ImangiStudios
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'Angry Birds VR' puts the infamous fowl on your face
In case you felt T-shirts, the silver screen, lunch buckets, go-karts or your smart device weren't enough places to ogle Angry Birds, now there's one more: virtual reality. A demo for the ubiquitous game about an avian-fueled, porcine genocide made its way to Samsung's Gear VR recently, but from the sounds of it the formula's changed quite a bit. Because the series-typical 2D side-scrolling affair likely wouldn't translate well to a head-mounted display, the perspective's shifted to behind the birds. What's more, based on the screenshot above it looks like you're coasting through rings rather than destroying fortresses. As Road to VR suggests, one might guide the crestfallen fowl through these loops by moving your head. Seems plausible. There are still a number of questions remaining, but perhaps the biggest is how do the pigs feel about possibly getting spared this time out?
Disney releases Temple Run Oz, another branded take on Imangi's hit
Just last week we were talking about Disney's potential for originality with a brand new Toy Story app, and now here the company is sticking like glue to some old habits. Disney has released a new app called Temple Run Oz, which, as you might imagine, is a mashup of Imangi's famous Temple Run game with Sam Raimi's upcoming Oz: The Great and Powerful movie. Temple Run: Brave (which combined the first Temple Run game with Pixar's Brave) is still available on the App Store, but this new version is much closer to all of the innovations spotted in Temple Run 2, which means it has curvy pathways, more powerups and various goals to go after and complete. It's not a bad game at all, actually, and like Temple Run Brave, Disney has added in some original gameplay, in addition to the Oz-based sounds, graphics and content. Instead of just dodging trees and cliff dropoffs, you also duck under flying monkeys, and you can jump in a big balloon to tilt your way through the air and collect coins. There are weekly challenges as well, and while the game isn't significantly different from Temple Run (you're still running, swiping and tilting), it does feel a little more substantial than just a reskinned game. The price is also interesting: It's available for US$0.99. That's a buck more than the free Temple Run 2 (which I'd recommend as the better game), though it's likely only for a certain launch period, as you get 99 cents worth of in-app currency when you buy the game. Temple Run Brave is still 99 cents as well, so maybe the price is part of the agreement between Imangi and Disney. Whatever the reason for the pricing, Disney saw a fairly big hit with Temple Run Brave, but it'll be interesting to see what the market is like with four different (!) versions of Temple Run now on the App Store.
Temple Run: Oz the Great and Powerful (apparently) landing this month on iOS
There's no place like home Twitter to let announcements slip before you're supposed to, because even if you delete a tweet, chances are good someone's already seen it. Such was the case when a Disney PR rep in France prematurely announced that the company is planning to release Temple Run: Oz the Great and Powerful on February 27, a tie-in with the Sam Raimi film set in L. Frank Baum's fantasy universe due in theaters March 8. The tweet was subsequently yanked, but not before being noticed by the sleuths at Superannuation. We have to admit that the land of Oz would at least make a visually striking setting for a new offshoot of Temple Run, much like the Scottish Highlands from Pixar's Brave did for Temple Run: Brave -- another collaboration between Disney and Imangi -- released last year. Hopefully the new game will include enhancements and mechanics found in the recent Temple Run 2, with some Oz staples added for good measure. After all, running away from flying monkeys just makes sense. [Via TouchArcade]
Daily Update for January 21, 2013
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. Subscribe via RSS
Temple Run 2 racks up 20 million downloads in less than a week
Imangi Studios has struck gold with Temple Run 2. The developer's latest iOS endless running game has been downloaded more than 20 million times since its release just four days ago. In fact, 6 million of those installs took place within 24 hours of launch on January 17. The free game's success isn't totally surprising given the immense popularity of its predecessor, which was downloaded 2.5 million times on Christmas Day alone. We've been having a lot of fun with the game -- it's pretty hard to put down, frankly -- and according to Imangi's co-founder Keith Shepherd there will be some reasons to keep playing well into the future. In our interview with Shepherd last week, he revealed that the company plans to add new content to Temple Run 2 down the road as it continues to work on its next, as yet unannounced iOS game.
Imangi surprises with Temple Run 2: interview with developer Keith Shepherd
Imangi Studios is one of our favorite game developers: Keith Shepherd and Natalia Luckyanova are a husband and wife team that have made some great titles for iOS, including Harbor Master, Max Adventure and the company's biggest hit, Temple Run. Since going freemium (and getting extraordinarily popular), Temple Run has turned Imangi into a very successful company, both with the original game's in-app purchases, and with a series of ports and spinoffs, including the Disney-powered Temple Run Brave. Now, without any previous announcement, the company has released a full-fledged sequel, Temple Run 2, on to the App Store, available right now as a free download. "It's going to be sort of a surprise announcement," says Keith Shepherd, who chatted with TUAW earlier today. "Being a sequel kind of gave us the opportunity to start fresh and use what we'd learned." Shepherd says Imangi wanted to "level up the look and feel of everything" with the sequel, but of course the couple was also dealing with the success of their first game, and the arrival of their first child at the same time. "We have a baby now in the house that's impacted our own time," says Shepherd, "and we decided if we were going to do something bigger that we'd need some help from other folks." So they decided to two add two more people to the core team of three, joining forces with another developer called FuzzyCube software. FuzzyCube hosts a few developers who've formerly worked at Microsoft's Ensemble Studios, and Shepherd says having their expertise around definitely makes Temple Run 2 look better than ever before. "It takes place in an all-new world and environment, and I think you'll be blown away by how great it looks," he promises. The game's look and feel isn't the only big upgrade: There are also new powers and abilities to encounter in the endless runner, and Imangi decided to accept some fan feedback and fill out the game's characters a little bit. In the original game, characters were only cosmetic, but in the sequel, each character has their own ability that players can power up and use at a certain time. "It adds a little bit of a strategic element" to the action-based gameplay, says Shepherd. Those abilities can also be powered up by the game's new currency: gems, in addition to the coins players earned in the original. Temple Run started out as a paid app, and Imangi only switched it to freemium to try and shore up some flagging popularity. But of course once the game went free, Temple Run found some huge success, and Shepherd says Imangi has decided to start out free with the sequel. That extra currency is designed to keep players playing -- "We are using the gems more for some of the consumable type things," says Shepherd -- but Imangi also wants to make sure that the freemium aspect of the game doesn't get in the way of players enjoying it. "What happened with Temple Run 1 from a gameplay standpoint is that we really ran out of things for people to spend their coins on really fast," Shepherd says. "But we followed that same path of being really generous with coins in Temple Run 2." Fans of the first game should love the additions to the second, but even if not, Shepherd says the original title won't be far away. "We're keeping it on the App Store," he says. "It's a classic at this point, and we don't want to remove it for folks who want to continue playing the original. We do have some plans for some things that we want to add to it still, and obviously we do have some plans for adding things to Temple Run 2." Imangi, like a lot of successful app developers, has known for a long time that updating a game post-launch is a great way to keep it popular, and Shepherd says that "with Temple Run 2, we completely rewrote the entire game so that it would be easier." Finally, Shepherd tells us that while this Temple Run sequel is the current focus, we'll still see some more original titles from Imangi in the future. "I think in the short term, we have a lot of work still to do on Temple Run 2 and Temple Run, and we're probably going to have most of our focus on that," he says. "But I think we're really itching to work on a new game too. That's why we got into this business: To really enjoy making games. We always have ideas that we're kicking around," he promises, "so you'll see some more things in the future." Temple Run 2 is now available on the App Store for free.
Temple Run 2 appearing today on the App Store
Uber-popular game Temple Run's surprise sequel has hit is about to hit the US App Store. Released earlier today in the New Zealand App Store, Temple Run 2 builds on the success of the first Temple Run, while ratcheting up the graphics, physics and gameplay. TouchArcade got its hands on an early copy of Temple Run 2 and the site says that everything users loved from the first game is still there. Namely, that's our hero running his butt off from scary monkey monsters. However, Temple Run 2 builds upon its predecessor in leaps and bounds. The game takes place during a perpetual dusk in a floating temple in the sky. All the graphics have been improved, but the real pleasure in Temple Run 2 comes from its more fluid movements. In the first game, turns were made very mechanically -- at 90 degree angles. Temple Run 2's environments are more hilly and curvy and turns and movements have a more real, natural feel. Also the game adds other improvements, like stretches where you're operating a mine car and the ability to play as four different characters. Temple Run 2 is available now as a free download. Stay tuned -- we'll have an interview with Imangi Studios, the creators of both Temple Run versions, on the site later on this evening.
Daily Update for June 4, 2012
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. Subscribe via RSS
Disney taps indie studio for Temple Run Brave
Disney Mobile has made a number of really smart moves over the past few years (starting with acquiring Tapulous, all the way up to allowing a game tester to make them a great game). Now here's another brilliant move: they've signed a deal with developers Keith Shepherd and Natalia Luckynova (also known as the very nice married couple behind Imangi Studios) to help them make a Brave-branded version of Temple Run. The game itself is actually being put together by a third-party game developer, but Imangi had input on the finished product, and the deal has actually been in the works for quite a while, even before Imangi saw all of its astronomical success with the golden idol running game. Imangi told me at GDC this year that they were being careful about choosing partnerships, but apparently this partnership with Disney met with their approval. Temple Run Brave should be in the App Store for 99 cents on June 14 (though my guess is that given how popular Temple Run has been as a free game, it'll drop to free soon after that). Disney has shown a lot of insight into the App Store in the past, and this latest deal with a very hot indie studio is no exception.
Imangi finds success, and more choices, with Temple Run
Imangi Studios' Keith Shepherd and Natalia Luckyanova have been making solid games on iOS for years now, from their original hit Harbor Master and their charming dual-stick shooter Max Adventure. But it wasn't until Temple Run this past year (which I first saw in an off-the-record prototype form at GDC last year) that Imangi really hit it big. The freemium game has over 40 million players already, and it's consistently sitting up among the top-grossing spots on the App Store. Imangi's perfectly happy with that success, if not a little overwhelmed by it. "This is ridiculous, what is happening," says Luckyanova. Temple Run actually came at a great time for the couple -- they've just purchased a house, and they have a baby on the way, so they'll definitely be busy ove the next few months, even without a new game. And Shepherd says that's the plan: While Imangi has "a lot of ideas, they're all on the back burner for now." The current goal is to push Temple Run as far as it will go. First things first, that means an Android release -- Imangi has announced the game will arrive on that platform on March 27. After that, says Shepherd, you might see Temple Run in a few other places, including the Mac App Store, and somewhere on the web, in a browser-based form. The couple has also had requests for versions of the game on PC and Facebook, so they're considering those as well. The issue with having this kind of success on the App Store, however, is that once you get a popular game up and running, your inbox starts to fill with all kinds of offers: Merchandising, porting, offers for other markets, and different amounts of money that come with each. Imangi says they're considering all of these, but their main goal is to stay as independent as possible. "We like being independent," says Shepherd. The couple have always had an artist working with them as a third developer, and have since brought on a few more people to help with support and other tasks, but "we're not trying to grow," they say. And that's the biggest issue with selling the company itself. Certainly, they've had offers from bigger publishers, but "if we were to really sell the company," says Shepherd, "we'd have to grow the team a lot." And while they admit extra resources might be nice, Imangi still seems perfectly happy as a core team of two. On iOS itself, Temple Run is getting an update in the next few weeks, with more objectives to take on, possibly more environments to run through, and some "powerup stuff" as well. But outside of that, Imangi is taking a well-deserved breather on development at the moment, and focusing on simply growing all of the business they have. What advice do they have for other developers searching for freemium success? "You need to start with solid work," says Luckyanova. Imangi's been putting good games together on iOS for a while, and so it was probably only a matter of time before one of their titles was able to pay off.
Daily iPhone App: Temple Run
The latest title from popular iOS developers Imangi Studios (creators of Harbor Master and Max Adventure) is called Temple Run, and was released to the App Store last week. We've watched the development of this one pretty closely -- I saw an early version of it at GDC, and we saw it again later on in the year, as well as in Imangi's own promotional footage. It's a running game in the style of Canabalt, though it features 3D graphics and a behind-the-back perspective rather than a 2D side-scroller engine. Gameplay is a little more complex than other titles of this ilk, too: You swipe to the left or right to turn, and swipe up or down to either jump or duck under logs in your path. The action's hectic and fun, with a Simon kind of feel, as you swipe ever faster trying to dodge all of the obstacles in your path. You can also tilt your device to collect coins on the left or right, and those coins can then be used for upgrades, offering a little progression system (as well as a way for Imangi to offer convenience-based in-app purchases). Playing the game once will probably show you all it has to offer, but then begins the score chase, made even more intriguing by Game Center leaderboards and achievements. Temple Run is another quality title from the husband-and-wife team at Imangi, one you definitely shouldn't miss if you're a fan of this genre or this developer. It's on the App Store now for just US 99 cents.
GDC 2011: The future of Imangi Studios
The husband and wife team of Keith Shepherd and Natalia Luckyanova make up Imangi Studios, the iPhone developer behind line-drawing hit Harbor Master. We've been following the duo for a while now, and we last talked to them at WWDC, when they were pretty far along in development with a game called Max Adventure, a dual-stick shooter with a plucky kid with a laser gun for a hero. Max Adventure was released last December (and has since been updated), and Imangi tells me at GDC that the launch went well -- mostly. "It was the best launch we've had on our own," says Shepherd, adding that both the ratings and sales numbers were great after the game released in mid-December. "But then...," says Luckyanova, trailing off. Then, it turns out, came the EA sale, filling the App Store charts with 99-cent sales of premium EA titles, and Imangi's carefully crafted Max Adventure got "crushed" in the Christmas rush. But the best part of the story is what happened next: a little while after Imangi had a blue Christmas, EA called them. The company liked Imangi's games and wanted to talk about a possible publishing deal.
Fruit Ninja and Max Adventure for iOS updated with new content
Two of TUAW's favorite App Store apps (and probably yours as well) have been updated with new content. Halfbrick's Fruit Ninja has a few new swords to play with, including one that plays piano music as you swipe. There are new leaderboards to fight your friends (and everyone else) on for the Classic and Zen modes. Great free update for a terrific app -- no wonder it's sold 6 million copies (inspiring Halfbrick to build up an orchard in order to pay back karma for all that destroyed virtual fruit). Imangi's great Max Adventure dual-stick shooter has also been updated with a new survival level and a few performance improvements and bug fixes. More importantly, it's on sale right now for just 99 cents, so if you haven't grabbed this one yet, now's your chance. I just picked it up again recently, and despite the kid-friendly graphics and storyline, the action and progression are a lot of fun. We've got appointments with both Halfbrick and Imangi at GDC next week, so stay tuned to hear what's coming next from these two great iOS developers.
TUAW's Daily App: Max Adventure
Max Adventure has been quite a while in the making. I first saw it at 360iDev earlier this year, and then again at WWDC, where we met up with the husband-and-wife team of Imangi Studios to talk about how it was coming along during development. You may have also seen this video of a level being made in the game. Finally, everything is done, and a few days ago, the game itself showed up on the App Store. It's a hit so far, too. Even though it's a dual-stick shooter, a genre that's been done to death on the iPhone, Max Adventure's got a fun and original sense of humor -- you play a little kid fighting off parent-kidnapping aliens around the neighborhood. There's an excellent story mode to play through, with progression, power-ups and quests to find and do, and if you finish that, there's a survival mode as well, complete with Game Center achievements and leaderboards. Just as you'd expect from Imangi, the folks behind Harbor Master (who recently updated their original app with Retina Display graphics just for the heck of it), the quality is excellent all around. The team at Imangi has put a whole lot of love into this one, and it shows. At the introductory price of just 99 cents (for the universal app!), Max Adventure is a bargain, even during the crowded holiday season. Odds are you've already picked up a few games this year, but even if that's the case, go find another buck in your couch because this one's a must-buy.
Watch a Max Adventure level get created in three minutes
The good folks at Imangi Studios (husband-and-wife team Natalia and Keith) are hard at work on their latest iPhone game Max Adventure, and they've been sharing updates from the trials and tribulations of making a big iPhone game via their twitter accounts. Among those updates today was this little gem above -- Keith Shepherd hammering out a Max Adventure level over a time-lapse video. It's pretty cool to see, not only for how he builds the level block-by-block, but to see what changes as he goes along versus what apparently was the original plan. The whole time lapse plays out from a four hour period of real time, and considering how big the game will eventually be, this is probably a drop in the bucket. Shepherd also says the level editor is one that Imangi actually built for themselves, alongside Max Adventure (though presumably they'd be able to use it for other apps as well). Fun little behind-the-scenes of an iPhone game on this Saturday afternoon.
