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After spending some quality time with a preview version of Int13’s new bullet hell shooter Shogun: Rise of the Renegade [Free] last week, we were eager to get our hands on the final version to see how it all came together. And sure enough, earlier this week Shogun quietly snuck into the App Store.

It was interesting that Int13 was departing from their typical augmented reality based games, like ARDefender [Free], and trying their hand at an established and nuanced genre like arcade-style manic shoot ‘em ups, especially with veteran shmup developer Cave basically cornering the market with their stable of high-quality ports. However, Int13 has surprised me with just how right they got Shogun, and while it might fail to totally impress the more discerning bullet hell enthusiast, fans of shmups in general will find a lot of action and fun brimming from the game.

The very first thing that pops out at you about Shogun are its graphics. The environments are done up in 3D and give off a great feeling of depth as you’re scrolling by in your ship. It’s also Retina Display ready, meaning it’s razor sharp. Enemies are your standard alien-type of spacecrafts, and there are some rather interestingly designed mid-boss and end-boss fights that will give you a run for your money in terms of challenge. On the whole, gameplay in Shogun doesn’t divert too far from your typical bullet-hell shooter formula, but it executes the components of that formula extremely well.

However, Shogun does show some more innovative signs in a couple of areas. One is the method in which you change your weapons. Your ship comes with 3 weapon types: spread shot, laser, and homing. Whenever you lift your finger off the screen, the game slows down bullet-time style and a small menu pops up above your ship that lets you choose from the 3 weapon types, as well as trigger a screen-clearing EMP or choose to add small wingman ships for added firepower. It’s nice that the action slows down to allow you to concentrate on what weapon you need to pick, but you can still take damage in this mode so you’ll still need to stay alert.

The other thing in Shogun that I found very interesting is the system for filling and using your shield meter. You have the ability to scrape bullets that pass you by, which basically means getting your ship extremely close to them without actually getting hit. With each consecutive bullet you scrape, you build a multiplier, and this adds to your shield meter above which can go past the 100% full mark. Every time you fill up your life meter completely, it fills one of the 6 reserve tanks above the meter.

Now, these reserve tanks can be used for various things, like setting off the aforementioned EMP blast or adding one or more sets of the satellite helper ships to your own ship (which VASTLY increases your firepower, I might add). Also, when you do get hit by enemy fire, the game will automatically clear the screen of bullets and shield you for a brief moment while giving you a refilled meter, but it will cost you one of your reserves.

The scraping and usage of reserve tanks aren’t totally new ideas in the shmup world, but they’re done well and add a ton of strategy to how you go about being the most effective in Shogun. It’s in your benefit to scrape as much as possible and always strive to keep your reserves well stocked for particularly challenging sections and boss battles. But, you can’t concentrate too hard on just scraping, as inevitably that will lead you to take damage if you aren’t paying enough attention to killing the enemies as well.

While the graphics are gorgeous and the underlying mechanics are sound, about the only thing I don’t like about Shogun is that it’s pretty short. Featuring just 4 levels to play through, it comes to an end pretty quickly, but it’s a satisfying and challenging ride while it lasts. The pay model is also pretty accommodating, allowing you to download and play through the entire first level for free. The remaining 3 levels are accessible as well, but you can only play them for a brief minute – just long enough to get a taste. Each full level is then unlockable separately for 99¢ each, or $1.99 to unlock them all at once.

As a big fan of Cave’s shooters, I find it hard to really get into most of the other shooters on the App Store. They really did set the bar that high. But Shogun is a game that instantly drew me in with its visuals, and then backed it up with a ton of solid action. It even Universal and has iCade support, to truly complete the arcade experience. As a free download, there’s really no reason not to give Shogun a try for yourself.

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Don’t take this as a shocker, but it sounds like Mortal Kombat developer NetherRealm is open to the idea of branching out beyond its resuscitated IP as well as exploring other platforms like iPad and iPhone. In an interview with GameSpot, head honcho Ed Boon talked about the future of NetherRealm and where it might go, noting that it, of course, isn’t done with Mortal Kombat, yet is down with creating new experiences across multiple platforms.

Here’s the relevant stuff for us from the wide-reaching interview:

GS: NetherRealm recently released Arkham City Lockdown for the iOS. Will NetherRealm continue to work on iOS projects, and what was it like developing it compared to a console game?

EB: It’s surprisingly similar, but for not as long a time period. We’re working in the Unreal environment, both in our console games as well as the iOS games, so there’s a familiarity there. We can share our programming resources, which is great. Obviously, the iOS games aren’t as long, in terms of how long it takes us to complete the project. As for future ones, we would definitely like to do additional iOS titles; we have nothing to announce at the moment, but that’s generally something we want to do. With our studio, we really want to diversify ourselves, and work on multiple formats, multiple types of games, not just Mortal Kombat games.

There’s a lot of ifs, mights, and wants in the interview, but it’s totally worth reading if you’re a fan of NetherRealm or even the old Midway studio it was built from. And while we weren’t the biggest fans of Lockdown [$5.99], we’re stoked about the prospect of more iOS titles from this studio. These guys know what they’re doing and given the resources, we bet its next Big Thing on iPhone could be special.

[via GameSpot, via Joystiq]

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Also at Macworld this year was ZigZaGame Inc, the developers who are bringing Adventure Bar Story to the App Store. We’ve already gone pretty in depth with Adventure Bar Story in our hands-on preview, but another title that they were showing off is their Pokemon-style game Dragon Island.

Dragon Island has you exploring a huge world, battling and collecting over 200 different species of monsters. Each one can be evolved several times, and you can even collect recipes which will allow you to combine two different creatures to create a new hybrid version. Also, you’ll be able to battle bosses and claim their spirits in order to summon them in future battles.

Another interesting feature is that there are no healing spells or items in the game. You can return to the main town hub to heal, but if you’re out in battle and one of your creatures dies, then they’re gone for good. I kind of like this as it adds an element of suspense and risk, and should affect how you go about tackling battles and completing the many dungeons in the game.

To balance this, even though you can only battle with 3 monsters at a time, you’ll be able to bring more than that with you as you play. So if you do end up losing one, another monster from your queue will take its place. As you level up in the game, you’ll gain the ability to carry more and more monsters with you.

An example of 3 evolutions of a dragon

The world which you can explore in Dragon Island is massive, with tons of points of interest to discover. These include towns, forests, random battles, and dungeons. When you come upon a dungeon, it is randomly generated and turns the game into more of a rogue-like, and there will be one infinite dungeon where you can grind and discover monsters and items, as well as compete on a leaderboard for how many floors you can descend.

Finally, the battle system will be a traditional 3-on-3 turn-based affair. Each monster can have up to 4 skills, each assigned a special swipe gesture. Although your character doesn’t get involved in battles himself, you can still level him up as you would in a normal RPG, and then his stats will extend to the monsters under his control. In this way you can influence how you will play the game despite the massive number of different monsters in the game which are actually the ones doing battle.

I was blown away when I saw Dragon Island in action. The amount of creatures in the game, coupled with the ability to evolve them and level up your own character has the potential for just a ridiculous amount of customization and strategy. Along with a huge world to explore, a storyline, tons of items and abilities, and even an infinite dungeon, there will be plenty to keep you busy in Dragon Island. Be on the lookout for Dragon Island to hit in the coming months, or check out the thread in our forums for even more discussion on the game.

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Paris based developer Int13 are experts in the field of augmented reality on mobile devices. They showcased this on iOS in late 2010 with the release of ARDefender [99¢], an augmented reality tower defense game. In terms of content, ARDefender was a bit one note, though it did receive a nice update this past October that fleshed out some of the features. However, despite being a pretty simplistic game, the actual tech behind ARDefender was really solid and incorporated into the gameplay better than almost any other AR game I’ve played before. Also, it was just plain fun to play.

Now Int13 is taking a break from the augmented reality for their next iOS release in order to pay homage to a genre they enjoy: manic arcade shooters. A project that originally started back in 2010, Shogun: Rise of the Renegade is a bullet hell shooter in the same vein as the classic shmups that were prominent in arcades in the 90s, and like the ones CAVE has been so generous with porting over to the iOS platform. I’ve been playing a preview build of Shogun for the past week or so, and am super impressed with the title so far. You can check it out in motion with the developer’s trailer for Shogun below:

The game is absolutely gorgeous in person, the video doesn’t quite do it justice. The gameplay is also really solid, offering most of the bullet-hell conventions you would expect as well as a few twists on the formula to differentiate itself from the pack. Shogun is already submitted and awaiting approval from Apple, which means we could possibly see it as early as Friday but most likely it will be sometime next week. It will be free to download and contain the entire first level, with the remaining 3 levels unlockable through in-app purchase. Oh, and here’s something awesome: Shogun will have iCade support baked in, something people have been dying for with other shooters on the App Store.

If you’re a fan of shmups, keep your eyes glued to this space as we’ll have a review of Shogun: Rise of the Renegade whenever it ends up hitting the App Store sometime in the next week or so.

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Adventure Bar Story, a Recettear-like RPG that originally released in Japan as Adventure Bar of Wonderland Portable on PSP, is being localized and fitted for iPhone and iPod Touch. Zigza Game, the studio behind this new effort, revealed its intentions to do this over on our message board, and even dropped a few new screenshots to stimulate the community. We’re including a much less, er, eye-melting PSP selection below.

Knock out the “item” part of Recettear’s title and insert “bar” if you want a decent idea of what you’ll be getting into with Adventure Bar Story. The goal is to have the best bar in the kingdom; To accomplish this, you’ll need to dungeon crawl and harvest the component parts of a variety of monsters to win cooking and drink contests. You know, just like in real life.

As of right now, the title is not slated to incorporate iPad support. That’ll be a thing the studio evaluates based on sales. Pricing, by the way, has yet to be confirmed.

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Galaxy on Fire 2 [$9.99 / HD / Lite] is receiving its second add-on in Q2 of 2012, the studio behind the outer space adventure game announced earlier today on its blog. The new stuff sounds cool, too. The add-on, a 10 plus hour adventure dubbed “Supernova,” will incorporate new mission types, new stories, better visuals, and even some fun callbacks to the series’ more memorable characters, like Khador.

Supernova takes place immediately after events in the last expansion, Valkryie. Here’s a blurb that explains what’s going on in Supernova specifically:

“After the unravelling of the Valkyrie conspiracy, daily routine has returned to the Deep Science space station. Carla dreams of a quiet and idyllic life with her sweetheart Keith, but the restless space war hero is not ready to settle yet.

Hence the desperate plea for help of an old friend comes right in time: A gigantic supernova, which seems to be of unnatural origin, threatens to destroy the whole Mido sector and its inhabitants.”

Political strain, and what happens when things get real, seems to be what this expansion’s content hinges on. We’re hopeful that we’ll see Game of Thrones levels of paranoia and betrayal. We’d be alright if Fishlabs passed on any, uh, delicate brother-sister relationships, though.

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Last summer Games.On.Net broke a story regarding Glenn Watson, a former Head Studio Programmer at Gameloft’s New Zealand office. Watson alleged he was typically working 100-120 hour work weeks. In his words, “Starting at 9:30 AM, going home at 2:30 AM, and then com­ing back into the office at 8:30 AM to start work again was not unusual”. He went on to whistle blow on poor working conditions, even mentioning that some junior programmers work 24 hour shifts.

These allegations spread like wildfire across the Internet, with little regard to the fact that there wasn’t much backing up these claims other than the single article everyone was sourcing. The New Zealand Labor Department launched an investigation on the matter not long after the allegations hit, and per New Zealand games site GamePlanet, the investigation recently concluded.

According to the Labor Department, Gameloft was not in breach of New Zealand’s Health and Safety Employment act. In fact, Labor Department spokesperson Alisa Mannell even mentioned that there was “no substantial evidence” of any wrongdoing on Gameloft’s part.

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Here’s some unfortunate news. Eurogamer reports that Japanese developer CAVE is switching up its strategy following some disappointing earnings from the first half of their fiscal year, which for them starts on the first of June. As a result, they’ve downgraded their forecasts for the rest of the year, which runs until the end of May, and have reportedly put some of their current titles on hold to allocate more resources into “social games”, according to the company’s recently released earnings report summarized in English by Andriasang.

Now, us iOS gamers associate CAVE with their awesome App Store shooters like Bug Princess [$4.99/Lite], Dodonpachi Resurrection [$7.99/Lite], and Deathsmiles [$11.99/Lite]. I don’t really like thinking about the developer of some of the most hardcore games around suddenly switching gears to the surging social/casual games space.

However, CAVE has a separate division focused on their mobile titles and I would imagine they are reasonably pleased with the performance of their games on iOS and Android. I think the problem lies more in getting people to buy a somewhat niche product like a bullet hell shooter on the home consoles for $60 or more. Their earnings report indicates that in the face of a stagnant retail gaming market, retailers are more hesitant to buy and stock as many games as CAVE had projected them to.

It’s not indicated which projects are being put on hold, and hopefully we’ll see CAVE continuing to bring their fantastic library of shooters to iOS, as well as more original titles like Mushihimesama Bug Panic [$6.99/Lite]. It will be interesting to see what direction CAVE moves in both the mobile and console space in 2012, and we’ll definitely be keeping our eye out for any new developments.

[Via Eurogamer and Andriasang]

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Lots of folks out there became new iOS gamers over the holidays, and one of my personal App Store favorites that may not be on their radars just got iCade support in an update. Madgarden’s excellent Saucelifter! Heavy Disc [App Store] is a Choplifter clone that started life on the PC and landed on the iPhone in early 2009. Since then, it has seen numerous updates, getting iPad support as as universal app and receiving various gameplay tweaks here and there.

Gameplay involves piloting your flying saucer to various Earth-based prison barracks, blasting open the doors, picking up your captive crewmates, and dropping them off at the transporter where they’re beamed safely back to your alien world.  This is made challenging by evil Earth forces, including tanks, laser turrets, fighter jets, and flying attack drones.

There are a lot of nice touches to the title. The stylized, vector-based 2D graphics lend the game clean, future-retro visuals, with a day-into-night changing skyline that adds nice variation to the scene. A letter-box effect alters the aspect of the play area to provide early warning of incoming enemies. It’s extremely well done.

On the iCade, the leftmost six buttons control fire / autofire in the three relevant directions — left, down, and right. I greatly enjoy Saucelifter! via tilt-control, but I have to say that gameplay on the iCade more closely delivers the kind of fun I remember having in front of Gorlin’s helicopter classic, hour after hour, back in 1984. Other iOS controller accessories that feature iCade emulation, such as the iControlPad, should also work fine with Saucelifter.

Those not sold on Saucelifter! should at least have a look at the Lite version [link].

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If you were thinking, “Hey, I haven’t shot a zombie in awhile” this morning, well, we’ve got great news for you: Nexon Mobile has released Combat Arms: Zombies [$4.99], the first-person spin on the fairly popular series’ Fireteam mode. Users have been reporting all kinds of crash bugs since its release, but a new update might have firmed that out. Either way, it’s still available at its special holiday pricing of $4.99.

Earlier this October, we brought you a first-word because it looked so darn impressive. Functionally, the game does more than look pretty — it offers players “a hand-picked selection” of guns, has a ton of carnage, customization, and control schemes, and even gives current Combat Arms Online players free weapons in its combat shop with the redemption of a bonus code. Gotta love tie-ins.

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