JulianFarrior
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Daily iPad App: Ragdoll Blaster 3 goes in a new direction
I first came across Backflip Studios' Julian Farrior back at GDC a few years ago. At the time, his company's biggest title was called Paper Toss, and he also had a game in the store called Ragdoll Blaster, a physics puzzler where you threw dummies out of a cannon. Back then, Farrior talked at length about how he was using ads in the Paper Toss app to drive sales of his paid titles, and his big plan was to use whatever worked to make his company successful on the App Store. Cut to two years later, and Backflip is doing great. The company has grown and released quite a few polished titles, including a licensed Army of Darkness game and the very popular and excellent freemium title DragonVale. Farrior and his company have learned a lot over the past few years, about how to make and maintain interesting games, and they've brought a lot of that knowledge back to bear on their recent return to the Ragdoll Blaster series with part three. First things first, Backflip's art and polish is probably better than it's ever been. Ragdoll Blaster 2 didn't look bad, but it didn't have the quality and "voice" (for lack of a better word) that this title has. This game's characters are cute and funny, and while you could argue that Backflip has borrowed a lot from games like Cut the Rope and even Sony's LittleBigPlanet, the core Ragdoll Blaster gameplay is still there. The flow of the game is much improved as well -- you still roll through a series of stages with their own challenges, but the game is super simple and easy to navigate. And there are a whole host of social features, including saving and sharing replays and full Game Center integration. Fans of the past Ragdoll Blasters may be a little disappointed. There are lots of freemium items included in this one (including little suits for the dolls), and the rare gamer that still wants to simply buy a paid app might be disappointed. And the new look to the game is a little more colorful and kid-friendly than the old, more gritty look, so some players might be turned off by just how cute the game is (the music, especially, tends a little too far towards the nursery than the playground at times). But all in all, I think this new direction is a good call for Backflip and Farrior, and will help this already solid franchise find an even bigger audience. Ragdoll Blaster 3 is available in the App Store right now for 99 cents. And stay tuned, I expect to see Farrior and company at GDC again this year, so we'll find out how this new approach worked for them then.
GDC 2011: Backflip Studios' Boss Battles, Army of Darkness Defense, and more
Backflip Studios' Julian Farrior was here in attendance at GDC 2011 this week. His company has been doing quite well lately, and he tells me that they've recently hit 85 million downloads across all of their free apps, with over 23 million monthly active users. In plain terms, that means that tons of people have downloaded Backflip's apps (like Paper Toss, Ragdoll Blaster and the popular NinJump), and they're playing them often as well. As I heard at last year's conference, Farrior is all about experimentation, using paid downloads, freemium apps and a large, well-organized network of in-app advertising to drive traffic around and monetize his company's users. He has a relatively large slate of games due out in 2011, including four social games that we'll be hearing about later in the year, and a few games using various models that I got to see in action. Boss Battles was the first -- it was still in an early stage of development, but the idea is that Farrior wants to try to marry a scrolling arcade shooter (like Gradius) with the freemium business model.
TUAW's Daily App: Strike Knight
I saw Backflip Studios' Julian Farrior speak at GDC earlier this year, and while there, he showed a few upcoming App Store games of his in a quick slide. Strike Knight was one of those, and it's now out in the App Store in all of its glory. It's a simple shuffleboard bowler game -- you grab a puck at the bottom of the screen, and flick it up towards the pins at the top, hoping to hit at just the right angle and knock them all down. Presentation is solid -- a bar crowd in the background cheers or boos you appropriately, and the titular Knight reacts to all of your shots while an arcade board flashes your high score as you play. The game is free-to-play, so it's definitely worth a try. The ads are slightly distracting (aside from the banner ads, currently all advertising the rest of Backflip's other titles, there are interstitials as well), but for a 99 cent in-app purchase, you can get rid of them, so if you like the game, you might as well make the buy. Aside from the regular singleplayer action, the app allows pass and play multiplayer for up to four people, and the gameplay's quite addictive -- that knight really pushes you to do better and better each time you play. Plus+ integration rounds out the experience, and there are awards to earn and leaderboards to top. Farrior and his team at Backflip are doing a great job pinning down some solid, quick experiences on the iPhone, and Strike Knight is nice addition to the company's lineup. If all of the apps he promised this year are as worthy as this one, they'll have an impressive stable of apps in the store.
