TouchArcade.ru

Attention: if you’re particularly fleet of finger, you can grab PopCap Games’s new-fangled Bejeweled [$.99] for the price of $0. Apple is continuing its crazy promotional program via Facebook, and this week it’s giving away Bejeweled while supplies last. All you need to do to claim a free copy is hit this link, mash a few buttons including a “Like” or two, and then you can download the game for free, like a boss.

We recently gave Bejeweled a spin and came away thinking, “Yep, this is Bejeweled.” That isn’t a complaint, either — this new iteration is as good as any in the franchise, and that means it’s really good. Especially in bursts. Give it a shot.

Also, get ready for a bunch of crazy deals in the near future. Ninety-nine cents off is going to be baby stuff compared to what we’re going to see later this week.

[source]

Disney Mobile’s fairly well-received puzzle game, Where’s My Water [$.99], has received another big content update. This latest chapter, which is available now for $0, adds a new steam mechanic, more collectibles, and a total of 20 new puzzles. With this added into the overall level tally, the game can safely boast 120 different levels.

Let’s focus on that steam mechanic for a second since it ties into the chapter’s name, the “Boiling Point.” In the chapter’s puzzles, you’ll guide water into hot things, which converts the liquid into a gaseous cloud. Steam eats away at very specific pieces of a puzzle’s environment, revealing opportunities to keep the game’s Rube Golberg-ian action moving and Swampy the Alligator happy.

Here’s the new trailer:

Eli Note: Just as I was about to unleash this story to the wild, I discovered that Where’s My Water is the latest game to be available for free via Apple’s crazy Facebook promo code promotion. You might remember this from when we did the legendary 9,999 Alarm Freebie Alert for Halfbrick’s Jetpack Joyride [99¢]. This works the same way, either mash this link or the image below, follow the instructions, and claim your free copy of Where’s My Water.

Seriously, jump on it.

[source]

Apple has been doing a variety of crazy promotions on iTunes for, well, basically forever. Free songs given away in all kinds of ways, free apps through Starbucks, and now, apparently, promo code generation through Facebook? I don’t understand the dark rituals taking place behind the scenes to extract promo codes from the ether, but here’s what I do know:

Following this link and mashing a few buttons on Facebook will get you a promo code to download Halfbrick’s Jetpack Joyride [99¢] for free. It’s the first of a new promotion process courtesy of Apple, and I can’t wait to see what else they end up giving away for free. Now, I’ve got no idea either how long this promotion is going to last, when it’s going to rotate to something else, and how many promo codes there are to give away. This news is so hot off the press I burnt my hands.

Seriously, we love Jetpack Joyride and there is absolutely no reason to not take advantage of this offer. Also, it seems you can even generate a code if you already own the game, and then give that code to someone else.

Exciting times we live in.

[source]

[source]

Flick Soccer! [99¢] by Full Fat Games is a penalty-shooting soccer game. Games like this feel like mini-games. The type of thing you wouldn't necessarily play for hours, but might jump on for 10 minutes of casual game-play, while waiting for something.  This game has nice graphics of the pitch, goal and stadium, complete with a cheering crowd and a goalie who does warm up exercises. And it opens with a surprisingly  decent rock song complete with vocals.

To shoot at the goal, you simply swipe across the ball in the desired direction, with short swipes to keep the ball low, or longer swipes to aim high.  You can curve the ball with a curved swipe, or do a second swipe while the ball is in-flight to add after-touch. These curved shots are useful for confusing the goal-keeper, swerving around defenders,  trying to correct a bad shot or for targeting with more accuracy. And it definitely feels great to curve your shot perfectly between the goal keeper and defender for a perfect bulls-eye!

There's five different modes of play, with game center rankings for each mode plus 25 achievements. In Quick-shot mode you try to hit a target within the goal-mouth, which features a bulls-eye with two surrounding bands. You earn extra game-play time, depending which part of the target you strike. In this mode the goalie keeps improving, so it's best to make your initial shots count. The longer you survive, the higher the level you reach.

You're given three balls in Endurance mode, but each time you miss the target, you lose that ball. You get extra balls back by striking the bulls-eye. The goalie is not alone in this game, as some defenders will stand between you and the goal, wisely covering their privates for protection. And power-ups float across the goal-mouth, which can be stuck by the ball to earn extra points or extra balls.

Challenge mode is a slower-paced game, with emphasis on accuracy rather than speed. You get exactly five shots to achieve the score required for bronze, silver or gold medals, which unlock the next skill level. The aim is to gain promotions from 'Trainee', through the ranks, right up to 'Superstar'. This mode helps increase the replay value, as it's tempting to strive for the promotions.

The worst mode is definitely Crossbar mode, which requires constant long swipes to hit the top crossbar of the goal repeatedly, over and over and over, again and again. This mode requires less skill and quickly becomes repetitive and boring and could potentially lead to an iOS hand injury.

The final mode is Smash It, which is all about kicking the ball into panes of glass, positioned around the goal mouth, so they shatter. The most notable aspect of this mode is that the glass panes each display advertisements for the developers (FullFat) or their games. I didn't mind the product placements when they displayed their advertisements on every single banner in the background stadium and on the scrolling electronic billboards around the pitch, and on the loading screens, and on the pop-up which intrusively appears when the game starts and requires a click to remove, but… also placing their advertisements right there on the targets, in the very center of the screen as part of the gameplay, seems a bit cheeky, since we've paid for the game.

There are tons of flick-style soccer penalty-shot games in the AppStore, such as Flick Football [99c/Lite], Flick Kick Football [99¢/Lite], and even Full Fat's own Dead Ball Specialist [$5.99/HD], which has gotten rather pricey with the recent App Store pricing adjustments. These are 3 of our favorites in the genre, and Flick Soccer! is another solid – though not groundbreaking – entry if you're looking for something new and can put up with the somewhat obtrusive cross-promotion advertising.

[source]

At first glance, Candy Boy [99c / HD] by Colorbox looks like a regular one-screen platform game – and to some extent it is. You control Casper, who runs, jumps and long-jumps around the level, climbing over blocks, collecting three coins and trying not to fall into water or holes. And in later levels there's enemies to avoid. Yup, that certainly sounds like a platform game. But, at its core, Candy Boy is actually a puzzle game, based on completing match-3 puzzles . There's no standard rectangular match-3 game-board though, as the blocks are often distributed around the platform level.

Here's how it works:  Casper walks around carrying a colored block of candy above his head, which he can drop anywhere on the level. If he places the candy next to two other candy blocks of the same color, they disappear. In many match-3 games the goal is to achieve a certain number of matches, or to move objects to the bottom, but here the goal is to destroy three "hateful worms" which have invaded Candy Boy's sugary homeland. The worms are colored too, and hide amongst the blocks, so by matching them with candy of the same color, you destroy them. They are stylized square worms, with wide open mouths!

To make things tricky, candy blocks can't be moved once dropped, so some thought is necessary to ensure your candy is placed wisely. Also, you receive a set number of blocks to solve the puzzle and have no control over the order they're released, which adds to the mental challenge. Sometimes the blocks must all be used in exactly the right places, so one mistake and you have to restart the level. However, the upcoming block colors are displayed at the top of the screen as a hint, much like how Tetris displays pending blocks before they appear so you know what's coming.

Candy Boy delivers a whopping 100 levels across 4 worlds, with Game Center / OpenFeint integration for rankings and 13 achievements. This will provide hours of game-play, although it would be nice if the achievements had more rewarding titles than "Achievement 1" up to "Achievement 13". If you get stuck you can skip ahead to the next level by exiting from the pause menu, although a certain number of coins is required to unlock each world. The first few levels are extremely simplistic, involving only a few blocks as you learn, but then the difficulty curve slowly increases, as the candy blocks pile on top of each other.

The controls are alright, but not perfect. There's buttons for left, right, jump and drop block. Climbing over the piles of blocks works perfectly fine, but when jumping up to small ledges or moving platforms, it's frustrating to fall multiple times where I wouldn't normally. And I'm blaming the controls and specifically, the jump button. Fortunately this doesn't happen too often.

If you're specifically looking for a regular platform game, this one's probably not for you. This is not a side-scrolling game and the emphasis is mostly on the puzzles. Try something like League of Evil [99c / Lite], Mos Speedrun [$1.99 / Lite] or Max and the Magic Marker [99c / Lite] (and there's plenty more great regular IOS platformers out there, some of which are mentioned in this thread). But, if you love match-3 puzzles then this cute and colorful cross-genre platform / puzzle game may tickle your fancy. This may not be the first game to mix these genres, but it's always wonderful to see creative experimentation in the AppStore.

[source]

One of my favorite things about the App Store is because of how fast it moves, you never have to wait too long to see trends forming. Thinking back on it, the entire existence of the iPhone is little more than a flash in the world of technology, even though its release back in 2007 (and the launch of the App Store in 2008) feels like ancient history now. A number of things have changed over the short life of iOS devices, but I think the change that had the largest effect on App Store was Apple shifting gears to allow the free to play market to take hold.

When Steve Jobs initially announced the in-app purchase system, he made sure to emphasize that only paid apps would be allowed to use it. Or, as he put it, "free apps remain free." Apple doesn't often change their tune, but they did in a big way on October 15th of 2009 when they opened the free to play flood gates. Moments later, ngmoco announced that Eliminate would be free, officially kicking off the free to play revolution on the App Store and energizing an incredibly vocal minority who were sure that this would be the death knell of iOS gaming in one fell swoop.

Since Apple rarely reveals statistics on both the sales of iOS devices and the number of apps downloaded (200 million device sales and 15 billion downloads, per last count.) if you want to delve any deeper than that you need to get third party analytics firms involved. Flurry is one (of many) of these companies, and they've currently got their analytics package installed in over 90,000 different apps spread across over 40,000 different companies. This gives them a massive bucket of data to run all kinds of different reports which they throw up on their blog from time to time.

The latest out of Flurry is that free to play games are responsible for 65% of the revenue in the top 100 grossing list, compared to only 39% earlier this year. If you're the kind of person who would rather see this data in chart form, well, you're in luck:

Now, I'm sure there are skeptics out there that right now are thinking to themselves, "Whoa, whoa, wait a minute. The top grossing lists go to 200. These numbers are skewed in favor of free to play by chopping off the bottom half of the list!" I followed that path of logic too, since it can often be easy to manipulate statistics to promote an agenda of sorts. However, after speaking to several developers with games all over the top 200, it seems that in calculations like this positions 100 to 200 (and beyond) aren't worth that much consideration because of the extreme bell curve of the top grossing lists making #200 essentially insignificant compared to #1.

What does this mean for iOS gamers? Well, the writing has been on the wall for quite a while now that free to play is taking over the App Store. It's not a hard decision for developers to make either when laying out plans for future games either. With a 99¢ paid game, your profits are completely tied to your chart positioning and your options are incredibly limited for promotion, often relying entirely on making your game free and crossing your fingers for a surge of sales when the sale is over. Comparatively, there's all sorts of neat tricks to make money from a free game, even with horrid chart position.

Thankfully, even though Zynga put the original bad free to play taste in everyone's mouth with Farmville on Facebook and many developers followed suit with similar iOS games that centralized around time sinks and pay walls, there is light at the end of the tunnel. On the Mac/PC side of things, games like League of Legends and recently Team Fortress 2 have been providing some fantastic "core-gamer" experiences while being totally free. I'm sure eventually games like these will filter down to mobile devices, as it's basically impossible to argue against the financial incentive being there through a massive customer base eager to download (and optionally pay for) free to play games.

[source]

There are plenty of popular car racing games in the AppStore; Real Racing 2 [$6.99/HD], Death Rally [99¢] and Reckless Racing [99¢/Lite/HD] spring to mind, to name a few. However, moto-racing is less frequently represented, so it's nice to find a new game about Italian motorcycles which looks pretty sweet. Ducati Challenge [$3.99/HD] from Ducati and Digital Tales opens with a montage of Ducati motorcycles in action, complete with pumping music. If you're a motorcycle, Ducati or racing game enthusiast, check this out.

The game features three modes: Quick Challenge, Championship and Multiplayer. Quick Challenge allows you to practice before a race, to familiarize yourself with the bike and track. You choose the difficulty level and number of laps. Championship Modes include easy (4 races), medium (6 races) and hard (12 races), which must each be beaten in turn as they're locked initially. Each Championship begins with qualifying practice laps which determine who scores pole position, followed by the race itself. Multiplayer mode lets up to four petrol-heads race via a local wi-fi connection and works with a combination of iPhone and iPad devices.

Let's look at the bikes and tracks. You start with a 1100 Monster EVO , but can unlock other Ducati bikes by winning races, including a Hypermotard, Diavel, Multistrada, Streetfighter and Superbike model, which all feature in Ducati's actual product range for 2011. The roaring engine of each model was recorded live, giving each bike a unique and "true" engine sound. You can hear the gearbox changes. This all sounds better if you wear headphones, plus you'll also hear which side the opponents are approaching from. While you can unlock these bikes, there's no way to boost their attributes such as vehicle speed, acceleration, handling or damage, which makes sense given that you're actually racing real-world bikes. There are six tracks provided, including mountains, village, urban and desert settings. Each track can be raced backwards too, effectively making 12 tracks in total.

The retina graphics are excellent. During a race, you can see far into the distance, which creates a realistic landscape, but attention is also paid to little details. There's billboards, spectators, vehicles parked off-track, fences, stadiums, an ambulance and buildings and that's just the first track. When you mess up a corner (and you will) your wheel stains green from the grass. There are three settings for graphics: Low (no effects), Medium (anti-aliasing ie: smoothing) and High (adds motion blur). One minor issue with the graphics is that the wheel and bike shadow are indistinct, forming a black area beneath the bike. Camera angles can be set to first-person, behind-the-rider or rear-view perspective.

The controls include a combination of touch and tilt. Unobtrusive buttons are provided for brake and throttle and holding these down causes stronger braking or acceleration. Tilting the device leans the rider left or right. If you don't like tilt controls, smile, because touch controls are planned for integration in version 1.2, but it's not clear yet if this will be via buttons, screen touches or sliders. Two extra tilting moves are available: Accelerating and tilting forwards pulls a wheelie (you big show off!), while braking and tilting backward performs a "stoppie". The wheelies are an obvious highlight as they're easy to control, but you can still steer and it feels superb to pass between multiple opponents on one wheel. Yeah baby! Eat that.

How do the bikes handle? That's up to you. The amount of brake assistance provided is configurable (on, off or warning), so you can choose an arcade or simulation game style, to suit your taste. The hardest challenge is definitely the corners. Taking them at full throttle simply does not work, so it pays to brake early and accelerate when exiting the bend. Warning indicators appear on screen prior to each corner, which are color-coded to show the difficulty of the turn. You can ram other riders, of course, but that typically causes you to crash. And if you don't like the quality in-game music, simply play your own iPod tracks.

While this game has plenty of positives, there's a couple of issues. The menu keys are small and occassionally unresponsive, requiring multiple taps to register. The player profile name couldn't fit my full Game Centre name, so it was truncated by default. The circuits are quite long, which is fine when you're racing, but if you're half a lap behind – *ahem* – it can be a long and lonely circuit. A short and simple circuit would have been a better initial training ground. And some players have commented that the "feeling of speed" could be improved; although a motion blur update has recently been added. And lastly, bumping and grinding against other bikes currently feels and sounds clunky and repetitive.

Ducati Challenge proves that two-wheeled gameplay can be as good as the four-wheeled variety and the developers are still making improvements. This game is an easy recommendation for moto-racing fans, who will strive to unlock the latest official Ducati models and circuits while climbing the leader-boards. Personally, i'm playing to unlock the rest of the backgrounds, which look so good in the (above) trailer and along the way i'll probably pull some massive wheelies.

[source]

Last night, TechCrunch leaked some details of a new initiative taking place over at Facebook called "Project Spartan." This project aims to utilize HTML5 to free Facebook (and Facebook games) from App Store dependence, essentially putting the ball back in Facebook's hands for control over their platform. If you're not privy to the differences between HTML5 and native apps downloaded through the App Store, I'll break it down for you real quick so you can understand why this matters:

Currently, if you want to release an app or game on the App Store, you need to build it in Xcode using C, C++, or Objective-C, using the documented API's available for developers. To submit said game/app to the App Store, you need a valid developer account which costs $99 a year and your game/app needs to abide by Apple's guidelines. Updates to existing games/apps need to go through the same process, and pushing an update out not only requires an additional trip through the week (or more) long approval process, but also depends on users to actually download said update. When you think about it that way, there sure are a lot of hoops to jump through.

Alternatively, your can build your game/app using HTML5. This won't allow you to access many of the features and functionality of the device as easily (or, really, at all) compared to a native app, but taking this road puts the developer in the driver seat instead of Apple. There are other drawbacks as well, such as requiring online connectivity, although clever resource caching can get around this to some extent, and until WebGL support matures there's not really an easy way to do any kind of 3D.

Where a HTML5 distribution model greatly favors Facebook and social game developers like Zynga is that they can instantly and seamlessly push out updates to their platform. In fact, one of the original criticisms that Zynga had, and one of the reasons why Farmville [Free] took so long to be released on the App Store is that the week or longer delays for each update doesn't jive with Zynga's rapid-fire update model. Those of you who are familiar with Zynga Facebook games are fully aware, but it seems like there's something new being added on a near-daily basis.

In addition, by utilizing your own payment infrastructure with your HTML5 game/app, you're able to completely sidestep Apple's required 30% cut. While coming up with an entire payment system might be too much for most developers to handle, Facebook already has their credits system in place that millions of people are already using today. Also, when you're looking at things in the scope of Facebook's massive userbase, that 30% savings that would have gone to Apple can easily add up to millions of dollars.

HTML5 works great for games as Sarien.net proved a while back, and it's fantastic for apps as well. Give Google Docs a spin on your device for a great display of just what's possible with some clever coding. With these two examples, it's not hard to imagine what Facebook and Facebook game developers could come up with.

TechCrunch also notes another interesting aspect of Project Spartan: Even though Facebook is essentially pushing to distribute its content outside of the bounds of the App Store (and with 700m users, they likely have the muscle to do it), transitioning developers like Zynga to HTML5 and away from Flash only serves to further diminish Flash reliance in the gaming world.

Allegedly, 80 developers are currently involved in Project Spartan. It's hard to imagine this having much of an impact on the App Store in general, but historically speaking, underestimating the power of Facebook has been a terrible thing to do.

[via TechCrunch]

[source]

As happy as it makes me to see how far the iOS platform has come in adapting to more traditional gaming tropes, there’s really nothing I love more than coming across a game that utilizes controls and mechanics that feel completely organic to the touch screen. Such is the case of Foodies [99¢], the first iOS game from indie developer Nano Titans and one that I had never even heard of before until it popped up in the App Store just a few hours ago.

Foodies is a story of two squishy, uh, creature… things named Sam and Pam. They are madly in love and Sam proposes marriage to Pam, but there’s a problem. Pam likes a man with some meat on his bones (if these things have bones, that is), and she has given Sam one week to gain some weight before she’ll agree to get married. All that’s left for Sam to do now is eat everything in sight.

The unique control mechanic in Foodies is a big part of what I like so much about the game. Placing two thumbs on the screen will create a line in between them. Sam will drop into a level from the top of the screen and you’ll use this created line to bounce and push him around each level, collecting the various types of food and avoiding hazards.

The 80 levels in Foodies are also very creative. Some have you simply collecting all the food on the screen, sometimes with a time limit or only a certain number of bounces to accomplish the task. Other levels require only collecting certain kinds of food (like healthy stuff) while avoiding the rest (like junk food). Oftentimes there are obstacles to deal with too, like buzz saws that will kill you or barriers that must be bashed into several times to get past them.

Foodies also contains the ever-important 3 star rating system for each level, though in this case it’s actually a 3 candles on a cake rating system. You’re scored on the treats that you munch during a level, how long it takes you to complete it, and how many bounces you needed.

This brings me to my one problem with Foodies, and that is that it seems incredibly difficult to earn 3 candles for many of the levels. I’ll feel like I completed one as quickly and efficiently as possible, but when my score is tallied up I’ve barely earned enough for 1 or maybe 2 candles. This isn’t a huge issue and it’s possible there’s some aspect to the scoring that I’m missing, but it’s really the only thing in the game that had me scratching my head.

Check out this extensive video from the developer that gives a taste of the mechanics and many of the level types in Foodies (actual gameplay starts at 1:29):

Besides the tiny scoring quibble, Foodies is an extremely entertaining game. The two-thumbed control scheme is incredibly intuitive to use, and with a bit of practice, you’ll be bouncing Sam around expertly in his quest for increased caloric intake. The 80 included levels will take some time to work through, not to mention trying to earn 3 candles for each, and they get quite challenging and complex in the latter half of the game. I’d love to see some more levels released in future updates, as well as achievements to go along with the already included Game Center leaderboard for total score.

If you’re looking for a new gaming fix that’s different from what’s already out there, plus has charming visuals and plenty of content, then definitely give Foodies a look. I was surprised by just how much I immediately enjoyed the game, and players in our forums seem to be loving it as well.

[source]