TouchArcade.ru

On the Wind is an eye-catching game. The interplay between the light, floral art and the chunky pixelized interfaces just begs for attention. t’s hard to tell exactly how it plays from the trailer, but the gist is this: the screen scrolls by, getting faster and faster as you progress through the seasons. You control the gust of leaves with your fingertip, moving it around obstacles and through other leaves that scatter across the field. It feels a bit like a wire loop game with added speed and less sadism.

At first glance it’s easy to assume that thatgamecompany’s Flower is the obvious source of inspiration, but developer David Buttress says it didn’t much factor into his design. Instead, he looked to The Helicopter Game, a classic Flash-based cave flier with simple, one-touch controls and a rather brutal difficulty curve. The idea for the leaves and flowing motion came from a more esoteric source: a in-depth look into Boids, an early artificial life program that models flocking behavior. He was particularly fascinated by the idea that such complex and beautiful motion could be created from a few simple rules, and he is bringing that organic motion into play in On the Wind.

Buttress is new to the iOS development world, having just recently launched his one-man studio, Don’t Step On The Cracks. But he’s coming from a long background in game development at Rare. Working with the other creative-types at the studio was often inspiring, but he had few chances to work on the small, creative ideas that cropped up. As with so many other developers moving from the console space, he found that iOS offers a great opportunity to play around with the concepts that had been building up while he put his time into larger projects like Conker: Live and Reloaded and Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts.

Buttress reached far and wide for inspiration while developing On the Wind. The silhouettes that make up the environment were initially inspired by Limbo. Rather than taking a similarly dark and pensive approach, he built on the idea, letting in riotous color for the leaves, flowers and backdrops. The sparseness of the sound is another carefully considered choice, like the auditory atmosphere in Shadow of the Colossus, which was usually formed only by the sound of the wind and the hooves of your horse.

For now, On the Wind is a concise experience meant for on-the-go play, one that runs through the seasons in short order before ending. Buttress is considering an update with an endless mode and powerups in the future, but for now he’s happy to launch with a still-pure experience. Between the procedurally generated world, leaderboards and a series of clever achievements, though, fans should find plenty of reasons to keep going. We’re certainly looking forward to playing more, having had a taste of the game. We’ll be sure to let you know when it lands, hopefully in a handful of weeks.

[source]

I think we’ve got our plate cleared of GDC stories. Yesterday’s Sega event was the last embargoed piece of news from the event for us to post about, closing the books on what might have been the busiest convention in TouchArcade history. Also, we got eight folks from the TouchArcade team together, and the best we could muster was a series of blurry iPhone photos. C’est la vie!

It goes without saying, but it was amazing seeing everyone at the event last week. Whether you were lucky enough to slide into an appointment slot with us or if you just had a few beers on us at the party, thanks to everyone involved. The massive community of awesome developers is what makes GDC my favorite event of the year.

For our readers who might have missed anything during the onslaught of GDC coverage, we’ve got all of our stories archived under the GDC 2012 category so, give that a look.

Our party this year was crazy, and I think we’re going to have to explore a different venue for next year if GDC 2013 is anything like GDC 2012. Here’s a few photos of the madness, courtesy of @sargonas:

If you’ve got your own photos from GDC, drop ‘em in the comments! As far as other conventions are concerned that we’ll be covering in the future, we might be at PAX East, following that the next big ones will be WWDC and E3 in a couple months.

[source]

TUAW’s Kelly Guimont has spotted some interesting language in yesterday’s iTunes Terms And Conditions update. Here’s the text in question:

Certain paid In App Subscriptions may offer a free trial period prior to charging your Account. If you decide you do not want to purchase the In App Subscription, turn off auto-renewal in your Account settings during the free trial period.

Guimont speculates that this could indicate that Apple is preparing to offer developers an easy way to offer time-limited trials of their apps, like game demos. This would be a fantastic change. Developers wouldn’t need to support extra lite versions of their titles, non-game apps could finally offer quick peeks at their content, and the rest of us would have a chance to try before we buy.

Now, while it seems at least as likely that this functionality is meant for magazine publishers, the new terms address that specifically:

Certain In App Subscriptions may be designated as “Newsstand” products, in which case they will appear only within the Newsstand application on your device after download.

Sounds like there will be some support for non-Newsstand apps to take advantage of free trial periods, which (intentionally or not) may open the door for other app developers. We’ll keep an ear to the ground and let you know if anything comes of this

[source]

Apple’s iPad Media Event recently drew to a close and TouchArcade was fortunate enough to have been sitting ring-side to watch the iOS phenomenon further unfold.

During today’s event, Apple CEO Tim Cook took the stage to announce, first and foremost, the third generation iPad (which is known as, simply, “iPad”) as well as related iOS apps and a new and improved third generation Apple TV.

It turns out that the rumors leading up to the new iPad’s unveiling were true; the new unit sports an improved Retina display with four times the number of pixels as the earlier iPads. The new screen has a resolution of 2048×1536 pixels and features notably improved color saturation as compared to the earlier devices. In order to push so many pixels around the screen, Apple has utilized their new A5X processor, a more powerful unit than the earlier A5, that features a quad-core GPU, bringing twice the number of graphics cores of the iPad 2 to bear on pixel- and polygon-pushing tasks. Given these specs, the A5X GPU configuration should be virtually identical to that of the Sony PSVita. Presumably the A5X features two CPU-cores, as did the A5 before it.

During the event, Cook brought several guest speakers on stage from various software studios, including Namco Game Design Director James Shelton and Epic Games President Mike Capps. Shelton demonstrated Namco’s upcoming aerial combat game Sky Gamblers: Air Supremacy, while Capps took the audience on a tour of Epic’s upcoming Infinity Blade: Dungeons. Both titles were an impressive demonstration of gaming on the new, twice-the-resolution Retina display of the new iPad. (Well, as much as they could be on a studio projector with a lower resolution than the new iPad, itself!)

After the main event, attendees were given the opportunity for a hands-on with the new iPad and to chat with several high-level figures, including senior VP of Worldwide Marketing Phil Schiller, about the latest iOS device.

Upon picking up the new device for the first time, the thing that strikes you right away is, unsurprisingly, the clarity of the screen. Indeed, the experience of using the new iPad is much the same as using an iPhone with Retina display as compared to an earlier iPhone or iPod touch. It’s striking, and in the best of ways. The jump in resolution, I noticed, was most visible in bringing up web pages in Mobile Safari, where content had the clarity of pages in a magazine. To me, the new iPad feels physically identical to the iPad 2, as far as weight and size.

I spent a short period of time with Air Supremacy and, there, saw high framerates with numerous aerial enemies on-screen, rendered quite a bit more sharply than I am accustomed to from an iPad game. I think that Infinity Blade: Dungeon might actually be a better demonstration of the design intricacy and minute detail that the screen can deliver, but I did not see that title, in person, unfortunately.

The device unveiled today brings unprecedented video fidelity to what was already one of the best gaming platforms out there — the iPad. It’s four times the pixels, with twice the graphics power of the iPad 2. All of us here at TouchArcade are anxious to see what developers have in store for Apple’s new flagship iOS device.

[source]

Apple has increased the size of all cellular network downloads, across all devices, to 50MBs from the long-standing cap of 20MBs. Presumably, this is a move meant to ensure that more… complicated iPad 3 titles will actually be available to those not around Wi-Fi. Of course, the next iPad also boasts 4G LGE. No better time to upgrade the ceiling, we suppose.

We’ve heard a lot of grumbling about the, now, old restriction at GDC this week. A lot of downloads come over cell, so developers want to be able to tap in the market. The downside, of course, is that it forced developers into making their games substantially smaller in scale and, in some cases, even prevented content updates.

[via Macrumors]

[source]

GDC starts… Tomorrow! Most of the TouchArcade crew is already causing trouble in San Francisco, while a few of us (myself included) are still airborne and working via the wonders of in-flight WiFi. Anyway, just as a heads-up this week should be pretty crazy with a constant stream of posts as we meet with the 80 different game developers we have scheduled meetings with.

If you have a meeting with us, please be sure to bring assets for your game with you. WiFi and cellular service in San Francisco seem to be equally unreliable, so we’re asking everyone to load some screenshots and any video you can come up with on some sort of USB storage device. USB flash drive, portable hard drive, whatever! As long as we can pull data off of it, we’re good to go.

If you don’t have a meeting with us, unfortunately our schedule is totally slammed and I can’t squeeze anyone else in regardless of how many times (and how creatively) you try to contact me about it! Please be sure to come to our party though. It’s at the same place we hold it every year, but a day earlier.

Here are the details:

• WHEN: Tuesday March 6th, 7:00 PM until they kick us out.
• WHERE: Bin 55 in the lobby of the Marriott Marquis at 55 4th St.
• WHY: Because there’s way more cool people we want to meet than we have meeting time slots for!

Bring your industry-relevant business card and/or a GDC pass to flash and we’ll trade you for a fancy tyvek bracelet to turn on the free beer. I’m thinking our party is going to be crazier than usual this year judging by how quickly our meeting schedule got booked up, so, don’t miss it.

[source]

There are many ways to envision Mars. It could be a barren world, perhaps host to life once but certainly no longer. It could be a thing out of science fiction, teeming with hostile life we haven’t yet met. Or it could be the future of our species, our best hope to leave a planet growing ever-smaller.

Tiger Style imagines a future that brings us to Mars to discover the truth. As the developers of Spider, The Secret of Bryce Manor [$2.99], the company has a lot to live up to, but they don’t falter. In creating Waking Mars [$4.99], they have crafted another game built around storytelling. It is a brave game, one that is willing to think the best of us: that we could discover new life and seek to learn from it, not exploit it.

Liang, the star of the piece, is a Chinese astrobiologist who is part of a tiny team responsible for researching the red planet. This is done from a safe distance, with the help of rovers and computers. When the rover goes missing, it’s up to Liang to recover it.

This means descending into Lethe Cavern, a Martian cave system that has only barely been explored. What should be a brief jetpack jaunt becomes an incredible journey. Liang encounters the Zoa, and begins to bring Mars to life.

The Zoa are Martian lifeforms, essentially plants. Tiger Style has researched and weighed every aspect of the Zoa ecosystem: each plant has its own dietary needs, soil pH requirements, vulnerabilities and biomass. Each contributes to the system in some way: one’s seeds feed another, one releases spores that prepare the soil of others, one predatorily dines on lesser types. A careful balance is required at all times.

The caverns are protected by cerebranes, Zoa that react to nearby biomass. Just as many plants need to be pollinated or processed by other species to reproduce, the Zoa need Liang’s help, and the cerebranes ensure he must give it. By raising the biomass in each cave, he can keep progressing deeper.

In practice, this means collecting seeds and planting them appropriately. ART, Liang’s A.I. companion, keeps track of biomass, tracking it with a five star system. Three is often enough to pass through a cavern, but five is better for reasons that will become clear as you play.

As Liang travels deeper into the caves, a larger story unfolds. It’s the story of the Zoa, and of Mars. It is not the story of Liang. He is stoic, quiet. He rarely discusses his own experiences. He is here to learn, to explore, and to complete his mission.

Aside from ART’s occasional interjections, Liang has one more companion: Amani. She stays back at Base Camp, reaching out to Liang with encouragement and information.

If I have one complaint about Waking Mars, it is this: Amani’s portraits don’t feel appropriate. Where the art is otherwise excellent, Amani’s is bold and out of place. Her portraits look a little too much like a series of stock photos. This is a small problem, but a jarring one.

But Amani herself is a welcome distraction. Early in the game, ART and Amani interrupt Liang’s journey near-constantly, walking him through all the basics. As time passes, they pop in less and less. The solitude of the caverns is a wonderful thing, enhanced by the game’s gorgeous soundtrack, but it’s also lonely in there, deep below the surface of Mars. On those occasions when Amani’s signals break through, it usually begins a much-needed moment of human connection.

Otherwise, Liang is alone with the Zoa, working to build enough biomass to continue his journey. Each discovery he makes is noted in a research journal, each cave he visits is marked on a map. The only thing left to remember is the composition of each cave. At first, resources are plentiful. Later, you’ll need to revisit caves to find the seeds you need. 

Waking Mars is never truly difficult. Some of the Zoa are carnivorous and must be avoided, but there’s no real penalty to letting Liang’s health drop. Similarly, some of the Zoa are very vulnerable, and can be killed. Keeping them alive is rarely completely necessary, however, as most caverns can eventually be brute-forced into growing sufficiently with enough persistence.

In place of difficulty, Waking Mars has intelligence. A clever game, it pushes players to contemplate its mysteries while they solve its smaller puzzles of ecosystem and biomass. Most of your questions will be answered by the time the curtain falls; in fact, I’d consider this one of the most satisfying gaming experiences I’ve had on this platform. Most of that satisfaction is down to the story and its presentation.

In the end, you’ll be left to decide the fate of the Zoa. Though the story can play out in multiple ways, there isn’t a wrong answer among them. You can always reload your final save to try things out differently. This is a blessing, one that lets you find every answer before putting the game down for the last time. This isn’t a game that will stand up to being replayed for most people, but at 6 to 10 hours it should provide entertainment enough.

Waking Mars has everything: a compelling story, beautiful environments, a gorgeous soundtrack and gameplay worth playing. Though it is, in some ways, less risky than Tiger Style’s last game (though I’d argue a game about a Chinese astrobiologist studying Martian botany is not completely risk free), it’s a worthy successor. Spider was an amazing experiment in storytelling; Waking Mars raises the bar on quality in long-form iOS games. Neither should be missed under any circumstances. Get this game. Whether you adore it as I do or not, it’s worth experiencing.

TouchArcade Rating:

[source]

This week’s episode of the TouchArcade Show is way more … irreverent than usual. It was a “slow” week overall, as studios are zipping their lips, so they can blow off our socks at Game Developers Conference 2012. The top of the podcast is a mash of talk that covers an insane range of stuff — from Android to muscles, it’s there. Towards the middle segment we do dip into games, and at the end we talk a little bit about iPad 3.

If this is your first show, wow, you picked an awesome week! To give us a listen, just hit one of these convenient links. If you like what you hear, consider subscribing to us on iTunes or Zune. It’s free, it’s awesome, and we love our regular listeners.

iTunes Link: The TouchArcade Show
Zune Marketplace: TouchArcade.com Podcasts
RSS Feed: The TouchArcade Show
Direct Link: TouchArcadeShow-041.mp3, 43.1MB

Here are your show notes:

GAMES

• Zombies, Run! [$7.99]
• NBA King of the Court [Free]
• Ziggurat [$.99]

JARED’S KITTY KORNER

• Cat-a-gory [$.99]

FRONT PAGE

• Apple’s iPad 3 Event Happening March 7

[source]

I love it when a logo explains it all.

You put on your shoes, and turn on the app. In the background, you hear the throaty hum of an engine and the voice of a pilot speaking into her comm. As you walk out the door, she tells you that you’re on a mission. She doesn’t know what kind, and she doesn’t seem to care, either. Your target is Abel Township, one of the last two remaining strongholds within 100 miles of this area. This is weeks, maybe years after a zombie d-day. Right as you hit outdoors and start an honest jog, the story takes a turn. A missile slams into the helicopter. You hear the crunch of metal, warning beacons, and gears grinding.

You’re three miles out of Abel, and maybe a quarter of a mile out on your run. You’re told to jump, so you do. And then you hear the groans of the undead.

Horror and athletics don’t usually mix, but with a heaping of pure passion, these two things can gel just as well as sweat and iron. Zombies, Run, is an exciting fitness app from London-based studio Six to Start. Its goal is to tell you the story of a fractured world as you jog, and put you firmly in the thick of it. You participate as a silent and athletically gifted protagonist that the survivors of Abel dub “Runner 5.” Runners have a single job: run — run to find new materials, or pick up packages, or trade with others. Each mission in the game presents a new piece of scripted story. Each segment is broken into chunks that are cleverly bookended by your own workout playlists.

The stylish Zombies, Run! poster that was given to its backers on Kickstarter.

The effect is sort of like what would happen if Stephen King’s The Mist 3-D ever melded with Nike Plus. The narrators, who hiss into different sides of your earbuds as you run, provide a rough context as to where you are and what you need to do. They bump out pieces of story intermittently, as you picture wandering through the bowels of a messed up hospital or explore an air drop outside of Abel base. After each mission, the app turns into something similar to Fallout’s radio stations; it plays your music alongside radio-style commentary and news from two Abel survivors.

There’s a much more mechanical game part to Zombies, Run, too. As you run, you’ll pick up items that can be used to boost Abel Township’s hospital, food stores, communication station, armory, residential areas, or recreational facilities. It’s a simple mechanic, but it feels like a treat after an awesome run.

Sometimes, you’ll hear the groans of the undead in your ear and have to run faster in the real world to get away from the game’s zombies. This specific part of the experience is its interval training, which is an important element that sets this apart. Most fitness games are horrible at getting you to new heights. Even the good ones like EA Active are bad at this. Band exercises have limitations, and running in place isn’t going to get your bigger or stronger or faster. Pushing yourself safely with intervals in a real world scenario is an important component to any kind of serious training, and Zombies, Run has that.

That’s a great element, but what I really think makes Zombies, Run work, and work so well, is its soul. The studio has one experienced runner with a history of using fitness apps and a staff filled with people who dig and understand proper storytelling. They want to deliver something special. As an organization, Six to Start seems like the perfect fit for this kind of app.

The Origin

Adrian Hon is one of the brains behind Zombies, Run. He’s the runner of the office. He tells me that he’s wanted a better kind of running game since the iPhone made its debut. He’s used a lot running apps, like Nike Plus and Runkeeper, as well as a couple of more visual-oriented apps. The problem he sees with these apps is legion. Running while looking at a screen is dangerous, stopping to see your progress is counterproductive, GPS can send you to bad places, and there’s not an element of fun.

Hon says he used to hate running when he was younger. He, literally, “Couldn’t think of a worse thing to do.” This all changed when he discovered Garmin GPS, which added an element of fun to the mix. Because of this app, he still runs, although its more of a seasonal thing because no-one likes getting out on ice.

There's a Zombies, Run store that sells these.

“One of the things I really liked about the Garmin was the ‘ghost mode,’ where you could race against yourself.” Hon says. “It made me think there was quite a lot that could be done with fitness games. And I think that physical activity — and of course, sports — is inherently fun and good, so it really shouldn’t be that hard to make a game out of them.” He laments what studios are doing now with their fitness games.

“However, developers have been more focused on the more reliably profitable, yet massively competitive, genres of casual games lately. And more experimental folk find it more difficult to combine tech and physical interaction in a way that doesn’t make you want to shoot yourself when you try to play.”

Zombies, Run was the answer to Hon’s issues with fitness apps and a riff on Ghost mode. It’s a viable one, too, because it treats your phone as if it were an iPod Nano. It only spits out audio when you select a mission, and it never asks you to take a gander at it while you exercise. Aside from random zombie horde events, it also lets you decide when you want to push yourself. A lot of fitness games, if they’re not taxing, they’re just screaming at you. It can be a really counterproductive factor in a workout. It’s easier to get hurt this way. Zombies, Run allows you to take care of your body while also torturing your mind.

Zombies, Run was a project that floated around in Hon’s head since his Garmin days. He and Six To Start had a lot of ideas bouncing around, but they settled on this one, as it artfully combines super simple play alongside an actual story. The narrative is something Hon obviously enjoys, too. “It’s a shame that so few developers have made more than a token effort to put proper stories in their games,” Hon says. “I understand that Triple Town and Bejeweled don’t need stories, but then again, I quite liked Puzzle Quest, so there’s a lot of room in mobile for innovation, but we’re still seeing the same old stuff, even from indie developers.”

This is the first promotional image for the game on the App Store.

Six to Start is all about story. If it isn’t obvious from the fact that it created an audio-based running game about the end of the world, check out its web site.

“We are next-gen storytellers,” the studio proudly states. “Great storytelling and great gameplay is at the heart of what we do. Storytelling is a huge part of the world’s culture, and great stories have always had the ability to move and excite us, whatever the medium. Play means a lot to us, too. We draw inspiration from video games, boardgames, casual games and playful applications and services.”

Six To Start believes that through play, people can learn and discover new experiences. When story and play are combined, it gives Six to Start “the opportunity to deeply engage with our audience get them to do new things — as a large single group or individually.” It’s getting me to run away from zombies, and think about the world they exist in as I kill my body, so this place is obviously doing something right.

Six To Start and Hon’s baby became 3,464 people’s baby, too. Zombies, Run was funded via Kickstarter. The team put up the game’s idea, asked for $12,500 and then received over $70,000 in return. The project was funded in six days alone. Backers received all sorts of neat prizes, including their names in the game’s credits, a poster, or the chance to name something in the game after themselves.

Hon has prior experience with Kickstarter, so it wasn’t a big moment when the idea of putting Zombies, Run on the popular crowd-funding service came to him. However, the decision was also a great way to vet the game’s core idea. “Plus, we thought that the public would be easier to convince Zombies, Run was a good idea than the usual gatekeepers.”

Everyday I Hear Zombies Moan

I usually stick to high-impact weight lifting. I don’t run because I’m afraid that I’ll lose my precious muscle mass. Call it a tic. The truly awesome thing about this app is that it is capable of embracing your routine, no matter how weird it is. I normally use the elliptical for my needs, for example, and I can use Zombies, Run. All I have to do is turn off the GPS features and turn on its experimental accelerometer functionality and I can play just like a runner might. Conversely, I can also just chill with it, and listen to the story, although this method isn’t preferable.

I’m taking Zombies, Run into the gym every day. That’s huge because it’s proving to be a tool. On my calf and thigh days, it’s pushing me, reminding me not to fall into casual or relaxed grooves. I need that because I’m usually only interested in sweating if I’m lifting something spectacularly heavy.

I guess games end up changing a lot when the budget suddenly skyrockets.

Plus, the story is tremendously well told. This isn’t a blown-up, bombastic tale of a few survivors just making do. There’s subtlety to its characters and its world, and just like The Walking Dead, there are moments of intense action, bookended by periods of drama and character building. Zombies, Run wants to actually tell you a story. It isn’t afraid to do so, and that comes across, even if you might be slightly too tired to care in sections. I never feel like an idiot while listening to it, either. It’s told with a straight face and with enough touch to make it feel like an honest story, and not just some weird nerd fantasy running app. There’s interesting stuff tucked into each mission — stuff you want to tune in order to learn more about the world Six to Start is building.

Also, of note, this isn’t a trainer. It doesn’t scream at you. It might nudge you with the zombie horde attacks, but the app doesn’t get in your face. It let’s you do your own thing in your own way. It was designed specifically to do this.

“We want to enhance people’s lives by making their workouts fun, not turn into nagging machines,” says Naomi Alderman, the writer of Zombies, Run. Mission accomplished, I think.

Zombies, Run is available now on the App Store for $7.99. An Android version is coming down the pipes, too. Currently, the game has a total of 20 missions. More missions are slated to come down the line as IAP. Check it out if it even vaguely interests you. I think you’ll be surprised by its purity — and its scares.

[source]

A game icon. On iPad 3.

Let’s pretend that rumor is fact, and iPad 3 is going to rock a high-resolution, Retina Display screen similar to the one we have on our phones. What will our games look like with it, and how will developers tackle the new hardware? The latter is a question a lot of studios are asking themselves and there’s no clear answer. The former is something a developer named Kevin NG of WordCrasher Blitz [Free] fame is blogging about, and he has a few tantalizing pictures to share.

For a little context, the following are shots from Food Run. That’s Kevin’s upcoming iOS title. It’s being created using vectors instead of bitmaps, so the art can be scaled to any size, including a 2048 x 1536 resolution, which is popularly believed to be iPad 3’s screen resolution.

Here's what an entire scene looks like on Food Run for the current iPad

Here's a zoomed in shot of the game on current hardware.

…And here's a gorgeous shot of what it could look like on iPad 3's rumored retina display. Crisp!

That’s quite a change isn’t it? We’re drooling over here. Seriously. Someone get a towel. A cup. Something.

Kevin also jotted down a bunch of really cool thoughts on iPad 3 and how it will affect developers, so give his blog post a read if you’re really interested. Apple is expected to announce iPad 3 during its March 7th event in San Francisco. We’ll be there and will get you any news as soon as possible.

[via book of the dev]

[source]