make Over
It's kind of crazy to think how much has happened since November of last year when we had the guys from on the fourth episode of our podcast just before the release of their first iPhone game, Ravensword: The Fallen King [$4.99 / Free]. They've since released the game and it became both a critical and financial success. Following the coattails of Ravensword comes several ambitious projects.
The first of which is the obvious Ravensword sequel, along with Ultra Kid: Mystery of the Mutants, Rimelands: Hammer of Thor, and the game they're revealing their involvement in tonight: Aralon: Sword and Shadow.
Aralon: Sword and Shadow actually has a great story behind its development. It turns out, the game has been in the works by since before Ravensword was even started. The two developers, Jason and Sam, have built the framework for an insanely impressive RPG, but neither are artists. The models were rough, the animations were mediocre at best, but if you looked past all of that, you could see something amazing.
Crescent Moon Games along with artist , famous for his work on everything from the Elder Scrolls series to Arkanoid for the Amiga, are giving Aralon the sprucing up it badly requires to turn a great RPG with bad graphics to what they're hoping to be the best 3D RPG on the App Store.
Aralon: Sword and Shadow is going to sport a feature list that is going to be difficult to beat. They're promising over 30 hours of gameplay, a faction system, crafting and gathering skills, and hundreds of items to equip your character with that also will change your appearance. In addition, there will be four character classes: Warrior, Ranger, Rogue and Mage, each with a unique play style in three playable races: Humans, Elves, and Trolls.
A primary quest will send you through every part of the Kingdom of Aralon, with many optional side-quests to add even more depth to the game. Different enemies will use different battle tactics, and you'll even be able to acquire mounts to quickly travel.
In talking to Crescent Moon Games about Aralon, I've asked them multiple times if they really want to promise all of these things. According to them, almost all of this is already programmed and all they need to do is spend the next four months or so making the game look as great as it plays.
As a fan of RPG's, it's hard to not get excited when developers promise epic gameplay experiences filled with deep stories, tons of character customization, and everything else. We're going to keep a close eye on all of the projects Crescent Moon Games has cooking, and I'm hopeful that Aralon: Sword and Shadow will be just as awesome as it has been described when it finally launches.
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Ball Roller ‘Ozone’ is a Puff of Fresh Air
Can a game be a piece of art? So asks Geardome, who strives to deliver just that in their recently released physics-based, ball-roller style game Ozone [App Store].
Dive into the galaxy of Ozone and unveil the secrets of this unique audio-visual experience, a mix of art and technology, never before seen or heard on a mobile device.
The game puts you in control of an inflatable ball that can be moved about various maze-like levels by way of touch-directed bursts of air. The goal is to collect all of the yellow orbs strewn about each of the game's more than 50 pseudo-3D levels in order to exit each maze. But there's more in each level than just yellow orbs. You must negotiate a wide variety of obstacles and enemies in order to make your way through each level. There are, among other things, moving traps, doors to unlock, weapons to collect and use, spikes to avoid, and end-bosses to contend with. A steel ball power-up renders your ball impervious to damage and able to plow through certain walls for a short period. Some pathways require you to deflate your ball in order to fit through, and then it's fingers-crossed that an air pump is just around the corner, because when you're out of air, you're out of luck. And those bursts of air that move you hither and yon — they're not freebies; each burst lowers your air level just a bit.
It's a lot to juggle.
But luckily, time is something you have plenty of in this game. Ozone is not a race against the clock, but is a slow-paced, intricate affair that requires a high level of precision to master. In that way, it's really not akin to Dark Nebula, a comparison some in our forums have made, in seeing posted screenshots. It reminds me more of Bubble Ghost, actually. It's a game for the patient, and an experience that is both frustrating (in a good way) and relaxing at the same time. A very well-matched, ambient soundtrack sets the mood and helps deliver what feels like a rather "zen" experience.
The developers have also created a custom level editor that can be used to create your own levels, available for Mac OS X, Linux, and Windows. The game's upcoming first update will enable the ability to play custom levels, and downloadable content is also on the way. Ozone HD, a version that takes advantage of the iPad's features, will soon be released, the developer indicates.
The reaction to the game has been extremely positive. Your Personal Robot shared his thoughts.
…I am playing this gem and WOW am I impressed.
This really is a little indie masterpiece. The graphics, the sound…simply amazing…This game just feels very deep, very thought out, every detail just seems right in place. Hard to describe it. It's a complete console game with a fantastic look and feel. And it's definitely NOT too expensive. This is a title with so much quality, many – or most – of the App Store games are far from reaching.
Ozone is a very well done and highly enjoyable game that should have great appeal to those who enjoy problem solving and being rewarded for precision. It's certainly one of the more engrossing titles I've spent time with in recent months.
App Store Link: Ozone, $4.99
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Live Bloggin’ The Apple iPhone OS 4.0 Keynote
Apple's surprise media event unveiling the iPhone OS 4.0 is set to begin shortly. We'll be providing live updates, and focusing on things that specifically pertain to iPhone gaming or things iPhone gamers might be interested in like all of our other keynote coverage in the past.
Steve Jobs just took the stage, and started things out by talking about the sales figures of the iPad. On Saturday they sold 300,000, and as of today they've sold 450,000. Apple apparently is making them as fast as they can, but notes that Best Buy is already out of stock. On the first day, 1 million paid apps were downloaded, and since then 3.5 million have been. (In addition to 600,000 eBooks.)
Photo courtesy of .
Jobs also mentions that there are over 185,000 apps in the App Store, with over 3,500 iPad apps. He then took some time to show off the more impressive iPad apps in the App Store currently such as the ABC app, Netflix, the Marvel comic book reader, and others. Shifting gears to talk about the iPhone, Steve mentions they've won three JD Power awards for customer satisfaction, and currently holds 64% of the mobile browser market share. Apple has sold over 50 million iPhones, with 85 million combined devices between the iPod touch and iPhone.
iPhone OS 4.0 is coming this summer, with a developer preview available today.
Photo courtesy of .
Photo courtesy of .
Among the seven "tent pole" features of iPhone OS 4.0 is multitasking. Steve goes on to demonstrate how multitasking is going to work. With multiple apps running, double clicking the home button raises a window that looks a lot like the bottom dock of the iPhone showing what apps are running. Tapping an icon instantly switches to that app.
Photo courtesy of .
To explain how this all works while preserving battery life and performance, Steve hands things off to Scott Forstall, SVP of iPhone Software. iPhone OS 4.0 will provide seven multitasking services. The first of which is audio streaming, and Forstall specifically cites Pandora as an example of an app that will shine with this functionality. Developing applications to utilize this functionality is apparently extremely easy, as it only took the Pandora developers a day to make the app background aware. Skype also works fantastically with this new functionality, even allowing you to accept calls while running in the background.
Doodle Jump spotted:
Photo courtesy of .
The next multitasking function is background location. Apps that use the GPS functionality such as TomTom will be able to continue routing while in the background. This raises obvious privacy concerns, and a new settings menu will be available to enable and disable location services per application, as well as showing a small arrow icon next to the battery indicator.
Moving on to push notifications, Forstall mentions they've sent over 10 billion notifications since the service went live. Building on push notifications comes local notifications, done entirely on the phone to see alerts from apps you have running in the background. One example mentioned was a popup when a photo was finished uploading to Flickr.
Photo courtesy of .
Steve takes the stage again and announces folders to organize apps. The interface seems an awful lot like the various jailbreak app organization solutions. So far Apple is really knocking it out of the park with this keynote.
Photo courtesy of .
The iPhone mail client is also getting enhanced, with a unified inbox for each email account on the device along with a threaded email view for reading conversations. Unsurprisingly, the iPhone is also getting the iBooks app which will sync pages and bookmarks with other devices that have the app.
Forstall just announced "Game Center", Apple's own gaming social networking service that seems to handle everything Plus+, OpenFeint, and others do with presumably one unified login tied to your iTunes account. Matchmaking, leaderboards, and achievements are all part of it.
Photo courtesy of .
Also mentioned was Apple's own iAd advertisement services, which we expect to see making appearances in many free games that have historically relied on AdMob and other advertising networks.
iPhone OS 4.0 will be coming this fall, and sadly, multitasking will not be supported for the iPhone 3G and second generation iPod touch. That's it folks, Steve is taking questions now.
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Ghoulish ‘Necromancer Rising’ Crawls from Grave to App Store
iPhone developer Ryan Mitchell has just released Necromancer Rising [App Store], a large-scale, first-person RPG with an air of the macabre that should appeal to fans of dark and dank dungeon crawlers.
Necromancer Rising places you in the unenviable position of the last surviving Battle Priest of the king's army with a wife and child that were recently slaughtered and buried, and — as if that wasn't enough — robbed from their graves by the minions of the evil Necromancer, tunneling in caverns below. Your goal is to regain your former strength and visit grave vengeance upon the aforementioned Necromancer in the name of your beloved family.
The game features a highly detailed stats and equip system; your person features 16 equipment locations for weapons and armor allowing for a great many battle configurations. The author indicates that the game includes tens of thousands of items as well as 50,000 different weapons, in all. (All items are freely available to those who spend the time to find them, but for those who don't mind paying for a bit of a short-cut, certain particularly useful items are also available as in-app purchases.) There are 50 different levels to explore (with 49 end-bosses) and each is dynamically generated upon entrance, so no level is ever the twice the same.
See the developer's trailer video for a look at the game in play.
As yet, I've spent but a brief while with the title and find that what it lacks in polish in some areas (menu system, look controls, etc.), it makes up for with a pleasantly ghoulish atmosphere thanks to the creepy level and creature design, as well as the superb, moaning sound effects and evocative background score. The whole thing has a nice sort of campy Evil Dead feel to it that lends it a particular sort of charm that I find myself enjoying.
Our forum members have about this one. Hitch , while noting the lack of polish in some areas.
This is a hardcore RPG. If you're a casual gamer, I'd probably pass as of now. It has good graphics, sounds, and gameplay elements/length, but a crappy menu system and messy controls keep the game from living up to it's potential. Great game, but hard to work with.
8/10- Must have for PATIENT RPG fans, but needs quite a few updates to make it a must have for everyone.
SharpCarlos as well.
Overall, it's scratching my dungeon crawl itch. There's random loot in varying levels of quality with random affixes (just found a helmet that increases my intelligence). It runs smoothly on my 3GS. And it SEEMS like there's a lot of game here. The dungeon is 50 levels deep, and if there continues to be several quests per level, it'll take quite a while to burn through them.
Have a look at the game trailer (this of the bundled tutorial video might be helpful as well) to aid in your decision.
App Store Link: Necromancer Rising, $6.99
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