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Daily iPhone App: Where's My Mickey combines Disney's old with its new
Disney has come up with yet another way to wring a new title out of its megahit Where's My Water. This time, it combines the "swipe to clean" gameplay with one of the company's oldest properties. Yes, they've pulled out Mickey Mouse for an iOS game, and Where's My Mickey? is available on the App Store right now. If you've played any of the other Where's My Water games, you'll know how this goes. Swipe across the screen to clear paths through dirt and funnel water into certain areas. In this case, you must direct water to Mickey (sporting his new retro look) so he can make lemonade. There are some new mechanics here as well, including clouds that can catch and drop water when tapped, and wind that can blow those clouds around the stage. Just like its sibling games, Where's My Mickey has lots of collectibles to find, and plenty of stages to go through. Despite this core game getting plenty old at this point (I know you've got another great original title in you somewhere, Disney -- please find it), Where's My Mickey is actually charming, both because it does bring new elements and new puzzles to the gameplay, and because it's got some very silly (and well-made) cutscenes telling the story of this new Mickey and his lemonade stand. Where's My Mickey is US$0.99 cents on the iPhone and $1.99 on the iPad, with an extra set of episodes available for another dollar. If you've had enough of drawing in the dirt via Where's My Water, this go-round probably won't convince you otherwise. But for those still interested in moving liquid around, bringing Mickey in was a good move on Disney's part. Hopefully the company will start up a whole new track soon, instead of treading over this gameplay yet again.
Avengers Alliance out now on iOS, Where's My Mickey coming tomorrow
Disney's got two big releases arriving on the App Store last week and this week, one we've been waiting on for a while, and another that combines one of the company's oldest properties with one of the newest. The first is Avengers Alliance, which is now out and available on the App Store as a free download. This game started off on Facebook, and it's still incredibly popular over there (or at least I assume it is, given all of the references and requests from it in my feed). Marvel originally teased an iOS version to us a little while back, but now the game is out in all of its glory. Unfortunately, Disney/Marvel didn't figure out a way to connect the iOS version up to the Facebook version, so the reviews on iTunes are full of people angry that they can't carry their progress over. In the meantime, however, if you've been waiting for an iOS version of the game to play, there it is. Disney has also announced a new game called Where's My Mickey, coming to the App Store this week, which combines none other than Mickey Mouse with the popular Where's My Water game. The title will have five chapters, all with animated episode intros, as well as new weather mechanics to play with. As usual, there will be collectibles that can open up new levels, and the tablet version of the game will have exclusive XL levels designed to be played on a big screen. Where's My Mickey will be US$0.99 on the iPhone, and $1.99 on the iPad, and be available on the App Store tomorrow morning.
Disney's Bart Decrem on the holiday lineup: Monster's Inc Run, and new Avengers and Wreck-It content
Disney's mobile game division has had one heck of a year. "I feel in general that we're executing very nicely on the vision we laid out a year ago," senior vice president Bart Decrem told TUAW this week. "Among media companies, we are maybe the most successful on the App Store and Android. I really feel like we are winning, and our vision and our strategy is working." It's hard to argue with that. The company has had quite a few number one games on the App Store this year, between the enormously popular Where's My Water, the Disney cartoon spinoff Where's My Perry, Decrem's own Tap Tap Revenge series, and the popular Wreck-It Ralph movie-tie in title. Disney's mobile division was already growing last year around this time, and Decrem says it's still growing, with the company seeing a peak daily user number of around 6 million. The company's found a formula for its popular characters and quality titles that's apparently working, and it's not slowing down anytime soon. Decrem filled us in on a ton of new content that's set to arrive on the App Store from the House of Mouse this holiday season: The company is putting out four major content updates and three new titles, all set to arrive by the end of the year. Content updates first: Wreck-It Ralph is getting a fourth game added to the trio of titles already included in the app. Turbo Time (as you'll know if you've seen the movie) is a retro racing title that got supplanted by newer games in the old arcade, and it'll be another minigame added to the current offerings. Both Temple Run Brave and Where's My Perry are getting new content as well. Temple Run Brave (which of course is based on a mashup between Imangi Studios' Temple Run and the recent Pixar flick) is getting a new in-app purchased character in the form of King Fergus, Merida's father, and a new mechanic to play with as well. And Where's My Perry is getting Dr. Doofenschmirtz as a playable character via IAP, and a number of new levels for free as well. Finally, Avengers Initiative (which is a Marvel game developed by Disney's internal Wideload Studios) is finally getting its first big content update, featuring none other than Captain America. The game, which uses Infinity Blade-style mechanics to tell an original Avengers story, has only featured the Hulk so far, and debuted to less-than-impressive numbers. But Decrem says Disney is supporting the title. "We believe in the game, it's a great game," he says. "We think we have a plan for getting millions of users into the game" in the next few months, including a major upcoming marketing plan that we can look for soon. Disney's also got three new titles incoming. The first is a Finding Nemo-related "reef builder" called Nemo's Reef, which sounds like a free-to-play Farmville-style game featuring those familiar fish. That one will be out for iOS and Android within the next week or so, so we'll look for it then. The second game is Where's My Holiday, a special holiday themed version of the popular series, which will connect the crocodile Swampy with the cartoon character Perry in the same game, and offer a combination of levels from the two big games. And finally, the other new title is called Monster's Inc Run. Disney has teamed up with Get Set Games in the same way it did with Imangi Studios, and has combined the Monster's Inc. movies (which are about to be rereleased in 3D) with the popular app Mega Run. This will be a 99 cent title, and will aim to share the Monster's Inc brand with the already huge Mega Run audience in the way Temple Run Brave combined a Disney property with that app's user base. So that's what Disney's planning for the rest of this year. As you can tell, Disney's strategy is clear: It's leveraging its most popular brands as much as possible. Decrem agrees that his division is definitely leaning hard on Where's My Water, but he says that "when you have a big hit like Where's My Water, you have a holy obligation to make the most of it." Yes, Disney is spending a lot of time reworking its hit titles to try and make more hits, but Decrem says it's being done in a very strategic way. "We're not just doing reskins or franchise plays," he says, "but when you've got them, you invest in them aggressively and you evolve them aggressively." And the company is definitely doing that. The ironic part, of course, is that much of Disney's mobile success came from the originality of Where's My Water, and it's used that success to make sure that there are now three games almost exactly like it on the App Store. But Decrem says Disney still appreciates original titles -- the Where's My Water team has mostly been working on levels for Where's My Perry, but he says they're still around, and we should see new games from them soon. Not to mention that because of all of this commercial success, future original games should be even better served. "It's a huge priority for us," says Decrem, "and I feel like we're getting more organized so that we can go do that." There was one more pressing question for Decrem and his games: How about that Star Wars acquisition? Decrem laughs and points out that the acquisition hasn't been approved just yet, so no one in Disney games has any Star Wars projects in the pipeline just yet. "But we're super super excited about the Star Wars universe and all of these characters," he tells us, "and we'll jump in as soon as the acquisition is completed." In that case, we'll keep an eye out for Where's My Watto coming out as soon as possible.
Windows Phone 8 gets Pandora Radio, Cut the Rope, Urbanspoon and more (update: full list)
Microsoft knows that Windows Phone 8 is only as successful as its apps. To that end, it's blowing the doors open in terms of major app support. It's not only promising a Windows Phone version of Pandora Radio for early 2013, it's offering ad-free listening for the first year. How's that for strong out-of-the-box content? On top of this, Microsoft is vowing a slew of new apps and games that had previously only been available in the Android or iOS camps, including Asphalt 7, Cut the Rope, Temple Run, Urbanspoon and Where's My Water. By the time the expansion is done, Microsoft hopes to have 46 out of the 50 most popular apps onboard, making any platform switch that much gentler. Instagram is a notable omission -- still, it's a big leap in terms of equality. Update: If you need even more detail, Microsoft has posted a wider list of new apps as part of its official Windows Phone 8 launch post. If that's not enough, you can catch a video overview of the platform after the break. For more, check out our Windows Phone 8 event liveblog!
Cut the Rope and Where's my Water getting toys, more content
The New York Toy Fair is on this week, and so collectors and toy buyers alike are hearing about all sorts of new products. And given that the iPhone is one of the largest brands around, it's probably no surprise that iOS-based game properties are very popular this year. Disney's Where's My Water is the latest iPhone game to get toys made for it. There are plush dolls coming soon of the main alligator character, as well as rubber duckies modeled after the duckies you collect in the acclaimed physics puzzler. And Cut the Rope's Om Nom Nom already has a plush made of himself, but there's even more on the way. Mattel has signed a deal to provide a board game based on the popular iPhone title, and it will apparently interact directly with the Cut the Rope app on your iPad as you play. Jakks Pacific has signed a deal to bring the game to your TV, with a dedicated toy that plugs in with the game pre-installed. And we can't leave the game itself out: There's an update coming (actually for the Cut the Rope: Experiments spinoff) called Bath Time, that adds some water-related puzzles to the mix. It's a sign of just how big Apple's App Store has gotten that these iPhone developers are able to spin properties off the games on this platform. Certainly both of these games have a lot going for them (EA owns Chillingo, which publishes Cut the Rope, in addition to Disney's Where's My Water), but the fact that these toys are being made at all speaks to how big the audience for these games is.
Disney introduces new 'Cranky's Story' levels for Where's My Water
Disney has released the very first new content pack for the extremely popular Where's My Water, "Cranky's Story." It features 40 new levels for the price of 99 cents. Instead of guiding clean water to a shower head as you did in the original game, this update has you direct dirty water to Cranky's plate so he can eat his "junk food." Where's My Water is a breakthrough title for Disney. Not only has it been phenomenally popular on iOS, but the game's also been released on other mobile platforms, and the free web version appeared in a campaign about clean drinking water. Disney is currently working on animated media about the game's characters, so this has turned into a pretty substantial franchise for the House of Mouse. This update raises the game's profile and demonstrates Disney's investment in iOS and this property. Fans of the game should find the update in the App Store now.
Disney reports 40% jump in iOS downloads from holiday 2010
Disney is the latest company to announce some crazy numbers from last year's holiday season (with Rovio having announced big numbers earlier this week, and the App Store overall seeing a big boost in sales over the holiday). The biggest title in the company's catalog was Where's My Water, which saw more than 6 million downloads over the holiday week, across both iOS and Android. And Disney Mobile saw a 40% increase in iOS downloads overall, as compared to the same period last year. TUAW previously spoke with the creator of Where's My Water, who started out as a QA tester at Disney and moved up the ranks to create hit iPhone games. This time around, we heard from Bart Decrem, Disney Mobile GM (and former CEO of Tapulous, the company that Disney acquired a few years ago). He says that "freemium" is the current word in mobile gaming: "2012 will see freemium models around many types of gameplay -- as is already being shown by the success of Temple Run." Temple Run isn't a Disney Mobile game -- it's created by a two person husband and wife team at Imangi Studios, and despite its relatively humble origins, it recently landed on the top grossing pile over this past holiday season. So if Decrem is right, we'll see more titles like it; games that intelligently combine solid gameplay with a very lucrative in-app purchase system. Disney itself says more updates are planned for Where's My Water and its other titles, and we'll have to wait and see what else the House of Mouse has up its sleeve for iOS this coming year.
Get Where's my Water free from Apple's Facebook page
Apple is apparently giving yet another popular game away using its Facebook page -- this time, it's Disney's Where's my Water up for grabs. To grab your free copy of the great water-guiding physics puzzler, just head over to Apple's App Store Facebook page, become a fan, and you'll get a free promo code to download the game on an iOS device of your choice. It's a great title (put together, as we've previously reported, by a former game tester at the House of Mouse), and obviously much better at the low price of completely free. This is still such a weird promotion, though -- Apple has traditionally not had the best relationship with Facebook, but they have given away apps using Facebook before. Cupertino has a perfectly good Twitter account that could also be used to give away free games, but the Facebook freebies appear to use a slightly different method than posting promo codes. Don't forget Apple also has the Ping social network that could probably use a little traffic (and, you know, already happens to be connected up in iTunes).
Where's my Water creator goes from QA to hit game designer at Disney Mobile
Tim FitzRandolph joined Disney Mobile's gaming team from the lowest rung possible: The Quality Assurance department. Game testers often work long hours on early versions of unfinished games, and FitzRandolph's first job was no exception. "I studied film studies and nothing to do with games, and also studied the Japanese language. And I had lived in Japan for a couple of years, so I was fluent in Japanese," he remembers in a recent interview with TUAW. "I didn't know what to do, and I settled down on a job listing on Disney for QA testing on an upcoming game, and they wanted someone bilingual. That was actually my kind of thing, my way in the door. I got to work on this game called Spectrobes, which was a DS game that Disney created with a team in Japan, so they needed someone to help do the testing and translate the bugs and communicate with the dev team." But FitzRandolph was also working on his own titles, continually trying to get into actual game design at Disney. When the App Store was announced, FitzRandolph decided to try and make his own iPhone games. One of those games was eventually picked up by Disney and became the very popular Jelly Car series. And FitzRandolph's second, original game for Disney Mobile, in the position he eventually earned as Game Design Director, is the critically acclaimed and top grossing puzzler Where's My Water. It took a little while for FitzRandolph to join Disney's mobile gaming department, however. From his position as a go-between for the US and Japanese devs on Spectrobes, he first got offered to go work on the console version of the Toy Story 3 game in Salt Lake City. He says that position taught him a lot, but Salt Lake City didn't turn out to be the place for him. "I didn't really enjoy living in Salt Lake very much, so I came back to California," he says. "And somewhere in that timeline I had also pitched the idea of doing a sequel to Jelly Car, which I had made on my own time as like a hobby project." FitzRandolph had been working on Jelly Car on his own for a while, and says it was first concieved as a project in Microsoft's XNA development system for the Xbox. "I was like, maybe I can try making a physics system that would sort of create a custom car, just experiment. When I got it working, I just did a lot of experiments with it, but I didn't really have an idea for a game. Except for making a little test for a car, create a little object to do the physics work. So I thought you might have a little object and you can make obstacles and get across gaps and stuff like that." When the App Store finally opened up on the iPhone, FitzRandolph says he felt it might fit the system that he'd made, so he went out and bought an iPod touch to develop on. "I got it working on the iPod touch, and it worked well enough." He then showed it around Disney, and when he pitched the idea of a sequel to the mobile division, which was looking for games to make at the time, Disney agreed to make and publish the title with him. FitzRandolph says it was exciting to have a famous company like Disney working on something he'd created himself, but that it was a little overwhelming as well. "I had never thought about what was Jelly Car, like what are the rules or style or whatever. In the first round of assets, I'd look at it and say that doesn't look like Jelly Car, and they'd ask what it was supposed to look like. I'd not really thought about that stuff, because it had always been this really personal thing. But it was really exciting, and it's really cool to be a part of that." FitzRandolph's team not only finished up Jelly Car 2, but then went on to make Jelly Car 3, both of which did well for Disney. And after that, he and the team (which they call "Creature Feep," after a problem many devs will find familiar called "feature creep") started thinking about what to make next. They wanted to make a physics puzzler, given how popular those have been on the App Store, but coming up with the actual gameplay involved a lot of brainstorming and iteration, says FitzRandolph. "We had a whole bunch of ideas, and at some point along the line, it kept coming back that water, water was very fresh and people hadn't done a lot of physics around water," he remembers. "But it was also really successful in that we all know how water splashes and flows and it might be fun to make a puzzle game around that." The team put together a prototype based around diverting the flow of water with touch controls, and of course that eventually became Where's My Water. "People liked it, really loved the prototype, and then we got enough response on that that we started making the actual game." The other elements of the game, involving a cute backstory about underground alligators who need water to take a shower and stay clean, came later on. "We basically realized that this stuff was directly connected to earth and dirt, and there were a lot of little gameplay cues that we felt like were going to be hard to explain," FitzRandolph says, "so we stopped and brainstormed about the story and what the visual elements could indicate." The team wanted to use the water to fill something underground, perhaps to a certain line, but struggled to figure out what logically would need water in that way. "What kind of things could we fill up underground? A bathtub would be cool but that doesn't make any sense underground. Well maybe it does," laughs FitzRandolph, "What about alligators living under the city? And it sort of snowballed from that." Where's My Water has done really well for Disney, so much so that the company says it has found a new official Disney character in Swampy the Alligator, probably the first time Walt Disney's legendary studio has taken IP directly from an iOS game, instead of the other way around. FitzRandolph says coming up with a strong character was part of development, but not just because Disney wanted IP. "We wanted to come up with a really good character that had a lot of personality -- it brings a lot of life to the puzzles. But also hopefully will have a big enough world that we might want to do a story about it that's not just our game, also in another format." "We were concerned," he adds, "that maybe alligators in general are not the most cuddly animals, but we felt like hopefully it will work out." And so far, it has, as the game still continues to do well on the App Store. What's next for FitzRandolph and his team at Disney? He says they're still working hard on new content for Where's My Water. The game has just recently gotten a big new update, "and we have plans for several more of those, so we're all coming up with new gameplay, new levels, and things like that. Especially as the game continues to do well," he says, "we want to continue to support it." Presumably he will eventually release another title, but right now it's all followup on the current release. As for FitzRandolph, he says he's happy to be doing what he's doing. Disney Mobile obviously appreciates having him around these days, making hit games for them, even if he did first get his foot just inside the door of the QA department.
Daily iPhone App: Where's my Water
Metacritic has released its monthly listings for iPhone and iPad, and right there on top of the ratings charts is the same title currently sitting on top of the paid charts: Disney's Where's my Water? Where's my Water is by the same team behind Disney's megahit JellyCar, and it features the company's first character ever created just for mobile games: Swampy the alligator. All Swampy wants to do in this one is take a shower, but of course in the sewers where he lives, the pipes are all cut off and blocked up with dirt. So it's the player's job, by scratching dirt off the screen, to guide the water down the screen and into Swampy's shower. There are three ducks to collect in each level (which you can pick up by diverting the water to them), collectibles hidden in the dirt in some areas, and a few other mechanics, including switches, acid water, and even plants that will grow and steal all of your water away. The game is friendly and colorful, and the water mechanics are really brilliant and well done. The title itself is very similar to Cut the Rope, in look and feel if not in actual physics gameplay. So it's no surprise at all that Where's my Water is worth both the same accolades and the revenue. It's a great title, available right now on the App Store for just 99 cents.
