TouchArcade.ru

According to a post in our forums, Japanese blog Esuteru (はちま起稿) has obtained a scanned image from V-Jump magazine which claims that Square Enix is readying a port of Final Fantasy III for iOS in addition to their already announced Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions port which is due sometime this Spring. This is exciting news to say the least, but unfortunately I don't read Japanese and therefore am left with quite a few questions.

First of all, the announcement of Final Fantasy III refers to a Japanese release, so even if it is officially in the works there's no guarantee that it will also come to the US. Given the success Square Enix has seen with their iOS Final Fantasy games stateside, I'd imagine that it will, but it would be nice to know for sure. Also, it isn't clear which version of Final Fantasy III would be ported. It was originally a Japanese NES game that wasn't released in the US until the 2006 Nintendo DS 3D remake. It could be a direct port of the NES title, a port of the DS version, or something entirely different.

It's important to remember that the Final Fantasy III that most Americans have fond memories of on the Super Nintendo is actually Final Fantasy VI in Japan, so don't get your hopes up if that's the version you're envisioning for this release. I never played the original Final Fantasy III on NES, but I did really enjoy the DS remake from a few years ago. I would hope that if Square Enix does release a version for iOS that it would be based off of this version, or at the very least an enhanced 2D version along the same lines of their Final Fantasy [$8.99] and Final Fantasy II [$8.99] releases on iOS.

There's a thread in our forums where discussion of this possible upcoming game is taking place, and we'll of course bring you any new information regarding official confirmation of Final Fantasy III for iOS from Square Enix just as soon as we get it.

(Thanks to Joystiq and Siliconera for bringing the post in our forums to our attention!)

[source]

Last month we reviewed Mad Skills Motocross [99¢], a fast-paced 2D side-scrolling motocross racing game. We enjoyed the title quite a bit as it had sharp graphics, plenty of different tracks, a nice online challenge system through OpenFeint, and above all else a stellar physics system. One problem many players commented on though was the immense difficulty of completing the single player campaign. The game started out simple enough as it eased you into the gameplay mechanics, but about a third of the way through the career mode the difficulty ramped up pretty quickly, and due to the requirement of completing every race in a division before unlocking a new division many players found themselves unable to progress.

Developer Turborilla heard these cries for help, and have rushed in to save the day with the latest update to Mad Skills Motocross. There is now an Amateur difficulty setting in the options that offers an easier AI opponent to race against, and your bike can withstand more damage before breaking as well. If you liked the original difficulty don’t worry, as the Pro option keeps things the same as they were before. Also, a previous update made it so you only needed to beat all but 2 of the races in a division to unlock the next, thus making it easier to move on if you got stuck on a particularly hard race.

Besides these difficulty tweaks, Turborilla has added an interesting new feature that adds to the competitive nature of Mad Skills Motocross. Before, you could set a time on a race and then send off a challenge to one of your OpenFeint friends for them to try and beat. Now, you can actually choose any of the scores on the leaderboards and take a crack at beating that person’s ghost. Or you can simply watch the replay of how that score was attained, possibly gleaning some tips from how they completed the course. This new functionality is a really nice addition to such a score-focused game, and it makes competing with the best players in the world more accessible to everyone.

I liked Mad Skills Motocross before, but I do admit I had my fair share of moments where I felt like throwing my iPhone across the room due to the difficulty. The new Amateur mode makes things significantly easier, and consequently more fun, and the Pro mode is still there for when I feel ready to take on that challenge. The new ability to challenge ghosts from the leaderboards adds a whole new layer of competitiveness to the game, and I even enjoy just watching some of the top times and marveling at the skill of those elite players. With these past two updates, Mad Skills Motocross has easily become my favorite racing game of this kind, and if you haven’t checked it out yet now is the perfect time as it’s currently on sale for just 99¢ for a limited time.

[source]

This might be a long shot, considering this event seems to be overrun by Android and other non-iPhone mobile devices, but I will be at Mobile World Congress all week this week in Barcelona, Spain. In addition, I will be on two panels of sorts this coming Thursday, one announcing the winners of the International Mobile Gaming Awards and a second "live pitching session". If you happen to be in Barcelona either for the event, or just because you happen to live in the area, I'd love to meet up with you if you've got something new, cool, and/or exciting to show off.

If you'd like to schedule a meeting, send an email off to tips@toucharcade.com and be sure to include "MWC 2011" somewhere in the subject so it properly gets filtered in my inbox. Keep in mind, I'm very much a typical American and really only speak fluent English. If you don't (wait, how are you reading this?) I'm still totally willing to meet up, but communication might be difficult.

For everyone else not at the event, I'm really not sure what to expect. I've been told this is the "CES of mobile phones". I sort of thought CES was the CES of mobile phones, but you never know. If I see anything neat on the show floor that pertains to iOS on any level, you can look forward to finding out about it on TouchArcade. The show hasn't even started yet and I've already seen some flat out insane Tegra 2 tech demos, and I seriously can't wait to see what is coming in the next round of Apple hardware if it's anything like that.

Here's Galaxy on Fire 2 running on the Tegra 2 chipset:

That's just crazy for a mobile device.

[source]

Last November, NaturalMotion Games announced that they would be bringing the beloved block-based party game Jenga to iOS. A game like Jenga [99¢/HD], where you must pull blocks from a wooden tower and place them on the top while avoiding being the first one to topple the tower, was in good hands at NaturalMotion with their extensive expertise in the area of physics technology. We checked out Jenga when it released in December, and despite not having that certain “feel” that you get from physically interacting with the game in real life, Jenga on iOS was about as great as a virtual interpretation of the game could be.

Ever since the announcement of Jenga though, people have been asking in the comments section and in our forums “what about multiplayer?”. It’s a valid question, since Jenga at its heart is a party game to be enjoyed with other people. The game did ship with a multiplayer component in the form of a pass ‘n play mode, and you could compare tower height in real time with your friends’ Game Center scores. Fun efforts in their own right, but not an adequate replacement for a true online multiplayer mode.

Today at the IMGA Judging event in Barcelona, NaturalMotion has announced that they are one-upping their multiplayer game and bringing asynchronous online multiplayer to Jenga through Game Center. I think it goes without saying that asynchronous multiplayer has proven to be well suited for mobile gaming, and the idea fits in perfectly for a game like Jenga. The Android version of the game will be getting this feature as well using OpenFeint, and the developers have stated that it’s a “definite possibility” that they could enable cross-platform play between iOS and Android devices in the future.

Besides this huge announcement, NaturalMotion has also hinted at some special types of blocks being added to Jenga that can greatly affect the physics in the game. Examples could include rare African wood which would be much lighter than normal, or metal blocks which would obviously be much heavier and harder to remove from the tower. It definitely sounds interesting and I look forward to seeing how they will spice up the traditional play of Jenga beyond the included Arcade mode. What’s really exciting though is the announcement of online asynchronous multiplayer through Game Center, which should be hitting roughly in the next couple of weeks.

[source]

In my time with TouchArcade, I've played a lot of games. Heck, a good chunk of my day is devoted to picking up where I left off the previous day on the AppShopper new games listing, and looking through every single game that appears on the App Store. Anything that even looks vaguely interesting I'll download and spend a fair amount of time with. Why is this at all relevant? Well, since I'm up to my ears in iPhone gaming the whole week, I try to unplug as much as possible during the weekend, unwinding away from the world of iOS.

But why am I telling you all this? So you realize just how big of a deal it is when I spend the entire weekend playing a game. Not because I'm powering through it to review it, but because it's so much fun that I can't put it down. In fact, I completely drained my iPad batteries twice before just giving up and playing plugged in to the wall. I'm telling you all this so you realize just how fantastic Mika Mobile's Battleheart [$2.99] is before I even get started on why.

Many developers have tried their hands at making iOS RPG style games, Aralon: Sword and Shadow being the latest and greatest example of a traditional RPG arriving on the App Store. But where Aralon and so many other games fail is that they're great games that just so happen to run on the iOS platform, rather than being a great iOS game. It's a distinction that becomes clearer and clearer as time goes on, as developers split between sticking with largely conventional controls adapted to the touchscreen in the form of virtual controls and developers who create games like Battleheart that could only exist utilizing the multitouch interface of iOS devices.

Battleheart takes traditional RPG elements found in party-based RPGs and even to some extent MMORPGs and boils them down to their essence. At its core, gameplay consists of managing a four member party through various battles. There isn't really any story to speak of aside from random flavor text describing characters and levels, characters only have four equipment slots, and there's only two statistics for each class to even worry about. In my early time with the game the latent RPG power gamer inside of me initially thought that how simple everything initially seems to be was a significant drawback, but oh, how wrong I was.

Instead of endlessly delving through menus, min-maxing, and everything else, the entire focus of Battleheart is fantastic party synergy and touch-based battle management. Playing through the game slowly unlocks additional classes available via an in-game tavern where they can be hired. A wide variety of classes are included, but they all fall under the three standard class roles: Damage dealers, meat shields, and support classes. As you progress in the game, intense micromanagement is required of each of these types of classes, and it's incredibly cool how it all goes together.

For instance, the party that I've found myself preferring consists of a monk, a witch, a cleric, and a bard. At the start of the battle I'll get my bard to start playing his song targeting the monk, get the cleric healing the monk, then position them towards the back of the battlefield spaced apart a little bit. I'll position my witch in the center, then put the monk on patrol picking up monsters as they appear on screen. The monk then holds their attention (or tanks them, if you're down with the lingo) while I focus the attacks of both the monk and the witch on individual enemies until everything is dead. Rinse and repeat with each wave of bad guys, paying special attention to prioritizing keeping monsters off both the bard and cleric.

How you do all this really is the clever part of Battleheart. It's entirely touch driven, so having the cleric heal my monk is as simple as drawing a line originating from the cleric and ending at the monk. Similarly, having the monk run after an enemy and attack it is as easy as drawing a link from the monk to the baddie. It's even multitouch friendly, so commanding both my monk and witch to attack a single target just amounts to using two fingers to draw lines from both of them converging on a single enemy. To move your party members around, you draw lines the same way, only ending the line at wherever you want to move them to.

Using this incredibly simple interface method, you're able to run what essentially amounts to a four player MMORPG party all by yourself. It all goes together very well, and really feels like a similar experience as you're rushing to pull monsters off your healer while rotating healing around, focus firing enemies down, and using various forms of crowd control. Enemies aren't completely mindless either, with some that won't just contently beat on your tank, and instead will go directly after your healer. Some enemies are healers as well, and you'll need to drop everything and slay them as soon as possible. The list goes on and on.

Tapping a particular unit during a battle selects it, at which point you're able to use various active abilities by tapping their icons on the top of the menu. These abilities vary wildly, and really encourage you to try mixing and matching different party members to see which ones you like. The whole reason I've found myself preferring the monk, for example, is his starter ability attacks everything on screen which is incredibly useful when a huge wave of monsters appears and they're running everywhere attacking random party members. Similarly, the witch gains an area effect damage over time spell, which works great once I get all the monsters stacked up and attacking my monk. The cleric has an ability that shields its target for a brief period of time, which allows my monk to easily take the damage of everything beating on it.

It's crazy how it seems no matter which classes you mix and match, you always seem to have abilities that compliment each other. Also, as your characters level up, every five levels they unlock an additional pair of abilities that you must choose from. These can be switched at any time in between battles, allowing even more customization and party synergy. Sometimes these choices will be two entirely different active abilities, or sometimes they'll be two similar passive abilities with different effects. In the case of the bard, you're given the option to have his song either give an additional 50% damage bonus, or an additional 50% armor bonus.

As you begin to master micromanaging your party, the game throws curveballs at you in the way of challenging boss battles. My favorite is a slime boss, with gimmicks that will be familiar to anyone who has been through Naxxramas in World of Warcraft. In the first phase, it's a big fat slime that spews pools of acid at your party members. These pools cause damage, causing you to keep your entire party moving to avoid them. Just when you think it's about to die, it splits in explodes in to tons of tiny slimes that get blown to the edges of the screen. They all slowly creep together, and combine back in to the main slime. The fight goes like this until you're successfully able to kill all the little slimes before they reform. It's a ton of fun.

The only real drawback of the game, if you'd even call it that, is the lack of any kind of in-game documentation. I actually found myself enjoying the fact that the game doesn't hold your hand through everything, as it gives it almost a retro air of discovery about it when you figure out what purpose a particular class serves. If this isn't your cup of tea, the thread in our forums offers an exhaustive amount of information about basically every class, ability, and equipment upgrade you'll come across on your quest.

If you can't tell by now, I really have nothing but good things to say about Battleheart. It successfully scratches the MMORPG itch of party-based combat while being a completely pick up and play game single player game. To sweeten the deal, it's even universal, with graphics optimized for the Retina Display if you're playing on a newer device. I've found myself preferring playing on the iPad, but the game is just as good on the iPhone. Another great thing that's been pointed out by our community is that Battleheart works great as a two player game, with each person responsible for half the party thanks to the multitouch input. The fantastic graphics are also cartoony enough and gore-free that you can even share the experience with kids without issue.

Battleheart is an absolutely effortless recommendation.

[source]

If you've been following TouchArcade, you've seen that we've been closely keeping up on Gameloft's Sacred Odyssey: Rise of Ayden [Free] since before it even had a title. Early on we suspected it to be an action oriented game with Zelda-like mechanics, and that turned out to be true. I also mentioned that I'll play any Zelda game and any game that vaguely resembles a Zelda game without issue, regardless of how good or bad it is. So, I've fulfilled that blood oath by spending a ridiculous amount of time yesterday and today powering through Sacred Odyssey: Rise of Ayden.

Before I get carried away, it's probably a good idea to discuss Gameloft's new approach to how they're selling their games now. They're labeling it "freemium", which seems to differ from everyone else's definition of the word. Instead, it seems more along the lines of a demoware, with the rest of the game available via a single in-app purchase. Basically, now instead of a paid and lite version of the game, there's a single version. In Sacred Odyssey, you're able to play through the first few missions (which more or less amounts to the tutorial) and get a good handle on what's coming in the rest of the game. This takes about 15 minutes. After that, a screen comes up asking you to make a one-time in-app purchase of $6.99 to continue.

Reactions on our forums have varied wildly from people who think this is an interesting approach to people frothing with rage. Personally, this kind of thing is what I always hoped for when I first heard about in-app purchasing coming to the App Store. The benefits of this are massive. Instead of downloading a lite version, getting 15 minutes in, hitting the end of it, and downloading the full version only to do that 15 minutes over again you can just keep on truckin' after making your IAP. It also helps to remove clutter from the App Store since separate lite and paid versions of Sacred Odyssey aren't needed. Sure, the download size may be a little bigger than your average lite version, but you're actually saving time and bandwidth by not needing to download a second game if you decide you like it.

The opening of Sacred Odyssey: Rise of Ayden takes a cue from many other RPG's and begins with a dream sequence where a mysterious princess is calling out to you. After doing some dirty work around your village, you start off on your adventure, and believe it or not actually end up meeting this mysterious princess inside the first 15 minutes of playing the game. She sends you off on your first task which involves visiting the first dungeon, snagging your first piece of loot, fighting the first boss, and discovering that you're not just some mild-mannered townsperson– You're a grail seeker. You then return back to your home town only to find it ravaged by orcs and burnt to the ground. From here, the plot takes a curious turn down Star Wars street, and if this cut scene doesn't remind you of Luke returning to Uncle Owen's farm on Tatooine, nothing will.

This brings me to my first issue with Sacred Odyssey– It's like the writers couldn't really decide if this is supposed to be a serious fantasy game, a pop culture parody game, or a comedy game. Dialog varies wildly from heavy-handed RPG cliches of foretold prophecies, to your fairy companion telling you that a mythical sword of the gods is "uber-sharp" and "begging to slice and dice". Meanwhile, you've got two horses, "Maya" and "Moto." It feels incredibly disjointed. The good news is, Gameloft's voice acting seems significantly better than previous offerings, so even though dialog is cringe-worthy at times, at least it's voiced well.

Solid dialog and plot lines have never been Gameloft's strong points, but thankfully, the actual gameplay in Sacred Odyssey is awesome. The game is controlled using a virtual joystick and variety of virtual buttons. Like most Gameloft games, these are all completely configurable, although I've had no issue with the defaults. Fighting works well, and unsurprisingly has a Hero of Sparta feel to it, with virtual buttons for swinging your sword as well as blocking or dodging if you hit the block button while holding the virtual joystick in the direction you'd like to roll. Combat is actually really fun, and you'll often find yourself in situations where you'll need to be evasive and defensive instead of just mindlessly mashing your attack as if it were an "I Win!" button.

Progressing through the main storyline involves taking various quests, which inevitably lead you to people who have other quests, and then eventually a dungeon. These dungeons often have puzzles which much like other Zelda-esque games involve sliding blocks around or using whatever item you just received to overcome obstacles. Of course no dungeon would be complete without loads of bad guys, and a massive boss at the end, two things you'll also find in Sacred Odyssey. Boss battles are a lot of fun, even though they can sometimes feel like going through the motions of "Oh hey, I just got this ability, time to use it over and over on this dude until he dies," but that seems to be the case for any game following this formula.

Aside from the main quest line, there are an ample amount of side quests too, although none of them that I've come across have been particularly engaging or offer good rewards. Still, it's cool that they're there, as they provide a bit of a distraction from just running from dungeon to dungeon. Along the way you'll also collect blue orbs, as seemingly everything spews them. These are used to purchase things from a vendor who follows you around. You can buy everything from simple potions, to potions that heal a larger amount of life, to extremely expensive power-ups.

While Gameloft isn't treading on any kind of new or original territory (as at times, Sacred Odyssey feels like a direct carbon copy of Zelda, Darksiders, or both) but there just isn't anything else like this on the App Store. We'll likely never see a real Zelda game either, so I suppose I don't really mind playing Gameloft's "highly inspired" version of it. If you love Zelda-style games, this isn't one you should pass up, especially to see what you think of Gameloft's new payment method.

What's going to be fun to watch is where Gameloft goes from here, as although I had a bunch of fun with Sacred Odyssey, it's hard to dispute the fact that the graphics do look a bit dated compared to more recent releases– Especially those utilizing the Unreal Engine. Also, it will be curious to see whether or not Gameloft sticks with this payment method for several reasons: They're now competing on the free charts, which is substantially more competitive than the paid charts. Sites like AppShopper don't (and can't) track sales of items purchased via IAP, as Apple doesn't offer this data as part of their third party App Store API. This means that all the people who save Gameloft games to a wishlist and wait for sales aren't going to get any notification. Last, but certainly not least, the IAP transaction requires an active internet connection on your device, which may be an issue for iPod touch users.

Regardless, I had a ton of fun with Sacred Odyssey: Rise of Ayden, and highly recommend any Zelda fan give it a try. You'll have a great idea of whether or not you want to continue by the time you hit the pay wall, and hopefully you're somewhere with connectivity so you can proceed past it.

[source]

The original Hysteria Project [Free] was released in early 2009, and still sticks in my head as one of the more memorable iPhone games I've tried. It's free right now, and you really should give it a try… But, if you're in a place where it's not feasible to quickly download a 150MB iPhone game, here's the gist: Hysteria Project plays surprisingly similar to those old Sega CD era full motion video games in that you don't have very much interaction and you're mostly just watching a video with branching points. During the game you'll have an opportunity to tap certain objects to interact with the game world, decide where your character runs, or other things like that.

Even though gameplay was more than a little basic, I thought it was really well done and combined a cool little indie horror flick with some interactivity. The game is short, but was just long enough to leave you walking away from it saying to yourself, "Huh, that was cool." And really, games that make you think that seem to be entirely too rare these days. Hysteria Project 2 [$1.99] can be described in mostly the same way.

Like its predecessor, it's a full motion video game with a heaping helping of video to watch. There is significantly more interactivity this time around, but at its core the game is still a Sega CD style FMV game, which means interactivity is limited to some puzzles and other touch-based mini-games. Unfortunately, these puzzles and mini-games really aren't much fun, usually aren't explained very well (if at all), and the only hints you'll find are generally on the game over screen– A screen which you will get incredibly used to seeing while playing through the game.

Both Hysteria Project games kind of give me the same vibe as Papa Sangre [$4.99] which I reviewed yesterday. I'm glad they exist, and they're the exact kind of crazy indie games that I love seeing crop up on the App Store, but I'm not sure how strong of a recommendation I can give them. They're great experiences, but I wouldn't really describe them as "fun", which I think is what most people are shooting for when they're looking for a new game to play.

That being said, if anything above sounds even remotely interesting to you, you need to try the original Hysteria Project while it's free. If you play through that and are looking for more, dive into the sequel.

[source]

Just as Engadget gets its hands on the still-unannounced PlayStation Phone, SCE hits us with this new mobile phone project: the PlayStation Suite.

In a nutshell, PS Suite is an Android initiative that will open up the PlayStation library to a range of Android owners with “PlayStation Certified” devices like phones and tablets. Details are light at the moment, but publisher Sony has confirmed its intent to port over PS One titles to Android via this new vehicle, which looks more like an extension to its downloadable platform PSN than anything else.

Interestingly, if PS Suite will resemble PSN, or even tie-in to it, there’s a good chance PS Suite subscribers might also get access to other forms of media like videos, themes, or even the Trophies achievement system. Sony isn’t talk about stuff other than games yet, so consider this all speculation on my part. However, I’ll note that Sony CEO Jack Tretton is teasing something in this PS blog post when he says, “we are also working with developers to create new and exciting content that will be available on both PS Certified devices and the NGP when it comes to market.”

It’s an interesting approach to the mobile gaming space that we haven’t seen from the other big two publishers, Microsoft and Nintendo. Sony is taking its platform straight to a range of phones, while Nintendo is producing its 3DS and Microsoft is pumping its resources exclusively into the Windows Phone 7. As for what PS Suite means to us, the iOS user, is more competition on the phone gaming market, which is never a bad thing. If someone raises a bar, the other has to respond. If PS Suite catches on, we might see growth in terms of more full-featured, console-like offerings on iOS.

There’s also a small chance that PS Suite could make its way to Apple’s devices. Note that Sony isn’t saying “exclusive” when it talks about Android, so its obviously leaving some wiggle room. Don't forget, last month we did report on Sony planning on bringing a curious official Sony app to the App Store with "tons more features" coming in the future.

And take double note of the PSP Minis initiative. Certainly, those will be part of the “exciting content” that’ll see released on the NGP and PS Suite, right?

Oddly enough, our first look at what will surely become a PS Certified device came from Engadget earlier this week when it somehow got its hands on an ever-elusive Sony Ericsson Xperia Play (or the “PS Phone.) Their rundown is solid from a technical angle and a rather good read from an iOS-centric point of view for the reasons I just discussed. No official Sony content is available on the platform quite yet (the phone still hasn't been announced), but it performs well with emulation, so that's a good indication that it'll be able to run what Sony is talking about well.

In all, Sony made some cool announcements yesterday that’ll bleed into our platform of choice if its moves are responded to by fans with Sony-branded devices. Obviously, we’ll have to wait to see if Apple feels like these are significant enough developments to feel like it needs to answer in the 5th generation, but it’s exciting nonetheless.

[source]

There are tons of different endless running games available in the App Store, and while the genre certainly wasn’t invented by Canabalt [$2.99] it sure seems to have exploded in popularity since that title's release in October of 2009. Nowadays it’s hard to get excited about a new running game, much in the same way it’s hard to get excited for another match 3, doodle, or zombie game. It's an overly-saturated genre, but every once in a while a new entry will emerge and do something that is just different enough to change up the gameplay in a way that puts a new spin on things. That is the feeling I had after spending time with 10tons’ newest title Grim Joggers [99¢].

The hook in Grim Joggers is that you are actually controlling multiple running characters at the same time. You start out with 15 joggers in a line, and you can jump or double jump by tapping anywhere on the screen. The lead jogger will jump immediately upon tapping, with the rest of the crew following in a staggered fashion. The goal is to run for as long as possible through randomly generated levels while avoiding a plethora of hazards and dealing with a steadily increasing speed. Inevitably you will lose members of your crew to these hazards, but play will continue as long as at least one of the joggers remains alive. Once everyone has given up the ghost, though, the run is over.

The multiple jogger aspect may seem like just a gimmick, but it actually completely changes the typical approach to this sort of game. Normally you would just immediately jump every gap or hazard that comes your way without much thought. In Grim Joggers, however, you have to consider the entire line of joggers – where each of them are when you jump, where they will land, and what sort of hazards will be in their way next. It’s a subtle change from the norm, but it impacts the gameplay in a significant way. I really like having to actually make strategic decisions and pay attention to everything that’s going on while playing, rather than just blindly reacting to a level’s challenges.

Heightening this evolved gameplay is an excellent scoring system that is the real heart of what makes Grim Joggers so much fun. Points are accrued as you run, and at set intervals there are checkpoints. The amount of joggers in your crew when you pass through each checkpoint adds to a scoring multiplier. Needless to say, it’s in your best interest to have as many joggers alive as possible for each checkpoint if you want to reach any kind of meaningful scores. This, coupled with the need to play smart and pay attention, creates some pretty compelling gameplay and is what sets Grim Joggers apart from other running games.

Visually, Grim Joggers utilizes a colorful pixel style that won't blow your mind but does look quite nice. There are all manner of gruesome deaths awaiting your joggers, from man-eating plants to explosive barrels to polar bears ready to maul you. It’s a tad on the gory side, but done in a humorous way, and there is an exhaustive amount of funny statistics and facts tracked throughout the game as well. Three different environments are available to unlock and play through, with a fourth level apparently coming soon. The pacing of the game is really well done too, and there are a ton of achievements to earn and high score tracking through Game Center.

Grim Joggers may be yet another running game, but it brings a few different twists to the genre that put it in a category of its own. The fantastic scoring system and randomly generated levels give the game a ton of replay value. The only thing I came across that I didn’t like about this are the sometimes unfair placement of hazards due to the randomly generated nature of the levels. These occurrences are pretty rare, though, and don’t hinder the overall experience. There’s a discussion thread for the game in our forums with further impressions, and even if you think you’ve had your fill of endless running games, Grim Joggers is still worth a look for its different take on the formula.

[source]

So, by now you’ve read the reviews for Dead Space [$6.99 / HD]. The game is good. Real good. But on top of sharing my thoughts about it, I wanted to get some inside perspective on the three pillars of the game: its world, its scares, and its action. For that, I went straight to the source, which happened to be lead designer Jarrad Trudgen.

Let’s start with the scares. Dead Space is unusual in that it’s able to make the predictable or obvious scare as impactful as the sudden kind. It’s all in the tension, the build-ups to the event. Scripting and the placement of precursors and mood setters are a big part of how the team succeeds in this regard. The other part is leverage. This game is able to use any mechanic, any trope no matter how insignificant, to scare you.

Of course, touch screen and the power of the iPad and iPhone can be barriers. So, I asked how the limitations informed the design of the horror elements, in addition to asking for comment about how some of the more clever stuff was developed.

“Scares are a big part of survival horror games and Dead Space is no exception. I still fondly remember jumping out of my skin when those zombie dogs jumped through the window in Resident Evil on console,” Trudgen said. “So, including some similar moments was a high priority for me personally.

“For the first time in our studio’s history we developed a scripting system that allowed designers to set up scripted events using triggers, sound cues, animations, enemy spawn controls etc. — basically all the tools a designer would use on a console title.”

“This allowed us to have a good variety of scripted scares and atmospheric scenarios play out over the course of the game. We also employed teleport and asset switching scripts that allowed us to produce some truly startling and disorientating hallucination sequences that I can’t wait for players to experience.”

Dead Space has a lot of scares. The general knock on them is that they’re too predictable. I don’t necessarily “get” this criticism because I feel like Dead Space always does a fantastic job at keeping you at a level of alertness that makes you jump at whatever goes bump or thump in the game. I especially dig how these scares are worked into basic tropes, like the Necromorph room I spoke about in the review.

“As far as leveraging game tropes against the player you are absolutely right. In order to keep things fresh we play with misdirection a lot. You set up an expectation for the player like, ‘Dead Slashers always pounce on me,’ or, ‘I’m safe in this type of room.’ Then you let that expectation set in and finally, once you’ve got some mileage out of it but before it gets stale, you violate that expectation… or don’t.”

And the technical challenges?

“In terms of delivering horror, the limitations we encountered on the mobile device were pretty much confined to issues of fidelity. Horror relies a lot on atmosphere and, to a degree, the more realistic you can make a game look the more convincing the atmosphere. “

“So, a big challenge for our artists and programmers was to squeeze every last drop of performance out of the devices to make the best possible looking game we could. We have a lot of staff with console experience and this knowledge is applied to developing our products."

“For example, our art pipeline is fundamentally the same as console production. Nothing is ported, everything is created from scratch using concept art and existing assets as reference, where applicable. We then bake down these high-resolution assets to produce convincing lighting on our character models, environment pieces and props.”

“Design works closely with Art when building out the levels to ensure that environments and props are laid out harmoniously with respect to the baked lighting. Through this process we make sure we nail the look and feel of the Dead Space universe with a minimal hit on performance,” he said.

Let’s talk about combat now. In the review, I pan it. The lead character, Vandal, doesn’t have the mobility I think is really required to deal with what’s coming at it. Early in the game, though, there’s a really good balance of combat versus exploration, as well as very careful, measured waves of enemies that keeps frustration down to a minimum.

I would have rather had more puzzles and more imaginative segments in Dead Space, but action was a crucial pillar of the game’s design alongside horror. Also, the team wanted to keep the game accessible with the touch interface.

“Early in pre-production we made the decision to focus on the horror and combat aspects of Dead Space and less on the navigation and puzzle solving elements,” Trudgen said. “With any development schedule, priorities need to be set and by making this decision early on we maximized the resources poured into these more accessible and engaging features to make sure they were robust.

“The primary goal behind this decision was ensuring that strategic dismemberment remain the core combat mechanic of Dead Space – a challenging feat requiring physics support to send lopped limbs flying and colliding with surfaces realistically. Although we do have a few puzzles in the game and the occasional more labyrinthine environments we felt that combat was a better focus for a platform that is often played in short bursts.”

Accessibility means more than just workable controls — as you’ll notice in Dead Space, the team cuts content that appears in other Dead Space titles in order to ease some of the burden that touch screen players experience with full-featured TPS titles.

“Accessibility is key on iOS devices and as combat is the core mechanic of Dead Space it needed to be very accessible. We knew that the Dead Space 2 team was considering making stasis a regenerating resource in their title. We decided to go one step further and make health regenerate, too.

“This meant one less thing for the player to fiddle about with during combat, allowing the tension to come from intense sustained battles rather than a lack of resources. Combined with our streamlined inventory and contextual melee events the combat is kept exciting and tense but not frustrating. In terms of balancing the combat we added difficulty support to cater for the diverse range of iOS players.

“Easy is suitable for anyone new to 3rd person action/horror games while Hard, which is unlocked along with a New Game+ mode after completing Easy or Normal, is very challenging.”

And of course, there’s the HUD. It’s brutally clean, leaving a lot of the screen open to play with.

“Our decision to maintain the minimal HUD aesthetic of Dead Space on console was primarily to increase immersion in the game world and allow an unfettered view of the strong art content.

“However, it was also a necessity in terms of our control scheme to provide the best possible player interaction. Other 3rd person shooters typically restrict input to a small arbitrary region of the screen, slap a ‘button’ on it and call it a day.”

“The result for the player is an often frustrating experience, where by the time they line up a shot, find the ‘fire button’ and tap it, then the enemy has moved on and they must repeat the process. Instead, we have developed a ‘tap anywhere’ style control scheme that gives the player greater freedom in where they place their thumbs/fingers and a better overall control experience. “

As for the world, well, you know most of the story from pre-release coverage. Dead Space takes place after the first Dead Space and leads directly into the events of Dead Space 2, which just released this morning in the US.

Like I said in the review, I would love to see more “new” in Dead Space, but there’s a lot in the game that makes it feel like the original title. This is something the team wanted.

“In terms of keeping that feel of the original Dead Space we decided to build some of the iconic areas of the original to make players familiar with that game feel right at home – the tram station for example is unmistakable and immediately conjures up feelings of nostalgia and, hopefully, that old familiar dread.”

“We also built some completely new areas of the Sprawl, the space station where Dead Space iOS and Dead Space 2 are located and these include a flesh processing plant, a water treatment facility, one of the crossover tubes connecting the Sprawl to the Titan Shard and, finally, the Titan Reactor.”

“Concept art and other reference material was used to make sure that these new environments, the 2 new weapons (the Plasma Saw and the Core Extractor) and the Boss designs were consistent with the iconic Dead Space style – that gritty, lived-in feel and engineering aesthetic to the weapons. As a bonus you can see the evolution of some of these designs through exclusive concept art wallpapers for your device that are unlocked by earning achievements,” he said.

We couldn’t talk about the future of the game world and Dead Space iOS, unfortunately, as the Trudgeon is unable to comment on DLC or his desire to make another game. But we did talk about a really big spoiler, so I'll share that conversation with you next week when you're finished with the game.

Dead Space is available on iOS now. Check it!

[source]