a space shooter for free
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Frima Studio's independent thinking in a 350-person company
Given just how big the world of iOS development is, it's hard to find a truly unique gaming company. Each has its own approach, but I find most companies fall into two categories: The young, small firms eager for a hit and the huge companies working with iOS's smaller scale. Frima Studio is a unique mixture of the two. With 350 employees its no small firm. Frima has done work-for-hire on traditional video games for years, releasing collaborative titles across brands and properties. But there's a small team of three developers within Frima Studio who are working on original games. The company describes this group as "an indie game company working inside a big corporation." You'd be be forgiven for thinking that the studio's first iOS title, A Space Shooter For Free, was the work of one developer. However, Frima's original games team begs, borrows, and all but steals company resources to complete its titles. "If we want to make our games, we need to say to the biz dev guys that we already have the money," Frima's IP manager Jerome Dumont told me. Originally released with Sony as a PSP mini game, A Space Shooter for Free (formerly A Space Shooter For Two Bucks) has over a million players on all of its platforms. That's earned Frima the opportunity to work on more original games, like the one Dumont showed me called Nun Attack. Nun Attack is exactly what you're thinking: Cartoon-style, heavily-armed nuns fight off the bad guys. Due later this year, Nun Attack looks great. It's essentially a clone of the very popular BattleHeart. Given that game's age, I'm happy to have a new tactical RPG to look forward to. The build of Nun Attack that I saw is simpler than BattleHeart, and includes an interesting overworld map to explore, several mechanics to play with (think dodging bullets) and gesture-driven abilities, which Dumont calls "miracles." The game will feature four upgradeable characters with strengths like ranged attacks, healing powers and other usual, fantasy-style abilities. Frima isn't sure how the title will be monetized yet. A Space Shooter for Free is funded by in-app purchases of a virtual currency, and while that seems like a distinct possibility for Nun Attack, Frima wouldn't commit to it just yet. Even at this early stage, the app looked quite good. Frima's in an interesting place in terms of being able to do some indie thinking with some larger resources, and that should put it in a nice position to develop for iOS going forward.
Daily iPhone App: A Space Shooter (for free)
A Space Shooter (for free) used to be a space shooter for a few more dollars, but the developers decided instead to bring it down a freemium level, which means you can pick up this quality arcade title for free. Not only does the game offer plenty of solid shooting action, with lots of enemies and pickups, but there's a surprisingly good story here, too, told through cutscenes full of pretty funny (though occasionally grating and even a little racy, I'll admit) dialogue. But the shooter action is fun. The game does suffer a little bit from the issue that all iOS shooters seem to have, which is that your finger often gets in the way of seeing just where your little ship is supposed to be. But fortunately the game uses a health meter rather than a one-shot kill, so while you might still clip the occasional enemy, you'll probably be fine anyway. There's full OpenFeint and Game Center integration, and in accordance with the freemium model, there are plenty of in-app purchases to make if that's what you choose to do. But A Space Shooter for free is a solid iOS game, and of course the price is just right.
A Space Shooter for Two Bucks goes 'Free' on iOS
It's a bold move to change the price of a game whose price is in the title, but Frima Studio figured out how to do so for the iOS release of its PSP Mini A Space Shooter for Two Bucks: replace the already-low price with "Free." For the iOS release, due July 28, it's been re-christened A Space Shooter for Free!, and reworked into a freemium experience. The free download features part of the original game -- with " an infinite supply of aliens to obliterate." For a dollar, you can upgrade it to the "Big ASS" version that unlocks the rest. So, it ends up being a space shooter for one buck. That's still fewer than two.%Gallery-128311%
