iGame Radio

 

What’s inside this episode:

• An interview with Max Schaefer, Travis Baldree, and Jason Beck of Runic Games about how development is going on the Mac version of Torchlight, how the digital download has been received, and how the art for the game is created.



• Also, a review of Atlantis Sky Patrol for the iPhone by Big Fish Games. Join the Sky Patrol and defend the world from the evil doomsday devices with a flick of your finger.

NOTE: I’ll be taking next week off, so my next podcast will be scheduled to drop on November 12th. And maybe then I’ll be back on schedule.

From Inside Mac Games: Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning is now available for the Mac! Warhammer Online features Realm vs Realm gameplay , allowing you to choose which army to ally with. You can join in PvE public quests as a solo player as well. Explore the world, learn ancient lore, or fight alongside your friends. Advanced guild features give more control to leaders and their members, and make guilds and integral part of the war efforts.

System requirements:

• Mac OS X 10.5.7 Leopard or higher
• Intel Core Duo Processor
• 2 GB RAM
• ATI X1600 or NVIDIA 7300 GT with 128 MB of Video RAM
• At least 15 GB of hard drive space for installation
• This game will NOT run on PowerPC (G3/G4/G5) based Mac systems (PowerMac).
• This game will NOT run on the Intel GMA 950 or X3100 class of integrated video cards.

You can download the full client here if you already have a Warhammer account, or the trial client if you want to try it out first for 30 days. The game is $19.95 from GameTree Online.

Runic Games has release another trailer of their action RPG, Torchlight. This game is already available for the PC for digital download, and will shortly be available for the Mac. In fact, I’ll be doing a studio tour with them today! Got a question, send me an email, a tweet, or post a question here.

Seems like a lot of games are moving over from other platforms to the iPhone. Check these three out just this week:

From the Wii, we have Groovin’ Blocks, a mash-up of tetris-style play and music gaming. As colored block pieces fall, players are challenged not just to clear the board of color matches, but to do so to the beat of the music. There’s even a color-blind mode. You can pick up Groovin’ Blocks for $1.99.

Word Spin for the iPhone and iPod Touch has hit the App Store. Word Spin is a word game in which you spin lettered wheels to spell as many words as you can. The game comes with a solitaire mode as well as a challenge mode to go up against your friends. You can check out a trailer of how the game runs here, or hop onto the App Store and download it for a limited-time introductory price of $1.99.

I-play has released Bubble Town 2 for the iPhone and iPod Touch. The sequel to the hit Facebook game, Bubble Town 2 utilizes the iPhone accelerometer technology to enhance gameplay. Players carefully aim, lob and shoot colorful borbs to pop three or more of the same kind. Bubble Town 2 also includes the new lob shot, invasion mode, and power-ups. The game is available for $2.99.

Com2uS has announced that their latest iPhone game, Sniper vs. Sniper: Online, has hit the AppStore. A first-person shooter, Sniper vs. Sniper features both a single-player and multi-player mode. You can engage in players from around the world head to head, or work in teams in Alliance Attack mode against terrorist groups. The single-player mode features a six mission campaign, including upgraded weaponry and achievements.

In the game, you locate your enemy using the tilt function of the iPhone, then tap to shoot. A missed shot will alert your enemy to your location. Interestingly enough, you can shoot more than just human enemies in the game…aliens, and even cats get targeted. Though that last one is part of an effort to round up starving cats for the pound, and you are shooting them with a tranquilizer gun.

The game is available for the iPhone and iPod Touch, OS 2.2.1 or later, for $4.99.

 

What’s inside this episode:

• An interview with Matt Miller of Paragon Studios about Issue 16 of City of Heroes, and how CoH made it to the Mac. Most memorable quote? “We had Transgaming show up and with no work from us they showed us a demo of our game using their Cider technology running on a Macintosh.” It’s that easy, folks, to get games on the Mac. Bribe Transgaming. ;-)



• Also, a review of Pipe Mania for the Mac by Virtual Programming. Help Junior and Fawcett perform the most fashionable job in the world…plumbing. Wait, what?



• Plus, a review of Dead Panic for the iPhone by Sean Maher. Can the dead panic?

Dead Panic Screen 2

Feral has just announced that Bioshock for the Mac is available now. The game is shipping worldwide to Mac retailers and those that pre-ordered today. You can order the game from the webstore today or wait for it to hit retail shelves.

From the Feral Interactive website:

Bioshock drops you into the failed utopia of Rapture, a city built beneath the waves and filled with advanced technology, beautiful art deco styling, and some seriously unhinged inhabitants. When genetic enhancements got out of hand, the city started to fall apart. Now at war with itself, Rapture may have found its saviour in the form of an unexpected visitor — you.

Minimum system requirements include:

• Processor: 1.8GHz
• RAM: 1.5GB
• Graphics: 128MB VRAM
• Mac OS: 10.5.8
• Hard Disk: 8GB

The game doesn’t support GMA cards with shared RAM.

The game costs $50. You can order the game here.

Well, if you have haut broadband, that is. According to VentureBeat, Nvidia yesterday announced Cloud 3D, a platform based on its graphics-focused server hardware, the Tesla RS, and iRay, a rendering technology. Basically, developers can use iRay to render 3D images, then stream it all via Nvidia Tesla RS cloud servers to waiting customers. The technology is not quite ready for real-time 3D, as current images take as much as 15 seconds to render. But services will most likely pop-up that can refine and streamline the process over time.

In fact, company Ubermind is currently testing the idea out on the iPhone, albeit with non-real-time images.

Ubermind, based in Seattle, showed off an iPhone app (right) where it could use images from Mental Images and display the images on the iPhone. The app connects the iPhone with a Tesla RS on the back end and then pulls down an image over the web connection to the iPhone. You can thus get a highly realistic image of a car and then rotate the image slowly so that you can see the car from all kinds of views. With the app, the user can also customize the image, changing it, and see the results on the iPhone right away.

Anyone want to take bets as to how long it will be before we have iPhone games streaming real-time 3D images doing location-based play on the 3GS? Perhaps when the that WiFi speed improves a bit….

Scoreloop announced today a new set of social gaming features available for iPhone and iPod Touch games. Core Social is Scoreloop’s white-label solution that integrates social gaming features directly into the user interface of the game. Players can, for example, review high scores online, compare achievements, and throw challenges at each other without exiting the game. Developers can choose which of the many features available to integrate into their game, then create a consistent experience, so that these social features feel part of the gaming experience.

Developers can also take advantage of Scoreloop’s Premium Integration Services, which will do the analysis and integration work for them. Developers that have already taken advantage of this tool include the studios behind Parachute Panic, Astro Boy, and Pee Monkey Jungle Fire (wait, what??).

For more information, pop on over to Scoreloop, or check out the games that have tried out the services.

Also via InsideMacGames, you can finally help the little robot in Machinarium save his girlfriend, released finally for Mac and PC. The game is only $20, and there is a demo available.

Specs include:

• Mac OS X 10.4 or better
• 1.6 GHz PPC or Intel Mac
• 1 GB RAM