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Steve Demeter's Trism to return as Trism 2
You may (or may not) remember Trism, which was one of the first iPhone games I've ever played, and was one of the App Store's first big gaming winners. Developer Steve Demeter was behind that game, but after his huge success on the early App Store, he left the spotlight for quite a while, and hasn't released another game since. Polygon caught up to him at GDC last month, however, and it turns out Demeter has decided to make another game, called Trism 2. As you can see above, the game looks very different than the original, though the slide-to-match gameplay is still there. Demeter's apparently decided to jump on the (overcrowded) free-to-play bus, not only selling the game and its features through in-app purchases, but also giving the title some colorful characters, and adding a lot of RPG-style progression to it. It sounds interesting. Demeter says that we'll see the game out on iOS devices soon, possibly sometime this summer. It sounds like he's done a lot of soul searching to figure out what he wants to try and make next after the success he's had, and Trism 2 will be the result.
Wired's top 10 reader-approved iPhone games
Our friends at Wired recently asked their readers what their favorite iPhone games were, and their list is a pretty darn good overview of some of the best choices for gamers on the App Store. Some of the picks are already well known -- we posted about Trism way, way back, and of course Galcon has been lauded already. And some of the choices are a little wacky -- Cube Runner is cool, but it's not really much more than a tech demo at this point.Still, there are a few gems you may not have discovered yet -- JellyCar looks like a lot of fun, and Topple did kind of get hidden underneath the shadow of ngmoco's other big release, Rolando. It's worth a try if you haven't played it yet.It's notable, as well, that all but the top two choices are pretty simple. As fun as these games are, there's definitely a lot more room for some deeper gameplay on the App Store.
Favorite iPhone apps: Robert's take
Now that Steve, Victor, and Mike have all made their opinions clear, I get to tell you what apps I use most on my iPod touch. My first favorite is Exposure, an app that lets you browse Flickr photos. Personally, my favorite thing to do in a boring phone meeting is to browse Flickr's "Featured" category, and find new wallpaper for my iPod. Which leads me to my only feature request: it doesn't let you save images to the local "Saved Photos" album. (What you can do, however, is open the image in Safari, and save it from there.) Exposure does much more than this, too -- browsing photos taken nearby, or searching for photos by keyword. Exposure is a great image browser all around, and it's free, but ad-supported. A premium version (sans ads) is $9.99. The second is time:calc. It may seem a little strange, but I've always wanted a calculator that figures time instead of decimal numbers. As a freelancer, some of my contracts are retainer-based, so I have to calculate how much time I have left for a particular task after work has been done. time:calc does this effortlessly: just enter hours, minutes and seconds, and use mathematical operators as you would a normal calculator. For video editing, it also includes support for time code in a wide variety of frame rates. time:calc is $1.99, and well worth it. Last but not least is my new favorite timewaster: Trism. Mike wrote about Trism in February, and I remember wanting it really bad when I first saw the video. It's an extremely fun Tetris-like game using three-sided tiles, and uses the device's accelerometer to determine which way is "down." It's not unlike Burning Monkey Puzzle Lab, for those that remember that game. Trism has three game modes, and a training mode. It's $4.99. App Store Links: Exposure (free) Exposure Premium time:calc Trism
Trism matches the iPhone's accelerometer with puzzle gameplay
One more reason why we can't wait for the iPhone SDK to drop. GameSetWatch has a short interview up with developer Steve D of Demiforce about his new iPhone game, Trism. It's a Bejeweled-like gem matching puzzle game, but the twist is that after getting matched, the gems fall in the direction that the iPhone's accelerometer tells them to fall. It's wild stuff, and you can see it clearly in the video above.He's playing the game on a jailbroken iPhone, but it's still a work in progress, so the game isn't available to the public yet. Depending on the terms of the iPhone SDK, he's looking at porting it over to that and releasing it via whatever distribution system Apple comes up with. And he cooked this thing up in about ten days (he wanted to rush it to show it off at GDC last week), so if Apple is able to include smaller developers like Steve in their SDK setup, we'll see some terrific software come off the line in no time at all.
Trism brings tilt-sensitive puzzle gaming to iPhone
While tilt-sensitive cell phone gaming is apparently nothing new in Japan, domestic developers/hackers have been slow to create games that take advantage of the iPhone's built-in accelerometer. Enter Trism, a simple, match-three puzzle game from semi-pro developer Demifroce that twists things around by changing the way blocks fall as you twist things around.A GameSetWatch interview with the developer reveals more of the story behind the game's ten-day development, and includes an excellent video (embedded below) of the game in action. Unfortunately, the forthcoming demo version will only work on jailbroken phones, but the developer says he'd love to sell the game on iTunes once the official iPhone SDK is unveiled. Apple, are you listening?
