Hands-on with PressOK Entertainment: Finger Physics, Fantasy Date, Spin it

While in Seattle this past weekend, I got a chance to sit down with developer Alex Koloskov of PressOK Entertainment. As a company, they've been through a few mergers, but Koloskov and his team have been working on mobile apps for years, and iPhone apps since the early days of the App Store. Their biggest game is the very popular Finger Physics, but they've also recently released a huge update to their version of Gin Rummy. Koloskov also showed me a few other unreleased titles, including a game that will likely turn some heads and a very early version of the Finger Physics sequel.

Read on for early hands-on impressions of the titles that I saw and a little behind-the-scenes information about the company.

Koloskov started out by telling me that his business had to be multi-platform. While there are definitely some big iPhone hits and some companies that are pushing hard to sell iPhone apps, he just doesn't see any way for smaller or mid-sized developers to keep a solid business going on the iPhone alone. For his company, releasing multi-platform titles is a necessity. That's not something we've heard from a lot of developers so far, but certainly there are plenty of companies out there who need to release their apps on more than one platform. His business has quite a few employees (many based in Russia, where he's originally from), so he's got to get as big of an audience as possible in order to keep them all paid.

Finger Physics is PressOK's biggest game so far, not least of all because Koloskov's company has committed to providing lots of updates for it, even after release. They're on the sixth update so far, and while a current bug has been rubbing some users the wrong way, Koloskov says that there's a fix pending at Apple. Like a lot of other developers, he's at Apple's whim when it comes to updating his apps. While he can code and send out bugfixes quickly, it's often anyone's guess as to when they will actually show up on the store.

He showed me the brand new version of Gin Rummy -- you can see the two side by side above, with the new version on the right. Instead of releasing a brand new game, the company decided to just update their old one. The new graphics and features are available (for free) to users who've purchased the game in the past. PressOK is hoping that new users will check out the game as well. I found it to be a pretty solid, good-looking Gin Rummy game. There are quite a few variants on the store already, but for free (at the moment -- Koloskov said that PressOK is still working on pricing, and that they may actually raise prices on their apps in the future if they believe the content is worth it), it's definitely worth a try.

I got to see a few unreleased titles as well. The first one was an interesting game called Fantasy Date. Even Koloskov seemed a little unsure of how I would react to it because it's a full motion video game that has the player going on "fantasy dates" with beautiful women. He assured me that he's very familiar with the App Store's history of removing explicit content, and he promised that this Fantasy Date app was an attempt to "try to stay classy." When you load the app up, you get to choose a woman to try to take out on a date. Then the app plays as an interactive first-person video, with live-action cutscenes in between interactive multiple choices. One scenario that I played had the player pulled over by a female cop, and then the player had to answer questions and choose responses to try and earn a date with the officer.

If it sounds silly, it was. While the pinup quality was there, the emphasis was more on crazy acting and dialogue and weird situations (at one point, a drunk guy entered the bar where the date was going on, and one of my choices was what to do about him; would I try and stop him myself or run away while the female cop solved the problem). However, Koloskov admits that it's an experiment to try and find a worthwhile spot in that market. Many of the "explicit apps" are just nonsensical cheesecake, and Fantasy Date is an attempt to bring a little more entertainment to the category. He knows that lots of people will turn up their noses, but he and his team think they can make a fun experience that appeals to that audience. The app should be out in a few weeks or so, and he expects to sell it for about $1.99, with extra packs (each "scene" takes about 30 minutes to play through, with multiple endings and choices to make) as in-app purchases, depending on demand.

He also showed me an early build of another game the studio is working on. They don't quite have a name for it yet, but it's a puzzle-style match 3 game that has the player rotating a board around while different-colored orbs drop into place and disappear when they're matched up in threes. The working title is "Spin It," but Koloskov said that he's seeking feedback from beta players (and TUAW readers, if you want) on the name and the game itself.

Finally, we got to see a very early build of the sequel to Finger Physics, tentatively called Finger Physics Champions. The game offers up more of the same physics-based puzzler gameplay as the first title (with updated graphics and physics), but the new hook is that players will be able to compete and add their scores together according to regions. EU players will be able to challenge North American players, and even states like New York and California will be able to compete with each other in the course of the game. It's not a complete sequel, as the company is planning to continue updating Finger Physics. They're also hoping to give users who download both games extra content. Finger Physics Champions should offer a little bit of a different direction to the current game's gameplay, though.

Koloskov and his team definitely seem like they're working hard on their App Store offerings. He said he's more than ok with the fact that not everything will become a hit. He added that they're interested in trying out all sorts of new things because even Finger Physics was originally put together as an off-hours prototype, and it became quite a hit. We'll keep an eye on what's coming out of the company in the future.