SpacetimeStudios
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Arcane Legends gets a new expansion, with a new exclusive item from TUAW
Spacetime Studios is releasing an update for its latest mobile MMO this afternoon, called Arcane Legends, and not only will you get access to a bunch of new content, but TUAW has an exclusive item for you to download in the game. The expansion is called Kraken Isles, and contains all sorts of fun new content to play with, from new areas to new armor sets, a level cap raise, lots of pirate-y action and a reset of the leaderboards so you can keep battling for the top place. But that's not all -- in addition to the new expansion, TUAW has a promo code for the game that will nab you an exclusive item based on your class. To get it for free, all you have to do is obviously download and start up the app (it's free), create your character, and then play through the introductory area. Once you reach the first multiplayer section (called the town of Windmoore), you just open up the chat pane and then type in "/promocode tuawkraken" (without the quote marks), and you'll get your free item! Pretty cool. Spacetime has been doing a great job on these MMOs for years, and the latest Arcane Legends release looks like no exception. If you haven't jumped in to play the game yet, definitely give it a download, and be sure to grab your free item from TUAW, too! Update: One quick note: The exclusive item won't go live until the expansion does, which we're told will be later on this afternoon. So check back then if the code doesn't work yet.
Spacetime Studios' MMOs go cross-platform with a Chrome release
I've been a fan of Spacetime Studios' MMOs on the iPhone for a while now. That's right -- while multiplayer and even massively multiplayer games are easy to find these days, Spacetime Studios was doing a full-scale World of Warcraft-style MMO back in the early days of iOS with Pocket Legends. The company recently followed that up with the successful Star Legends. Now it has created another technological wonder. Not only has Spacetime released both MMOs as full browser-based desktop apps on the Chrome Store (playable inside the Google Chrome browser), but it's somehow figured out cross-platform play, so those playing on iOS could join folks on Android or the desktop in a single game. Obviously, it doesn't mean much for the game itself (you'll still just see players in the world as normal) but the tech is very impressive indeed. Spacetime's impressive mobile efforts are more compelling when you consider that it started out working on a full-scale PC MMO. Congrats to the team on all of its success. If you haven't tried these games yet, you should. Spacetime is definitely bringing the MMO genre out to a larger audience across a lot of really new platforms.
Pocket Legends offers paid content for free
Pocket Legends, I maintain, is one of iOS' best technical achievements. It's a full-featured MMO, in the style of the legendary World of Warcraft, and it's available to play for free on Apple's App Store. It's huge among a certain audience (and, in fact, I've been told that audience is even bigger on the Android side of things), but I'm surprised that even more players haven't tried this game out to see what Spacetime Studios is working on. Maybe this will help, though: to celebrate the game's one-year anniversary, Spacetime is opening up many of its normally premium content areas to all players for free. In a goofy video they made, developer Cinco Barnes says that all of the game's major premium areas will be open and playable to everyone until May 4. If you haven't taken a look at this app yet, now's a great time to do so. Pocket Legends is free in a universal version, and it's definitely worth checking out.
GDC 2011: Spacetime Studios returns to Blackstar
I last spoke with Spacetime Studios' CEO Gary Gattis last year at GDC Online in Austin, and when I saw him then, he told me his company was commissioned to create a PC MMO for NCsoft called Blackstar. Spacetime spent months and months of work on the project before it was abruptly canceled, leaving the company in the lurch and requiring it to make cutbacks until it got to work on what was supposed to be a much smaller project. That project eventually became Pocket Legends, an MMO that's now thriving on the iOS App Store. The game has seen over 3 million downloads across both the Apple and Android platforms (somewhat surprisingly, the game is more popular on Android, where Gattis says he's seen "more numbers and more money" coming in), and is an unqualified success. It's so successful, in fact, that when Spacetime thought about what to do for its second game, Gattis and company decided to go back to their origins and recreate Blackstar on the mobile platform.
GDC Online 2010: Spacetime Studios and the making of Pocket Legends
Pocket Legends has been out on the App Store for quite a while now, but if you (like me) haven't seen it in a while, you might want to check it out again. Spacetime Studios has been steadily updating the game, and the title they showed off at GDC Online 2010 this week was pretty impressive -- an instanced MMO, running in full 3D with three character classes, dungeons and loot, and almost all of the other trappings you'd expect from the genre. This week, I got to sit in on both Cinco Barnes' panel about the studio and its up-and-down background. I also chatted with the company's CEO, Gary Gattis, both about Spacetime's history and what it's done with Pocket Legends so far, and what's in store for the growing title.
Pocket Legends updated to Pocket Legends: Adventures, a full MMO on iOS
I tried Pocket Legends for the iPhone a while back, and found it to be pretty interesting. It's a full 3D MMO inside the iPhone, where you create a character, equip it with weapons, and then jump in with a few other people to hack, slash, and cast your way through a dungeon. It could use a little polish (the particular dungeon I played wasn't exactly tuned for my difficulty level, and the people I played with weren't exactly forgiving), but if you're looking for this kind of cartoony MMO gameplay, Pocket Legends actually delivers quite well. And since it's completely free, there's not a huge investment barrier anyway. And the game just recently got a big update, adding in an actual explorable world, a bunch of new quests and items to play with, and some optimization to the game engine that makes it a little more forgiving on older devices (but the game looks pretty good, given what it is, on the iPhone 4 already). It's available on the App Store for free right now for both iPhone and iPad -- what Spacetime Studios has done in implementing a full PC-style MMO on Apple's handheld device is impressive, and the new update makes it even moreso. If you've never given Pocket Legends a look, but can appreciate a solid MMO, definitely check it out.
