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Wikipad gets chromed out buttons and Big Fish games, we go eyes-on
What's this? The Wikipad? At CES 2013? But we were told it wouldn't be here! As it turns out, the Wikipad is still kinda here, albeit with Big Fish Games. And wouldn't you know it, Big Fish games are now integrated into the $500 Android gaming tablet's launcher. Not only that, but the Wikipad's seen some visual updates since we last got our hands on it -- most notably are the chromed out buttons, which show up on all sides of the device. The controller piece is still removable, though it's unclear if the original specs still stand. Last we heard, the 10.1-inch, 1,280 x 800 IPS screen sat out front of an NVIDIA Tegra 3 T30 quad-core 1.4GHz processor, with 1GB of DDR2 RAM, all powered by Android 4.1 Jelly Bean (at least initially). Either way, those new chromed out keys sure do add some spark, eh? Follow all the latest CES 2013 news at our event hub.
Daily iPad App: Drawn: Trail of Shadows is a simple, beautiful puzzle game
The Drawn series is hard to describe, really -- I've mentioned one of them here before, but I don't know if I quite gave the series a good description. Fortunately, if reading this post doesn't work, I've included a video of me playing the game down below, so you can take a closer look at just what these games are like. The series started up on PC as the domain of Big Fish Games, a company that has released a lot (a lot!) of PC games over the years. But Big Fish is making its way onto iOS (most notably with the great Fairway Solitaire), and the Drawn series is slowly coming along, with Trail of Shadows being the latest release on iOS. At its core, this game is a hidden object title, where you need to poke around a series of still pictures, finding items to use in various adventure-game style puzzles. The title is quite atmospheric and beautifully, well, drawn, and provides a very casual story experience for you to simply relax in and enjoy. These games aren't for everyone -- a gamer used to a little more action might call them boring, and unfortunately, Big Fish hasn't very smoothly ported the game over, so there are some awkward loading screens and the occasional dropped cutscene. But there is definitely a strong mood here, a strong feeling evoked from playing a game like this, and having this around on your iPad can make for a very intriguing afternoon of gameplay. Drawn: Trail of Shadows is available as a free trial right now, and you can pay US$4.99 in the game if you want to play through the whole thing. It's definitely worth a look -- there are certainly games of this hidden object ilk that are indeed a waste of your time, but Drawn is one that's won me over a few times already.
Big Fish Unlimited lets gamers resume play on mobile, PC and TV, stay distracted at all times (update: HTML5 explained)
The perpetual crisis of casual gaming is that need for just one... more... turn. After all, those 29 levels of progress aren't coming with you to the office, are they? Big Fish Games wants to ease our consciences (or at least our egos) with Big Fish Unlimited. By using HTML5 to constantly save progress, the cloud service remembers exactly where a player was and ports it to the next device: it's possible to hop from a Android tablet, to a Roku box, to a Windows PC's browser without having to replay anything. The nature of the streaming games themselves won't give OnLive players second thoughts, but their lighter footprint won't demand as much from an internet connection, either. Most of the intended audience will appreciate the price -- the now active service costs $8 a month for access to more than 100 games from the full catalog, and free play is on tap for 20 of the games as long as you can endure periodic ads. Whether or not coworkers can endure another round of your hidden object games is another matter. Update: We've since talked to the company directly, and it turns out that the HTML5 is more for the cross-platform support; it's the server that tracks progress whenever you quit a given app.
Big Fish Games scores a hit with Fairway Solitaire
My meeting with Big Fish Games' Patrick Wylie was one of my last meetings at GDC, but it was also one of my most satisfying. It turns out I'm not alone in my esteem for the great Fairway Solitaire app this company has put together; "This game is growing our audience," Wylie told me. That's quite a big statement. Big Fish has been around for a while making PC titles designed for a very casual audience, usually hidden object games and other casual time management fare. It's been trying to break out in the iOS market for about the past year and a half. Before Fairway Solitaire, the company hadn't really had a hit on this level, and I'd argue it was because the company was playing around with its standard casual titles rather than digging in deep. It makes sense when you consider this game's rocky past. Back in 2008, Wylie says Big Fish Games had one of its biggest PC hits with a hidden object game, and one of the developers got the idea to do a solitaire game with a golf framing on it. However, the decision was that Big Fish should catch a wave with hidden object titles and ride that trend for all it was worth. Fairway Solitaire got put on the back burner, and Big Fish went on to build its reputation on casual gaming. Last year, as the company was trying to gain ground on iOS, Fairway Solitaire showed up in development again, and I actually saw a very early version of it at GDC 2011. But while the game was technically complete last October, Wylie and company decided to go back to the drawing board and spent five months "tuning a game that was already done, just trying to get the experience as exactly right as possible." All that work apparently paid off; Fairway Solitaire has huge conversion rates for Big Fish, and its players are among the most engaged players on the whole App Store. Wylie says he would have liked to see this success sooner, but he doesn't really regret all of the work done on the game before release. "I'm glad we actually did wait," he told me. Big Fish is very excited about the success of Fairway Solitaire, and just like its earlier hidden object games, Big Fish plans to take full advantage of that popularity. Up first on the iOS game, there's a spring update coming with a brand new pack of maps for players to play through. Big Fish has another Fairway Solitaire-based title planned, and we can expect a summer pack as well, with lots more content and features to come. "We're going to service this forever," says Wylie, or at least as long as the game's players are willing to play. "I don't know where it's going to stop," he says of Fairway's rising sales. Big Fish's next game will be called Lifequest, a freemium RPG title designed around performing real-life tasks like getting a job, working, or even eating out or buying a pet. Lifequest has been Big Fish's "best performing non-hidden object adventure game" on the PC and Mac according to Wylie, so he has big hopes for how it will do on Apple's touchscreen platforms. Another big title due soon is Plunder, a pirate-based puzzle game in which you guide a set of pirate ships through dangerous watery grids by propelling them forward in the right order and at the right time. Plunder's been under development on iOS for awhile, and it's not quite as complicated as Fairway Solitaire, which itself isn't all that hard. Big Fish isn't giving up on hidden object games; the company is also releasing the latest version of the popular Mystery Case Files series, called the 13th Skull. It's jam-packed with full motion video, letting players interact with live action characters as they explore a haunted house and have to find all sorts of items and solve simple adventure-style puzzles. These games tend to appeal to a very specific audience more than anyone else, but Big Fish hopes the production values make it stand out in an already very packed market. Big Fish is very excited about Fairway Solitaire, and we can expect to see much more of that game coming in the future. I've always been a proponent of more complicated games, even for casual players. While many developers on the App Store are racing for a lowest-common denominator style of super casual freemium gameplay, Fairway Solitaire shows that with a quality, compelling gaming experience, you can attract engaged gamers from all over.
Daily iPad App: Tiny Places HD
Tiny Places is the latest title from Big Fish Games, which typically releases games on PC (mostly casual stuff like find-an-item and puzzle games), but lately has been making a big push on iOS as well. What's interesting about Tiny Places is that it borrows from from iOS games rather than Big Fish's PC catalog. Specifically, from Cut the Rope. Tiny Places is similar to Chillingo's other physics title (the one that's not about angry birds), in that it features a cute little protagonist trying to reach a goal in a colorful 2D level while using real-time physics to move around. In this case, you play as a chameleon who uses his tongue to hang from various objects, trying to collect "starflies" while moving towards a hole in the wall that kicks off the next level. To start, you can fling the little chameleon around, but as the game progresses, there are other objects to interact with. Tiny Places is harder than Cut the Rope as precise, airborne is required. Especially if you want to get all of the stars and extras, you'll need to make some pretty tough jumps. But resetting the level is quick and easy, so the game encourages replaying to get things just right. The polish isn't quite as good as Cut the Rope, but if (like me) you've already run through all of the levels of that one, Tiny Places offers a worthy alternative and a fun time in and of itself. The iPad version is US$1.99 while the iPhone version is just a buck, and there are free versions of each to try out as well. Tiny Places isn't a classic, but if you enjoy physics games, the many levels on display here (with lots of updates to come, according to the app itself) will provide plenty of entertainment.
Daily Update for November 23, 2011
It's the TUAW Daily Update, your source for Apple news in a convenient audio format. You'll get all the top Apple stories of the day in three to five minutes for a quick review of what's happening in the Apple world. You can listen to today's Apple stories by clicking the inline player (requires Flash) or the non-Flash link below. To subscribe to the podcast for daily listening through iTunes, click here. No Flash? Click here to listen.
Apple [doesn't allow] subscription-based iPad gaming for the first time (Updated)
Update: The app has been pulled from the store. John Gruber hypothesizes that the app was actually approved in error, with the App Store screening team not realizing that they had made a policy shift. Bloomberg reports that Apple has allowed Big Fish Games to begin offering its games in a subscription-based model. For US$6.99 per month, iPad users will have access to Big Fish Games' entire library of iPad games. Subscription models have already been introduced for newspapers and magazines sold in the App Store, and Netflix is a prime example of how the subscription model can succeed for movies. According to Big Fish, it took some extra arm-twisting to convince Apple to allow the subscription model for Big Fish's games. Big Fish Games will also offer free, ad-supported access to its game library for thirty minutes per day. As an alternative, users can sign up for all-you-can-eat access at an initial cost of $4.99 per month, which will increase to $6.99 per month next year after Big Fish adds more titles. (As always, Apple will collect its 30 percent commission on subscription sales.) The company also plans to expand its subscription services to the Android platform early next year. Games played through the subscription service will be streamed to users' iPads rather than downloaded in their entirety, and as such the service will initially work only over Wi-Fi. This is an interesting move on Big Fish Games' part, and it will be fascinating to see whether this experiment with subscription-based gaming is successful or not. I imagine other gaming companies, particularly the bigger houses like EA and Gameloft, are going to be watching developments in this space very closely.
TUAW's Daily iPhone App: Haunted Manor: Lord of Mirrors
We've posted about Big Fish Games before. It's a casual gaming company that has produced a ton of titles for the PC already, and it's in the process of both bringing those over to iOS and creating an original library of titles for Apple's mobile devices. This weekend, Big Fish is having a sale on the App Store, with nearly all of its titles dropping down to just 99 cents on the iPhone and US$1.99 on the iPad. So now's the time to pick any of these up if you haven't yet. If you're not sure which one to get, Haunted Manor is a good choice. Like a lot of the games, it's sort of a puzzle/adventure title, using casual interactions like hidden item and mix and match puzzles to move through a very well-rendered environment. The game's never too tough, but if you get stuck, there's a forgiving hint system to help push you along. Game Center integration is a nice bonus as well. If you haven't heard of these games or haven't wanted to jump in and try them just yet, here's your chance.
TUAW's Daily App: Drawn: The Painted Tower
A little while back at GDC, I was introduced to a market for games that I'd never known much about before. There is a whole ecosystem of casual game companies out there that make PC games that appeal to an audience outside of the usual gaming crowd (read: usually older and female). Big Fish Games is one of the biggest of these companies -- they produce a number of games every year (usually hidden item or time management games) and sell them first as free trial downloads and then full PC versions on the website. Recently, these companies have started poking their way into Apple's iOS system, porting over their already large library of titles to Apple's platform, and selling them to this same casual audience on a brand new platform. Of quite a few of these games I saw at GDC, Drawn: The Painted Tower was probably my favorite, and if you were lucky enough to get a brand new iPad 2 this weekend, you might want to check it out. The game is extremely artistic and beautiful, though the action is pretty slow. You basically search around a series of screens for hidden items, and then you use those items, adventure game-style, to explore the world of the game. While the puzzles can get quite complicated, the game never pushes you too hard -- you're pretty much free to explore the lush art at your own pace. It's a nice experience (with Game Center included), and it serves as a good introduction to these games. While you can try an hour trial version for free, unlocking the whole game is on sale right now for just US$4.99. This one could be just the showpiece for that magical device you're now playing games on.
Nintendo announces new Wario Land for Wii, Kirby for DS
With E3 just around the corner, we've begun to brace ourselves for the deluge of new game announcements that always accompany the annual event, the latest of which has come from Nintendo. This morning the company announced a trio of new titles set to be shown during next month's conference, including Wario Land: Shake It! for the Wii, as well as Kirby Super Star Ultra and Mystery Case Files: MillionHeir, both for the company's touchable portable.As previously announced for both Japan and Europe, Nintendo describes Wario Land: Shake It! as a "classic side-scroller," and notes that the game will have players controlling Mario's portly nemesis with the Wii remote turned sideways on September 25. Kirby Super Star Ultra, on the other hand, will re-imagine the SNES classic platformer starring everyone's favorite perpetually-hungry cream puff when it debuts four days later on September 29. Finally, Mystery Case Files: MillionHeir brings Big Fish Games' line of casual PC puzzlers to the DS earlier in the month on September 8. The games join the previously announced Mario Super Sluggers, giving us an early look at what Nintendo will have on tap at the LA Convention Center in a few short weeks.
