TouchArcade.ru

Last Fall, Pixelbite Games brought us Reckless Racing [99¢/HD], an arcade-style top-down racer with gorgeous graphics, great controls, and a fun physics system. We really liked Reckless Racing in our review, and now Pixelbite has announced a follow up to the game titled Reckless Getaway.

The “getaway” in the title refers to the different approach to the gameplay in this new game. Instead of standard race tracks, there will be 16 different tracks that feature a long stretch of terrain filled with objects and other traffic to avoid. The goal is to escape the police who are chasing after you, and Pixelbite pegs the classic Spyhunter as their main inspiration with a bit of the Burnout series thrown in for good measure. Sounds pretty great to me, and looks even better in the following trailer:

Initially, there will only be the two playable vehicles that you see in the video, a muscle car and an armored truck. But Pixelbite has designed the game to be easily added to via updates, and they’ll be following the player feedback closely to see what sorts of things they’ll be adding to the game post-release. One of my favorite things about Reckless Racing was how fun it was to just drive, skirting around corners and searching for hidden jumps within the tracks. The prospect of that being translated into this style of getaway gameplay is pretty exciting.

No firm release date is set just yet for Reckless Getaway, but there is a thread in our forums where you can discuss the game and we’ll bring you any new details when we get them.

Update: Well it looks like we barely had time to get excited for the game, as Reckless Getaway has just popped up in the New Zealand App Store. It should filter across the various App Store regions throughout the day, and finally land in the US App Store at 11pm EST tonight. Until then, you can check the thread in our forums for early impressions from international buyers.

New Zealand App Store Link: Reckless Getaway, $2.99 (Universal)

[source]

Last Fall, Pixelbite Games brought us Reckless Racing [99¢/HD], an arcade-style top-down racer with gorgeous graphics, great controls, and a fun physics system. We really liked Reckless Racing in our review, and now Pixelbite has announced a follow up to the game titled Reckless Getaway.

The “getaway” in the title refers to the different approach to the gameplay in this new game. Instead of standard race tracks, there will be 16 different tracks that feature a long stretch of terrain filled with objects and other traffic to avoid. The goal is to escape the police who are chasing after you, and Pixelbite pegs the classic Spyhunter as their main inspiration with a bit of the Burnout series thrown in for good measure. Sounds pretty great to me, and looks even better in the following trailer:

Initially, there will only be the two playable vehicles that you see in the video, a muscle car and an armored truck. But Pixelbite has designed the game to be easily added to via updates, and they’ll be following the player feedback closely to see what sorts of things they’ll be adding to the game post-release. One of my favorite things about Reckless Racing was how fun it was to just drive, skirting around corners and searching for hidden jumps within the tracks. The prospect of that being translated into this style of getaway gameplay is pretty exciting.

No firm release date is set just yet for Reckless Getaway, but there is a thread in our forums where you can discuss the game and we’ll bring you any new details when we get them.

[source]

It all started when Ryan Henson Creighton, awesome dad and game developer, decided to take his daughter Cassie to the TOJam game jam in Toronto, Canada. With his daughter he created Sissy's Magical Ponycorn Adventure, a free to play Flash game with art, voices, and design done entirely by five year old Cassie. Since then it has become somewhat of a worldwide sensation, and through donations Ryan has raised nearly $3,000 to put towards Cassie's education. The game is good, too. It's probably the craziest point and click adventure game I've ever played through, and it's basically impossible for the story of its creation (and success) to be any more heartwarming.

Sissy's Magical Ponycorn Adventure [$2.99] was just released for the iPad on the App Store, further expanding the Cassie's Ponycorn empire. Check out the trailer below to see what it's all about:

The game itself is short, and really, you can play it in its entirety for free online if you want… Or if you've got an iPad you can grab it on the App Store to pitch an additional $3 to Cassie's education fund.

[source]

Provided Owlchemy Labs can energize the creative members of their playerbase, Snuggle Truck [$1.99/HD] owners won’t want for levels in the near future. A new level editor as well as a hip new social component that lets you share, rate, and explore each other’s levels, will appear in the game’s next update — an update that’s currently in testing, but is being teased openly on the studio’s blog.

I get the sense that the sky is the limit in terms of raw sharing. The game can currently boast 41 original levels, but it’ll soon support thousands. The user levels, as explained in a recent video release, will appear next to the level select screen in their own special sub-menu, complete with all sorts of sorting and finding mechanisms. This is THE editor that the developers used to create the game, so you’ll be able to play or provide a similar level of quality to those that ship with the game.

Olwchemy Labs sees this as a great value add and I tend to agree. But version 1.5 won’t just boast the level editing stuff. It’ll also feature a re-position UI, new higher-resolution art, new achievements, and a “ton of low-level optimizations” and bug fixes.

We see a lot of game creators dabble with putting their tools in their user’s hands. For the most part, it doesn’t seem to enrich the overall experience — bad level design or funky implementation never makes for a good time. See: Infamous 2, ModNation Racers, and LittleBigPlanet for plenty of examples of both. Really, for level sharing to work for you, creative minds have to get involved, feel like they have a stake in the product, and keep iterating. I hope Snuggle Truck owners will do that over the long haul.

[source]

Cavorite [$1.99]  by Cascadia Games is another entry in the puzzle-platformer section of the App Store, only this time, the game takes place on the moon. The story goes like this: Back in 1898, a funky substance named 'Cavorite' was discovered, which could shield against gravity. The professor who discovered it built a spaceship, sprayed it with cavorite and ventured into space, to become the first man on the moon.  Unfortunately, a bunch of green bug-eyed aliens, known as 'Selenites', emerged from underground. They abducted the professor and dragged his spaceship into caverns below the lunar surface.  Luckily, the professor has escaped, but he now must repair his spacecraft, to escape the moon. The game is inspired by the H.G.Wells novel The First Men in the Moon, written in 1901. How's that for retro?

As a platform game, Cavorite has plenty of stationary and moving platforms and conveyer belts to jump between, lava and spike-pits to avoid, lazer beams to block or deactivate, doors to unlock and assorted alien enemies to jump or defeat. There's three varieties of alien to watch out for: 'Guard Selenites' are aggressive and carry spears, 'thieving Selenites' are kleptomaniacs who steal your ships parts if they reach them first, while 'pusher Selenites' move any crates in their path, which may either help or hinder. My favorites are the deadly moon-beetles, which crawl around platforms and inflict instant death if touched.  The enemies can be killed by crushing with crates which turns them into green goop, forcing them into spikes or pushing them into molten lava.

While the title is solid as a platform game, It's the puzzle-solving and level-design where this game really shines. There are crates which must be pushed, dropped or even flown into position, to complete each level.  The professor is armed with a cavorite gun which causes objects or enemies to float.  You can spray cavorite on an object to make it rise, perhaps to activate a button above or to drop on an alien's head once the effects of cavorite wear off. You can also make a crate float, then grab hold of it, to be pulled into the air. Once air-bound, you can maneuver the floating crate (and yourself) left or right. This is a useful way to reach higher platforms, to transport crates to other parts of the screen, to activate buttons or to block lazer beams. The puzzles make you stop and think, as you often need to plan your strategy for completing the level. Things are moving around on the screen, so sometimes you need to act quickly before your exit is blocked or a thieving alien steals a part required to repair your ship.

Cavorite delivers plenty of gameplay in three chapters (63 levels). Each chapter features a different pixel-art landscape and it's own boss battle. Gold or silver stars are awarded for each level, based on time taken. If you get stuck, a level can be skipped after a few unsuccessful attempts. There's even Game Center achievements and an online leader-board for fastest game-completion times–  Screenshot grabbing and tweeting are built in. The developer knows all the puzzles and can beat his own game in 24 minutes and 9 seconds, which is an insane time for hard core gamers to beat. For most of us, the game will provide hours of gameplay, which is probably why the music got stuck in my head, in a good way.

The App Store is a smorgasbord of awesome games, so it's easy to jump from title to title, having a wee taste of each. But a nibble of Cavorite isn't enough, for the puzzles are enticing, without being too difficult, so you'll want to keep playing until you escape the moon. The well-designed puzzles and ability to float objects, all within a physics-based platforming game, with retro pixel-art and a nod to H.G Wells, is a winning combination.

[source]

Ticket to Ride [$6.99] is a tremendous board game-to-digital game translation. It looks and feels authentic and boasts a wide range of features. It’s a sharp title through and through, but it was missing a couple of things at launch, namely a pass-and-play option. That has since been added. Developer Days of Wonder hit us up about the game’s most recent patch, which adds the aforementioned mode for up to four friends or a mix of friends and AI. It even hides your cards when you pass the device, which is a super-smart design decision.

More was added in this update, though all take a backseat to pass-and-play. You can now mute voices if you don’t want to hear them, as well as skip some animations. The buttons in the game’s silly “Central Station” now have names so you know what you’re clicking on, and hey, if you’re colorbind, “better support” has been added in. Finally, there’s been an update to the netcode for people with crappier connections. Most notably, if you drop out of a match, there’s now an option to do a quick recovery and jump back into action.

That’s a lot stuff addressed and there’s still more. If you’re interested in learning all, hit up the game’s full patch notes at this iTunes link.

Ticket To Ride is easily one of the better board games turned digital, and this update only strengthens its position. If you’d like a more critical dissection of the title look no futher than our review. Spoiler: it’s glowing.

[source]

Earlier this month, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that Cowboy Rodeo, who lovingly ported the classic Amiga titles Pinball Dreams [$4.99/Lite] and Pinball Fantasies [$5.99] to iOS, were getting set to release a brand new version of Pinball Dreams that was fully remade with 3D graphics. Just a few days ago that game, known as Pinball Dreams HD [$4.99], arrived in the App Store.

I was sort of confused as to why they would decide to remake the game seemingly out of the blue, but according to the developer they had been getting requests for iPad versions of their games ever since the iPad’s release last year. But redrawing the old graphics to suit the new screen size and resolution would have been too large of an undertaking, so they started toying around with the idea of building the tables in 3D to solve those problems. After being happy with the results, they took the project full steam ahead.

Now, two and a half years after the first iOS release and nearly twenty years after the original Amiga release, Pinball Dreams HD breathes modern life into a retro classic. Purists tend to get up in arms when people go fiddling around with their classic games, but before you go blasting hatred over your IRC channel or start calling for Cowboy Rodeo's head over the Usenet boards, you should know that Pinball Dreams HD uses the exact same gameplay code as the original iOS version. And, in practice, it plays nearly identical to how you remember it. It also features all the original music and sound effects.

Although I’m not an original fan of the game from back in the Amiga days, I did fall in love with Pinball Dreams back in ’09 on the iPhone, and it pleases me as well to see the game’s integrity retained. It actually feels pretty surreal to be playing Pinball Dreams HD with fancy 3D graphics in your face but sweet retro sounds hitting your ears. It feels like I’ve entered some sort of bizarro time warp, but I’m loving every minute of it.

One thing to note is that because the game is in 3D, there is a dynamic camera that follows the ball around the table. It’s not quite as dramatic as the camera in Gameprom's pinball games like War Pinball [99¢/HD], so if you’re prone to nausea from those then you’re probably still safe with Pinball Dreams HD. But the lack of any kind of camera options is annoying, especially the absence of a single overhead shot of the table.

Thankfully this should be rectified with the first update to the game which Cowboy Rodeo has said in our forums will include additional camera options as well as a few other minor fixes. They’ve also pretty much confirmed that Pinball Fantasies will be getting this same HD treatment down the line too, and that Pinball Dreams HD will be hitting the Mac App Store soon. I am definitely looking forward to both of those.

One of our forum members has recorded this extremely lengthy video of Pinball Dreams HD so you can see what it's like in action:

If you’re a fan of the original Pinball Dreams, whether on the Amiga or on iOS, then don’t be scared of checking out Pinball Dreams HD. The game still plays and feels like it always has, but now it looks fantastic in high resolution on the iPad and Retina Display devices. If you’re new to the Pinball Dreams world, then know that you’re getting 4 extremely well designed tables and one of the best digital representations of pinball ever released. It’s not a very realistic pinball simulation, but in 1992 it was the pinnacle of video game pinball and that has held up incredibly well over the years.

Pinball Dreams HD is an excellent example of how to modernize a classic while still remaining true to its roots, and it’s one that pinball fans shouldn’t hesitate to pick up.

[source]

For quite some time now we have been tracking Manomio's upcoming iAmiga emulation system for iOS, designed as a sort of wrapper or delivery vehicle to bring licensed Amiga games to the App Store. At the end of last year, we posted an exclusive preview of the in-development system, including a demo video showing a number of classic test titles running quite well on an iPhone 4. One of the titles we played with back then was Cinemaware's classic 1986 strategy game, Defender of the Crown. I'm happy to report that this well-loved, fully-licensed title will be the first iAmiga-powered game to land in the App Store, and that Manomio CEO Stuart Carnie was kind enough to grant us exclusive access to a near-release build of the game.

First, let me say a little bit about the game, for those that may be unfamiliar. Defender of the Crown is a strategy game set in medieval England. The player takes on the role of any of four Saxon knights in a bid to defeat the Norman invaders and fill the vacant throne of England. The original game manual, which is packed with historical information, tells the story well.

IT IS A TIME OF LEGENDS. A time for heroes. A time of bitter strife, when great men rise above their peers to perform great deeds. A chapter of history is in the making.

Your liege the king is dead, the throne vacant. Britain enters a season of destruction, a winter of killing that can end only when the last brave Saxon knight lies dead or the castles of the Normans lie in heaps of rubble, emptied of the foul oppressors who have enslaved your people.

It is a time when foreign invaders shall learn truths administered by the shining blades of Saxon swords. It is a time when heroes are made, and legends are born.

The game is centered around a Risk-style map of England on which the player builds and deploys troops in an effort to defend home territories and take land occupied by the Normans. The struggle involves field combat, castle raids (with catapults, even), jousting, rescuing damsels in distress, and the like. While some of the action is quite involved — jousting is a first-person affair, for instance — other portions of it are more high-level strategy, i.e. click attack, watch the stats columns update. The whole thing is laid out like a very interactive board game, as opposed to something more intricate and vast, such as the more recent Warcraft III or Starcraft II. It is 25 years old, after all.

Even though Defender of the Crown is now 25, the pixel artwork of the talented and renowned Jim Sachs is still lovely to behold — and I don't think I'm talking through my retro blinders, there. Given that, I wanted to share an excerpt from Brian Bagnall's excellent book On the Edge: the Spectacular Rise and Fall of Commodore, to help convey just how actually jarring an experience it was to see the game for the first time back in 1986.

[Amiga co-creator R.J.] Mical saw artist Jim Sachs push the Amiga to its full potential. "Jim Sachs, what a God he is," marvels Mical. "Jim Sachs is amazing. These days everyone sees graphics like that because there are a lot of really good computer graphics artists now, but back then, 20 years ago, it was astonishing to have someone that good."

The final game was a landmark in video game production values. As game designer Bob Lindstrom recalls, "The shock of seeing Defender for the first time was one of those experiences that changed the gaming stakes for all of us."

Compared to other video games of the time, Defender of the Crown established a new level of quality. IBM had Kings Quest by Sierra On-Line, a decent but primitive adventure game. The Macintosh had games like Checkers or Backgammon, or board games like Risk. Defender of the Crown had richer graphics than any computer, console, or even arcade game could boast in 1986. It was a revelation.

That's not to say that the game shined so brightly on every one of the numerous platforms to which it was ported. While the Amiga original is unquestionably the most visually impressive of the lot, there's room for debate as to which version looks the worst. And, happily for iOS users, it's the Amiga version that will soon be landing in the App Store.

Being a faithfully emulated version of the original, Defender of the Crown for iOS brings with it the Amiga's mouse-based controls, and Manomio has done a good job of making that work with the iPad's touchscreen. In order to interact with items on the screen or aim the jousting lance, the screen becomes basically a large trackpad, with a pointer that can be dragged or clicked (tapped) to get things done. As a full-time user of Apple's large Magic Trackpad, I very quickly got accustomed to the interaction, there. In a number of situations, a direct tap on this or that item on the screen would be preferable to dragging the pointer about, true, but I think it's important to remember that this is an emulated title that is being made available to iOS gamers thanks to the iAmiga system. A ground-up rewrite of a classic from years past — and the likelihood of that occurring — is an entirely different proposition, from many angles. I think there's much to be enjoyed about Defender of the Crown on iOS, just as it is.

Have a look at a bit of gameplay on the iPad 2 from the latest build of the game.

Stuart indicates that right now the game is feature complete and all that's left is to finalize the in-game documentation. Defender of the Crown for iOS is a Universal application supporting the iPhone 3GS, 3rd gen iPod touch, iPad, or better. It should arrive in the App Store in about two weeks and we'll be sure to let readers know when they can start to have fun storming the castles.

[source]

Back in March, I felt luckier than a field of four leaf clovers when I was among the first to see Fruit Ninja [$.99 / HD] creator Halfbrick’s latest side-scrolling title, Machinegun Jetpack. It’s a mix of infinite runner and shooter like Monster Dash [$.99 / HD]. Heck, it even stars that game’s hero, Barry Streakfries. Where it departs is where it draws its namesake: during the entirety of the experience, you’ll be strapped to a jetpack that spews bullets.

Back at the event in San Francisco that March, I was told that the game should have been out about… well, right now. I have an update on that: Halfbrick says that the target is now late August, and it’ll definitely hit within the next two months. The team inside Halfbrick on the game is doing a final critical pass, adding in features and tweaking the existing ones for the best possible experience.

I’ve also been told — and you’ll hear this later in the podcast this afternoon, if you’re into our audio — that Machinegun Jetpack will support IAP. As you play, you’ll receive coins that you can exchange in “The Stash,” which is a place that operates as an item and upgrade shop. With IAP, you’ll be able to buy more coins with real cash or, if you want a little bit more of a challenge, buy a machine that doubles the coins you collect organically.

Before you jump out of your seat, Halfbrick realizes that IAP can shred game balance, so it's designing the game for people who aren’t going to purchase coins from The Stash. The IAP is just a way people can earn and use faster. Think of it like a cheat code of sorts — a cheat code that costs money.

Anyway, Machinegun Jetpack will still debut as a Universal app with Game Center at 99 cents. I'm still trying to figure out what I'm going to do with myself until it hits.

[source]