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Aurora Feint unveils OpenFeint with cross-platform mobile multiplayer and voice chat
On the same day as Apple announced the rollout of its iOS Game Center platform for next week, Aurora Feint, creator of the OpenFeint social network for iPhone/iPod Touch, says it will enable real-time multiplayer gameplay between iOS and Android devices later this year with OpenFeint PlayTime. The new developer tools will also allow real-time voice chat during gameplay across both mobile platforms. "Traditionally, multiplayer technology has been accessible only to top tier developers. It's just too complicated and time consuming," Aurora Feint CEO Jason Citron said in the announcement. "So we invented PlayTime, which literally takes one day to integrate into a casual game." Features will include VoIP, lobbies and matchmaking for "casual games," expanding to incorporate team-based voice chat and 16 player game servers for "core" titles.
TUAW's Daily App: Monster Dash
Halfbrick Studios really made a splash with their iPhone debut, Fruit Ninja, and now they've followed it up with a little game called Monster Dash. It's a running game in the vein of Canabalt, but rather than dodging skyscraper jumps and bombs, you're fighting through pixelated monsters while sprinting along. The main addition to the game is a "shoot" button, so in addition to jumping obstacles and gaps as they come up, you can mow down enemies with various weapons, such as the (default) flameburster, uzis, and even a machine gun jetpack (that comes in handy when jumping). It's a lot of fun (as you'd probably expect if you've played either Canabalt or Fruit Ninja), and the game comes with Halfbrick's requisite polish, including excellent lush graphics and full OpenFeint compatibility. If there's a downside, it's too bad that Halfbrick decided to just stick with the usual arcade formula. It'd be cool if they tried for something a little less shallow and a little more engrossing. This is just a bunch of levels and a chance to rush for the high score; nothing else carries over from one game to the next. That's just nitpicking, though. Halfbrick has done another great job on this one and pushed the newborn genre forward with their own twist. It's well worth the 99 cents. And if you do buy it, try tapping on the title screen monsters just for fun.
TUAW's Daily App: Gravity Runner
Gravity Runner is a little game put together by a group called We Are Colin -- it's a side-scrolling platformer with, as the name implies, a gravity defying twist. The idea is that after tapping to jump as your little character runs along, you can tap again to switch his gravity, and start running on the ceiling rather than the floor. As you might expect, the game gets tough fast -- not only is the speed uncontrollable (the game is somewhat forgiving, as hitting obstacles will usually get your guy to stop rather than actually kill him), but the jumping is kind of "floaty," requiring split-second timing even early on in the game's 25 plus stages. There's also an endless mode to play with, and OpenFeint functionality adds leaderboards and achievements to the mix as well. Gravity Runner isn't really playing around -- just a few stages in, you'll have to depend on both quick timing and a little bit of thought about which way your guy is headed. But it's an excellent platformer that eventually turns into a puzzle game, as you try to see just how to get your character jumping up where he needs to be. At its current price of just 99 cents, Gravity Runner has a nice retro charm that's worth the buck.
TUAW's Daily App: Pokerbot
We posted about another poker app back at WWDC, and the developer of Pokerbot got in touch with us to show off his app as well. Pokerbot is a little bit different than your standard hold'em poker game. It's a straight up one-on-one battle, so the game is really built for learning how to play poker well; it doesn't drag out games or rely on graphical flair. The game started out as a poker training program, and the developer of the game's AI is a real poker player who has played more than a few good hands. That said, this probably isn't the app you want to get if you just want to enjoy playing at a full table; Pokerbot is meant for poker buffs or people who want to try to get to that level. There are little game touches that might turn hardcore players off (you can cheat with a feature called "Onetime" if you want, and there's a full achievements system thanks to OpenFeint). Most of the non-traditional touches are included in order to enhance the feel of the game, though; they aren't meant to make the poker action more casual. Pokerbot is US $1.99. If you've never played poker before, it's probably a little bit much for you, and you're better off going with something like Apple's official game. However, if you know your antes, straights, and flushes, and you want a game that will present a nice challenge while teaching you to play better, Pokerbot will help.
OpenFeint coming to Android phones
According to Slide to Play, Aurora Feint has announced plans to bring its OpenFeint platform to Android devices. The platform made its name by creating an online social hub for iPhone gamers, allowing them to send instant messages, find other players and even find games (though it will soon face competition from Apple's own Game Center). The service will begin supporting Android later this summer, with Hudson Entertainment, Glu Mobile and Digital Chocolate all planning to support the launch. Furthermore, Aurora Feint has announced that it has received a new capital investment from The9, a firm known primarily for operating several MMO products in China.
OpenFeint coming to Android
I've often wondered why, instead of creating their own social gaming platform with Game Center, Apple didn't just swallow up a successful third-party platform like OpenFeint. Now, it seems that Apple may have lost its chance: OpenFeint announced this morning, after another multi-million dollar round of financing led by Chinese gaming firm The9, that it will be extending its social gaming network to Android apps. The same features and services available to developers on iOS devices will soon be available to Android developers, and OpenFeint is launching on Android with a few major app developers in tow and support for Google Checkout and a few other services. Now, this may not mean much for those of us who only use iOS devices; OpenFeint will carry on as it has, and it will still integrate with Apple's Game Center as planned. However, it does mean that OpenFeint is no longer serving developers at Apple's whim; if there's something that Apple doesn't allow them to do that the Android platform does, they can still carry out those plans. Of course, it's a big step for Android as well; one more significant iPhone developer service is now available on Google's open source platform. It's a very interesting move by OpenFeint, and I don't think it's the last we'll see of major iPhone-based services opening up to the competing Android platform.
OpenFeint hits 25 million users, announces 2.5 beta release
OpenFeint has announced that they've reached 25 million users on their social networking service for apps on the App Store. That's an astounding number, and not only does it represent an amazing achievement by the folks at Aurora Feint, but it hints at just how big Apple's official Game Center service will be (whenever they get around to, you know, implementing it). Just for comparison, location networking service Foursquare is still racing to try and hit 3 million users, so in just over a year's time, OpenFeint has picked up many times that number. Those users represent almost a third of the iDevice market and over 85 million devices across 1900 different developers. The service has also announced that they're bringing out the beta of version 2.5 for developers to implement in their iPhone apps and games. The new version includes a revamped API, which will allow for both turn-based and "action replay" multiplayer (a functionality that Game Center won't yet offer, as far as we know); it's also Game Center compatible, so developers who implement OpenFeint in their games will be able to easily transition to Apple's official service when it comes out (that's what we heard from Jason Citron a little while back, too). OpenFeint 2.5 is in beta right now and will arrive on iPhones later this summer.
TUAW's Daily App: Space Storm
Space Storm is about as conventional as space shooters get; enemies come into the screen from the right, and your ship flies from the left, blowing things out of the sky with a few different weapons and picking up health or power-ups along the way. In this case, though, conventional is good. The game feels right, and the dual-stick setup will have you navigating your ship around enemies and bullets and even slowing time down with occasional power-ups, in no time. Boss levels add a little variety to the mix, but basically, it's fly and shoot. It's very simple and pretty darn fun. OpenFeint adds some replayability to the somewhat short game, but a shooter is a shooter. As of this writing, the game is free on a promotion, but if you enjoy a good space shooter, it's definitely worth a couple of bucks.
Capcom joins OpenFeint social gaming network on the iPhone
While Microsoft has Xbox Live as an official network, and of course Sony has PlayStation Network, the iPhone doesn't yet have an official social gaming network, at least not until Apple's Game Center is unveiled later on this year. Until then, a company called OpenFeint has been connecting gamers on iPhones with leaderboards and achievements (which is why you'll often see their logo appear in your iPhone games). And while most of the developers signed on to OpenFeint so far have been pretty small, it's starting to reel in the big fish -- Capcom has signed on to hook its games up to the OpenFeint service. The service will first appear in Capcom's Dark Void Zero and Hatchlings iPhone games, and both OpenFeint and Capcom say they are excited about the possibilities of working together. Of course, the release of Game Center may change the relationship, depending on what features Apple offers later this year. But OpenFeint says they're planning to offer services even on top of Game Center's planned featureset (Capcom has confirmed they want to use OpenFeint X, a platform for serving up virtual goods on the iPhone even beyond what Game Center will offer). So it sounds like even after Apple's official network is released later this year, Capcom will still have a use for its new partner.
App of the Day: Subatomic for iPhone and iPad
App of the Day is TUAW's new App Store spotlight. One great app, every single day. Subatomic is a game that's available for the iPhone and the iPad. The premise is that you push molecules of different colors around a field with gravity. Portals sit on the gamefield full of molecules, and as they slowly fade away, it's your job to pull more in and match them up. By touching near a molecule, you can push it in a certain direction with a gravity vortex (the game has a cool blurred graphical feature whenever you touch the screen). The game ramps up pretty quickly; eventually you're trying to push molecules toward multiple portals while trying to keep different-colored molecules from reaching the wrong portals. Unfortunately, the difficulty curve can be a little high. It's sometimes hard to control the incoming molecules, and when you accidentally touch a little too close, you'll find yourself flinging molecules off into the distance instead of getting them where they want to go. At a basic level, though, it's an interesting control scheme that I haven't seen before. The game contains a full tutorial as part of its 31 levels, and the music and backgrounds (some of which contain actual electron microscope imagery from real-life scientists) add to the experience. The social features of the game are managed by OpenFeint. Subatomic is US$1.99 on the App Store, and a free version (with seven levels to try) is available as well.
360iDev: The future of Jason Citron's OpenFeint
OpenFeint's VP of Engineering, Jakob Wilkerson, took the stage here at 360iDev in San Jose to talk about something most people might not have expected: Game Center. Ever since Apple's official social gaming network was announced last week, the question's been in the air about what will happen to all of those unofficial gaming networks, of which OpenFeint is the largest. Wilkerson took the news in stride, however. As CEO Jason Citron told us last week, OpenFeint isn't going anywhere, and as you can see from their chart above, OpenFeint still believes that they can build more social game services, in the form of OpenFeint X, on top of Apple's official offerings. Wilkerson talked about Game Center in terms of potential; he used examples from OpenFeint to explain how implementing leaderboards and friends lists in the right ways can really open up player interest in a game. OpenFeint often talks internally about bringing, both, hardcore and casual game players into the fold, and their different online features target those various audiences. We also got a chance to talk to Citron again regarding his thinking about OpenFeint so far, and what the company plans to do when Apple unveils its official plan. Read on for more.
OpenFeint's Jason Citron talks Game Center and Aurora Feint 3
The first thought on everyone's minds as we heard during the event yesterday that Apple would be forming their own social gaming network on the iPhone called Game Center, was probably, "What about OpenFeint?" Since almost the very beginning of the App Store, OpenFeint founder Jason Citron has been working hard to provide developers with a free and easy solution for implementing a social network and social features on their iPhone apps, and with one small announcement, Apple appeared to make all of that work obsolete. Quite a few unofficial social networks have spawned on the iPhone (OpenFeint is one of the first and definitely the biggest, with over 12 million users at last count), and with one fell swoop, it appeared that Apple's new official network would make them all unnecessary. Not so, Citron told us in a quick interview today. Yesterday, he confirmed in a statement that OpenFeint would still do their best to sit on top of any official network that Apple would build, and today he talked a little more with us about the future of OpenFeint, his worries about Game Center, and how the company's first iPad title, Aurora Feint 3, is doing.
Game Center sparks light reactions from competing iPhone social network devs
Yesterday, Apple announced Game Center, a social gaming service for iPhone. Pretty much everyone with an iPhone has reason to be delighted with this development, except for companies like OpenFeint and ngmoco, which already operate social network gaming services for iPhone in OpenFeint and Plus+, respectively. Are both companies freaking out? Not in public. In a statement, OpenFeint positioned the OpenFeint X service, which allows iPhone devs to sell virtual goods, as the next step for its business. "OpenFeint X is currently built on top of OpenFeint and in the future it will also sit on Apple's Game Center social graph, achievements and leaderboards so developers and gamers don't miss a step," said OpenFeint CEO Jason Citron. "Apple is a key partner and we are delighted that they have validated the first half of the OpenFeint vision and we can now fulfill the second half: OpenFeint X and Virtual Goods based Social Games." Citron also promised to "continue to invest in OpenFeint" for the benefit of the games using the platform now and in the process of adding it. ngmoco's Simon Jeffery released a statement indicating that Plus+ is also already moving in a similar direction. "ngmoco has anticipated this move from Apple for some time, and is happy to see a cleaner developer and consumer experience on the horizon," he said. "As we demonstrated at GDC 2010, Plus+ took a strategic shift in direction a few months ago toward being a service, and less about being a set of social gaming features." Plus+ is now focusing on "empowering monetisation and discoverability mechanisms for the development community," as evident in the service's support for player-created virtual item stores in We Rule. If both OpenFeint and ngmoco are to become virtual goods platforms, they stand to benefit from Game Center -- in essence, they can allow Apple to handle all the matchmaking and friend list stuff, while they focus on building marketplaces to interact with Game Center. At least until iPhone OS 5 introduces a virtual goods marketplace. [Via TUAW]
Current game network developers comment on Apple's Game Center
Way back in February at Macworld, one of my questions to Eros Remini of OpenFeint was pretty blunt: "Why," I asked a representative from the biggest third-party social gaming network on the iPhone, "haven't we seen an official platform-wide network?" Remini didn't have a good answer for Apple, but he did say that OpenFeint was happy to step up and fill the void. Apple answered for themselves this morning: They announced Game Center, which will be an official social gaming network for the iPhone and iPad, complete with friend lists, leaderboards, achievements, and everything else that third-party providers like OpenFeint have set up already. So what does OpenFeint think of Game Center? We contacted it for a statement and we are told that OpenFeint is welcoming Apple's Game Center. The company has recently released a virtual goods marketplace called OpenFeint X, and their statement about Game Center says that there's still a place for OpenFeint on top of Apple's official service. "OpenFeint X is currently built on top of OpenFeint and in the future it will also sit on Apple's Game Center social graph, achievements and leaderboards so developers and gamers don't miss a step," Jason Citron, CEO of Aurora Feint says. Current OpenFeint players (of which there are 19 million at last count) will automatically become OpenFeint X members, and it sounds like OpenFeint plans to move on to the virtual goods market, leaving their old social gaming realm behind for Apple. There were a few other reactions from various developers and publishers about the Game Center news -- read more information from PopCap and Ngmoco after the link below.
iPhone OS 4.0: Apple announces Game Center, a social gaming network for the iPhone
This is huge -- Apple has announced Game Center, an official social gaming network for the iPhone, coming to the device along with OS 4.0 this summer. So far, there have been a few social networks vying for an audience in the form of OpenFeint and Ngmoco's Plus+ system, but Apple's going official, bringing in friends lists, leaderboards, achievements, matchmaking, and so on all to the iPhone themselves. Jobs said on stage in Cupertino that they will combine GameCenter with the App Store's over 50,000 games and entertainment titles. It'll be extremely interesting to see how Apple's network interacts with App Store titles, and it looks like OpenFeint and the like have some serious first-party competition.
Battle of Puppets brings the fight to the marionette stage
Battle of Puppets fell through the cracks here when it was first released, and that was unfortunate -- it's a 2D real-time strategy game for the iPhone with a distinctive art style and a plethora of cool features that definitely deserves a look. The team has been updating the app often, and the latest update not only adds in achievements and leaderboards via the OpenFeint platform, but also has dropped the price to just 99 cents for a limited time. The game has a surprising amount of strategic depth -- more than you'd expect for an iPhone title. There are five different armies (each one representing an "opera" theme), each with its own strengths and weaknesses, and the little unit battles play out over 22 different theaters, where various environmental changes can actually affect the strategy of the game. And in addition to commanding your puppet troops, you can "cast spells" on the screen with gesture input, which will also affect the flow of battle. It's almost too much to handle on the iPhone's small screen, but the developers have added in a tutorial that should help you figure it out. At 99 cents, Battle of Puppets is a steal. More casual game players might get a little dragged down by the complexity, but those looking for strategy will find it underneath the cutout art designs. And if they continue to update the app at the rate they have so far, there'll be even more coming in the future.
Macworld 2010: TUAW talks to OpenFeint
On the day before Macworld last week, I got a chance to sit down with Eros Remini, VP of Marketing for OpenFeint, to talk about his social gaming network for iPhone apps. He shared with me that the network has claimed a gigantic 12 million users total, with about a million of them active in iPhone games from day to day. Additionally, the average user plays three or four games regularly -- unlike most other consoles, the iPhone is really a device that can split attention rather than have players dive deep in on one game. He also told us about the OpenFeint app that was released last month, as well as their popular free game of the day giveaway -- once per day, they give away an OpenFeint game for free right there inside the app. And we also talked about both how OpenFeint is serving as connection between developer and customer, as well as why Apple hasn't really shown an interest in an official iTunes gaming network like this. You can check out the whole interview on video right after clicking through the link below. Enjoy!
Review: Bankshot delivers a quick hit of fun
The other week I said a lot of good things about Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars, but one of the great things about games on the iPhone is that they don't all have to be epic masterpieces. Such is the case with the free Bankshot [iTunes link], which is a simple and fun one-hit game that was created in just 36 hours: the only goal is to bounce a little neon "puck" into a target that gets placed on different sides of the screen. It's fun, it's easy, and it's the perfect kind of game to just pull up and play when you only need a few minutes of distraction. The game does have a little bit of hidden depth (you can score more points by bouncing the puck off the walls more times before it hits the target, but if you go more than four bounces, the game is over), but essentially, this is an addictive little pick-up-and-play game (and it's even OpenFeint enabled, if you're into that sort of thing). The game is free with ads, but they were never distracting or in the way. If you want a quick arcade hit to play during your next few iPhone breaks, definitely pick it up.
OpenFeint announces version 2.4, now in Fieldrunners
The guys over at OpenFeint have released version 2.4 of their social gaming platform, and they've also corralled one of the biggest games on the App Store into using it: you can find the brand new version in the popular Fieldrunners app. New features of the software include a simplified UI, a completely revamped "Discovery" section (popular among developers for recommending games to users, but good for users as well in terms of finding new things to play), and a new "Forum and Fan Club" system which allows for discussion about games and between devs and customers right inside the app. Other improvements include a new geolocation leaderboard (so you can see where people are nabbing the high scores), and tweaks on other social features like the "presence" system, which features Xbox Live-style announcements when friends come on and offline while playing. It's interesting how this sort of sub-culture is burgeoning simply inside individual games, completely unofficially, on the App Store. You have to wonder if Apple is watching any of this -- certainly there's a call from both devs and players for social connections like this, and it would be interesting to see a system that worked App Store-wide, perhaps even with current iTunes accounts. OpenFeint and the other folks working on their own social networks are doing a lot of interesting things already, but I have to wonder what it would be like if Apple got involved.
Fieldrunners updated to 1.3, offers two new maps as in-app purchases
Touch Arcade has word that one of 2008's best iPhone games (our 2009 list is coming out this week), Fieldrunners [iTunes link, $2.99], has released an update (1.3), in which they've released two new maps available as in-app purchases, and they've included OpenFeint 2.4 functionality, with messaging, chat, and everything else the in-game social network portends. The two new maps are called Skyway and Frostbite. Skyway boasts a metal floor with a few holes in it, which limit where you can place your units in the tower defense classic. Frostbite is a snowfield with a base in the middle to defend from attackers on all sides. Seems like both offer up some interesting twists on the gameplay -- they're 99 cents each (a fact that has the most recent iTunes reviews up in arms), but if you ask us, two bucks for new content is cheap, especially if you're a big Fieldrunners fan already. The update itself is a free download for paid users, though, so if you want that OpenFeint functionality, hit up the App Store and load the game up yet again.
