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Zombie Track Meat features the Apocalympics
I must confess that I didn't come up with "Apocalympics." Its the result of a collaboration between Streaming Colour, FuzzyCube, and Pixelocity. The group meant to use the name for its zombie-based Olympics game, until the International Olympic Committee vetoed it. The title they settled on, "Zombie Track Meat," is still pretty good. It's a minigame title, as you can see above. You must master eight events, each with a zombie-related twist. In the swimming event, your cute, customizable zombie must navigate an endless pool while collecting brains and avoiding radioactive barrels. The long jump is actually a car crash, where your zombie is thrown from a car. The goal is to keep him bouncing along and extend the landing for as long as possible. The Javelin throw is actually a shovel toss, and so on. Each simple mini game features a single touch control. Much like Jetpack Joyride, they have little quirks to master and depths to explore. Zombie Track Meat ships with eight single-player events. You can earn "brains" to buy things in the store, like extra costumes or custom items for your zombie. The game's creators haven't decided how future events will be unlocked. They don't want players to miss out on content, of course, but there may be some kind of progression in the title eventually. Zombie Track Meat will debut on the Chrome App Store on April 1st. At that time, some of the events will be playable inside Google's browser. The rest of the events will arrive with the iOS release, which is set to hit when the real Olympics begin in late July, 2012. Zombie Track Meat looks like an interesting, casual collaboration between three talented iOS developers. We'll have to see how it comes out in June.
TUAW's Daily iPhone App: iQuarterback 2 Pocket Edition
iQuarterback 2 is an excellent little football throwing game from FuzzyCube Software that has you tossing a little pigskin around a football field through multiple game modes. The game recently came out on the iPad, but the iPhone version is brand new. It's just as fun on the small screen, with plenty of targets to go after, and a "Fame" currency that you can use to collect new outfits, accessories, and more. Full Game Center integration lets you check scores and achievements between you and your friends as well. Plus, the price is right -- the game is a free download, and right now this weekend, the in-app purchase to remove ads is just US 99 cents. The iPad version is a little more expensive, but that's what you get for having a bigger screen, right?
iQuarterback 1.1 from former Ensemble Studios devs
The folks at FuzzyCube Software dropped us a note that their first game, iQuarterback, is in the App Store now, and it looks all right -- rather than actually quarterback a game, you mostly just try to hit passing targets. And while the game is pretty barebones right now (it's only 99 cents, and they're planning to add new modes to it in the next version), the most interesting thing about the game isn't what it is, but who's making it: the guys behind FuzzyCube are a few refugees from Ensemble Studios, the legendary developer of Age of Empires that got shut down by Microsoft on the eve of their recent Halo Wars release.Now that's interesting -- a big time studio forced to close by their corporate overlords is finding new life in iPhone development (FuzzyCube isn't the only studio to come out of the Ensemble breakup -- Robot Entertainment, Bonfire Studios, and Windstorm Studios are all being started by ex-Ensemble employees right now, though FuzzyCube is the only group to have released a game so far). Lots of game developers are facing a crunch right now, and with the iPhone easy and cheap to develop for, we might see even more of these former larger game devs turn to the smaller screen.Update: My apologies to the folks at Newtoy -- they are apparently the first Ensemble refugees to have released an iPhone game, dropping Chess with Friends in the App Store last December. But the point stands: bigger studios who've been asked to dissolve can seemingly find a nice place developing for the iPhone.
