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Little White Bear Studios joined us on our podcast this week and discussed their latest game Compression, the iPad and their experience with FreeAppADay.

Little White Bear Studios

• Compression – Their latest game in which Tetris meets Bejeweled. This husband/wife team made the switch to full time just this past September and talk about their success and plans for the future. We also discussed the new iPad and their participation in FreeAppADay.com

Games We Played

• Vector Runner ($0.99)
• Angry Birds ($0.99)
• Arctopia ($1.99)

Podcast music provided by Overclocked Remix.

Podcast: Subscribe in iTunes or Direct Download (M4A, 38MB)

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For the many that surely missed it, on Wednesday Apple quietly announced a new member of the iPhone OS family, the iPad. And, while it runs existing iPhone applications just fine in a pixel-for-pixel or 2x-scaled mode, the device with its 9.7-inch screen has much more to offer in the way of screen real estate (over 5x the pixel count of the iPhone) and both CPU and GPU power. The iPad proposition gives iPhone developers much to ponder in the way of just how best to support it.

James Brown, author of the lovely, zen-like frog manipulation game Anicent Frog [App Store] has, himself, begun to ponder the situation and has shared his thoughts on what he feels makes the most sense in bringing Ancient Frog to the iPad, in a recent blog post.

I can make the current iPhone application recognise the iPad and behave more like a native application on that platform. What I've done here is run it at 768×1024, but allowing it to letterbox slightly to retain the original aspect ratio (luckily the ragged border gives me a neat way to bring the edges in a bit, as well as a bit of room to lose some pixels top and bottom). This already looks way better than the previous shot – lots of elements are still blurry, but things that appear at varying scales in the game are already at a higher resolution. This means the text, the daisy and the particle effects are all crisp, which makes the whole thing seem higher resolution

He goes on to point out that fully supporting the iPad's enhanced resolution in his existing iPhone game would not only require a reworking of the graphics that make up every level, but would also push the game above the 10MB barrier for Edge / 3G download, which would greatly reduce the game's "impulse buy" potential for iPhone users.

Brown's plan is to bring the incremental upgrade that he describes, enhancing the game experience on the iPad in the near term and, down the road, release a separate, larger iPad-only version that takes full advantage of the device, but does not penalize iPhone and iPod touch gamers with a larger install.

For new games, moving forward, building in specific support for the iPad is one thing. But reaching into the back catalog to refresh existing titles for Apple's new device is quite another. Just what degree of iPad support is worth adding? What make the most sense? Once gamers start getting iPads in their hands, the early reaction to the experience of gaming on the device, as well as overall sales levels, should help answer that question. But developers and gamers alike should keep in mind the fact that, when the App Store launched, the iPhone had been on the market for a full year with millions of units sold. When a gamer downloads the first iPad game from the App Store, its market will be starting at zero. As such, it will be some time before developers determine where the "sweet spot" of iPad development effort lies.

App Store Link: Ancient Frog, $4.99

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The guys at Illusion Labs are no stranger to getting their games running on crazy hardware setups. If you've played Touchgrind [$4.99], watching this video of the game running on a giant multi-touch surface will really make you want a similar multi-touch coffee table in your living room.

The latest thing out of the Illusion Labs labs, is a 24" Apple Cinema Display with an accelerometer on it– Presumably either an iPod touch or an iPhone duct taped to the back. They then put together a custom build of Labyrinth 2 [$4.99 / Free], only instead of just rendering the same game at a higher resolution, they kept all the components the same resolution and made the levels much bigger.

Obviously the 24" display is higher resolution than the iPad, but the following video gives you a great idea of what some of the iPad optimized games could be like:

Also, we recently stumbled across a video of a massive multi-touch game of Missile Command, although a lot of the skill required to play the game seems to be lost when you can launch ten precisely targetted missiles at once just by touching with your hands. Either way, these giant tech demos of iPhone games are really getting us excited for the iPad.

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Originally announced in mid-2008, it sounds like Trism 2, the sequel to the early iPhone smash hit Trism [App Store], is one step closer to seeing the light of day. Demiforce released the following teaser trailer, mentioning that Trism 2 is not only coming for the iPod touch and iPhone, but also the iPad:

We got in touch with developer Steve Demeter to get some more details on what to expect in Trism 2. While he's not releasing any screenshots just yet, he did mention that Trism 2 is being overhauled from the ground up, and apparently looks quite a bit nicer than the first. The sequel will also have multiplayer, but is implemented in "a really fun way that you might not intially suspect".

Demeter hopes to have an iPad optimized combo app that also will run on the iPhone or iPod touch, but isn't ready to make any promises yet because of how important he feels being under the 10MB 3G download cap is. The sequel of course will also include a "classic" mode that will play like the original where players tilt their device to alter gravity while sliding rows of triangles to make matches.

For more information on Trism check out our review.

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Apple put up their full keynote today which can be streamed online or downloaded through iTunes by subscribing to the Apple events podcast. We clipped out the three games shown during the keynote:

• X Games SnoCross, $4.99
• N.O.V.A. – Near Orbit Vanguard Alliance, $6.99
• Need for Speed Shift, $6.99

SnoCross was demonstrated as an example of a, existing 3D game from the App Store running on the iPad, while both N.O.V.A. and Need for Speed were tweaked to show some iPad-specific functionality utilizing the additional screen real estate available on the larger and higher resolution screen:

Following the keynote, Joystiq got some hands-on time with the device where they played Need for Speed, N.O.V.A. and Scrabble:

Also, if you listened to our recent podcast and want to hear more of what developers think of the iPad, both Joystiq and Boing Boing have great articles worth reading.

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With the introduction of the Apple iPad yesterday, many developers seem genuinely excited about the prospect of bringing their games to the large-format device. During our Podcast we discussed that some games would be better suited than others to take advantages of such a large surface area. So here are a few that we think would benefit the most.

Tower Defense

Fieldrunners

Fieldrunners and almost any other Tower Defense game would be able to take unique advantage of the large scale size of the iPad. Right now, most iPhone games require you to zoom in and out or pan across maps to manage towers and track the creeps. Imagine playing with a massively large map with a full overhead view.

Line Drawing

Boom Brigade

Any line-drawing games such as Flight Control and Harbor Master would benefit from a large screen. In fact, both developers have already announced their intentions to make iPad-specific versions. It would also change the game play balance entirely, potentially making for a much more frantic play field. But the one line drawer that we always felt was handicapped by the iPhone's screen size was Boom Brigade. In Boom Brigade you could draw lines to direct your troops into formations to attack the enemies. The problem was that the screen was so small, there wasn't enough space to do much maneuvering. That will change with the iPad.

Board Games

Monopoly

Monopoly and every other board game out there are a perfect match for the iPad. Not only because you can actually see the entire board at once, but also because there's enough room on the device to actually play with other people in your family. Board games have always been social games, but that aspect tends to be lost when you are playing on a 3.5" device. The iPad may be the perfect way to revive these under appreciated games.

Real Time Strategy

Command & Conquer

StarCraft, well, maybe not StarCraft specifically, but aside from Command & Conquer Red Alert there really hasn't been many full-featured RTSs that we've enjoyed because of how difficult cramming all of the different interface elements required to control your units and micromanage your base requires way too much screen space on the iPhone. C&C did it best, and even then it felt like way too much of the screen was wasted on large finger-sized buttons. With the increased area for countless interface elements, the iPad could be the perfect device for realtime strategy games.

If you have your own ideas of what kind of games would be best served by a 9.7" multi-touch display, let us know in the comments.

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In the wake of Apple's keynote today unveiling the iPad, we rounded up Dave Castelnuovo and Allan Dye from Bolt Creative, Anders Mårtensson from Illusion Labs, Natalia Luckyanova and Keith Shephard from Imangi Studios and Bruce Morrison from Freeverse to hear what four successful iPhone development studios thought about the new device.

The reception amongst this group of developers was remarkably positive, and everyone had ideas for new projects exclusively for the iPad, as well as refining or enhancing existing games to take advantage of the additional screen real estate and processing power of the device. We also discuss the niche that the iPad will likely fill, and what kind of usage patterns we expect the device to see once it is available for purchase.

Music lovingly lifted from the Steve Jobs YTMND.

Podcast: Subscribe in iTunes or Direct Download (M4A, 50MB)

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Media who attended the Apple keynote are now being allowed some hands-on time with the iPad, and so far the first impressions make the device sound pretty awesome. Gizmodo describes the iPad as "…substantial but surprisingly light. Easy to grip. Beautiful. Rigid. Starkly designed. The glass is a little rubbery but it could be my sweaty hands. And it's fasssstttt." While Engadget confirms the speed of the CPU, they described the iPad as "…not light. It feels pretty weighty in your hand."

Joystiq provides some details on gaming with the device. The iPad features a "2X" button which scales any iPhone app to full screen, but of course this comes at a graphical cost. Much like upscaling Gameboy Advance games on the Nintendo DS, or Sony PSone classics on the PSP, games are said to look noticeably upscaled. They felt that Need for Speed: Shift actually controlled better with the larget screen, as tilting the device had less of an effect on the screen.

Also, as we expected, the sheer size of the device makes it impossible for your thumbs to obscure most of the screen as you're playing games like NOVA. According to an Apple representative at the event, iPad-optimized games will have their own section on the App Store, although the SDK allows for apps which will run equally well on both devices.

With the SDK for the iPad available today, we expect to hear quite a bit from developers. We've already heard from the people at OpenFeint who are pledging their full support to the platform, and Firemint just dropped us an email announcing an optimized version of Flight Control for the device. They are also "working on some incredibly fun and exciting games that will look amazing on iPad and take full advantage of its features, as well as working brilliantly on iPhone and iPod touch."

Jon Kromrey, GM of the Apple games divison of Namco network also dropped us a note saying how excited they are to create AAA games for the device and feel "the iPad will play a significant part of our goal to reach any player, anywhere at any time."

Photo courtesy of Joystiq

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The entire internet seems to be in a frenzy today regarding the unannounced Apple Tablet. Between the CEO of publisher McGraw-Hill confirming its existence and Daily Finance already reporting on things they don't like about it, speculation, rumors, rants, and questions which won't be answered until Steve takes the stage tomorrow are running rampant.

This morning, Stand Alone Inc announced their intentions to bring Crosswords [$9.99] to the rumored Apple tablet device. While they may be jumping the gun a little bit, announcing a game for a device which hasn't even been officially announced, Stand Alone does have a fair amount of street cred' in tablet application development. They were a major developer for the now defunct Apple Newton and authored an impressive library of software for the Newton, which is still available online.

Crosswords is among the better crossword games available on the App Store, and is one of the few games which has lived on my phone since its initial release in 2008. If the Apple tablet does run the iPhone OS as many are speculating, and it has either its own associated App Store or operates off the existing App Store, we expect this will be the first of an avalanche of announcements of software coming to the device.

Apple's keynote begins tomorrow at 10:00 AM Pacific, and will be covered live by nearly every tech-related web site. We will be providing live updates with anything that pertains to gaming, regardless of what is announced, and if Apple's tablet does end up serving as a gaming device, expect tablet game coverage to supplement our existing iPhone and iPod touch coverage.

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