backflip studios
Latest
Daily iPhone App: Gizmonauts is DragonVale, but with robots
Backflip Studios' biggest hit is still Paper Toss, an early app that has you throwing a paper ball into a wastebasket, and has been downloaded over 24 million times. But the company has grown a lot since that initial game was released, and these days works almost more like a major gaming studio than a smaller development house. Founder Julian Farrior hired some big-league art talent (from Insomniac Games) to create the company's first freemium hit DragonVale, and Backflip is back at the cute farming-style genre with its latest release, Gizmonauts. As you can see in the video below, there's not a lot of new action in this one -- it's DragonVale, except instead of raising dragons, you're raising robots. But these games are pretty clear as it is: You build habitats (here called zones), buy robots to live in them, collect money from the robots, use that money to build more, buy "snax" for your robots to eat and level up. If, like me, you played a lot of DragonVale, you'll probably play just as much of Gizmonauts. The game is free, and of course there are in-app purchases available, though Backflip does a great job of making them really unnecessary for all but the most impatient of players. Next time, it'd be nice to see a little more innovation on a game like this -- maybe a little more gameplay, or just something besides the standard build/profit/build cycle. But Gizmonauts is well worth the price, so grab it if you're into farming up pets for fun and profit.
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.
Daily iPhone App: Boss Battles
I was just saying that we'd see more freemium action from Backflip Studios soon, but I didn't think it'd be quite this soon. The studio has released its second big freemium title, called Boss Battles. This time, they're taking on the space shooter genre. As you might guess from the title, the game is indeed a series of boss battles, pitting you against a number of different space shooter bosses that can earn you a bounty of gems. Those gems can be used to upgrade your weapons and ship's accessories, and they also serve as currency for your ship's lives. If you need more, you can buy more, or you can earn them as you play. There is one hitch on this one, and it's that Backflip has included ads in the package -- even if you buy one of the in-app purchases, you still have to deal with ads on the screen. But they aren't that distracting, and considering that the game is free in the first place, the ads aren't too much trouble. The game also offers full Game Center integration, and five different difficulty modes to play with. Boss Battles is available for free right now on the App Store.
Daily iPhone App: DragonVale
DragonVale is the newest game from Backflip Studios, a company we've covered in detail here on the site before. It represents kind of a new direction for the company, too -- so far, CEO Julian Farrior and his team have gone after mostly ad views, selling cheap or even free apps to lots and lots of people, and then using ads to monetize them. And Farrior has always said that he's open to monetizing apps in all kinds of ways, so here's another: DragonVale is Backflip's take on the popular freemium model going around lately. The idea is that you're raising a farm of dragons, more or less, and all of the standard "Farmville" style rules apply: hatch dragons into habitats which earn you money, enabling you to build more dragons and habitats all the way up the chain. And DragonVale isn't a bad example of this game -- it builds up nicely, the art is colorful and fun (Backflip actually hired a former Insomniac Games artist who previously worked on the Ratchet and Clank series), and everything runs quite smoothly. If you're a fan of the genre (or want an easy and comfortable way to see what it's all about), DragonVale is worth checking out. It'll be interesting to see how this goes for Backflip as well -- as I said, generally the company has depended on larger audiences to support its games, and a title like this definitely could use a big audience, but even moreso requires that dedicated group of players willing to commit a few bucks (or more) to buying the in-game currency. If this all goes well for Backflip, we might see lots more of this from them in the future.
TUAW's Daily iPhone App: Shape Shift
You probably know Backflip Studios from its many popular titles on the App Store already, but Shape Shift is a relatively new title from Julian Farrior's company. It's a puzzle game, sort of in the vein of Bejeweled, with a grid of icons that you can switch around to match up four or more in a row. The catch is that you can only switch icons of the same shape, but you're trying to match up colors, so the game consists of moving around shapes to line up the various colors. It's interesting -- definitely a new mechanic from anything I've seen, and it's addictive enough to stay compelling for a while. One little twist is that you can switch "gems" without making a match, so there's a lot of potential for chaining up moves. But in classic mode at least (there's also a Zen mode for peaceful matching), there are bombs and other obstacles to match your way past. Game Center integration is included, of course, and the game's presentation and polish are nothing less than what you'd expect from Backflip these days. Plus, according to the company's model, both the iPhone and the iPad versions are free and ad-supported, allowing you to clear out the ads with just one simple in-app purchase. Shape Shift is an excellent puzzle game and another great title in Backflip's growing lineup.
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.
Backflip Studios reports 20 million active monthly users
When the news hit earlier this month that Zynga had purchased iPhone developers Newtoy (after Ngmoco and Tapulous were also purchased this year), I immediately joked on Twitter that we should make odds on which iPhone developer gets acquired next. In all seriousness, however, Backflip Studios is actually a pretty good candidate to be acquired by a larger company. I heard Julian Farrior speak at GDC earlier this year, and Backflip shows all the signs of a healthy, growing developer: quite a few solid apps, lots of ways to generate revenue and a healthy knowledge of how to make apps popular and profitable. Backflip has one more juicy plum a prospective investor might want to pull: 20 million monthly active users. Backflip is also claiming 2 million daily active users in its apps, and it's reportedly making over half a million dollars a month in ads alone. Farrior is a big fan of multiple revenue streams, though, so paid apps are probably a nice source of income for the company as well. Farrior also says Backflip is porting popular titles to iPad and the Android platform, and the company has some big plans in store for 2011. Of course, as with all successful app developers on the App Store, the question is if Farrior even wants a partner in development. Lots of small studios that are doing well on Apple's platform probably aren't interested in bringing another partner on. But some of the investors shopping the App Store have some pretty deep pockets, and when a big traditional game publisher comes along offering a big check, lots of experience and infrastructure for marketing and development, it's hard to think that a studio like Backflip wouldn't be tempted.
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.
GDC 2010: Backflip Studios' year in the App Store
He revealed that a full $1m in that actually came straight from ad sales -- he's made deals with AdMob and other companies to put ads in his popular Paper Toss app, and he uses those ads both for straight revenue, as well as to promote his own games (more on that later in the talk). Farrior offered up a frank and honest look at what it was like to run an iPhone app company for a year.
