JackLumber
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Jack Lumber now available on Steam
Jack Lumber is an excellent game that arrived on iOS last year. It's reminiscient of Fruit Ninja, in that you drag your finger around the screen to chop through wood, though I think it's an improvement on Halfbrick's formula -- it's got a more complex meta game, and the mechanic is a little deeper as well (the action slows down when your finger touches the screen, allowing for different types of cuts and slashes). Jack Lumber is still available on iOS, but just in case you'd rather use a mouse than your finger, the game has just arrived on Steam as well. The Steam version will work on your Mac, or on PC or Linux as well, and it's SteamPlay-enabled, so if you buy for one platform you own them all. Currently, the game is on sale for just $5.02, and while there's no new content, the game has been re-tweaked to work with a mouse (though it will also work with a stylus if you'd rather do that). Jack Lumber is a great title, so definitely grab it on Steam if you're interested in that, or just give it a look on iOS if you didn't before. Update: I was wrong -- the game does have a new "Infinitree" mode to play. So go enjoy that!
The Nomad Flex paintbrush stylus will let you paint on a touchscreen (as well as you already can)
We've talked about the Nomad Brush before -- it's a capacitive paintbrush stylus that's designed to be used on a touchscreen canvas, letting you paint across your iPad's (or iPhone's, though the size of that screen makes it a little tougher) touchscreen with your favorite art-making app. Now, Nomad has introduced a new brush they call the Flex, which has a new synthetic brush tip to use, and comes in what seems to me like a slightly longer size (though that may just be my bad memory). The Flex is available to the public starting this week, and Nomad kindly sent a couple along to TUAW for us to try out and review. In short, the verdict is that this is just another tool for aspiring artists to use. If, like me, you can't draw much more than a stick figure with a smiley face, a house and some of those M-shaped birds, then the Flex won't make you a much better artist. It might make you feel like one, at least, because the brush's capacitive tip does respond quite well to the iPad's screen. I used the Autodesk Sketchbook app to do some test painting, and when I first started, I mashed the brush down on the screen like a standard stylus, pressing it in and then swiping it around. With a little bit of practice, though, I found that the brush would register on the screen at even the slightest touch, so that when I stopped thinking about it as a stylus and started thinking about the interaction as paint on a canvas, it actually worked fairly well. Again, I have zero experience with real painting outside of what I did in kindergarten, but I do get the impression that in the hands of someone who knows how to wield a paintbrush, the Nomad Flex would be very useful. As I discussed with the Nomad's makers earlier this year, there are a few drawbacks to a brush like this. First, Nomad itself doesn't make a painting app to work with the brush: They recommend a few, but you're essentially using third-party apps of your own choice, and those each come with certain issues and features of their own. Painters used to blending colors and the physical properties of paint may obviously find problems with digital painting apps, and the paint on screen may not move around they're used to seeing paint on canvas move. For someone already used to holding a paintbrush while making art, however, the Nomad Flex seems like an excellent tool. I do have one hitch, actually. In Sketchbook, you will sometimes need to just touch on the screen for the app's UI, in order to change around the brush's color, for example, or switch up your brush's width. I instinctively turned the Nomad brush around, thinking that there'd be a capacitive stylus on the opposite end of it. But no dice -- the brush ends in what seems like a metallic stub that could tap on or even crack your screen if it hits hard enough. It seems to me like a no-brainer to turn the other end into a standard stylus, but Nomad hasn't done that for some reason. Just for the heck of it, I also tried using the Flex for something it's not designed for: Playing the great line-drawning game Jack Lumber. I scored fairly well in the level I played, but I have to admit that by the end of it, I preferred the familiar feeling (and responsiveness) of dragging my finger across the screening. Painting with the brush allows you to be a little more expressive, but games, it seems, are designed for a good old hand-attached digit. That silliness aside, the Nomad Flex is a great stylus paintbrush, and if you're a painter who prefers swiping some fibers across the screen rather than your own finger, at $29.99, I would definitely recommend trying it out for sure.
Daily iPad App: Jack Lumber goes chop socky on trees
Sega has just started publishing other developers' games on the App Store through an initiative called Sega Alliance with Jack Lumber, a game by the folks who made Smuggle Truck (or Snuggle Truck, if you caught it post-censorship). This is a title that's heavily inspired by the great Fruit Ninja, but instead of just ripping off Halfbrick's apple-slicing classic, it actually iterates forward on that game quite a bit. For one thing, instead of just slicing through the air as quickly as you can, Jack Lumber will actually pause and slow down the logs you're meant to be cutting through, which lets you set up a little more strategy to your slices. You can cut through multiple logs in one swipe for bonus points, and some logs have to be cut in a certain directly, or chopped twice for maximum points. The game's great fun, and the goofy "Trees killed my grandma" cartoon aesthetic goes a long way towards making the game really colorful and interesting. If you like Fruit Ninja, Jack Lumber is a must buy, and even if you're looking for something new from a line-drawing game, this one's well worth a look. Sega definitely started off its publishing choices right. Jack Lumber is universal and available from the App Store now for just 99 cents. Edit: A previous version of the post listed the wrong publisher. Apologies for any confusion.
Sega Alliance launched, will provide marketing and production support for indies
Sega has announced a mobile initiative that it's calling the Sega Alliance, which seems like a publishing division of Sega Mobile. Sega says the Alliance will "provide participating developers with comprehensive marketing and production support as well as creative consultation." In other words, this is Sega's version of Chillingo, where the company will find indie developers doing good work and back them up with production and creative support, as well as partnering in the revenues when the apps are released. For a lot of indie devs looking for a spotlight, this is probably good news. As open as the App Store is, it can be hard to get seen by users and the press, and teaming with Sega is a good way to do so. Jack Lumber is a new $.99 game on the App Store, and it's the first release through Sega Alliance. The game was created by Owlchemy Labsthe folks behind Snuggle Truck, and it's a game along the lines of Fruit Ninja, where you have to draw lines across your iPad or iPhone to cut wood instead of fruit. The game looks interesting, and we'll have to see how this Sega partnership helps its chances.
