Archive for the ‘Safari’ tag
Hands-On Videos of ‘Gundam’ Games Leak Out of Tokyo Game Show
Yesterday we caught wind of a set of Gundam games and apps courtesy of Japanese video game magazine . All of these games are currently playable at the Tokyo Game Show, and our friends over at have posted hands-on videos. We still don't know much about these games, or if they'll even be released in English on the US App Store, but quite a few people are excited for them judging by the comments from yesterday.
Gundam Fighting Spirit – A fighting game where players are pit against other mobile suits.
Gundam G Generation Touch – A strategy RPG with what sounds like tons of content with additional suits to unlock.
NDAM Tool Box – A Gundam-themed dashboard-like app lets you launch things like Safari, Mail, and other apps.
The Gundam suite of games and apps is scheduled for release this winter, but as I already mentioned, we still haven't heard whether this will be a Japanese-only release or not.
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Choose Your Own Adventure with Choice of Games’ Library of Interactive Fiction
We've posted a few times about the Fighting Fantasy, Gamebook Adventures, and Sorcery! series of interactive fiction and have gotten a surprisingly positive response every time. Those books are like the Choose Your Own Adventure novels you may remember reading as a child, with an element of randomization thrown in by needing to complete various dice challenges throughout the books to determine which way the story forks. abandons this dice-based gameplay model for a much more traditional (and in depth) multiple choice system for each decision that I actually enjoyed quite a bit.
Under the hood of all these games is something Choice of Games calls "ChoiceScript". ChoiceScript allows for works that are much more complicated than your typical two decision fork that leads off to two different pages as it supports things like variables in the story. These variables not only allow you to sometimes name characters yourself, but are often used as character statistics, with some decisions leading to gaining a particular stat which could potentially open up areas later in the book.
Choice of the Dragon in Mobile Safari on the left, Choice of Broadsides app on the right.
The coolest part about all this is that Choice of Games has a guide on , and it's actually quite simple. If you've got the time to invest in to building a piece of interactive fiction in ChoiceScript, they'll even host it for you on their and App Store listing, sharing 75% of the profits.
The presentation of these games is very bare bones, and are little more than black text on a white background with UI elements that just consist of basic form components. They play the same both in the browser on as they do in app form, so if you've got constant internet connectivity you can just make a home screen bookmark for the game you're playing. If you've got an iPod touch or a non-3G iPad, the apps are totally worth downloading if you find yourself getting in to them.
Just like the other interactive fiction we've posted about, these works are completely independent of each other and reading one isn't required to enjoy the rest:
Choice of the Vampire, $1.99 Begin your two-hundred year journey as a vampire in New Orleans, 1814; choose whether you will seek love, power or redemption as you negotiate the growing-pains of the young Republic.
Choice of Romance, $1.99 Play as a young courtier who catches the monarch’s eye. Will you find true love? Gain a crown? Lose your head? A text-based multiple-choice game of romance, deception and court intrigue.
Choice of Broadsides, Free Multiple-choice swashbuckling naval adventure, in the spirit of C. S. Forester’s Hornblower or Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey/Maturin books, with a dash of Jane Austen.
Choice of the Dragon, Free Play as a fire-breathing dragon who sleeps on gold and kidnaps princesses for fun. Dominate the local kingdom, loot and pillage, and inspire terror in the hearts of your enemies!
Paranoia, Free By Kie Brooks. When you think your doctor may be trying to kill you, life gets complicated. Survive this multiple-choice game if you can.
What Happened Last Night?, Free By Kie Brooks. “What Happened Last Night?” is a dark but occasionally humorous action murder mystery multiple-choice text-based game.
The Nightmare Maze, Free By Alex Livingston. “The Nightmare Maze” is the story of a 19th-century Bostonian plagued by strange nightmares. Lose yourself in the depths of a tormented psyche and try to find the logic to the night terrors in this haunting text-based multiple-choice game.
Popcorn, Soda … Murder?, Free By Pauzle. “Popcorn, Soda … Murder?” is a thrilling text-based multiple-choice murder mystery. Can you find all the clues at the murder scene and piece together who must have done it and how?
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Labor Day Weekend Sales Extravaganza
It's Labor Day Weekend in the U.S. and most every retail sector in the land is offering major product sales — and the App Store is no exception. So, without further ado, the following games are available for a reduced price through this three-day, holiday weekend.
Namco
- BurgerTime Deluxe $1.99 → 99¢
- Garters & Ghouls $1.99 → 99¢
- Ms. PAC-MAN $4.99 → 99¢
- PAC-MAN $4.99 → 99¢
- $2.99 → 99¢
- $4.99 → 99¢
- Pole Position: Remix $2.99 → 99¢
- Pool Pro Online 3 $1.99 → 99¢
- Rolling 5 Dice Poker $4.99 → 99¢
- Solitaire: Deck of Cods $4.99 → 99¢
- Star Trigon $1.99 → 99¢
- Tamagotchi: 'Round the World $4.99 → 99¢
- Lt. Fly Rise of the Arachnids $1.99 → 99¢
- Brain Exercise with Dr. Kawashima $4.99 → 99¢
- Galaga REMIX $2.99 → 99¢
- Dig Dug REMIX $2.99 → 99¢
- PAC-MAN Championship Edition $2.99 → 99¢
- I Love Katamari $4.99 → 2.99
- Ridge Racer Accelerated $4.99 → 2.99
- …
Sky Burger, Free (down from $1.99) NimbleBit’s Sky Burger is a fun exercise in burger stacking that’s seen a great deal of since it recently went free; presently it’s sitting at #6 free title in the App Store. Now’s the time to grab it.
Glu Mobile
- Build-a-lot $1.99 → 99¢
- Transformers $1.99 → 99¢
- Build-a-lot 2 $2.99 → 99¢
- Mini Golf $1.99 → 99¢
- Transformers G1 $1.99 → 99¢
- Deer Hunter: African Safari $6.99 → $2.99
- Jump O'Clock $1.99 → 99¢
- Stranded: Mysteries of Time $1.99 → 99¢
- Deer Hunter 3D for iPad $4.99 → 99¢
- Glyder 2 for iPad $1.99 → 99¢
- Super KO Boing 2 for iPad $2.99 → 99¢
Robot Unicorn Attack, $0.99 (down from $2.99) If there’s any game in the App Store that is double rainbow all the way, it is without question Adult Swim’s Robot Unicorn Attack. It’s got unicorns!!
- Boggle $1.99 → 99¢
- CLUE $1.99 → 99¢
- Littlest Pet Shop $2.99 → 99¢
- MONOPOLY $2.99 → 99¢
- MONOPOLY Here & Now: The World Edition $2.99 → 99¢
- RISK: The Official Game $4.99 → $1.99
- THE GAME OF LIFE Classic Edition $2.99 → 99¢
- Trivial Pursuit $2.99 → 99¢
- YAHTZEE Adventures $2.99 → 99¢
I Dig It HD, $4.99 (down from $9.99) InMotion Software’s I Dig It HD is an iPad take on the iPhone original that we — and most everybody else — loved. On the bigger screen, it’s bigger action and all the fun of the iPhone version.
The titles listed here represent a pretty good highlight of what's out there for less this weekend, and additional deals are being discussed in an active .
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Apple’s September Press Event – Where Can I Get That Guitar?
Apple Media Event Today @ 10:00 AM PDT – Live Stream Available
We are mere hours away from Apple's latest media event held at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, CA. Few people know for certain what will be discussed today, but the rumor mill is on fire with what could be a potentially redesigned iPod Nano or iPod Shuffle as well as the somewhat inevitable iPod touch refresh. Photos of leaked front panels of what could be the new iPod touch have been floating around the Internet for quite some time now, and it appears that this year could potentially be the year that the iPod touch finally gets a camera– Maybe even a front facing camera to place FaceTime calls. Other rumors have been circulating including potential enhancements to the Apple TV and even revamping the pricing structure for some content on iTunes such as 99¢ rentals for episodes of TV shows.
Yesterday that they will be streaming this event live:
Apple will broadcast its September 1 event online using Apple's industry-leading HTTP Live Streaming, which is based on open standards. Viewing requires either a Mac running Safari on Mac OS X version 10.6 Snow Leopard, an iPhone or iPod touch running iOS 3.0 or higher, or an iPad. The live broadcast will begin at 10:00 a.m. PDT on September 1, 2010 at .
If you don't have a Mac, iPhone, or iPod touch to watch the event on, there is a guide on to watch the stream using VLC on a PC. Of course like all Apple keynotes we will be providing live coverage of things from the keynote that pertain to gaming, and we will be on site after the event to hopefully get some hands-on time with whatever new products are available.
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WWDC 2010: Glu’s Upcoming Game Lineup – ‘Escape from Nom’, ‘Build-a-Lot 2′, ‘Deer Hunter African Safari’ and ‘Deer Hunter 3D for iPad’
During WWDC this week we met with Glu to get a peek at their upcoming game lineup, along with the not entirely surprising news that they're going to be shifting towards the freemium market towards the end of this year. In the meantime, they showed us four of their upcoming games, which will all be coming out in the next few months.
Escape From Nom – A physics-powered puzzle game where you have to aim a colored circle (named Alan) to get to the bottom of the water at the bottom of the screen. You can control where you drop Alan, and levels often involve either using existing or placing new gizmos in to the game world to bounce off of to avoid being eaten by the Noms, multi-colored blobs which are either stationary or moving about.
Much like Enigmo, later levels require a quite a bit of thought and manipulation of various objects to bounce Alan about. Some levels even have Alan starting out as a different color than the water, at which point you must have him bounce off an appropriately colored bumper in order to change to the correct color to complete the level.
Escape From Nom also comes with a full featured level editor which will allow you to create and share new levels. Aside from user-generated levels, the game will come with 30 pre-made levels of increasing difficulty across 3 different game worlds. Escape From Nom will be released soon, potentially even before the end of June.
Build-a-Lot 2 – This is a sequel of the original Build-a-Lot, which came out in early 2009. We liked the original in our review, and it sounds like the sequel is more of the same with additional enhancements. There are new blueprints to unlock, and a new curb appeal system that adds another level of depth to the game as curb appeal increases as a house is built closer to a playground and other desirable structures.
Tons of other parts of the game has been tweaked, and it's safe to say if you enjoyed the original you will also like the sequel. Build-a-Lot 2 is expected mid-July and Glu is also working on an iPad-optimized version of the game.
Deer Hunter African Safari – More of the same Deer Hunter action, this time set in Africa. You'll be able to do 3 different hunts in 4 separate locations and shoot exotic game like lions, zebra, kudus, elephants, and other virtual African animals begging for your bullets. Like the other Deer Hunter games, there will be DLC to purchase additional equipment and other fun hunting toys to allow you to more efficiently cleanse the land of life.
Deer Hunter African Safari will be available mid-August.
Deer Hunter 3D for iPad – The original Deer Hunter 3D is making its way to the iPad, with 16 different hunts in 4 different locations. 7 different types of animals are packed in to the game, and there are 13 different weapons to shoot them with. Everything is up-scaled to 1024×768, and the game looks just as good as you would expect on the iPad.
Deer Hunter 3D for iPad is coming in early July.
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