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Daily iPhone App: Micro Miners combines Lemmings and mining in a cute brew
Back before he invented Minecraft, developer Notch made a little Java game called Miners 4K, which had you digging tunnels on a 2D playing field for little miners to find minerals and other goodies below the dirt. Another developer named Jean-Philippe Sarda later decided to take that idea and run with it on Apple's iOS platform, and the result is this game, Micro Miners, out this week on the App Store. You can see the basic gameplay idea in the video below: The game's sort of like Lemmings, in that you guide the path of a bunch of little creatures without actually controlling them. Instead, like Where's My Water, you swipe across the screen to dig down into dirt, trying to guide them around obstacles to various deposits and other goodies. The action can be relaxing or frantic, depending on where you are in each level, and while the graphics are definitely not extremely polished, they're well-designed in that it's always very clear what's happening in the game. Micro Miners is a smart and fun take on Notch's original title, and for just US$0.99 in the App Store, it's definitely worth playing. Give it a look if the video below interests you.
NASA's moon-dirt digging competition ends sans a winner
This won't mark the first occasion (nor the last) in which a NASA challenge ends without a winner, but just as noted before the competition began, it looks like the quarter-million dollars in prize money will indeed be rolled over to next year. NASA's Regolith Excavation Challenge beckoned teams to conjure up autonomous digger bots that could move a given amount of mock moon dirt into a cell within a half hour, and unfortunately for crews hailing from Pismo Beach, Berkley, Rolla, and Rancho Palos Verdes, everyone left with their heads a-hangin'. The excavator built by Technology Ranch was able to notch first place by relocating just over 143-pounds in 30 minutes, but fell quite short on picking up any award monies. So for those of you who weren't exactly ready to go mano-a-mano with these guys and gals this time around, next year you've all got $750,000 on the line. [Warning: Read link requires subscription]
