Archive for the ‘developers’ tag
The TouchArcade Show – 50 – Fourth Time is the Charm
On this week’s episode of The TouchArcade Show, we power through conversations about smart gyms and wearable heart monitors in order to bring the latest, greatest, and the best in iPhone and iPad. At the top of the show, we dive into oral reviews of a bunch of cool games, including Brainsss and King of Fighters 2012. Later, we ponder if the free-to-play market is about to collapse and dig into the realities of development in a market that only wants 99¢ stuff.
You can listen below via these handy-dandy links or, hey, you can subscribe to us on iTunes or Zune. The latter is the only way to get our stuff the very second it comes out and lord knows you want us immediately so do it!
iTunes Link: The TouchArcade Show
Zune Marketplace: TouchArcade.com Podcasts
RSS Feed: The TouchArcade Show
Direct Link: TouchArcadeShow-050.mp3, 42.7MB
Here are your show notes:
GAMES
- Brainsss [$2.99]
- Flight Control Rocket [99¢]
- The King of Fighters-i 2012
- Tower of Fortune [99¢]
- DreamWorks Dragons: TapDragonDrop [$1.99]
- Junk Jack [$2.99]
JARED’S KITTY KORNER
- Cat Sliding [Free]
FRONT PAGE
- ‘Draw Something’ Is Losing Dudes Like Whoa
- Jason Citron Forming Games Studio
This week’s episode is sponsored by Jim Guthrie’s .
The original Soundtrack by Jim Guthrie (of Sword & Sworcery fame) for Indie Game: The Movie is available for pre-order now and iTunes. The 24-track album featuring music from the award winning documentary chronicling the journeys of independent game developers by filmmakers James Swirsky and Lisa Pajot will be released in full on May 15th. It will also be available on double LP exclusively through Bandcamp. Pick up a pre-order copy of Indie Game: The Movie: The Soundtrack today on Bandcamp and iTunes.[]
The Reality Of Independent Game Development Is What Keeps iCloud Out Of Your Favorite Games
You see a form of this question in almost every high profile game’s review: why doesn’t this have iCloud support? Apple’s remote storage service is a tremendous offering that lets us resume any supported game from any connected Apple device. During our commutes, we can bang out a couple of minutes in Infinity Blade 2 on our iPhones. Later, at home, we can finish the section we were exploring on our iPads. When the service works, it’s awesome, but we don’t see a lot of games using it. It’s a surprise when one does.
We spent a few days asking a small pool of independent game developers why they aren’t incorporating iCloud in their latest games. What we discovered isn’t surprising: iCloud is always on a good studio’s radar, but the pitfalls of indie development keep it there. It’s too alien, and maybe even a little too wonky, for cash-strapped and low-bandwidth studios to take a chance on.
I’d Buy That For A Dollar
Time, cash, and bandwidth are the three most important resources to the production of any good game. If there’s not enough of one or the other, something goes bad. In the age of $.99 download these resources are even more precious. Their effects on the creation of games are exaggerated to the point where even experimentation on things like iCloud, no matter how easy it might be to implement, becomes a liability. says it couldn’t commit time and resources to iCloud with Super Crate Box because it didn’t have the time or cash to spare.
“We think iCloud is a great technology and we can totally see why Apple is pushing it,” Vlambeer’s Rami Ismail tells TouchArcade via e-mail. “The thing is that while from the user side it’s an easy thing to set up, as developers it’s a new thing that we have to consider, learn to use, and then apply.”
Super Crate Box is the first game Vlambeer has made for iPhone and iPad, so that put an unusual strain on the studio. By the time iCloud support could become an actual bit of functionality as opposed to just a desire, Vlambeer had decided its time would be better spent on tweaking the game’s controls.
Ismail tells us about another wrinkle: now that Super Crate Box is out in the wild and its users have multiple saves across devices, there’s a worry that throwing in iCloud at this point could cause something horrible to happen, like loss of progress or even high scores. It’s happened before with other games.
Zombieville 2, for example, launched and included the service when it was new. Creator learned something in the process: iCloud has a hard time when both local data and cloud data are in the picture. If it pulls the wrong set, it could potentially corrupt a save.
This sort of problem has branching consequences. If Vlambeer has to fix a broken Super Crate Box, that’s a month spent on a finished game when it could be working on something else, draining resources that it just doesn’t have. Ismail breaks down how close to the edge Vlambeer was when it started on Super Crate Box and explains why this informed its decision to not include iCloud.
“Like with basically everything in life, money is a consideration when making games,” Ismail said. “Consider the following: Super Crate Box had five people working on it — the two at us at Vlambeer and two guys at Halfbot. Since we felt the people that made the original art and music deserved a bonus for their work on the original, we decided to pay them out a little holiday money as well.”
“We pay ourselves far below minimum wages because we hardly have any real-life costs at this point. However, the Halfbot guys both have families to support. Multiply the costs of two families and two students by the amount of months it took us to make the game. Then add a few thousand dollars for art and music — AND then add the Apple developer license, iPads, iCades and all other stuff we used to test the game on… the costs simply start adding up and up.” Ismail estimates that Super Crate Box on iOS cost his studio around $15,000.
“The shorter a project is and the fewer people work on it, the lower your costs are and the easier it is to create risky projects. This is essentially why a lot of indie studios remain small — we want to make games we love to make and honestly, if we could avoid all business and just do that without any worries, we’d be doing that. However, there’s always the economic realities, so we have to consider all that as well. In the end, we love making games, but we want to be able to keep making games.”
“During development, at some point, you run out of time or money — whatever you want to call it. If things went well, that’s a point at which most improvements you could make to the core game make barely have any noticeable effect. With Super Crate Box, we chose to spend a lot of time on such tiny improvements, especially to the controls. Burning through spare money from our release of Serious Sam: The Random Encounter, we just kept going until the gameplay in Super Crate Box iOS was the best we could make it.”
“That turned out to be six months later. Basically we found ourselves running out of everything. At that point, we considered adding iCloud, but obviously that was too late to do that. If we wanted to do that, we’d end up figuring out how to add it, where to add it to the code, how to make sure we don’t damage player save games or even delete some save games — basically, it’d add an additional month to development.”
Ismael said at this point Vlambeer had two options: it could either gamble by adding content and support that might or might not work or require additional resources, or it could release a good game. “When we have to choose, we always go with releasing a fun and solid game. We’ll usually pick a few technologies that we feel would benefit the game most, so in Super Crate Box’s case that was Game Center, OpenFeint and iCade support.” Vlambeer says it’ll always pick the latter when it comes down to quality versus any form of external support.
End Of The Day
Other studios that we talked to for this story, including Simogo and Uppercut games, told us that their latest projects didn’t launch with iCloud support because of similar reasons. Vlambeer isn’t the only studio on the App Store deciding to hold out on iCloud support in an effort to stay nimble and put out the best game that it possibly can within a sustainable timeframe.
It’s also obvious to us that iCloud and the implementation of it needs to be easier, and the service itself needs to be more reliable. Almost every studio we talked to had some trepidations or a horror story to share. Browse our message board, and you’ll find even more from users receiving the bad end of an iCloud problem.
That’s not to say iCloud isn’t awesome. It is. Games that use it, like Infinity Blade 2, are better for the implementation. iCloud could also be used for stuff beyond saves, so there’s promise of what’s to come. We simply want to see more of it.
Studios like Vlambeer and most others know that you take gaming as seriously as they do, so iCloud support isn’t ever going to just get thrown into the mix. Solid implementation takes time and money to pull off, though, and these are finite resources. Studios may want to roll in the support, but until they can afford to do it, iCloud will continue to be a staple of the cutting room floor.
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The Pitfalls Of Independent Game Development Is What Keeps iCloud Out Of Your Favorite Games
You see a form of this question in almost every high profile game’s review: why doesn’t this have iCloud support? Apple’s remote storage service is a tremendous offering that lets us resume any supported game from any connected Apple device. During our commutes, we can bang out a couple of minutes in Infinity Blade 2 on our iPhones. Later, at home, we can finish the section we were exploring on our iPads. When the service works, it’s awesome, but we don’t see a lot of games using it. It’s a surprise when one does.
We spent a few days asking a small pool of independent game developers why they aren’t incorporating iCloud in their latest games. What we discovered isn’t surprising: iCloud is always on a good studio’s radar, but the pitfalls of indie development keep it there. It’s too alien, and maybe even a little too wonky, for cash-strapped and low-bandwidth studios to take a chance on.
I’d Buy That For A Dollar
Time, cash, and bandwidth are the three most important resources to the production of any good game. If there’s not enough of one or the other, something goes bad. In the age of $.99 download these resources are even more precious. Their effects on the creation of games are exaggerated to the point where even experimentation on things like iCloud, no matter how easy it might be to implement, becomes a liability. says it couldn’t commit time and resources to iCloud with Super Crate Box because it didn’t have the time or cash to spare.
“We think iCloud is a great technology and we can totally see why Apple is pushing it,” Vlambeer’s Rami Ismail tells TouchArcade via e-mail. “The thing is that while from the user side it’s an easy thing to set up, as developers it’s a new thing that we have to consider, learn to use, and then apply.”
Super Crate Box is the first game Vlambeer has made for iPhone and iPad, so that put an unusual strain on the studio. By the time iCloud support could become an actual bit of functionality as opposed to just a desire, Vlambeer had decided its time would be better spent on tweaking the game’s controls.
Ismail tells us about another wrinkle: now that Super Crate Box is out in the wild and its users have multiple saves across devices, there’s a worry that throwing in iCloud at this point could cause something horrible to happen, like loss of progress or even high scores. It’s happened before with other games.
Zombieville 2, for example, launched and included the service when it was new. Creator learned something in the process: iCloud has a hard time when both local data and cloud data are in the picture. If it pulls the wrong set, it could potentially corrupt a save. Bummer.
This sort of problem has branching consequences. If Vlambeer has to fix a broken Super Crate Box, that’s a month spent on a finished game when it could be working on something else, draining resources that it just doesn’t have. Ismail breaks down how close to the edge Vlambeer was when it started on Super Crate Box and explains why this informed its decision to not include iCloud.
“Like with basically everything in life, money is a consideration when making games,” Ismail said. “Consider the following: Super Crate Box had five people working on it — the two at us at Vlambeer and two guys at Halfbot. Since we felt the people that made the original art and music deserved a bonus for their work on the original, we decided to pay them out a little holiday money as well.”
“We pay ourselves far below minimum wages because we hardly have any real-life costs at this point. However, the Halfbot guys both have families to support. Multiply the costs of two families and two students by the amount of months it took us to make the game. Then add a few thousand dollars for art and music — AND then add the Apple developer license, iPads, iCades and all other stuff we used to test the game on… the costs simply start adding up and up.” Ismail estimates that Super Crate Box on iOS cost his studio around $15,000.
“The shorter a project is and the fewer people work on it, the lower your costs are and the easier it is to create risky projects. This is essentially why a lot of indie studios remain small — we want to make games we love to make and honestly, if we could avoid all business and just do that without any worries, we’d be doing that. However, there’s always the economic realities, so we have to consider all that as well. In the end, we love making games, but we want to be able to keep making games.”
“During development, at some point, you run out of time or money — whatever you want to call it. If things went well, that’s a point at which most improvements you could make to the core game make barely have any noticeable effect. With Super Crate Box, we chose to spend a lot of time on such tiny improvements, especially to the controls. Burning through spare money from our release of Serious Sam: The Random Encounter, we just kept going until the gameplay in Super Crate Box iOS was the best we could make it.”
“That turned out to be six months later. Basically we found ourselves running out of everything. At that point, we considered adding iCloud, but obviously that was too late to do that. If we wanted to do that, we’d end up figuring out how to add it, where to add it to the code, how to make sure we don’t damage player save games or even delete some save games — basically, it’d add an additional month to development.”
Ismael said at this point Vlambeer had two options: it could either gamble by adding content and support that might or might not work or require additional resources, or it could release a good game. “When we have to choose, we always go with releasing a fun and solid game. We’ll usually pick a few technologies that we feel would benefit the game most, so in Super Crate Box’s case that was Game Center, OpenFeint and iCade support.” Vlambeer says it’ll always pick the latter when it comes down to quality versus any form of external support.
End Of The Day
Other studios that we talked to for this story, including Simogo and Uppercut games, told us that their latest projects didn’t launch with iCloud support because of similar reasons. Vlambeer isn’t the only studio on the App Store deciding to hold out on iCloud support in an effort to stay nimble and put out the best game that it possibly can within a sustainable timeframe.
It’s also obvious to us that iCloud and the implementation of it needs to be easier, and the service itself needs to be more reliable. Almost every studio we talked to had some trepidations or a horror story to share. Browse our message board, and you’ll find even more from users receiving the bad end of an iCloud problem.
That’s not to say iCloud isn’t awesome. It is. Games that use it, like Infinity Blade 2, are better for the implementation. iCloud could also be used for stuff beyond saves, so there’s promise of what’s to come. We simply want to see more of it.
Studios like Vlambeer and most others know that you take gaming as seriously as they do, so iCloud support isn’t ever going to just get thrown into the mix. Solid implementation takes time and money to pull off, though, and these are finite resources. Studios may want to roll in the support, but until they can afford to do it, iCloud will continue to be a staple of the cutting room floor.
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Has ‘Draw Something’ Lost 5 Million Daily Active Users Since Zynga Acquisition?
If you rewind the App Store clocks to around a month and a half ago, there was absolutely nothing out there hotter than Draw Something [$1.99 / Free ]. OMGPOP went from some Flash portal social game company I’d never heard of to releasing a game that even the most extreme non-gamer type friends of mine were relentlessly harassing me to take my turn. Draw Something’s popularity was so explosive, that I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s mentioned in several GDC talks this year as other developers try to divine the secret sauce that caused the game to go so incredibly viral.
What almost instantly followed the success of Draw Something was $210m acquisition by Zynga, spawning all sorts of entirely too predictable Zynga hated across the internet. You’d think that the might of the Zynga empire backing the game would only cause its popularity to grow, but did some digging into some figures published by , who believe that Draw Something’s popularity is in a steady decline, already losing five million daily active users.
Even after this decline, I’m not sure you’ll find too many game developers out there that’d complain about retaining ten million daily active users. What about you guys? Are you still playing Draw Something? Did you delete it after the Zynga purchase? If you’re still playing it, do you notice as many of your friends still at it?
[ via ]
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OpenFeint Founder Jason Citron Forms New Gaming Venture
Jason Citron was among the very first game developers for Apple’s App Store when it launched all the way back in 2008, and most people associate him with founding the groundbreaking iOS social gaming network OpenFeint. Well, about a year ago, OpenFeint was bought by Japanese gaming giant Gree, and several months later Jason left the company to pursue a new challenge.
We’ve gotten the first word on what that new challenge is, as that Jason has announced his forming of a new gaming venture called Phoenix Guild. Right now the company consists of just Jason, but the current plan is to raise a round of funding to hire a team and get off the ground, and he thinks Phoenix Guild will be able to ship their first game sometime this year. In fact, he’s already started coding the project on his own.
For some insight into what kind of games Phoenix Guild would be interested in creating, Mr. Citron had a choice quote on the matter
“All of the gaming today is casual or mid-core. There is a huge bunch of gamers who can’t frigging stand this crap, myself among them.”
Sounds like the focus of Phoenix Guild will be towards meatier kinds of titles like those that you would find on home consoles, and given the background with OpenFeint a social aspect will also be a high priority. The studio will also be focusing development on “post-PC” devices, so tablets, smartphones, and similar devices.
We know Jason Citron is capable of great things given his previous work, and although this is just the very beginning stages we’re eager to see what will come from his new venture Phoenix Guild.
[Via ]
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‘Cannon Cat’ Review – This Flying Feline Knocks it Out of the Park
I’ll be honest, I’m wary of any games I download onto my phone these days that promise any sort of physics-based fun. I’m burned out on that scene, plain and simple. However, I do like cats, as you may know from my past reviews, and I like the idea of forcibly launching a cat out of a cannon (in safety gear, of course, folks). So I caved for Cannon Cat [ Free ], and I admit, now I’m really glad I did.
Cannon Cat has a flimsy premise, as most iPhone games do — something about skyfish being imprisoned in bubbles by a guy named the Evil Emu. I think that it’s cute fluff, but I didn’t pay it much mind before I jumped headlong into the game. We’re not here for deep stories, after all – I came here to put a cat in a cannon and rocket him across the skyline. I mean, who doesn’t want to do that?
Good news: that, my friends, is exactly what you are going to do, over and over. Cannon Cat is diced up into into two worlds, Kapalua Islands and Cedaria Reef. Apparently a third world called Stratos is coming soon as well. Each of these worlds holds roughly 40 levels to work your way through, which sounds like a lot, but if you factor in that each level takes you less than a minute to play, you could finish Cannon Cat in just a couple of hours. And I found that mildly frustrating, because I wanted to play more.
Each level contains a series of cannons, and your job is to guide Cannon Cat from one to the next, collecting the skyfish along the way. As you can imagine, this starts simple and becomes challenging with the addition of obstacles. Each cannon moves when you are inside of it, so you can choose the directions to send your cat flying in. Choosing alternate paths may mean collecting all the level’s fish, so you don’t always want to go in a straight line, as you could be missing out. You go through a ring at the end of each level to complete it.
When you finish each level you’ll be ranked on whether you got all the fish, and if you didn’t, you lose out on bonuses that would have improved your score. You also have a handful of cool powers at your disposal, such as a shield, an option to use “cannon time” (which causes slow motion), a boost that makes the skyfish bigger so they are easier to pick up along the way, and an autosave that automatically zips you back to the last cannon you were in before you failed.
These are all optional power-ups, and you can use an in-game currency called sparks to buy them. At first you’ll have some free ones, but if you use them all, you’ll need to spend some real life money to get more. It’s not at all necessary to enjoy the game, though.
I think the best way to appeal to a gamer who grew up in a time period when games were at their most challenging is to use some of the same structure in current games. It hooks us, and I admit that little touches like that really work on me. Cannon Cat is not radically unique, in fact it’s very similar to another iOS title Land-a Panda [$0.99 / $1.99 (HD)], but there’s something about the structure of it that also reminds me a bit of golden era platformers like Mega Man and Sonic the Hedgehog.
That’s probably because like those games, Cannon Cat is precise and easy to play, it’s fast, and it’s a lot of fun. Also, it’s free, and it looks like the developers plan to expand on it, so it’s well worth your time to grab this game and spend some leisure time sending your feline friend in search of flying fish.
TouchArcade Rating: 
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Coming Soon From the Creators of ‘Pro Zombie Soccer’: ‘Supermagical’
If you’ve been on the hunt for an incredibly elaborate fantasy-centric free to play sideways version of something along the lines of Bust-A-Move [ $4.99 ], the guys behind Pro Zombie Soccer [$0.99 / $1.99 (HD)] totally have your back. As it turns out, that game description sounds totally up my alley, and something tells me, after watching the trailer, you’ll be sold too:
The guys from Super Awesome Hyper Dimensional Mega Team are very active fielding questions, but what we know so far is the game will be universal, sport 15-20 hours of gameplay, feature cooperative multiplayer, and tons more. They’ve described the free to play system as being similar to games like Jetpack Joyride [ Free ] which sounds great to me.
The developers aren’t getting any more specific with release dates than “soon,” but I’ve got my fingers crossed they mean “coming soon” as in, “very soon.”
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‘Sam & Max Beyond Time and Space Ep 4′ Review – The Best Episode Yet
“Chariots of the Dogs,” [$4.99] the fourth episode in the Sam & Max Beyond Time and Space series is easily the best one so far. The Sam & Max series has always been tightly written and designed, but “Chariots” does two things remarkably well: it matches its narrative hook to its mechanics, and it ties the entire series together.
If nothing else, “Chariots” is remarkable for the way it brings almost all of the big questions from the first three episodes and ties them together: the Bosco and Stinky subplots are advanced, and previously off-screen bit roles come forward as major players in the series. This feels satisfying and rewarding for longtime devotees, and Sam & Max Beyond Time and Space’s episodic structure lends itself to weaving these disparate narrative threads together. Even the intro sequence feels tighter and more cinematic, suggesting a series that is maturing with each episode.
Episodes one, two, and three were generally self-contained, but “Chariots” provides the most solid narrative link in the series thus far: it picks up the immediate aftermath of “Night of the Raving Dead” [$4.99]and ends on a cliffhanger that propels the story into episode five [$4.99]
The Sam & Max series has always been, at its heart, based on inventory items, but Beyond Time and Space seems dedicated to refining and twisting that formula as much as possible: “Moai Better Blues” [$4.99] used portals to great effect; the previously mentioned “Raving Dead” included several dialogue trees and ambient aural puzzles. Without spoiling anything, “Chariots of the Dogs” focuses on time travel.
Incidentally, the time travel mechanic was first introduced in episode one, “Ice Station Santa,” [$4.99] when Sam and Max have to appease the Ghosts of Christmases Past, Present and Future. (The Ghost of Christmas Future section actually foreshadows the end of “Chariots,” if you’re paying attention.)
The beauty of “Chariots” isn’t just that it’s an adventure game with a time-travel story; the time travel conceit shapes and informs every puzzle, becoming the tentpole mechanic in its own right. A lazier game would use time travel as a plot device and build a standard inventory game around it. “Chariots of the Dogs” focuses not just on matching certain items with certain solutions, but in exploring their effects through time. Like its predecessors, “Chariots” does a good job matching its story hooks with its mechanics, which makes each relatively short episode feel distinctive and full-featured.
The logic employed in “Chariots” is relatively straightforward: the Freelance Police can move forward in time to gather clues, which in turn allows them to travel backward in time to affect the future. There’s a nice gameplay loop there, and the game as a whole feels holistic and natural, each puzzle mechanic and story arc syncing perfectly.
It’s no surprise, then, that “Chariots” feels intuitive and fun throughout. Making its players feel smart has always been one of Sam & Max’s strong suits, but every episode until now has had puzzles that feel arbitrary or unfair. Generally speaking, the broad strokes of each puzzle or story arc are easy to grasp in “Chariots,” even if the step-by-step puzzle solution requires some tinkering and mental elasticity. For my money, this installment strikes the right balance of deductive reasoning and old-fashioned observation.
This is, I’m assuming, another of episodic game development’s bounties — after four games (not counting Sam & Max Save the World, the previous series of episodic Telltale games), it’s no surprise to find the writers and developers zeroing in on smart, intuitive puzzle design.
“Chariots of the Dogs” is smoothly and tightly paced, and nothing feels misplaced or kludged together. It’s a charming, warm, and funny game, and it’s the best episode in an increasingly good series.
TouchArcade Rating: 
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The First Big Free to Play iOS Game Comes Full Circle: ngmoco’s ‘Eliminate’ Shutting Down on 5/25
2009 was a weird time for the App Store. Free to play games were building steam on other platforms, but the way Apple originally structured the in app purchase mechanic prevented it from being used on anything but paid games and apps. This policy was reversed in mid-October, and only a few hours later ngmoco announced that their (then) upcoming online first person shooter Eliminate would be free.
The game was released a few weeks later, and we posted an extensive guide on it. In a nutshell, Eliminate was a four person first person shooter with a free to play twist. In order to earn credits to buy armor and weapon upgrades, players needed to use their energy supplies. Energy depleted as you played, and, obviously, an in-game store sold all the energy that players could ever need if they didn’t wait to wait to recharge.
Being among the first free to play games available, and actually being the first gamer-centric freemium game on the App Store, Eliminate seemed to spawn a massive community of players overnight. In fact, the is still amongst the most popular TouchArcade threads of all time, running closely behind and .
A TouchArcade reader sent a tip in over the weekend that not only had Eliminate been pulled from the App Store, but launching the game now results in the above popup. On May 25th, 2012, Eliminate is going offline. It’s sad to see not only this game, but also ngmoco as a company coming full circle. We’ve been covering ngmoco since their inception, as it seemed to many (myself included) that they were the most promising contender to be the premiere iOS-exclusive game developer.
In early 2010 the company then picked up some additional financial steam and bought Freeverse, which was yet another incredibly promising iOS developer that has since vanished. Later that year, Japanese social gaming giant rolled ngmoco up into their proverbial katamari at the potential price of $400m… Then things started to take a slide.
The Epic Wars series of games were the first projects to be shut down by ngmoco, leaving faithful players (who potentially invested heavily into the game) in the cold. News of games releases, or really, any activity from the company dried up until earlier this year we heard the company was hit with layoffs. even suggested that they missed the financial targets of the $400m buyout, putting the bulk of that purchase price in jeopardy.
If nothing else, the shut down of Eliminate is yet another reminder that the money you spend on these server-centric free to play title is buying you things that only persist as long as the developers keep the game online. If you’ve dumped cash into Eliminate, be sure to get your money’s worth playing the game before it goes offline next month.
Thanks Payam!
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‘Panzer Corps’ iPad Port is In The Works
If you’re the kind of person who loves turn based strategy games, likes lots of tanks, and might even have some fond memories of the 1994 MS-DOS game Panzer General, do I have the iPad game for you. Well, more accurately, it’s a PC game, but the developers are hard at work on an iPad port and I think it’ll be great with touch controls. Allow me to introduce you to .
Currently , Panzer Corps sounds like it has depth on top of depth on top of depth. How much depth? Well, here’s the first bullet point in the feature list:
- 400 unit types, divided into 19 unit classes with 20 detailed parameters to indentify units abilities, 17 terrain types affecting gameplay in various way.
Better yet, the single player campaign actually has branching points at various stages, where the outcome of the game will be entirely different depending on the margin of victory (or defeat). Apparently all major and minor nations are represented in the game, and your core units move through the game with you, leveling up and gaining new abilities along the way.
But wait, there’s more: “Award winning” online multiplayer utilizing something the developers refer to as the “PBEM++ system” system. Sounds awesome, right? If you’re antsy, you could download the right now. Meanwhile, those of us iPad-owning Mac users will have to wait until the iOS release which is currently slated for the third quarter of this year.
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