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Finger Tied Jr. coming next week
Finger Tied is an iPad app that arrived late last year. It's put together by developer Owen Goss, and he says that a lot of users have asked him to create an iPhone version of the app, but given that it's a game that uses the iPad's big screen for lots of finger-swiping space, he didn't want to make it until he was sure he could do it justice. Apparently he found a way, because he's delivering the iPhone version next week, with a game called Finger Tied, Jr. There's a short post up on his blog talking about the game, and as you can see from the picture above, it's more compact than the full iPad title. But that could be fun anyway. Finger Tied, Jr. is due out next week, May 23. Stay tuned for a full look at the app sometime after that.
Matt Rix and Owen Goss prepare for a Snow Siege
After a long absence from the App Store, developer Matt Rix will soon be back with Snow Siege, a game that's the result of a new collaborative effort between Rix and Owen Goss called Milkbag Games. I met up with Rix at GDC this week to talk about the new game and how it all came together. Rix made a big splash on the App Store a couple of years ago with Trainyard, an excellent game that had you connecting little colored trains with rails on a grid. Since then, Rix has worked on several projects and prototypes but hasn't released a new game for iOS. He admits feeling pressure in trying to follow up Trainyard's high quality, and notes that he "gets really sick of it" when a project goes on for too long. While game development can be fun, polishing a title for release often isn't. As a result, Rix found himself looking for a new project rather than finishing the ones he'd started. Last year, Rix teamed up with fellow developer (and Ontario, Canada resident) Goss, the creator of Finger Tied and Landformer. Rix said he hoped "working with someone else might make me stick to something." Rix has also been working on a framework built for the Unity engine called Futile (which developer NimbleBit has famously embraced for their games), so the duo started making a game together. Snow Siege is scheduled to be released this year. The initial game Goss and Rix started bore a close resemblance to another game Rix made called Baskeball Cannoncube, which itself has roots in a silly comment on Reddit. But the original game, which was about a cube that could shoot basketball hoops, eventually translated into a snowball fight game, and it morphed again and again, as Rix and Goss threw ideas back and forth, into the wild mix of genres that Snow Siege is right now. So here's the run-down. Snow Siege is a tower defense game with action elements. The defenses that you build (against an invading horde of 2D snowmen) are all represented and chosen from a deck of cards. A number of cards go into your hand during every build phase, you get a certain number of points to build with, and then you can spend those points to build defenses. Blue cards are shields that block enemy attacks. Red cards are weapons and used for attack. Green cards represent support units which provide a variety of helpful abilities. Snow Seige has one last twist. Once you choose what cards you'd like to build with, the defenses appear on the board in the form of ... wait for it ... Tetris pieces. With plus-shaped pieces, lines and various angled blocks, you can drop pieces onto the board and build them up as you like, either slotting them together Tetris-style or dangling them dangerously out across each other. There's even a little bit of strategy to building a rickety structure -- if a group of snowmen takes out a support block, the blocks overhead will fall and could give you a "crushing bonus," rewarding you with lots more coins and points. As you might imagine, the game starts simple, with just a few snowmen that are easily defeated. However, Rix showed me a battle from later in the game that was incredibly chaotic, including hordes of snowmen marching on a huge fort, driving tanks and even helicopters. Your defenses can get beefy too, with missile turrets and lasers that will shoot automatically and even target certain enemies for you. Snow Siege looks like a lot of fun, but complicated. The card mechanic is a strange addition to a game that's already got puzzle blocks and shooting weapons. But Rix said it's in there to simplify things, actually, and he and Goss hope that the simple act of collecting cards in a deck makes the choices of what and how to build a little easier and more understandable. At any rate, the pair has plenty of work yet to do. Rix and Goss are both talented game creators and they've got several interesting ideas up in the air already with Snow Siege. Hopefully they can juggle those ideas without dropping any.
Daily iPad App: Finger Tied will tie your fingers in knots
Developer Owen Goss has made some really interesting puzzle games for iPhone and iPad, including the excellent LandFormer. He also built an app called Baby's Musical Hands that emphasizes simple interaction with the iPad. Clearly, he's very interested in the iPad's tactile possibilities. His latest game, Finger Tied, explores the idea even further by asking players to directly interact with the glass screen in several ways. The core idea is simple. There are a few different shapes on the screens with tracks attached to them. Your goal is to drag your fingers across the screen and follow those different tracks. As you can see above (and in our video below), this can get difficult as the levels go up, sometimes requiring you to independently operate up to four different fingers at once. The game also has a very nice and intuitive level creation editor, where you can make your own levels in a snap. Unfortunately, I can't find an easy way to share custom levels, so maybe that's a feature that will be in the pipeline for a later date. At any rate, Finger Tied is an excellently designed title, and demonstrates how much thought Goss has put into the touchscreen's potential. The game's currently available at a launch sale price of just US$0.99, making it a must-buy for anyone with 10 fingers and an iPad.
TUAW's Daily iPad App: Baby's Musical Hands
Owen Goss is an experienced iOS game developer -- he's produced a game called Landformer, and I once watched him make a game about bacon farming in just 90 minutes at a conference. But he's taken a step away from gaming for his latest iPad app, instead creating more of a musical instrument meant just for the very young. Baby's Musical Hands is an app made for babies, using color and sounds to fascinate and entertain the youngest iPad users out there. The app was created with Goss' son in mind, but any baby will likely be drawn to interacting with the visual and audio feedback that the app provides, and parents can "play" along with children as well. Unfortunately, I don't have a baby to test the app out on, but I'm sure any kid would find the fun in this one. And at the price of just US 99 cents, it'll come much cheaper than most of your baby's other toys and gear (of course that doesn't include the cost of the iPad). If you've got an infant around who's shown a little iPad interest but isn't quite old enough to throw Angry Birds around, give this one a try.
TUAW's Daily App: Landformer
Owen Goss is the mind behind Streaming Colour Studios, makers of Dapple and Monkeys in Space. I first met Goss earlier this year at at the 360iDev conference, and during his panel there (in which he created a game about bacon farming in just 90 minutes), he showed off a few early shots of a puzzle game called LandFormer. LandFormer is now out in the App Store, and it's a puzzle game with a pretty steep slope in difficulty and a really excellent look and feel. The goal of the game is to level out all of the lands in a little playing field, which you do by raising and lowering them in a few different patterns. You're given a target number of moves, and the challenge comes in leveling the land before the move timer runs out. The app is free, but it only comes with 10 beginner levels to start. 50 more levels can be bought within the app for US$1.99 (and a premium theme can be picked up for 99 cents), with presumably more levels to come. Fortunately, Goss has created a fully featured level editor with the free version -- you can make and share levels with anyone, and even "download" new levels through an ingenious URL system. If you're up for a few mindbending puzzles (and maybe have a few friends to create and share levels with), definitely give LandFormer a look.
