TouchArcade.ru

Last week we previewed our upcoming app for TouchArcade. We’ve been anxious to get the app finally released into the hands of our users and have been working toward that goal for many months.

Our original plan had been to launch it on Monday of this week. Unfortunately, our lead web/backend developer was in a terrible accident over the weekend and is in critical condition. We are still hopeful for a full and meaningful recovery. Given the circumstances, we were unable to launch the TouchArcade App as planned.

We are still working hard towards that goal, and another of our developers is familiarizing himself with the code so that we can launch in the near future. Thank you for your patience.

[source]

The very first post on TouchArcade was over four years ago now, which, for those of you playing along at home, was before the iOS App Store even launched. (Heck, back then it wasn’t even iOS yet, and wouldn’t even be iOS for another two years.) We’ve been hard at work on our own app with the help of Flexibits and Bartelme Design for what seems like forever, and with it being unleashed to the world next week, I figured now was a great time to lay out the features and functionality of the app.

First off, the main screen (seen below and to the left) is what you see when you launch the app. It has a featured story, which usually will be whatever our last review was, or any other story that deserves some kind of special attention. To the right of that is the “Hot Games” list, which is a killer feature of the app. What you’re looking at here is a realtime display of the games that have generated the most interest in our community.

There’s a whole bunch of behind the scenes wizardry taking place to compute this list, utilizing tons of different data points to create a surprisingly accurate display of what the hottest games at the time are. The cool thing about this is that the list is constantly being updated. If you want to know what the most popular games amongst our community are at this exact moment, look no further than the hot games list.

The other views of the app share a similar look, and you’re able to really drill down on reviews for all the games we’ve looked at via a set of drop downs. So, for instance, if you wanted to see reviews of free action games posted in the last month. Totally doable. The “News & Reviews” function gives you a quick glance at all the content on the site. Oh, and if you decide to, you can even get push alerts when we post a new story.

Our forums are (obviously) huge for our community, so we’ve included forum integration in the app. Each thread display also features all the information you’d need about a game at a glance, with ratings from both the actual App Store as well as amongst our own users. You can even assign your own ratings just like you can on your browser. See the little slider with the binoculars? Things with the app get even better.

The watch list, much like the wish list in the AppShopper App [ Free ] is my favorite feature. By flipping the toggle switch seen above, you can add any game, regardless of whether or not it’s released. From there, you can see any stories that have been posted about that specific game. Also, if the push alerts for everything we post is a little too much for you, you can set the app to only send you alerts when articles that pertain directly to your watch list are posted.

So, if we post a preview for a game that interests you, all you’ve got to do is add it to your watch list, and you’ll get alerts for when it’s released, when we post a review, and potentially even if it ever gets updates or a price drop and we cover it.

The app also has tons of information about all the games on the App Store. Once you get into the actual details page of any game (which is accessible by numerous methods within the app) you’ll see our own review scores as well as the rating from out community, and you’ll be able to jump into any forum thread that pertains to the game. Also, obviously, any associated trailers or screenshots are there along with the iTunes text and anything we’ve posted about the game.

We’ve put a ton of work into the TouchArcade app, and we’re all really proud of what we’re about to release. There’s a number of other little features and settings that you’ll discover as you’re using it, but this is the core functionality of the app. We’ve been using it for months now to discover games to cover on the site, and we’re confident that it’ll become your go to app to find the latest and greatest games the App Store has to offer.

If everything goes as planned, it will be available for free, globally, next week.

[source]

We’ve been looking forward to Ravenous Games’ upcoming Burger Cat since it was announced in late March. Not just because it’s a game featuring an adorable cat, which is reason enough to be excited in my book, but also because it looked like a clever puzzle platformer that was a casual-focused departure from the grittier League of Evil series.

In our hands-on preview of Burger Cat, we found the gameplay very approachable but still with a nice progression in both challenge and depth of each level. Plus, since it’s a complete overhaul of the original Flash version, the production values in Burger Cat are second to none. Definitely give the preview a read for the full skinny, and check out the first trailer for Burger Cat which Ravenous has recently released.

We’ve also learned that Burger Cat has been pushed back from its original release, which would have been this week, but we won’t have to wait long since it’s already rescheduled to hit next week on April 19th. Good thing too, I can already hear my cat’s stomach growling.

[source]

When you’re looking for a simple, compulsive time waster, do you look for something that lets you grind to your heart’s content, or a game where you can dominate a high score board with skill alone? This is an honest question. DogByte Games’ 8bit Ninja [Free] has a free-to-play model that doesn’t get in the way of simple good times, but it pretty much throws the whole leaderboard thing out the window if you don’t want to pay. Other than that little problem it’s a great way to lose a few hours to that good ol’ craving for just one more game.

Consider 8bit Ninja a companion piece to Halfbrick’s Fruit Ninja. In that game, you are a bodiless ninja with a sword and a penchant for murdering fruit. In this game, you’re a nearly unarmed ninja with a good reason to fear bouncing produce. One’s about the thrill of the attack, the other’s all about avoidance. They make a great pair, but where Fruit Ninja is a one-and-done sorta game that focuses on hitting peak performance, 8bit Ninja holds its big rewards back for the patient player who puts time into its substantial upgrade system.

If you have a weakness for levelling things up, 8bit Ninja is going to eat you alive. Just playing lets you level up your ninja, improving his special ability and shrinking its cooldown. You also pick up coins while you play, and those can be used to unlock and upgrade a whole list of powerups. You can equip three of those powerups in a given run. Eventually you can unlock new ninjas with better abilities and level them up too. It’s the sort of grind that goes straight to your head.

The game is simple: run left and right dodging increasingly aggressive bouncing fruit. Every so often a powerup drops from above. Depending on what you’ve equipped it might give you a few coins or boost your XP, or it might slice up some fruit. Splattered fruits drop coins and the occasional coveted egg.

As we mentioned in our preview, the IAP system is largely inoffensive if you just want to play. You can get by without ever making a purchase and never know the difference. Coins and eggs can be earned by playing, but eggs are quite rare and are more easily acquired with IAP. Purchasing any egg pack has the side effect of removing ads. So far, so good.

You can use eggs then to unlock new ninjas and scenery. They add small bonuses, but nothing outrageous. You can also use them to level up your ninja faster, or swap them for coins to upgrade your powerups. That’s getting a bit dicey from a high score point of view, but you’ll earn your way up there eventually. Things get messy with the last option, though. You can use eggs to purchase one extra life each round if you’re willing to keep plugging in dollars. That’s a pretty big hit to your potential if you don’t want to pay up.

Assuming you’re cool with that situation, 8bit Ninja is otherwise pretty solid. The only real problem is, as with most linear arcade titles, that the early part of the game gets dull and runs get uncomfortably long as you improve. But the game is extremely accessible and its touch controls are great. Between the thrill of random egg drops and the desire to level up and score higher, it’s probably going to get a hold on you.

So ask yourself what you’re looking for. If you want serious competition without hitting the IAP, this probably isn’t the game for you. If you want an entertaining time waster with cute pixel art, go nuts. Just don’t say I didn’t warn you when you’re desperately hunting eggs in the hope of catching up to the rest of the pack.

TouchArcade Rating:

[source]

PlayGround States logo, as it appears on Facebook.

“It’s been an amazing experience,” Double Fine founder Tim Schafer told fans via a live stream that celebrated the closing moments of Double Fine Adventure’s success on Kickstarter. The project generated over three million dollars worth of donations in a month. Double Fine had asked for $400,000. It wasn’t just amazing. It was magical.

Not every studio sees this kind of outcome. Lead artist and the brains behind Playground State, Barry Collins, is walking us through what his studio looks like, and what has happened to his game, after his project failed to receive funding.

Playground State was founded two years ago by Barry and his brother Brad to explore and express the ideas that Barry has had floating around in his head since childhood. If you look closely at its web site, you’ll notice that there’s no physical address. It’s just a collective “willing people” across the globe coming together to build a series of sci-fi titles called Knights. A PC title called Knights: Spiral Islands was to be the first.

Spiral Island became a known project thanks to Kickstarter and a warm reception by PC enthusiast web site Rock, Paper, Shotgun, which featured it in an editorial in February 2011. Spiral Island is described as an episodic online action-adventure game in which you, as a knight in the game’s sci-fi universe, battle evil across the cosmos. Its hook, outside of its UDK visuals, is its lack of boundaries: in one mission, you’ll be hacking and shooting Vikings, in others space bees, mushroom zombies, robots, and large crabs.

Concept art of a playable Knight. You'll see other Knights in the upcoming preview game.

It has the look and feel of something incredible, especially if it were to be expanded as planned. Spiral Island was pitched to potential donors as game design in motion, as it would have seamlessly integrated new scenarios and enemies in a constant steam.

For whatever reason, it didn’t receive sufficient support. The Kickstarter effort ended with a thud later that April. Playground was looking for $10,000. A hair over $1,500 was pledged across 36 serial donators. One pledger, for example, has backed 48 other projects.

It’s easy to see this as a knockout shot, but to Barry, it’s just a glancing blow, and now the team is looking to iOS and its vast audience to continue.

“The lack of funds was frustrating, but it didn’t really kill our ambitions or desire to make this work,” Barry tells TouchArcade. In the ultimate show of confidence, the studio grew. It picked up an artist, a musician, a sound designer, and a couple of programmers following the failed attempt at funding.

That Playground is reacting in the exact opposite way you’d expect isn’t lost on Barry, and he explains that the reason is tied into how deeply his core team believes in what the studio is trying to accomplish.

“It’s our baby,” Barry tell us. “Amazingly, after maybe an hour or two of rambling with the various team members, they all irrevocably become hooked on the concept and what it has to offer, and slowly but surely begin to own it. Right now we have a team of guys all on the same page and all excited about the small steps as much as the bigger one that will come later — Knights as a whole.”

The crab monster we originally fell in love with, but now fewer polygons for mobile.

While the team grew, so did Knights. It’s now more than a game: it’s a series of mobile titles based in the same universe that spans multiple platforms and genres. Barry has an idea for several projects, some of which are in early stages of development. The most important is an Epic Citadel-like preview title, built specifically for iOS to show off what his team can do.

But even though the team is growing and excited about the games Barry wants to make, it has a horrible issue: it’s hemorrhaging programmers. It can’t keep one on staff, and this is putting a kink in the size and scope of the Knights games Barry wants to make. Barry says they’re in a spiral of simplification, as no one has the expertise to implement complex content into builds. The lack of a revenue stream is undoubtedly one of the culprits here. It’s also the reason why it’s bothering with a showcase project in the first place, and opening its doors for outsourcing work.

“This constant tug of war is what pushed us to our current goals of producing a very basic, free to download visual demo — a means of walking around a crazy environment full of eye candy and talking to basic scripted actors within the world. This will lay the ground work for follow-up episodes to come afterwords,” Barry tells us.

That Knights is blowing up, too, isn’t lost on Barry. He says this game has two goals: to nab exposure and be a launching board. Barry believes it’ll generate new ideas for future Knights games, and argues that the scope in this game is much more manageable than the one he put out there with Spiral Island.

This is how Playground wants to tackle on-screen FPS controls.

Another game is another iPhone and iPad-specific title called Knights: Arena. This is also a victim of the rotunda of programmers cycling through the studio. It’s an FPS that revolves solely around online play: team deathmatch, capture the flag, and so on. Barry, with a lengthy Internet sigh capping off what he tells us about Arena, says the studio’s goal is to establish a revenue stream as quickly as possible. It needs to hire at least one, dedicated programmer. “But that in itself is a Catch 22,” he says. “Need a programmer to make revenue, need revenue to get a programmer.”

Playground State’s ability to keep its legs churning in the mud seems unreal, but it’s a human reaction. With a teeth-gnashing kind of pride, Barry plans to continue marching on beyond his studio’s funding failure. He doesn’t just want to make games — he wants to see his dreams realized.

“I don’t quite know how we managed to grow in quality, strength, and numbers. Faith in Knights among the team is stronger than ever today, despite everything,” he tells us.

“Knights is one of many projects I dream of making. So this is the blood, sweat, tears part of paving the way to eventually being able to produce these with a real budget and fully paid team. This is it. This is what I love. It’s what I want to do for the rest of my life.”

That’s why Barry is up for using Kickstarter again. He has at least two in the works right now. One is for an extensive indie bundle that features developers in the Vancouver area. The other is for Knights: Arena or a single-player variant of that idea, which he wants to launch “at the same time that we launch the free demo, so people can see or play it and discover it that way.”

Barry talks about Knights: Spiral Island in his Kickstarter promo.

Spiral Island’s crowd-funding failure didn’t come without costs in terms of people and revenue. There were lessons learned, though. The first was scalability. “No need to come out of the gate with a massive universe to embark on hundreds of small stories in other universes. A single story is good enough, or if finances and or programming get in the way, as we are discovering, there are still options,” he tells us.

“We did not go into this expecting it to be quick and easy, and it has not been quick or easy either,” he says.

And let’s say these Kickstarters don’t pan out? Barry isn’t worried. “We will keep pushing along until we are earning revenue on our own, find the right investment deal or get the attention of a publisher that wants to work with us.”

“But no matter what, this project will see the light of day, and as a series of mobile games to start.”

Towards the end of our Barry conversation, we pressed “pause” so we could ask what makes him so idealistic. His vision for these Knights games still seems almost too ambitious considering the lack of funding. The risk of what will happen if these ideas die could be monumental to the studio’s future and Barry. These games are the realization of his dreams, after all.

Honu are a species you'll be able to talk to in a preview. Here's one in a warrior outfit.

“Knights in general is an extremely ambitious concept,” he says. “It started big and the scope of the games we want to tell based in this setting have been cut back for the sake of getting something to market sooner. “

“The concept of Knights being so grand just means we always have room to grow. We realize that we may only ever produce the Knights preview or only ever get as far as Knights: Arena because there’s a real possibility that Knights is lame and we are all crazy people working away on an idea nobody else likes. “

“For me this would just be a continuation of exactly what I have done for 11 years, which is to just hire myself out to whatever studio wants to pay me, and doing so in mass with others is old hat. The grind of tracking down clients and deadlines, milestones, massive delays in payment and so on… it’s all a part of the job. But, Knights, to me, is a way out of this, to finally get all the ideas my brother and I have been brewing up for decades. It’s time we produce things we want rather than the things that pay the bills.”

Barry says that he likes to focus on what could happen with some success. He could hire programmers, no more lost time on contract projects, and the people he’s surrounded by could be supported.

“I just really hope people want to play a game about the Knights — the ultimate saviors of all things, the definition of heroic. Not a bad bone in their bodies, watching them take on any bad guy we can dream up and throw at them, across all history in any universe and time. I really want to play that game.”

When a Kickstarter fails, it’s not necessarily a catalyst for disaster. Barry is idealistic, and maybe too ambitious, but he’s not a quitter. He’ll keep creating. The success of Double Fine was magical, but the intensity of at least one man who didn’t win big is special, too.

While Barry’s story stands on its own, we are covering something larger here. This is part one of a two-part series of articles. In the next, we’ll introduce you to three more studios who haven’t had the greatest experience on Kickstarter. We’ll also discuss why we don’t normally cover games on the service and why we’re not certain of the long-term viability of crowd-funding sources like Kickstarter.

[source]

Penny Arcade On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness Episode Three, the long-awaited follow-up by Cthulu Saves The World developer Zeboyd Games, is coming to the iPhone and iPad, according to a recent Joystiq preview. This version will hit this summer alongside the PC, Mac, Xbox Live Indie Games, and Android versions of the game. These guys have all their bases covered, right?

If you’re not in the loop, Episode 3 is a… change of pace. It has the look, and what seems to be the feel, of an old-school RPG. In a chat with Joystiq, Zeboyd said that its major influencers were Final Fantasy V and Grandia, so go figure.

Zeboyd says this will continue the story Hothead Games and Penny Arcade set out to tell before things didn’t pan out, but it’ll also operate as a stand-alone title, which is a great thing for us. I mean, we didn’t even see the previous two games on our tablet and phones of choice.

We’ll definitely keep our eyes on this as it nears release, but you should definitely go read what Joystiq has to say. Episode Three sounds pretty hip.

[via Joystiq]

[source]

I must be biologically programmed to react instantly to anything that reminds me of The Legend of Zelda for NES. Take Carota! [$1.99], for instance, which is a puzzle game starring a rabbit named Thaddeus who’s been knocked down a hole and must proceed through 50 levels of puzzling to make it back to the Earth’s surface. Must have been a deep hole, yeah?

Anyway, if you’ve ever played Zelda (and who hasn’t), you’ll recognize that some of Carota’s levels take place in a room that looks awfully like the rooms of the Zelda dungeons. And so, the nostalgia begins…

It’s really no more than a hat tip though, which I appreciate, since I’ve played plenty of Zelda clones. Carota! is anything but, going in favor of an interesting little puzzle dynamic where you turn blocks with the touch of a finger in order to guide your rabbit to the door.

This sounds very simple, and in the beginning, that is just what it is. You can drag blocks around the screen in order to craft this path, but in order to clear a level, you must use a certain number of blocks or the door will not open. This is no problem at all when your goal is to use four. It gets somewhat more complicated once you have fifteen. Did I mention the blocks also disappear after you waste enough time? Yep, there is that.

You do have a few options at your advantage, however — you can introduce new blocks in at anytime (and you’ll get a preview of what each block is, in the upper left hand corner), and you also have access to a speed button which makes your bunny friend go just a tad faster. Both of these resources are invaluable as the levels become more difficult. Since Thaddeus only walks in one direction most of the time, you’ll have to be crafty about making sure you turn blocks at just the right moments to keep him moving, too. Oh, but he always turns left at forks. And he cannot walk back on a tile he has already crossed. Have you got all this written down?

Keep that pen out. In later levels, there will be more new blocks for you to learn to work with, such as blue ones that are slippery. To say that Carota! gets difficult later down the line would be a bit of an understatement. You’ll have quite a bit going on to manage if you can progress, and that’s when one of the game’s fatal flaws comes in — it’s not always 100% responsive to touch when you are trying to move blocks around. It’s mostly responsive, but I did have a few issues where I had to drag my finger across the screen several times when trying to move a block, which meant losing the precious few seconds I needed and Thaddeus fell to his doom.

Carota! will time you as you progress through each level, so if you want to try to improve your score, the option is there. To tell you the truth, though, some of these levels drove me so crazy, I don’t think I would ever want to play them again. If you’re a high score rockstar, however, OpenFeint and Game Center are waiting for you to get in there and show off your high scores.

I liked the concept of Carota! but I thought it could have been executed better. If the controls were as responsive as I expected, I think it could have helped with the challenge of later levels, but fighting against that issue and the difficulty at the same time made me feel as if I was struggling to have a good time. When the formula works, it works well, but if you don’t have a high tolerance for punishment, you might want to spend that $1.99 elsewhere.

TouchArcade Rating:

[source]

At GDC earlier this month, one of my favorite upcoming games that I had a chance to play was Get Set Games’ Mega Run. They’ve taken Redford, the adorable main character from their hugely successful previous title Mega Jump [Free], and have dropped him into an auto-running game.

But, this isn’t just any boring, old auto-runner. Instead it’s literally bursting with items, power-ups, and enemies, not to mention its colorful visuals and loads of personality. Plus, it has incredibly well-designed levels with multiple pathways and tons of secrets to discover. It really is something you need to see in motion to appreciate. Which is fortunate for you, as Get Set has released a new gameplay video of Mega Run in action.

Mega Run is still in the final stages of development, and with any luck we should be seeing the title hit the App Store within the next month or two. After getting my hands on the preview version at GDC, I really can’t wait to spend some quality time with the final game. Keep your eyes firmly planted on this space and we’ll let you know just as soon as Mega Run gets a firm release date.

[source]

If you’re lining up to see The Hunger Games tonight, why not bring its official teaser game with you to pass the time? The Hunger Games: Girl On Fire [Free] launched this afternoon for the generous price of $0 and we recommend it without pause. It’s a conceptually solid runner that boasts a tremendous look, and it even introduces some new ideas to its clotted genre.

If you’d like a way more in-depth look, feel free to hit up our preview. We’ll be bringing you more on it in the near future, too, so stay tuned.

[source]

At an event that was supposed to revolve around World of Warcraft’s upcoming expansion, Mists of Pandaria, Blizzard producer John Lagrave revealed that the studio is flirting with the idea of taking the still-popular MMO to iPhone. “We won’t do it until we think it’s decent,” Lagrave told Eurogamer in an interview. “But it’s interesting and the world is evolving towards that little handheld device.” He added that Blizzard would be foolish not to consider a port.

Lagrave pointed out a few key reasons why we haven’t seen WOW mobile yet, the main one being that it doesn’t have a good idea for it at the moment. As far as fundamental problems are concerned, that strikes us as a pretty big one. Still, it’s nice to know that Blizzard is thinking about us phone-shackled folk. If this ever happens, hopefully Blizzard sticks to its guns and offers up with something much more clever than these guys, who put the entire game on iOS via Vollee.

[via Eurogamer]

[source]