BossBattles
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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.
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.
