TouchArcade.ru

Sometimes some wackiness arises due to having different iTunes and App Stores in different countries around the world. Sometimes games aren't available in certain markets, and likewise sometimes price drops don't affect every market. In this case, EA Mobile has dropped the price of Mirror's Edge for both iPhone and iPad to free for a day, but the catch is it's only in certain markets. So far, it seems most of Europe, Australia, and New Zealand are able to download either version of the game for free. The US, Canada, and most Asian countries seem to be out of luck.

While TouchArcade is a US-based website, we figure we have a big enough international audience that this sale is worth mentioning in the hopes that some of you will be able to nab the game for free. We couldn't possibly check every single App Store to see who has it for free and who doesn't, so your best bet is to just check your very own store for the game. If you're unfamiliar with Mirror's Edge for some reason, check out our review of the iPad version or our review of the iPhone version to score some knowledge on what the game is all about.

International App Store Links:

• Mirror's Edge, Free
• Mirror's Edge for iPad, Free

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Brick and mortar game peddlers will never die thanks to the creative minds of Kairosoft, the creators of Game Dev Story [$3.99 / Lite]. Hours before we donned our tinfoil hats and celebrated the New Future Year of 2011, the studio released a new game called "Waiwai! The Game Dealer" across the Japanese App Store.

Here's what's so exciting: as its name and the studio's pedigree implies, Waiwai! The Game Dealer is a simulation title that puts you in the role of a game store manager, much like GDS put you in the role of a game studio manager. Hilariously, it appears as if you'll also dabble in the video game stock trade (in order to boost profits) and even play around with food. To be frank, we're not sure what the latter has to do with the game, but hey, GDS had a monkey that could program.

We've e-mailed the fine folks at Kairosoft to see if Waiai! The Game Dealer will be localized and we'll let you know when we find out. I think, though, that it might be safe to assume it will, eventually, provided Japanese sales are strong enough. As we've noted in the past, Kairosoft dug the reception of GDS and have confirmed that its sequel will see an English-language release. I'd imagine GDS2 won't be the end of the line for its localization efforts.

[Additional translation help given to me by owner of Rockmelon Soda, Topher! Thanks, dude!]

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Last week we posted about the Indie iPhone Holiday Sale, a joint effort from six developers, each with fantastic indie titles, to raise money for Penny Arcade's Child's Play charity. It really doesn't get more win/win than this. For $6, you get six great games, and some of the proceeds go to helping improve the quality of life of kids in hospitals across America.

The following games are still on sale until the 2nd of January:

• Canabalt, by Semi Secret Software – Review
• Solipskier, by Mikengreg – Review
• Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor, by Tiger Style Games – Review
• Osmos, by Hemisphere Games – Review
• Eliss, by Steph Thirion – Review
• Drop7, by Area/Code Inc. – Review

To celebrate raising so much cash for kids in need, Semi Secret Software made a substantial announcement: Canabalt is now totally open source via the MIT license. This is the full latest version of the game that hasn't even been approved yet on the App Store which features some pretty sick OpenGL optimizations I've been told, allowing the game to run at 60fps on recent devices.

If you're a pioneering iOS developer, check out the source here. The license they're using is open enough that you can basically use the game engine for anything you want, provided you're not redistributing the game code, graphics, or sound. This really makes me wonder if we'll see a Canabalt spinoff that features all the unanswered suggestions from our forums.

Either way, this is great news for the developers participating in the sale, developers who are interested in looking under the hood of Canabalt, and most importantly: The kids benefitting from these donations.

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The App Store mouse seems to have hopped back on its wheel after the recent holiday freeze of iTunes Connect, and we're starting to once again see new games, updates, and price drops becoming available. Right off the bat there is a noteworthy sale that caught my eye, so if you still have a dollar left over after gorging on the massive list of holiday sales that we posted last week (many of which are still going on, by the way), you'll definitely want to pick up Game Dev Story [99¢/Lite] while it's at its lowest price ever.

Chances are pretty good that you've heard of Game Dev Story by now. This port of Kairosoft's 1996 PC game puts you in the role the manager of a brand new game development studio. You'll need to hire staff, come up with game ideas, and then bring those ideas to fruition all while staying within your budget and available resources. Then you market and sell your games, hopefully getting positive reviews from critics and bringing in a profit so your studio can expand and work on future titles. We were quite taken with Game Dev Story when we reviewed it, and it turns out we weren't alone as it subsequently went on to create quite a buzz across the gaming blogosphere.

In the App Store world, anything more than a dollar can be a hard sell to some gamers. After seeing the nearly 15 year old graphics that are used in Game Dev Story, I imagine that there were a lot of people that found it hard to part with the $3.99 that the game originally cost, despite the mountains of praise it received. Even with the recently launched lite version, I'm willing to bet that there are gamers that were steadfast in their willingness to wait for a 99¢ sale. To these people, your time has come! Game Dev Story is now just a buck, and you'll be hard-pressed to find more bang for that buck in practically the entire App Store. So stock up on food, buy a few cases of Red Bull, and get sucked into the divine addiction that is Game Dev Story, which will give you a chance to hone your skills for the upcoming Game Dev Story 2.

Update 1: It seems the price has been increased back to $2.99.

Update 2: For whatever reason, the price seems to be fluctuating from $2.99 to 99¢.

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The App Store mouse seems to have hopped back on its wheel after the recent holiday freeze of iTunes Connect, and we're starting to once again see new games, updates, and price drops becoming available. Right off the bat there is a noteworthy sale that caught my eye, so if you still have a dollar left over after gorging on the massive list of holiday sales that we posted last week (many of which are still going on, by the way), you'll definitely want to pick up Game Dev Story [99¢/Lite] while it's at its lowest price ever.

Chances are pretty good that you've heard of Game Dev Story by now. This port of Kairosoft's 1996 PC game puts you in the role the manager of a brand new game development studio. You'll need to hire staff, come up with game ideas, and then bring those ideas to fruition all while staying within your budget and available resources. Then you market and sell your games, hopefully getting positive reviews from critics and bringing in a profit so your studio can expand and work on future titles. We were quite taken with Game Dev Story when we reviewed it, and it turns out we weren't alone as it subsequently went on to create quite a buzz across the gaming blogosphere.

In the App Store world, anything more than a dollar can be a hard sell to some gamers. After seeing the nearly 15 year old graphics that are used in Game Dev Story, I imagine that there were a lot of people that found it hard to part with the $3.99 that the game originally cost, despite the mountains of praise it received. Even with the recently launched lite version, I'm willing to bet that there are gamers that were steadfast in their willingness to wait for a 99¢ sale. To these people, your time has come! Game Dev Story is now just a buck, and you'll be hard-pressed to find more bang for that buck in practically the entire App Store. So stock up on food, buy a few cases of Red Bull, and get sucked into the divine addiction that is Game Dev Story, which will give you a chance to hone your skills for the upcoming Game Dev Story 2.

Update: It seems the price has been increased back to $2.99.

[source]

The App Store mouse seems to have hopped back on its wheel after the recent holiday freeze of iTunes Connect, and we're starting to once again see new games, updates, and price drops becoming available. Right off the bat there is a noteworthy sale that caught my eye, so if you still have a dollar left over after gorging on the massive list of holiday sales that we posted last week (many of which are still going on, by the way), you'll definitely want to pick up Game Dev Story [99¢/Lite] while it's at its lowest price ever.

Chances are pretty good that you've heard of Game Dev Story by now. This port of Kairosoft's 1996 PC game puts you in the role the manager of a brand new game development studio. You'll need to hire staff, come up with game ideas, and then bring those ideas to fruition all while staying within your budget and available resources. Then you market and sell your games, hopefully getting positive reviews from critics and bringing in a profit so your studio can expand and work on future titles. We were quite taken with Game Dev Story when we reviewed it, and it turns out we weren't alone as it subsequently went on to create quite a buzz across the gaming blogosphere.

In the App Store world, anything more than a dollar can be a hard sell to some gamers. After seeing the nearly 15 year old graphics that are used in Game Dev Story, I imagine that there were a lot of people that found it hard to part with the $3.99 that the game originally cost, despite the mountains of praise it received. Even with the recently launched lite version, I'm willing to bet that there are gamers that were steadfast in their willingness to wait for a 99¢ sale. To these people, your time has come! Game Dev Story is now just a buck, and you'll be hard-pressed to find more bang for that buck in practically the entire App Store. So stock up on food, buy a few cases of Red Bull, and get sucked into the divine addiction that is Game Dev Story, which will give you a chance to hone your skills for the upcoming Game Dev Story 2.

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We've received word that InMotion Software, the creators of I Dig It and Dungeon Defense, has slashed the prices of a chunk of its iTunes portfolio. As of yesterday, several of their titles became cheaper than before:

I Dig It, Free – [iPad] – [Review] – In I Dig It, you play as Farmer Lewis, a man who is in a bit of a monetary pickle and needs to pay the mortgage on his farm. Naturally, when faced with financial difficulties, the first thing that comes to mind is retrofitting an old bulldozer into a digging machine to search for over 60 types of subterranean treasures beneath your homestead. The iPad version, I Dig It HD [$2.99] is also on sale, and sports many improvements mentioned when we first got our hands on it.

I Dig It Expeditions, $0.99 – [iPad] – [Review] – Continuing on his adventure, Farmer Lewis strikes it big from the original I Dig It (spoilers?) and decides to take his digger on the road. In Expeditions, you dig in many different locations, including a crazy underwater level. If you liked I Dig It, Expeditions is as close to a "must-have" as you can get.

Dungeon Defense, $0.99 – [iPad] – [Review] – An odd twist on tower defense that puts you in charge of a dungeon, and you need to place various minions to defend it. The iPhone version has been 99¢ for a while, but if you've got an iPad Dungeon Defenders HD [$1.99] is worth picking up while it's on the cheap.

Professor Wordington's Spellatorium [$2.99] is one of the few InMotion-developed joints that didn't receive a cut. The reason is probably tied to the fact that the game just released on the App Store on December 19 — a mere few days ago.

Prof Word seems pretty cool based on our limited time with it so far. It's a word in which you and an opponent take turns adding letters to a word fragment. The point is to not be the dude who ends up spelling a word, or, additionally, be the first dude to point out that a word cannot be spelled from the growing letter cluster. Basically, the game boils down to tricking someone and knowing the dictionary.

Also, there's a layer of RPG elements that spice up the adversarial play. Each word fight has multiple rounds since each opponent has a health bar. You earn and find items that magnify the amount of damage you can do in a round, as well as blunt the impact of screwing up. And if that wasn't enough, there's InMotion constructed a hip, limited environment to explore and find dudes to fight inside.

Prof Word is available for the iPad now and we've been told that a Universal app update has been submitted to Apple. Check it out if this all sounds hip to you, or, hey, grab I Dig It's bangin' follow-up on the cheap.

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