game center
Latest
TUAW's Daily App: Battleheart
There are tons of great RPG apps out lately, and I'm not sure why that is -- something about the way the App Store has developed. At any rate, here's another one. Battleheart is just out this week, and it's really amazing. The game is a real-time RPG battler. There's not a lot of story or extras to this one, but the core system, in which you choose a group of heroes and send them out to battle oncoming hordes in various settings, is designed and executed very well. There are the usual RPG trappings of extra skills and better equipment, but the bonus here is the control scheme -- the cute little heroes are super easy to drag around, set up as healers or drop spells as a magic user. The graphics are polished, the sounds and music are great, and the variety of classes and their various abilities is really awesome. Unfortunately, there's not a ton of content -- the main battle mode is all there is, and while it takes a while to play through (probably more than enough for most casual players), there's no multiplayer, survival mode or any other gameplay to check out. There's no Game Center integration at all, either. Some users have reported crashes as well, and on that your mileage may vary. But all of those things can (and probably will) be patched in later. The core game is available right now for US $2.99, and it's worth every penny.
100 Cameras in 1 latest non-game app to use Game Center on iOS
Back when Apple first introduced Game Center, one of the first big questions was whether or not apps that weren't actually games could use the service to share achievements and leaderboards from user to user. Since then, there have been a few examples of this poking around, but this is probably the most blatant: a new app called 100 Cameras in 1 offers not only over 100 Instagram style "effects" for your iPhone 4's camera, but full Game Center integration as well. Unfortunately, the limit isn't really being pushed here as the achievements only give you some bonus points for using the various filters (and I agree with Wired -- it would have been nice to see some invention here, maybe achievements for taking a picture in multiple countries or taking a picture of a certain object). "Gamification" is kind of a buzzword being passed around lately, and it refers to the fact that companies of all kinds are finding ways to use gaming principles, either in things like managing their employees or rewarding customer engagement. Whatever you think of the idea itself (lots of people are seeing it as the latest business fad, and perhaps it is), it remains true that Game Center is still one of the best ways for iOS developers to spread the word about people using their apps. Through leaderboards and the Game Center app itself, all of your Game Center friends can see what you've been "playing," and vice versa -- it's a potential bonanza for companies wanting to share word of their apps. I'm still curious to see more non-game apps use the service. Game Center integration, especially when used well, can be that "secret ingredient" for utilities trying to make a bigger splash on the App Store.
Firemint sells 3 million copies of Flight Control
Firemint has shared some sales figures about Flight Control over on its blog. The now classic line-drawing game was recently listed in the top paid apps of all time on the App Store, and so Firemint decided to reveal a little bit about how many copies it's sold and when. The grand total is exactly 3,881,634 copies as of their posting. The game currently sells for 99 cents, but that doesn't mean Firemint pulled in $3.8 million as Apple takes its 30 percent share as well. Firemint has also posted the chart above, showing when the most copies sold. Interesting to see that the Game Center patch gave them the biggest spike in sales, though don't forget that Flight Control was one of the first games on the service as it went live, something that certainly encouraged extra downloads. The new maps and the Retina Display support patches also gave big bumps. iOS developers, take note: big feature updates sell apps. Christmas boosts sales as well, as we've discussed here in the past. What's most interesting about those bumps, I think, is that they're basically the same size -- Christmas is turning into a pretty predictable spike in iOS sales for developers. We saw a lot of "planned" releases and discounts last holiday, and I bet we'll see even more as time goes on. Of course this is only one app on the store, but it's one of the biggest apps of all time, and probably a good representation of a lot of bestselling apps. Thanks to Firemint for sharing!
TUAW's Daily App: Push-Up Wars
I'm a big fan of DailyBurn for tracking weight and nutrition. While a lot of iPhone users stand by the Lose It! app for that sort of thing (and rightfully so, it's a good one), I prefer to have a service that's accessible from any browser, and DailyBurn (formerly known as Gyminee) is the one I've tried and liked the best. Earlier today, while adding far too many calories to my nutrition record (CES and its various events are not being kind to my diet this week), I noticed that DailyBurn has another app out called Push-Up Wars, designed to help you track your push-up ability. Just like the main app, Push-Up Wars allows you to enter and register how many push-ups you're doing each day, and then the app will track your progress both among your friends and on a global leaderboard level. Push-Up Wars is notable even if you're not an exercise fanatic, just because it's the first app I've seen that's not a game, technically, but still uses Game Center. You can earn ranks and achievements as you "level up," and then see global and friend-based leaderboards. Registering push-ups requires you to take a video of you doing the exercise (only uploaded if you agree to do so), so the app requires a video-enabled iPhone or iPod touch -- no dice on older versions. But it's an interesting idea that's executed quite well, and if you want to get serious about powering up those arms, Push-Up Wars might be able to help.
TUAW's Daily App: Burn the Rope
This isn't an iOS port of the great Flash game You Have To Burn the Rope, though an upgraded version of that would be nice to have. Instead, this one is a pretty inventive puzzle title by a company called Big Blue Bubble. The idea is that you touch anywhere along a rope to start up a flame, and then you have to keep that flame burning by tilting your iPhone so that the fire always burns up. It works really well as a physics puzzle game, and each level has certain percentage goals of the rope to burn (and later there are enemies to burn through as well), and whenever your flame splits off at different intersections, you need to watch each side of the flame and make sure it has vertical room to grow. Getting through the levels is not that hard, but burning everything on the screen is both challenging and fun (when you can actually do it). It's a really inventive game. Something only possible on the iPhone, it takes a nice different angle and just iterates on it, similar to popular games like Angry Birds and Cut the Rope. That iteration lasts over 80 levels, and the developers promise even more to come. There's no Game Center integration, unfortunately, but there is a silly theme song, and all of those levels make for quite a bit of game. As of this writing, the game is on sale for a buck, but I think it's worth it even for a few bucks. It's too bad there's no lite version to try out, because the concept really is original. But if you like puzzlers like Cut the Rope and Zen Bound, this one will probably scratch that same itch.
Holiday Buyer's Guide: App Store Games
From the conceptually insane Solipskier to the "you're clearly insane if you don't like this" Cut the Rope, 2010 saw the release of oodles of excellent and wildly divergent iOS games for iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. These are our favorites. To begin, click one of the links below to jump to a category or simply head on past the break to peruse the guide form top to bottom. The Game For Everyone | For the Hardcore Console Quality | Look At This | New-School Old School One Minute, Man | Where'd the Time Go?
Rage mobile gets Game Center support (achievements!) and gyroscope-based aiming
Over the weekend, a massive update for Rage: Mutant Bash TV – id Software's iOS-based on-rails shooter for the iPhone and iPad – made its way to the iTunes App Store. Perhaps most notable is the inclusion of support for Apple's Game Center service, featuring leaderboards and achievements so you can compare your mutant-murdering abilities with those of your friends. Other improvements encourage you to bask in Rage's beauty: Museum Mode lets you casually stroll through the levels, mutant-free, taking in all the sights. Look, a collapsed wall. Charming! 2nd Display Support lets you link your iThing up to your television using an Apple component cable (480p) or an Apple VGA cable (720p), so you can get some big-screen appreciation for all those polygons. But our favorite enhancement is surely "Gyroscope Support" – forget about tilt-based aiming, it's all about the virtual window-style now. Grab yourself a swivel-based office chair, park it in the middle of your room, and peer through your 3.5" window (or 9.7" for you iPad owners) into the 360°, megatextured alterna-world of Rage. Find the update notes after the break.
Rage for iOS frags its way to gyroscope and Game Center support
One of the hottest titles in the App Store right now -- id Software's Rage -- recently got a healthy official update to version 1.11 that adds a handful of big new features to its roster, perfect to add a little replay value just in time as your amazing graphics-induced euphoria wears off. What's new? Well, the biggest new feature might be support for Apple's Game Center, offering achievements and scoreboards. You've also got gyroscope support -- good only if you're using an iPhone 4, of course -- that offers an orientation-controlled aiming mode, and official TV-out support for upsizing your gameplay onto the big screen. There's apparently also a new "museum mode" that lets you stroll through the game world without troublesome baddies trying to attack you for those occasions when you're looking for a more peaceful form of entertainment... not exactly fit for a title named "Rage," really.
Jenga for iPhone has great graphics, frustrating gameplay
Jenga. Jenga. J-J-J-Jenga. Now that you've got that Jenga song stuck in your head, you're ready for a review of Jenga on the iPhone. The original Jenga was about as simple as games get. As the song goes, you take a block from the bottom, and you put it on top. Or, you can take a block from the middle, then put it on top. Once the tower of wooden blocks falls over, the game ends. When two or more players play, the one who caused the tower to topple is the loser. The basic gameplay works exactly the same way on the iPhone, with graphics that seem almost excessively beautiful for a game of this type. But there's one very critical "gotcha" that made the game incredibly frustrating for me -- without any sort physical feedback, I found the game almost impossibly difficult compared to the real-world version of the game. Read on to discover how Jenga proved to be both an unexpected delight and an exercise in frustration.
OpenFeint's promotional app now called Game Channel
Social gaming network OpenFeint has had its own app for a while now, offering up news and information for players playing games with the technology built-in. But the app recently underwent a re-branding of sorts -- it's now called Game Channel (not to be, or possibly to be, confused with Game Center), and is now built around a Groupon-style model. The app has offered up a Free App of the Day for a while now, but in addition to the freebies, it now also has a feature called "Fire Sale," in which players can "vote" for certain games to go on sale. It'll be interesting to see how that works -- one of the biggest issues developers are facing on the App Store is simply getting their app discovered by players, and this seems like yet another outlet for OpenFeint-enabled games to find their customers. The app also helps with discoverability in other ways as well: you can see what your friends are playing, and track leaderboards and all of OpenFeint's other stats right there. It's tough to actually call this an attack on Game Center, since Game Center isn't really in competition -- it's already installed on every mobile iOS device anyway. But Game Channel does look like a little innovation from OpenFeint in terms of getting its apps out there. If you haven't picked up the app now called Game Channel, it's a free download from the App Store.
Infinity Blade makes $1.7 million in four days
Level whatever criticisms you like at the App Store, you have to admit it's pretty darn good about rewarding quality. As of this morning, Chair/Epic's iOS $6 slasher Infinity Blade can tout over 286,000 users, good for $1.7 million in four days, making it the "fastest grossing app ever," according to Appmodo. That doesn't take into account whatever promo codes were distributed, but since the old record held by Cut the Rope was $1 million in 10 days, we think Infinity Blade is pretty safe in asserting its supremacy. We knew it was good, great even, but even we're a little surprised by how quickly it's being adopted on the App Store. We Level 40 Infinity Blade wielders on staff (OK, it's just Justin) have their fingers crossed that the popularity prompts Chair to push out some new content sooner rather than later. Update: Epic's Mark Rein notes that "the Game Center numbers being reported are quite a bit lower than the actual sales." So more than $1.7 million, then. Read the full statement Rein gave us after the break.
Mac App Store launching in January sans Game Center and in-app purchases?
"Less" and "later" are some of our least favorite words, but they may apply to the Mac App Store, as one source claims it will miss Christmas, and another says the marketplace will have fewer features than its iOS counterpart. First off, The Loop's Jim Dalrymple believes that December 13th isn't the magic date, claiming that his inside sources say the store will actually arrive in January -- which, we must admit, would still be within the window of Apple's October promise to launch within 90 days. Second and perhaps more importantly, 9to5 Mac reports that App Store developers are being told that their Mac endeavors will have a number of substantial limitations, namely no Game Center support, no in-app purchases, and no ability to offer demos, trials or betas. Sounds like those high-denomination iTunes gift cards you've been stockpiling in your basement will finally come in handy.
App review: Infinity Blade (iPhone)
Aww, would you look at that, the iPhone's trying to play big boy games! Following in the well received footsteps of Rage HD, today marks the debut of Infinity Blade, the second in what's hopefully a wave of gorgeous-looking iOS games boasting advanced 3D graphics, if not 3D gameplay. Epic Games has put aside the chainsaw-equipped projectile weaponry of its wildly successful Gears of War console series to deliver the first mobile game built around its Unreal Engine 3. You won't be surprised to hear that it's utterly delicious to look at, and the visuals certainly helped transport us to this alien realm of swords, axes, shields, and magical rings -- where body armor is optional, but helmets apparently are not. Jump past the break to see this visual feast in motion and to soak up some more of our impressions. %Gallery-110231%
TUAW's Daily App: HEXETERA
Here's the deal: based on that screenshot at right, you already want to play this one or you don't. You can probably guess what it is just from that. It's a falling block game, except you match triangular tiles rather than blocks. There are goals you need to meet in order to progress through the levels (or there's an unlimited mode for constant play, as long as you can manage). And there are various power-ups to pick up and carry out as you go through the game. It's pretty straightforward. Of course, you don't see the great music in that screenshot over there. And you don't see Game Center integration, which ... err, sadly, the game doesn't actually have (though you can keep and share high scores over both Facebook and Twitter). But honestly, you probably knew right away whether this was one you wanted to play or not. If the idea of another falling block game doesn't appeal to you, HEXETERA probably isn't your thing -- go ahead and wait until tomorrow when we'll have another great app in the spotlight. But if that screenshot intrigues you (as it did me), you can pick up HEXETERA on the App Store right now for US 99 cents.
Game Center terms of service updated, real names shared on invitation
Apple has quietly tweaked the Game Center terms of service to add in the rule that whenever you first invite a friend to join your friends list in the gaming social network app, your real first and last names (as entered in your iTunes account) are shown to them. You still use a nickname as a full ID (and Game Center will still show your nickname when you log in to browse achievements or see what people are playing), but when you first "friend" someone, they get to see your real name. Apple has been able to get away with this one somehow -- the iTunes-based Ping social network also makes liberal use of the real name associated with an Apple account when adding friends, but for some reason nobody has made too much of a fuss about it. Consider Apple lucky -- when Blizzard Entertainment tried to require real names to be shared on their World of Warcraft forums, their community raised such a clamor that they had to back down and keep the forums anonymous. But Apple hasn't had that problem, either because the audiences are different, or just because people don't care so much about anonymity among their Game Center or Ping friends. We'll have to see how the community responds to a change like this.
OpenFeint has doubled community since Game Center's launch
When Game Center was first announced way back in April, the first question everyone had was about all of the third-party networks that had already built up in the space. OpenFeint was the biggest of these, and founder Jason Citron had no apparent worries about Apple's advance into social gaming -- he said that OpenFeint would continue to offer features beyond what Game Center did, and that developers would be easily able to use both networks in their apps. A report released last week by OpenFeint says that's exactly what's happened -- the userbase has doubled to a whopping 50 million users since Game Center launched, and games on the network have also increased 119% since Game Center was announced. Those are pretty amazing numbers -- there was a lot of talk earlier this year that Apple would walk into this space and just dominate (and certainly, I've seen a lot of solid Game Center integration since release, and of course because Game Center is automatically installed in iOS, adoption is probably huge), but that hasn't been the case at all. There's definitely room for services like Plus+ and OpenFeint, even with an official network up and running. OpenFeint, as far as I've been told, is also still planning the OpenFeint X service, with more options for in-game microtransactions, so we'll have to see what they're up to next.
TUAW's Daily App: Astronut
You may have already heard about the Iconfactory's new game Astronut, but just in case you haven't, we'll happily be the ones to tell you. From the makers of Ramp Champ and Twitterrific comes a game that's sort of a mashup between Dizzypad, Captain Ludwig and Doodle Jump. You play a little astronaut bouncing from planet to planet and trying to make his way up the screen, all while avoiding aliens and other traps and troubles along the way. Astronut's a little more forgiving than most of the other "jump"-style games. Not only are there three sections of your heart to go through, you can pick up more hearts, shields and other items along the way. You also get a "boost" that allows you to invincibly fly past any number of bad guys or enemies (as long as you're pointed in the right direction). As a result, the game is a whole lot of fun to play. Rather than trying to time out each jump perfectly, you constantly bounce around the map, ascending and sometimes even landing huge jumps for bonus points. There's Game Center integration in the form of leaderboards and achievements as well, so there's quite a bit of game here to play. There are 24 levels total, and the first four are included in a free download that comes more than recommended -- it's a lot of fun. If you like it, you can buy the rest of the game for US$1.99 via an in-app purchase. The Iconfactory never disappoints when it comes to well-executed, solid designs, and Astronut is another great app in their growing library of quality App Store titles.
SpyParty dev details his Blizzard-inspired 'depth first' approach
Speaking to a packed room at New York University's Game Center last week, developer Chris Hecker -- a man perhaps best known for giving ... impassioned rants -- detailed his "depth first, accessibility later" approach to development of his latest project, SpyParty. The game is a twist on the Turing Test: one player is "the Spy" while the other is "the Sniper." The Spy must complete a set of objectives without being spotted, while the Sniper looks on and tries to pick out who the Spy is from a group of NPCs (and then murder that Spy) before the time runs out. How does the sniper spot the spy? By paying attention to a variety of "tells" -- from the subtle (a human Spy's order of actions may differ from an NPC's) to the "hard" (catch the Spy covertly slip an object to an NPC). As Hecker is keen to point out, SpyParty is a game about human interaction. "You have to decide where you're going, go there and don't look back (basically). Of course, I also make the NPCs fidget occasionally, just to fuck with people," Hecker revealed to a laughing audience. "And that's interesting -- that interplay ... I mean, it's an inverse Turing Test at a certain level." %Gallery-107897%
iOS 4.2 brings Game Center to iPad
Apple's latest iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad software update is now available, bringing some of the new functionality we've enjoyed on iPhone to the iPad. Owners of the 2001-style monolith will now be able to multitask between apps: Engadget was able to "run video or music to our Apple TV (even 720p HD content) and leave enough horsepower for gaming at the same time," according to its review of the new OS. The other biggie for iPad gaming is Game Center. Game Center-enabled apps have already shown up on the App Store, but now you'll actually be able to track your achievements. The good news is that you've had a few weeks to get way awesome at Big Bad Sudoku Book.
iOS 4.2 available today, brings the iPad into the multitasking era (update: it's live)
You've waited a long while for this day to come, but here it finally is. Apple is today rolling out iOS 4.2 to iPads and qualifying iPhones (3G, 3GS and 4) and iPod touches (second, third and fourth generation) across the globe, delivering the long-awaited multitasking and app folder enhancements to a tablet that was already supposed to be magical and revolutionary. To see whether this new update -- replete with Game Center, AirPlay and AirPrint additions -- really helps the iPad step up to doubleplusgood territory, check out our full review; everyone else, hit up your nearest iTunes 10.1-equipped computer to get your update on. Update: Plug in your iPhones and iPads, the 624.3MB update is rolling out now. Looks like it's starting in Europe, given the joyous cackles from our editors across the pond. Screenshot after the break. Update 2: Now available within US borders as well.
