Archive for the ‘developers’ tag
Upcoming MMO Strategy Game ‘Empire of the Eclipse’ Finally Submitted to Apple
I had originally met at Macworld 2011 when the industry veteran turned iOS developer showed me a demo of Empire of the Eclipse, a massive online multiplayer 4x strategy game created from scratch for the iOS platform. At even that early state, the scope of Empire of the Eclipse blew my mind, and considering Zarksoft was comprised of just a few people I had my doubts whether the team could pull off the kind of game that they envisioned.
At GDC that year I was able to get an even more in-depth hands-on demo with the game, which had been coming along quite nicely in the months since I’d last seen it. Initially the developers had hoped to have the title done by the end of that same month, but in April we got word that after some feedback from folks who saw the game at GDC they decided to make some changes to the game which would delay their intended submission date.
Their new goal was to have the game shipped by summertime, but that never came to be, and aside from the update in April pretty much everything on the Empire of the Eclipse front had gone totally silent.
(Zarksoft’s has a bunch of tutorial videos if you want to get into the nitty gritty of how the game works, and this beginner’s overview one is a good introduction to the very basics):
Earlier this week, however, Zarksoft stating that at long last Empire of the Eclipse had finally been submitted to Apple. They explain that after starting the beta testing process, many more things came to light in the game that required changing, and in fact they performed a pretty major overhaul on some of the main components of the game.
Obviously a game of this scope takes a lot of work to tweak, balance, and get just right so that it offers a great competitive experience, and that work can take a significant amount of time. Even though it’s nearly a year after its intended release, and more than 3 years of development time total, I’d rather have Zarksoft make the game the best it can be rather than release something that isn’t ready for primetime.
Empire of the Eclipse has been in submission for a few days now, and it’s really anybody’s guess how long it will take to go through the Apple approval process. But we’ll be all over it when it releases to see how it turned out after such a long journey, and in the meantime there is a discussion of the game that you can check out.
[Thanks to everyone that emailed this in!]
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Simogo and How Its Sausage Is Made
Simogo's new office. Look how busy these guys are!
Simogo doesn’t make games like most studios. It doesn’t do design docs, meetings strike it as silly, and it doesn’t get rattled when something isn’t working as intended or a game needs to be delayed. It can be different because its games are the product of an improvisational style of development that sheds structure when it impedes an organic flow of ideas, analysis, and feedback. Simogo calls this “jazz development.” It’s a good name.
Simon Flesser and Magnus “Gordon” Gardebäck are the two dudes behind Simogo. They’ve been working together for over five years across two different companies. They make mobile games now in Malmö, Sweden. Their office is a lively place with a pine-colored floor, a massive window, a radiator, and rainbow colored throw rugs.
Before, they made XBLA and PSN downloadable titles. Their last one was . Simogo’s titles and that game share a lot in common. Simogo builds vibrant worlds with complimentary music, and it aims to keep its games as charming as they are simple.
Simon is the art guy. He handles concepts and music. Gordon is the “one-man army.” He codes and programs. He builds frameworks. He even tackles design concepts. The duo has a fantastic relationship that goes beyond the creative glue that binds them. When Simon talks about Gordon, he’s almost reverential. The mutual respect these two have is also a big reason why Simogo makes games the way it does. They don’t argue. They listen, and then they execute.
Simogo is one of the most fascinating mobile developers out there. It’s a brutally small studio that, somehow, drops some of the most compelling, idealistic, and fulfilling games on iPad and iPhone. Beat Sneak Bandit, a rhythm and stealth mash-up, is loud and launched with a lot of fanfare, but the studio made the most noise with Bumpy Road, a somewhat depressing one-finger side-scrolling game that features an old couple, a car, and a road that can be manipulated with touch or swipe. The development of Beat Sneak went down in the usual Simogo way, which is to say, most of the good stuff happened on the fly.
How The Sausage Is Made
A pre-release "bonus" screen of Beat Sneak Bandit. It was taken to show off the resolution of the iPhone version.
Simogo doesn’t like design documents. It’s also too small for meetings. Gordon and Simon twirl their chairs and talk when something needs to be discussed. If an idea pops up in their heads when they’re not at the office, they call each other.
Simon thinks game design documents are good tools for big teams, but they fail to communicate feel, which is important to Simogo games. Bumpy Road was ponderous with a touch of zany. Beat Sneak Bandit is hyperactive and bombastic. Simon describes game design documents “like watching sheet music and saying you’ve heard the song, but the music is so much more than the composition,” Simon tells me.
“You could say that the way we make games is like jazz music; we improvise and put in new stuff as we go along.”
Simogo begins the actual game development part of production with a prototype just like any other studio. It dreams up an idea, and then it tries to flesh that out with a rudimentary demo. Some studios like to take this process especially slow by isolating experimental mechanics to produce proofs of concept, presumably to show publishers. Simogo goes deeper. It takes its pre-production demos and adds layers of actual production. “A lot of the appeal in our games is the full package, so we want to have that early on to get a feel for it,” Simon says.
The original idea for Beat Sneak came before Simogo released its first title, Kosmo Spin. At that time, Beat Sneak was an endless runner with a musical twist. If it had come out, it would have had you jumping and ducking to the beat, as opposed to sneaking to the beat in a series of interconnected levels.
That idea morphed into something more, yet still different from what Beat Sneak is today, when the studio began working on the game in August 2011. Beat Sneak 2.0 had you swiping the floor of a level to offset the timing of the beat. Simogo called this mechanic “scratch reality.” In this version of the game, you wouldn’t have control of the Bandit directly. Instead, you’d swipe against the beat to open doors and Bandit would follow a path automatically. Simon compares the feel of this version to real-time video editing.
“This idea proved to be as complicated as it sounds, so we had a rough month in which we just simplified and simplified,” Simon explains. “The concept of looping rhythm stages was something that was very cool to look at, we just had to come up with a suitable interface.” At this point, the duo tackled the problem by thinking about the first pure idea for Beat Sneak.
“Then we remembered the old rhythm-tap idea and everything just fell in place. We had two different prototypes after that. You would tap in beat to walk right, and backbeat to go to the left. That proved a little too difficult as backbeat is kind of a hard concept to grasp if you’re not a musician, so we wanted to downplay that.” The other build, which was much closer to the version we’re familiar with, had Bandit flipping when he hit walls. However, backbeat reared its head again. This build had floor security lights you had to jump over by hitting a backbeat.
One of the first Beat Sneak Bandit screens. This is the iPad version.
When Gordon and Simon do have a disagreement, it’s usually about planning. One specific instance that I had to pry out of Simon involves beackbeat, a concept that never made it to the actual game. Simon didn’t want Beat Sneak to be as easy as it is now, so he kept pushing for backbeat. Gordon was adamant that the mechanic need not exist, while Simon stubbornly held his ground maintaining that the game would suffer if it wasn’t included in the package. Gordon’s view that Beat Sneak should be as simple as possible to play eventually saw Simon agreeing with him. And just like that, the debate had a winner, and Beat Sneak Bandit became context-sensitive.
This process of simplification is a hallmark of Simogo’s games, and the source of its most spirited conversations. Gordon presses to make things as simple as possible without killing what makes a product special. Simon seems to have a hard time letting features go. He doesn’t want the users to get bored. He also knows that simple is best when it comes to touch devices, though, so these disagreements get ironed out without getting bitter.
“The thing we focus early on in all our projects is definitely the controls,” Simon tells me about production in general. Beat Sneak’s controls were a huge priority. The interface was, too. In the end, Simogo made an extraordinarily easy to play music game. Put a finger to the screen and Bandit moves. Hitting specific spots in the environment alters his direction.
This is Simogo's old office. Seems… smaller.
Simon describes the way Simogo works as a “publisher’s nightmare.” It sounds like it. Publishers want design documents. They want to checkpoint developers. They want meetings. Basically, they want to make sure their investments are being used and that a game is hitting every milestone and well on its way to releasing when agreed.
Roving deadlines, however, are a big part of the Simogo experience. Bumpy Road, its last game, released on May 19. After some contract work and work on a huge Bumpy Road update, Simogo started on Beat Sneak in August. The original release date was December. It hit this February, a couple of months past its original due date. This allowed Simogo to create more levels and that boss fight, as well as a few other features.
After the backbeat change, Simogo stopped long enough to produce a ten-level vertical slice to submit to the Independent Games Festival. That November, it revealed the game with a fun little teaser that betrayed just two things: the rhythm and sneaking. “Around then we realized we were making something special, so we wanted to do it justice and expand it a little. We added new elements, like the vacuum buster, the time stopper, the shadow stages, the phone calls from Herbie and the Duke, and then decided to skip our deadline in December.” Not competing during the Christmas rush was smart. The App Store freezes in late December. During this period, no new games are released, but the store is more vibrant than ever because developers basically dogpile it the week prior to the freeze. Games get forgotten, passed over.
Behind the Bandit
One of the coolest spots of design that Simon let me in on during our talks about the creation of Beat Sneak was origin of the game’s central figure, the Bandit. Bandit as we know him wasn’t a part of Beat Sneak at first. His final design came from a game concept called Mustache Bandits. That game’s tagline: “Every revolution starts with mustache doodles.”
Simon tells me not to ask about Mustache Bandits, but I have to press. It was a drawing game influenced by, of all things, Fruit Ninja. If it had actually seen the light of day, players would have been painting mustaches on posters guerrilla style and rewarded for factors like accuracy and speed. One of its big features would have been prompts like “UNI-BROW BONUS!”
“We wanted to wrap this in a story of a gang of bandits starting a revolution against the mayor by painting mustaches, and they’d all have their own strengths and special attacks. Silly stuff,” Simon says. I don’t think he understands how bad I want to play this game now.
We’ve got quite an assortment of concept art of Bandit and his revolution, er, evolution over the development.
This is from Rhythm Bear, which was the game that ended up being the core idea behind Beat Sneak. Notice how the hairstyle managed to make it over, as well as the expressiveness of the avatar. The little blocks, not so much.
Enlarge this one to see it in all its glory. The original bandit doodles all had one thing in common: a funky, defining hairstyle. This is, technically, a 3D project but Simogo uses 2D images.
This isn’t directly related, but I wanted to share it. This is a style test sheet that helped solidify the tone of Beat Sneak.
And those give you a good example of how many iterations everything – including the game’s name — had to go through. At one point, the game was called “Backbeat Bandit” or “Beat Bandit.” You can tell the backbeat discussion was still going on while Simon was working on the game’s branding.
The Release
This was the second teaser image released.
Figuring out when Beat Sneak was “finished” wasn’t hard. Its external testers and Simon’s girlfriend pretty much made the decision. “The response from our testers was absolutely phenomenal, and you know when people actually want to continue playing not because you’re watching, but because they just want to.”
“There was a much greater initial response to this one than Bumpy Road, actually, from people we showed early. But, personally for me it was when my girlfriend told me it was the best thing we’ve made. Creatively, I trust her 100 percent.”
In February, after it was submitted to certification, Gordon and Simon celebrated with beer, vague celebratory tweets with pictures of wine glasses, and a few days off. When it actually hit the App Store a week later, Simon and Gordon spent a few days telling the press and any one who would listen that it was out. “We speak to fans, to media and just focus on trying to get the word out, which is very hard when you’re this small.” It’s true. Even a site like ours misses big titles from established indie developers.
Beat Sneak is a great game bolstered by tons of high scores in the press, but its first week didn’t bust the mark that Bumpy Road set in its first days of release. In Simon’s mind, the numbers aren’t matching up to the hype press stirred up.
The fact that busted Pokemon rip-offs are able to take second place on the charts while Beat Sneak can’t crack the top ten is also frustrating. “In a week where an app that was a copyright infringing picture of a Pokémon took the second spot in the charts, that is especially heart-breaking,” says Simon. “But in the end, what matters is sales in the long run, and if we can keep steady sales, that’s good.” Simon takes the high road, always.
“We do understand that this is a bit more niche than Bumpy Road, more of a gamers game, though. Also, Bumpy Road was iPhone game of the week and Beat Sneak Bandit was iPad game of the week so I guess that comes into play too.”
The End
Thousands of words and not one mention of clocks. Well, until now.
Simogo isn’t a typical iOS developer. As cash-strapped as it might be, it still spends more than a single month on a game. It tests. It iterates. It builds the kinds of prototypes that are representative of more than just a clever mechanic.
Gordon and Simon are a strong tandem because they check their egos at the door; they’re hugely talented, but they operate as a unit without the baggage. They disagree at times, but they also find answers.
“Much like a recording artist we want our games to feel Simogo. It should feel like something that only we could make. So it’s hard to put a finger on what that is. Maybe it’s how everything produces a sound when you interact with it, how it feels tactile, the level of ‘polishness,’ or the art… I don’t know.
“I say this a lot, but there is no single aspect in a game that is more important than the other. Gameplay is not more important than presentation, art is not more important than sound. Everything plays together to create something bigger than the sum of its parts.”
Of note, Simogo develops on a special platform that gives indie developers a chance to take the risks that Simogo does with each release. You’ll never see Beat Sneak Bandit on XBLA or PSN. It’s too unusual, too unique. Maybe too small, as well.
This game deserves your attention if you haven’t bothered with it yet. It’s one of the best games on the App Store, and one of the most creative to boot. Its flavor, tone, and rhythm mechanic are all completely unique and fun.
Simogo is moving on, by the way. The studio has just now started talking about “Game 4,” and it isn’t quite sure if it’ll follow a similar development path. Simon describes this title as totally different from Simogo’s previous games, but it’s so early it might just end up as just another title that influences its next project, like Mustache Bandits.
“I’m excited about bringing in some new blood in to this project, to help out on bits we can’t make ourselves. We’d really like to have it out by this year, but you know — jazz development, you know where you’re going with it, but you never know how long the improvisations will last.”
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It’s My Birthday and Games Are on Sale!
If you listen to The TouchArcade Show, you’ll know that we often joke about just how silly the culture of price changes is on the App Store. Even the most obscure of holidays are fair game for entire-catalog 99¢ sales. Anyway, long story short amounts to me goofing around on Twitter mentioning how my birthday almost seems like a more relevant holiday for iOS sales than Presidents Day. I didn’t really think anyone was going to do it, but it turns out there’s a small number of developers observing my birth as reason to drop prices. So, if you’ve had your eyes on any of these games, I guess thank my parents.
Breakeroids, $1.99 → 99¢
Commander Pixman, $1.99 → 99¢
King Cashing: Slots Adventure, $1.99 → 99¢
Match Panic, $1.99 → 99¢
Outfoxed, $1.99 → 99¢
Pickpawcket $2.99 → 99¢
Pin Fall, $1.99 → 99¢
Pinch n’ Pop, $1.99 → 99¢
Piyo Blocks 2, 99¢ → Free
Pollywog, 99¢ → Free
Power of Logic 99¢ → Free [HD]
Ramps, $1.99 → 99¢
Silverfish, $1.99 → 99¢
Silverfish MAX, $3.99 → 99¢
Soccer Tactics Multiplayer, $1.99 → 99¢
Tripolar, 99¢→ Free
Zen Wars, 99¢ → Free
Oh and SlotZ Racer Caterham Special has always been free, but if you play it today, you’ll get a special track. Exciting, eh?
If you’re looking to find more games on sale on days that aren’t today, the best way to do this is by bookmarking . These days so much stuff goes on sale that we don’t often post about them as pricing is just in a constant state of flux. Keeping a close eye on AppShopper is the best way to not miss anything.
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‘League of Evil 2′ Review – Still As Evil As Ever
The people behind Ravenous Games appear to be firm advocates of a familiar old idiom – if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. League of Evil 2 [$2.99/Lite], the much-anticipated sequel to their sadistic platformer from 2011, isn’t anything new but it’s certainly still worth your hard-earned cash. However, before you rush out to grab their latest product, you probably want to ask yourself one question first: how much do you enjoy dying?
Because the game is hard. Really hard. Like its predecessor, League of Evil 2 is jam-packed with things that want to kill you dead. From ninjas with light sabers to shirtless Rambo lookalikes to spike pits, you’re going to see it all. The only thing League of Evil 2 doesn’t throw at you is a ravenous kitchen sink hell-bent on washing you out.
The level design is absolutely nefarious as well. Be prepared to drop down long passages only to explode atop a bed of sharp, pointy things. Be ready to accidentally jump into stray projectiles. The worst thing about this is there’s no one to blame but yourself. League of Evil 2 never really throws you into impossible situations. It merely demands that you have the reflexes of a greased-up mongoose on wheels.
Under ordinary circumstances, all that I’ve said would probably make the game impossible for all but the most hardcore. However, much like its progenitor, League of Evil 2 is blessed with wonderfully responsive virtual controls and a minimal amount of buttons. There are only three, in fact. You move the protagonist, otherwise known as the Agent, with the left and right buttons. To jump, you press B. To double-jump, you, uh, press B twice. And finally, A is for punching and kicking things. It’s pretty straightforward.
Much like in the original League of Evil, the story here is pretty simple. As the Agent, your mission is to stop the League of Evil – a coalition formed from an assortment of identical-looking evil scientists – by punching them in the face. Literally. In fact, that’s the goal of each level: to find the resident researcher and decapitate him with one blow. (Don’t ask how that works.)
And now that we’re done with the mandatory explanations, let’s move on to the differences between League of Evil 2 and the first League of Evil. The biggest change here is the visual style. Instead of retro-looking sprites, Ravenous Games went with a more cartoony, retina-quality approach this time around. I’m not sure if I particularly like the change but it’s certainly appealing, nonetheless. There are also an assortment of boss battles, a hefty 100 levels to start with, costumes, and comic book-style cut-scenes to introduce each new world.
One curious change in this sequel is in how the double jump works. In the first game, you could run off a ledge, jump in mid-air, and then jump again in mid-air. This mid-air double jump was an integral strategy in the first game in order to get difficult level completion times in the first League of Evil, and it seems strange that it would be changed for no discernible reason. However, the developers have acknowledged that the mid-air double jump will be restored in the next update.
I’m not the biggest platformer fan in the world, but I’m in love with this one anyway. Though I could have done with a few more collectibles and a deeper story, there’s not much to complain about here. If you want to experience Super Meat Boy on the go, League of Evil 2 is, well, the way to go.
TouchArcade Rating: 
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‘Ice Rage’ Update Adds New Character and iCade Support
In mid-December, Mountain Sheep quietly dropped their one-on-one arcade hockey title Ice Rage [99¢] into the App Store. We thought it was a pretty fun little game in our review, but Ice Rage was so severely lacking in content it was kind of hard to know what to make of it. Since its initial release, the developers have been addressing this problem with a decent stream of updates.
A week after its launch an update added the Bike Baron as a playable character, and then an update in January added another new character as well as a fun single-player tournament mode with a simplistic stat upgrading system. Then earlier this month, yet some more new characters were added to the playable roster.
Slowly but surely, Ice Rage was getting fleshed out, and today a brand new update has been released that continues that progression. In fact, it’s probably the biggest Ice Rage update yet. A new skater, the big Swedish bruiser Svensson, has been added to the roster, and he looks ready to party. Also, each of the characters have been given their own individual “weight” in the game, giving them a more distinctive feel from each other as opposed to just feeling like different skins of the same player.
What I think is the biggest addition in this update to Ice Rage is iCade support. For such an arcade-y arcade game, mashing away at a physical joystick and buttons can only add to the experience. If they could at some point figure out a way to get multiplayer between two iCades to be a thing then I would be in miniature arcade heaven.
iPhone 4S and iPad 2 owners also get treated to anti-aliasing courtesy of the latest update, as well as enlarged touch zones during multiplayer and huge memory optimizations. The core gameplay in Ice Rage is so much fun that I’m really hoping Mountain Sheep keep on making the overall game more robust. But for a dollar, even as a simple arcade experience, Ice Rage is a blast so be sure to give the latest update a spin.
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Upcoming ‘Momonga Pinball Adventures’ is a Cute and Colorful Pinball Action Game
, who have previously released the quirky skydiving-esque game Jimmy Pataya [99¢] on iOS, have announced that their next project will be a pinball action game hybrid called Momonga Pinball Adventures. You play as Momo the momonga, which is an actual thing, an adorable Japanese flying squirrel to be exact. Momo is on a mission to rescue his momonga friends who have all been kidnapped by a group of evil owls that recently attacked their village. Momo is hurt in this attack as well, but is rescued by a panda who then gives him the training needed to defeat the leader of the evil owls, General Kuton.
Yes, a game where a Japanese flying squirrel is injured by a pack of evil owls and then nursed to health by a panda does sound pretty crazy, but probably not any crazier than a plumber traversing a magical Mushroom Kingdom to save his Princess love interest from a weird fire breathing dinosaur/dragon/turtle thing. The zaniness of the premise actually suits the colorful, cartoonish world of Momonga Pinball Adventures, which you can check out in the following trailer.
Bopping Momo around with flippers is about where the pinball influence ends, and Momonga will have a large focus on point collection and speed, as the developers note in the comments on their video. There will be structured levels to complete, boss fights, and fully animated characters that move the storyline along. This certainly isn’t the first game to take pinball mechanics and mash them together into something more, but it’s an idea that I’ve seen used to great effect to provide interesting and varied gameplay. I’m hoping for some more of that with Momonga Pinball Adventures, which is slated to hit the App Store sometime in Spring.
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Adam Saltsman Interview Reveals New Details on ‘The Hunger Games: Girl on Fire’ iOS Title
Last week we learned that a superstar lineup of indie developers led by Canabalt creator Adam Saltsman are developing a game based on The Hunger Games: Girl on Fire, an upcoming movie adaptation of the popular book series. Not a lot was known about the game at that time, but Adam did reveal that even though it will feature a running character it isn’t simply a re-skinned Canabalt, and will focus more around marksmanship and strategy. He also made it sound like the movie’s studio, Lionsgate, was pretty open to giving the team the freedom to create the kind of game that they want to make, which can be rare when dealing with licensed properties.
In a recent interview , Adam goes into a few more details on what kind of game The Hunger Games: Girl on Fire will be, as well as some of the thought that went into shaping its development. Saltsman talks about his main motivation behind the game being “to just pretend I am making a movie tie-in game for the Super Nintendo, only actually fun to play” which is an amusing dig at the glut of terrible movie tie-in games released during the 16-bit era. You can totally get that vibe from the pixelized movie poster-style teaser art for Girl on Fire (click for full size):
Saltsman goes on to explain that the game sticks close to the source material of the movie and books, and that series author Suzanne Collins even contributed some guidance and ideas herself. While the game takes place in the Hunger Games universe, it will apparently deal with new events than what can be found in the books or movie. Since the core idea behind the iOS title has been to make a “teaser game” that leads into the movie, the events of the game will take place before the actual Hunger Games arena event in the story. The developers are also drawing inspiration from the female main character, such as “the heroine’s talent for archery, her tendency to go for long walks in a sort of forbidden forest area, and her brains-over-brawn approach to solving problems.”
The full interview is a great read, and provides additional insight on how the team approached making a game using a hugely popular IP. Make sure to check it out at the link below. The Hunger Games: Girl on Fire on iOS is slated to hit at the same time as the movie’s release on March 23rd.
[Via ]
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‘AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! (Force = Mass x Acceleration)’ Hits the App Store Next Week
This past November we learned that and Snuggle Truck [Free/HD] developer were in the midst of bringing a mobile version of their 2009 PC hit AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! – A Reckless Disregard for Gravity to the App Store.
The absurdly long title refers to the sound one makes when base jumping off extremely tall buildings, which is exactly what AaAaAA!!! is all about. On the way down you perform risky and stylish stunts to earn maximum points and admiration.
The mobile version of the game is known as AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! (Force = Mass x Acceleration), and the developers have announced that it is scheduled for release one week from today, on March 1st. Check out the amusing and informative new video for AaAaAA!!! (F=MxA) below.
When AaAaAA!!! (F=MxA) launches next week it will come equipped with Universal iPad support and cost $2.99, and we’ll have more on the game once it’s finally available.
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Newly Formed Studio Ninth Ninja Bringing ‘Mutant Storm’ and a Mystery Game to the App Store
Some former developers from True Axis and Firemint have banded together to form a new studio called Ninth Ninja and are readying a release of the classic dual-stick shooter Mutant Storm for iPad. Mutant Storm was originally released by PomPom Games for the PC, Mac, and Xbox, and was amongst the first to spark off a rebirth of retro-style arcade games in the past 10 years or so. It was also remastered and re-released as Mutant Storm Reloaded on Xbox Live Arcade in 2005.
You may remember that another PomPom Games release called Space Tripper [$3.99] made its way to iOS last year thanks to the porting efforts of True Axis. It also shouldn’t be forgotten that the Space Tripper iOS project was filled with trials and tribulations before it finally ended up on the App Store after more than 3 years of development. The wait seemed to be worth it though, as Space Tripper’s gameplay held up strong on iOS and the performance was rock solid.
Andy Coates, the former one half of developer True Axis, was responsible for a majority of the Space Tripper iOS port. He’s putting all that previous hard work to good use by using the same engine for the Mutant Storm port, and again the game is running at a solid 60fps on the iPad 2 and is running respectably smooth on the original iPad as well. Check out the developer’s hands on video of Mutant Storm running on the iPad.
Development on Mutant Storm is said to be going a whole lot smoother than it did with Space Tripper, so chances are we won’t be waiting 3 years to get our hands on the game (hopefully I didn’t just jinx it). In fact, Andy says that the game is basically finished, and that all that remains is some work to do on the menus and online integration. Ninth Ninja is hoping to have Mutant Storm out in April or May of this year.
Ninth Ninja has also announced that they are currently working on a brand new iOS project in addition to Mutant Storm. Adrian Moore, who had previously worked on Firemint’s Spy Mouse, will be handling the design. Artwork will be Paul Mitchell’s job, and he most recently has worked on the Real Racing series, also from Firemint. And of course, Andy Coates will be handling the programming of this mystery title.
We expect to have lots more on Mutant Storm and the mystery game from Ninth Ninja, especially with GDC just a couple of weeks away, so keep your eyes on this space.
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‘Eufloria HD’ iPad Review – Good Things Come to Those Who Wait
I didn’t really mean to play Eufloria [$4.99] and Mass Effect at the same time during the last few days, but accidentally playing two games on opposite ends of the science fiction spectrum has been fruitful. On the one hand, Mass Effect seems absurdly violent at first glance, sporting photorealistic visuals and third-person shooting. Your character can, quite literally, be a renegade. On the other, Eufloria is relaxed and ambient, full of soft lines and leisure. It’s a game about growing flowers.
But Mass Effect is about saving lives as much as ending them. And, beneath the surface, Eufloria is a killing ground: no quarter for your enemies as your troops get sent again and again into the breach. That same incongruity between mechanics and presentation infects the rest of the game.
Eufloria is a stripped down real-time strategy game about growing trees, sprouting seedlings, exploring space, and colonizing empty asteroids. The traditional trappings of the genre are there, but repurporsed to fit the game’s laid-back aesthetic. Your only units are seedlings, which come in three varieties: fast, strong, and energetic, each of which serve different purposes. These seedlings are sent out to raid nearby asteroids, tasked with killing any native species and planting Dyson trees — i.e., barracks — which in turn sprout more seedlings. The only resource to manage is your time which, unfortunately, isn’t highly valued by the two-man development team.
The internal logic of Eufloria seems interesting at first: older enemy Dysons are harder to kill than younger ones. The central conflict, then, is a question of timing your attacks and troop surges — players must wait until they have enough troops, but can’t wait so long that enemy trees have had time to put down solid roots.
The rub is that colonizing asteroids is hard, dangerous work, especially when there’s already a colony of seedlings entrenched there. Expanding your colony’s territory generally involves sending wave after wave of troops crashing against the defenses while your nearby Dyson trees regenerate troops. Every war is one of attrition, of stockpiling little insectoids until you’ve amassed a lurching wave of them.
In practice, Eufloria plays out more like an asynchronous turn-based game than a real-time strategy. There are, in general, very few problems that can’t be solved by more seedlings which is simultaneously terrifying to consider and frustrating to play through. Set a few Dyson trees going and come back later to finish the assault; if it didn’t work, wait some more — don’t worry, the other colonies will wait patiently while you regroup. The best strategy is to do nothing, to watch your trees spit out more dots. This means waiting, waiting, waiting, until you have enough seedlings and watching the rest of your empire to make sure your outlying colonies aren’t pre-emptively attacked.
As a result, Eufloria often grinds to a halt, giving players plenty of time to zoom in on their colonies and watch their asteroids bloom to life, tiny seedlings buzzing and swooping in orbit. Players can speed the game up, but this does little to alleviate the fact that Eufloria’s defining mechanic is inaction.
Increasing the difficulty or fast-forwarding the game forces players into the zoomed-out view so that they can monitor their slow-growing empire. If nothing else, Eufloria is beautifully detailed by it’s pastels and minimalistic aesthetic, but players sticking to the tactical view aren’t likely to see it. Whatever its faults, Eufloria is a visual delight, superlatively evocative of the natural forces at play in something as simple as growing plants.
When the pieces are finally in play, Eufloria comes alive and reaches its gestalt. Most enemy colonies are docile until attacked, but lash out violently after. Different strands of seedlings are useful in different stages of the assault, and a full-fledged attack requires moving troops through the colony while keeping each asteroid properly garrisoned. A clean UI and fantastic controls makes moving troops tactile and intuitive and, even in the fog of war, new mechanics start to take shape. There’s no “rally” system — and the “beacon” system only works for newly sprouted seedlings, not pre-existing platoons — so troops have to be moved asteroid by asteroid: swipe, swipe, swipe. Your ability to expand is curbed by your ability to move troops around.
When Eufloria peaks, seedlings criss-cross the screen, maneuvering around Dyson trees and turrets, swarming smaller colonies. Zoom out, and tiny dots are replacing one another in different parts of the screen; zoom in, and you’ll see localized dogfights and clusters of thick, puffy seedlings taking out turret-like Defense trees. Normal developers would revel in this type of carnage, but Eufloria keeps things abstracted and austere. It’s really quite beautiful to watch.
My favorite tactic is to purposefully expose a frontier asteroid and goad the enemy AI into taking it while I sneak around and take their unmanned colony. I lost a colony, yes, but it’s now surrounded by my asteroids and its Dyson trees are undeveloped and weak. In character-driven games, I wouldn’t dream of sacrificing soldiers; in Eufloria, it’s glorious. Attack first, spare no one, troops are expendable — these are the lessons Eufloria teaches.
At its best, Eufloria is dynamic and engaging, buoyed up by a great, tactile interface on the iPad. It can be a beautiful and evocative game, but the intense moments of action and triumph are bracketed by a lot of waiting and futility. Even when an abortive assault doesn’t end in mission failure, just regrouping to try again can take several minutes. Restarting an entire chapter to try a different approach could represent half an hour or more in wasted time.
Eufloria made a graceful leap to touch devices, but it puts its best foot forward frustratingly rarely, often cutting players out of the game entirely. In the too-brief moments when you’re invited back in, however, Eufloria’s a treat.
TouchArcade Rating: 
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