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Growing up as an avid Mac gamer in the 1990s, I was a huge fan of RPGs put out by the folks at Spiderweb Software. Not particularly known for their graphical prowess (even back then), these shareware games of old focused more on exploration, narrative and, most important, freedom. Avernum: Escape From The Pit [$9.99] is the second game from Spiderweb to hit iOS, serving as the pinnacle for these RPG tenets and should be looked at as a gold standard for iOS RPGs.

First, a brief history lesson is in order. Avernum for iPad is a remake of the 1999 Avernum title, which itself was a rewrite of the 1995 Mac shareware title Exile: Escape from the Pit. While each iteration brought visual and combat upgrades, the same open-ended exploration system remained. The same holds true for Avernum for iPad, which receives overhauls in both its visual and character/battle systems.

In Avernum: Escape From the Pit, the Empire rules the surface. Anyone that crosses this oppressive regime is banished to underground region of Avernum, a world unto itself that replaces the sun with luminescent moss and the sky with endless caverns. The world, along with all its inhabitants comes to life in the game’s deep narrative which could easily span its own novel. It’s this world that you’re violently thrown into, and it’s in this world that you are free to do what you wish.

It’s this freedom that makes Avernum such a compelling and enjoyable experience. From the moment you customize your four person party at the onset, you are allowed to do what you wish. Sure, you are presented with some overarching decisions as you spend more time in the world (complete with three separate endings), but like all great RPGs, the true reward is in the journey. Whether you choose to be a willing asset of the struggling makeshift kingdom in Avernum, a lone wanderer trying to make do in the cavernous wild, or an agent of destruction and chaos, all paths are available in this title.

In terms of character development, there’re attributes, abilities and traits to customize, each being open to all characters. You really can’t appreciate the sheer amount of options you have as opposed to most other RPGs as a plethora of weapons, armor, abilities and spells supplement the core character stats mentioned above. Fans of the original Avernum series will notice that some of the skills have been streamlined. However, the options have been consolidated for the better, preserving the majority of the customizability while making the game far more accessible.

For those looking for a rundown of Avernum’s gameplay, you need not look any further than our review of Avadon: The Black Fortress, Spiderweb Software’s initial iOS offering that debuted last year. The same isometric, turn-based combat system returns, complete with various difficulties, an auto-save function and a new collection of achievements to earn. As with Avadon, the touch-based control system works well enough, although there are occasions of imprecise tapping, making your characters potentially act in ways you did not mean.

One of the side effects of open-ended gameplay is a shift in exploration and gameplay style. In the world of Avernum, you can and most likely will run into areas that you simply should have not stumbled onto. Enemy fortresses may have hidden rooms (complete with warning signs) featuring overpowered enemies that may wipe your party out. This leads to a lot of saving/reloading as well as a lot of backtracking should you choose to return to previously visited locales to beat that one powerful demon. Fans of streamlined experiences may balk at this gameplay style, but I love the variety as it sets the tone of Avernum as a chaotic world that isn’t as clear-cut as it may appear.

As we mentioned earlier, Spiderweb Software games are homages to classic 90s RPGs in many aspects. That includes the visuals and music, which are simplistic and work just enough to provide ambience. And yet, there were many occasions while playing in which I felt far more attached to the events unfolding than I have while playing any ‘next-gen’ RPG. The amount of effort and care put into the narrative, quests and even level design create an atmosphere that is sorely missed in other titles (assuming you’re willing to lend an able imagination to fill in the gaps).

While Avadon served as a streamlined ‘introductory’ experience to the world of classic RPGs, Avernum (as evidenced above) removes all the handholding in order to create a more open-ended experience. I believe this choice makes Avernum the more fulfilling and satisfying title, as well. The storytelling, customization, and sheer amount of content make this RPG a true powerhouse on iOS. There’s also a certain amount of nostalgic satisfaction as newer gamers are able to experience a world made popular during the Mac shareware golden age. While there will undoubtedly be some who turn away because of the retro look and feel, a truly rewarding experience awaits anyone else willing to dive into the pit.

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Here’s a heads up for the many board game (Well, in this case, card game.) fanatics out there- USM, the same German outfit responsible for the iOS port of Settlers of Catan [$4.99 / $4.99 (HD)] just released a few screenshots of their upcoming adaptation of Rivals for Catan on our forums.

Check ‘em out:

Rivals for Catan is a re-worked version of the Catan Card Game which itself is a re-worked version of Settlers of Catan. That’s some serious board game Inception action right there. Anyway, the card games are a simplified take on the territory building gameplay mechanic that Settlers hinges on.

Details are fairly vague right now, but USM has mentioned that the game will be a universal app that’s going to have both two player local and online multiplayer. Either way, I’m always excited to see these kind of physical to iOS transitions for “well known” board and card games. Playing with some random dude online is often so much easier, approachable, and generally substantially cheaper than just buying the physical game.

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One of the all-time best platformers on iOS would have to be Acne Play’s Pizza Boy [ $1.99 ]. Released back in September of 2010, Pizza Boy absolutely nailed the virtual controls thing on the touchscreen, and almost more importantly they totally got the “feel” right – that is, the weight and movement of your character as he ran and jumped through the world felt perfectly tuned, like a classic 2D Mario game.

We thought Pizza Boy was great when it hit, though it was a bit on the short side, something that was rectified a few months later. Now, after all this time since Pizza Boy’s release, Acne Play, in conjunction with NCSoft, has announced their newest game for iOS and Android called My Little Hero with the following teaser trailer.

The problem with this teaser trailer is, well, that it’s just one big tease. There’s no gameplay shown and we’re really left wondering what kind of game My Little Hero is. I guess that is the point of a teaser, right? At the very least our interest is piqued.

The only other information we’ve been able to glean from our forums is that My Little Hero is an action adventure title and we should be hearing more on the game in the way of screens and videos soon. Given how awesome Pizza Boy is, consider us excited for whatever My Little Hero turns out to be.

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Crescent Moon is publishing its first racing game later this May. It’s called Slingshot Racing, and as its name implies, the core action loosely revolves around slinging your cars around tracks. Its twists are in its hooks, literally. Each car is equipped with a grappling hook, so you’ll actually be flicking cars’ hooks on pieces of the environment as you race. The steampunk-stylized visuals help to explain this weirdness away.

Slingshot is being developed by Snowbolt Interactive, which is a collective of ex-Frontier guys who helped with titles like Lost Winds and Kinectimals. We expect to be impressed with this one considering those chops.

We’ll be hearing a lot more about this in the future, so stay tuned. Also, check out these screens. This thing is a looker.

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The very first post on TouchArcade was over four years ago now, which, for those of you playing along at home, was before the iOS App Store even launched. (Heck, back then it wasn’t even iOS yet, and wouldn’t even be iOS for another two years.) We’ve been hard at work on our own app with the help of Flexibits and Bartelme Design for what seems like forever, and with it being unleashed to the world next week, I figured now was a great time to lay out the features and functionality of the app.

First off, the main screen (seen below and to the left) is what you see when you launch the app. It has a featured story, which usually will be whatever our last review was, or any other story that deserves some kind of special attention. To the right of that is the “Hot Games” list, which is a killer feature of the app. What you’re looking at here is a realtime display of the games that have generated the most interest in our community.

There’s a whole bunch of behind the scenes wizardry taking place to compute this list, utilizing tons of different data points to create a surprisingly accurate display of what the hottest games at the time are. The cool thing about this is that the list is constantly being updated. If you want to know what the most popular games amongst our community are at this exact moment, look no further than the hot games list.

The other views of the app share a similar look, and you’re able to really drill down on reviews for all the games we’ve looked at via a set of drop downs. So, for instance, if you wanted to see reviews of free action games posted in the last month. Totally doable. The “News & Reviews” function gives you a quick glance at all the content on the site. Oh, and if you decide to, you can even get push alerts when we post a new story.

Our forums are (obviously) huge for our community, so we’ve included forum integration in the app. Each thread display also features all the information you’d need about a game at a glance, with ratings from both the actual App Store as well as amongst our own users. You can even assign your own ratings just like you can on your browser. See the little slider with the binoculars? Things with the app get even better.

The watch list, much like the wish list in the AppShopper App [ Free ] is my favorite feature. By flipping the toggle switch seen above, you can add any game, regardless of whether or not it’s released. From there, you can see any stories that have been posted about that specific game. Also, if the push alerts for everything we post is a little too much for you, you can set the app to only send you alerts when articles that pertain directly to your watch list are posted.

So, if we post a preview for a game that interests you, all you’ve got to do is add it to your watch list, and you’ll get alerts for when it’s released, when we post a review, and potentially even if it ever gets updates or a price drop and we cover it.

The app also has tons of information about all the games on the App Store. Once you get into the actual details page of any game (which is accessible by numerous methods within the app) you’ll see our own review scores as well as the rating from out community, and you’ll be able to jump into any forum thread that pertains to the game. Also, obviously, any associated trailers or screenshots are there along with the iTunes text and anything we’ve posted about the game.

We’ve put a ton of work into the TouchArcade app, and we’re all really proud of what we’re about to release. There’s a number of other little features and settings that you’ll discover as you’re using it, but this is the core functionality of the app. We’ve been using it for months now to discover games to cover on the site, and we’re confident that it’ll become your go to app to find the latest and greatest games the App Store has to offer.

If everything goes as planned, it will be available for free, globally, next week.

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Today, at The Gadget Show Live in Birmingham, four teams of student developers will bring Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone’s Fighting Fantasy series to the iOS audience in a brand new way. We’ve had the chance to look at the games in development, and they’re looking pretty hot.

The Make Something Unreal Live competition is the sort of opportunity most folks who’ve dabbled in game development would kill for. It’s organized by Epic Games and Train2Game. Student teams were given access to the Fighting Fantasy IP and, basically, told to go nuts with it. They’ve spent the last few months building games based off that IP using the Unreal Development Kit. Working with industry mentors, they’ve created new interpretations of the beloved books. Now they’ll go on stage and put the finishing touches on their titles with help from some of the industry’s biggest names.

If you don’t know the Fighting Fantasy IP, it’s a series of roleplaying gamebooks that were super popular in the 80s and 90s. A number of them have been brought to iOS in classic interactive fiction form by Big Blue Bubble, but this is the first time they’ve been reimagined for the platform as full 3D games.

There are four teams of students competing in Make Something Unreal Live, each with members with expertise in art, design, programming and QA. Each team set out with a different title: The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, Armies of Death, The Citadel of Chaos and Deathtrap Dungeon. We’ve had some time with each of the titles, and they’re shaping up nicely.

Digital Mage is the team responsible for Armies of Death: Rise of Agglax. It turns the tale of Armies of Death on its head. Players will command the undead forces of Agglax as they travel down lanes destroying the heroes and defenses of the kingdom of Allansia. Defeating enemies releases their souls, which provide the power needed to raise the undead.

The levels of the game are inspired by events from the original book. Though we were only able to try out the early stages of the game, Digital Mage says that the final product will boast a lovingly crafted story that expands of the tale of Armies of Death.

Indigo Jam showed us its take on Deathtrap Dungeon. Like the book, the game pits players against rooms of devious traps and vicious enemies. It’s a first-person action adventure with areas and traps designed on a grand scale. From what we’ve seen so far, stealth will play a large role in the game, and sneaking around unseen is the surest way to survive while you try to solve the deadly puzzles of the dungeon.

The Citadel of Chaos: Dire Consequences is a wave-based first person action game built by Derp Studios. Players are tasked with protecting Dree Village against waves of monsters. You begin with a sword and shield, but with each wave you survive you’ll have the opportunity to purchase and upgrade spells with the souls you earn in combat. Players who survive 10 waves unlock new levels, and ultimately win after 20 waves.

Derp Studios plans to bring in a story mode as well. This will take place after the final moments of The Citadel of Chaos.

Finally, we took a look at The Warlock of Firetop Mountain: Lost Chapters, by Commando Kiwi. Though we won’t know which game takes the grand prize at Make Something Unreal Live until next week, this one really caught our attention. Built as a third-person RPG, it already has a progression system in place and some promising looking item collection. But the combat system is where it stands out.

Lost Chapters uses an active-time style combat system, with a selection of abilities that operate on individual timers. To capture the element of luck that the Fighting Fantasy titles so relied on, blocking is left to good fortune. Each time an enemy attacks the player is presented with three cards. Each has a shield on the other side, one red, one yellow and one green. If the green card is drawn, damage is escaped. The red card hits twice as hard.

The four teams will show their games off today at The Gadget Show Live, and they’ll receive feedback from the advisory board. The judges include Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone themselves, as well as industry leaders that include, no joke, Peter Molyneux and Cliff Bleszinski. Teams will work to bring the games to their full potential over the course of the show, providing regular updates and showing their work off to an audience of over 100,000 attendees on the show floor. The winning team will be announced on Sunday, and it will get to take home a commercial Unreal Engine 3 license.

The games should all be heading to the App Store soon, though it sounds like the winning team might have a leg up on the others. The builds we played were still far from being ready for release, but they had real potential. Here’s hoping the final releases follow through, because we’re pretty jazzed about seeing more original RPGs and action-adventure titles on the App Store. So good luck to all the teams—we’ll be keeping an eye on what comes next.

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Late last month we caught the first video for Everplay’s upcoming hack ‘n slash platformer Spellsword, and thought it looked pretty darn cool. It’s an arena-style game similar to Super Crate Box but with larger environments, more enemy types, and many upgradeable items. It also features a more structured campaign with 90 levels in addition to unlockable endless arenas. In case you missed it before, you can check out Spellsword in action in the following trailer.

Yesterday in our forums, Everplay announced that Spellsword has an official release date, which will be two weeks from this Thursday on April 26th. We’ve been anxious to get our hands on Spellsword since it was announced, especially since it’s from the same team that did Terra Noctis so we know they can do platforming right. It all sounds good so far on paper, but the real test will be when we can get our hands on the final version of Spellsword when it hits later this month.

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PlayGround States logo, as it appears on Facebook.

“It’s been an amazing experience,” Double Fine founder Tim Schafer told fans via a live stream that celebrated the closing moments of Double Fine Adventure’s success on Kickstarter. The project generated over three million dollars worth of donations in a month. Double Fine had asked for $400,000. It wasn’t just amazing. It was magical.

Not every studio sees this kind of outcome. Lead artist and the brains behind Playground State, Barry Collins, is walking us through what his studio looks like, and what has happened to his game, after his project failed to receive funding.

Playground State was founded two years ago by Barry and his brother Brad to explore and express the ideas that Barry has had floating around in his head since childhood. If you look closely at its web site, you’ll notice that there’s no physical address. It’s just a collective “willing people” across the globe coming together to build a series of sci-fi titles called Knights. A PC title called Knights: Spiral Islands was to be the first.

Spiral Island became a known project thanks to Kickstarter and a warm reception by PC enthusiast web site Rock, Paper, Shotgun, which featured it in an editorial in February 2011. Spiral Island is described as an episodic online action-adventure game in which you, as a knight in the game’s sci-fi universe, battle evil across the cosmos. Its hook, outside of its UDK visuals, is its lack of boundaries: in one mission, you’ll be hacking and shooting Vikings, in others space bees, mushroom zombies, robots, and large crabs.

Concept art of a playable Knight. You'll see other Knights in the upcoming preview game.

It has the look and feel of something incredible, especially if it were to be expanded as planned. Spiral Island was pitched to potential donors as game design in motion, as it would have seamlessly integrated new scenarios and enemies in a constant steam.

For whatever reason, it didn’t receive sufficient support. The Kickstarter effort ended with a thud later that April. Playground was looking for $10,000. A hair over $1,500 was pledged across 36 serial donators. One pledger, for example, has backed 48 other projects.

It’s easy to see this as a knockout shot, but to Barry, it’s just a glancing blow, and now the team is looking to iOS and its vast audience to continue.

“The lack of funds was frustrating, but it didn’t really kill our ambitions or desire to make this work,” Barry tells TouchArcade. In the ultimate show of confidence, the studio grew. It picked up an artist, a musician, a sound designer, and a couple of programmers following the failed attempt at funding.

That Playground is reacting in the exact opposite way you’d expect isn’t lost on Barry, and he explains that the reason is tied into how deeply his core team believes in what the studio is trying to accomplish.

“It’s our baby,” Barry tell us. “Amazingly, after maybe an hour or two of rambling with the various team members, they all irrevocably become hooked on the concept and what it has to offer, and slowly but surely begin to own it. Right now we have a team of guys all on the same page and all excited about the small steps as much as the bigger one that will come later — Knights as a whole.”

The crab monster we originally fell in love with, but now fewer polygons for mobile.

While the team grew, so did Knights. It’s now more than a game: it’s a series of mobile titles based in the same universe that spans multiple platforms and genres. Barry has an idea for several projects, some of which are in early stages of development. The most important is an Epic Citadel-like preview title, built specifically for iOS to show off what his team can do.

But even though the team is growing and excited about the games Barry wants to make, it has a horrible issue: it’s hemorrhaging programmers. It can’t keep one on staff, and this is putting a kink in the size and scope of the Knights games Barry wants to make. Barry says they’re in a spiral of simplification, as no one has the expertise to implement complex content into builds. The lack of a revenue stream is undoubtedly one of the culprits here. It’s also the reason why it’s bothering with a showcase project in the first place, and opening its doors for outsourcing work.

“This constant tug of war is what pushed us to our current goals of producing a very basic, free to download visual demo — a means of walking around a crazy environment full of eye candy and talking to basic scripted actors within the world. This will lay the ground work for follow-up episodes to come afterwords,” Barry tells us.

That Knights is blowing up, too, isn’t lost on Barry. He says this game has two goals: to nab exposure and be a launching board. Barry believes it’ll generate new ideas for future Knights games, and argues that the scope in this game is much more manageable than the one he put out there with Spiral Island.

This is how Playground wants to tackle on-screen FPS controls.

Another game is another iPhone and iPad-specific title called Knights: Arena. This is also a victim of the rotunda of programmers cycling through the studio. It’s an FPS that revolves solely around online play: team deathmatch, capture the flag, and so on. Barry, with a lengthy Internet sigh capping off what he tells us about Arena, says the studio’s goal is to establish a revenue stream as quickly as possible. It needs to hire at least one, dedicated programmer. “But that in itself is a Catch 22,” he says. “Need a programmer to make revenue, need revenue to get a programmer.”

Playground State’s ability to keep its legs churning in the mud seems unreal, but it’s a human reaction. With a teeth-gnashing kind of pride, Barry plans to continue marching on beyond his studio’s funding failure. He doesn’t just want to make games — he wants to see his dreams realized.

“I don’t quite know how we managed to grow in quality, strength, and numbers. Faith in Knights among the team is stronger than ever today, despite everything,” he tells us.

“Knights is one of many projects I dream of making. So this is the blood, sweat, tears part of paving the way to eventually being able to produce these with a real budget and fully paid team. This is it. This is what I love. It’s what I want to do for the rest of my life.”

That’s why Barry is up for using Kickstarter again. He has at least two in the works right now. One is for an extensive indie bundle that features developers in the Vancouver area. The other is for Knights: Arena or a single-player variant of that idea, which he wants to launch “at the same time that we launch the free demo, so people can see or play it and discover it that way.”

Barry talks about Knights: Spiral Island in his Kickstarter promo.

Spiral Island’s crowd-funding failure didn’t come without costs in terms of people and revenue. There were lessons learned, though. The first was scalability. “No need to come out of the gate with a massive universe to embark on hundreds of small stories in other universes. A single story is good enough, or if finances and or programming get in the way, as we are discovering, there are still options,” he tells us.

“We did not go into this expecting it to be quick and easy, and it has not been quick or easy either,” he says.

And let’s say these Kickstarters don’t pan out? Barry isn’t worried. “We will keep pushing along until we are earning revenue on our own, find the right investment deal or get the attention of a publisher that wants to work with us.”

“But no matter what, this project will see the light of day, and as a series of mobile games to start.”

Towards the end of our Barry conversation, we pressed “pause” so we could ask what makes him so idealistic. His vision for these Knights games still seems almost too ambitious considering the lack of funding. The risk of what will happen if these ideas die could be monumental to the studio’s future and Barry. These games are the realization of his dreams, after all.

Honu are a species you'll be able to talk to in a preview. Here's one in a warrior outfit.

“Knights in general is an extremely ambitious concept,” he says. “It started big and the scope of the games we want to tell based in this setting have been cut back for the sake of getting something to market sooner. “

“The concept of Knights being so grand just means we always have room to grow. We realize that we may only ever produce the Knights preview or only ever get as far as Knights: Arena because there’s a real possibility that Knights is lame and we are all crazy people working away on an idea nobody else likes. “

“For me this would just be a continuation of exactly what I have done for 11 years, which is to just hire myself out to whatever studio wants to pay me, and doing so in mass with others is old hat. The grind of tracking down clients and deadlines, milestones, massive delays in payment and so on… it’s all a part of the job. But, Knights, to me, is a way out of this, to finally get all the ideas my brother and I have been brewing up for decades. It’s time we produce things we want rather than the things that pay the bills.”

Barry says that he likes to focus on what could happen with some success. He could hire programmers, no more lost time on contract projects, and the people he’s surrounded by could be supported.

“I just really hope people want to play a game about the Knights — the ultimate saviors of all things, the definition of heroic. Not a bad bone in their bodies, watching them take on any bad guy we can dream up and throw at them, across all history in any universe and time. I really want to play that game.”

When a Kickstarter fails, it’s not necessarily a catalyst for disaster. Barry is idealistic, and maybe too ambitious, but he’s not a quitter. He’ll keep creating. The success of Double Fine was magical, but the intensity of at least one man who didn’t win big is special, too.

While Barry’s story stands on its own, we are covering something larger here. This is part one of a two-part series of articles. In the next, we’ll introduce you to three more studios who haven’t had the greatest experience on Kickstarter. We’ll also discuss why we don’t normally cover games on the service and why we’re not certain of the long-term viability of crowd-funding sources like Kickstarter.

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Well, this was unexpected. A day or so after launching a restaurant simulation game on Android, the simulation gurus at Kairosoft stealth-released Epic Astro Story [$3.99] across the iPhone and iPod Touch. From the look, it appears as if it’s melding the action-y soccer part of Pocket League Story with the city-building of its other recent releases, Oh Edo Town and Venture Town. The key exceptions being that it’s dripping with sci-fi buildings and homes, and the action-y part are actual battles with cutesy aliens.

We’re giving it a spin right now and will definitely deliver you something a little more specific in the near future. If you’re a Kairosoft fan, however, this appears to be the change of pace game you’ve been craving since the company began releasing its city building games on the App Store. Fingers crossed for awesome!

[Thanks, WakeBoardMan10!]

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