iGame Radio

 

What’s inside this episode:

• A review of Foodies, by Nanotitans. An addictive strategy puzzler with a wide variety of different puzzles to get through and some great music to listen to.
  
• Also, a review of Yo Deshi, published by Proper Games. Yo Deshi is a wonderful meditative strategy game that will stretch your limits of strategic thinking.
  
• Plus, a review of Sprinkle, published by Mediocre Games. Sprinkles is a fun and additive physics puzzler with a need for some refinement in the mechanics to make it the perfect afternoon relaxer.
  

BulkyPix just released their new game Tiny Token Empires for Mac. The game will also launch on iPhone and iPad in the near future.

Tiny Token Empires is a turn-based strategy game with a bit of puzzle gaming mixed in. Sort of like an odd cross between Risk and Bejeweled style matching.

The player can choose one of five ancient empires; Rome, Greece, Egypt, Persia, or Carthage. They then proceed to build cities and armies, annex new territory, and eventually expand their power across the entire globe.

However, Tiny Token never takes itself too seriously as it also includes many comic elements including goofball gods, adorable mythological monsters, clown legionnaires, and other ridiculous things.

The game has four modes, including two different campaign modes and a practice mode. You can download the game from the Mac App Store for $24.99.

Exit Games has released their newest version of their game network engine and socket server, Photon 3. Available for Unity, iOS, Android, Windows Phone 7, HTML5, Flash, Silverlight, and more, Photon 3 is available for download today.

Some of the enhancements featured in this newest version include load balancing, utility networking, server-to-server interface, HTML5 and Windows Phone 7.1 client libraries, and more. Exit Games claims that Photon 3 enables all platforms covered to create cross-platform multiplayer games thatscale for tens of thousands of concurrent users. “Photon 3 incorporates and condenses all our knowledge from AAA projects and makes it available and accessible to everyone,” says CTO of Exit Games Christof Wegmann.

All Photon customers who bought a license after April 1rst 2011 will be provided with a free upgrade to version 3. Also, Exit Games provides free licenses for all the platforms mentioned above and more. Developers can find the newest demos and documentation at the site’s documentation page.

Red 5 Studios has announced that Frag Doll founder Morgan “Rhoulette” Romine is joining their team. She’s being brought on to champion the potential of their new game Firefall as a professionally competitive first person shooter. With the game gearing up for release in December 2011 it will be her job to sell the e-sports community on the idea of a truly competitive free-to-play FPS.

After founding the Ubisoft all-girl professional gaming team “The Frag Dolls” Romine became the team’s manager and captain. She became the main spokesperson for the team, a role she used to advocate for women in the industry. Red 5 Studios is hoping to use her experience, involvement, and insight into the culture of competitive gaming to round out their e-sports division.

“I believe this game has awesome e-sports potential,” said Romine, “because Red 5 is committed to creating a competitive experience that is as fun to watch as it is to play.” Red 5 CEO Mark Kern stated that “with her caliber of experience and deep community roots, Firefall is poised to take the world of e-sports to the next level.”

As of right now it’s only being developed for Windows but a Mac version will go into production if the demand is high enough. Their community team will definitely be aware of any and all requests for a Mac version as several members of their e-division are in fact Mac gamers in addition to PC gamers.

The Firefall beta is on now; the full free-to-play game will be released in December.

Paradise Beach for iPad is a tycoon-style click management game where you design, build, and manage some of the world’s leading beach resorts. The game includes “Where’s Waldo” style hidden object hunts, two game-play modes, and a plot declared interesting by the developer. The game is a freemium download, with in-app purchase of $4.99 to upgrade. Based on comments on iTunes, what you download is a lite version, and the $4.99 buys the full game.

Total Eclipse is a tabletop RPG system that has been formatted specifically to work on your iOS or other smart phones/tablet devices. Developed by Disrupted Gears and set to publish by ShrapnelGames, the system is meant to allow for regular level advancement in microsteps, as well as an attribute system that supposedly eliminates min-maxing and encourages actual role-playing. The first four books in the system will be formatted for any eReader, so not just those with smartphones or tablets can read them. And if enough interest is shown, print-on-demand will occur. The game system will be released before the end of 2011, and a call for beta testers has already gone out.

Fix-It-Up: Kate’s Adventure by G5 Entertainment was released today. Though the storyline is quite stereotypical, the plot is a little different from most time management games. Kate must learn to fix cars and other vehicles and manage the shops to save her father’s auto business. The game includes six locations with 10 different types of cars and several different modes to play with. Fix-It-Up: Kate’s Adventure can be found for iPhone, and an iPad version is also available. The game downloads for free, but requires a $2.99 in-app purchase to unlock the full game ($4.99 for iPad).

 

What’s inside this episode:

• Host Omaha Sternberg and co-host Corey Tamas of Macgasm talk about the week’s news in Mac and iOS gaming. First up, Epic has finally brought Mac support to the Unreal Engine 3 SDK. Or at least a beta version of it. Corey and Omaha talk about the implications of this and what might happen now.
• Valve has launched something called Steam Trading. Corey and Omaha talk about what that is, and whether it makes any sense.
• CRTC, the Canadian government’s telecommunications regulators, has told Rogers Communications to stop throttling the bandwidth of online gaming. Rogers says they aren’t. Corey tells us his opinion…it’s a strong one.
• Square Enix announced at the Tokyo Game Show that they are bringing some of their classic console RPGs to the iOS.
• OpenFeint has a new CEO, and Corey needs a new mouth.
• Feral Interactive has been a busy kitty these past few weeks. Find out big news they’ve announced and what you can look forward to for Christmas.
• Blizzard has announced their Diablo III closed beta. Which means playing Diablo III can’t be far behind. And yet some complain it is late already?
• Poll: Wow, that many gamers haven’t upgraded to Lion?

Music Notes:

• Digital Droo produced our theme music here at iGame Radio.
• Pedro Camacho featured some of his game demo music.
• Rich Carlson featured music from Weird Worlds: Return to Infinite Space.

 

We sat down with lead designer Kristoffer Touborg of EVE Online to talk the ins and outs of the latest update to this space sandbox MMOG, Incarna, and the upheaval that resulted from the launch of their in-game store.

We also had a chance to talk about the myth that EVE Online is too difficult to play, or that everyone hates you while playing it, and dispel those rumors with some more concrete information and facts.

Back in July, Astroslugs was released for iPad. Now the puzzle game has been released for the iPhone/iPod Touch as well, with a major update to the iPad version too. The player must gather energy at different planets by solving puzzles that activates “slugballs”, releasing energy for his spacecraft. To solve a puzzle, the player must draw the ancient hieroglyphs of the Astrolugs’ ancestors in a limited game area. The update includes 20 more planets to explore, an in-app purchase to open all planets instead of doing it in-game, and bug and performance enhancements. You can get the iPhone version for $0.99.

Serious Sam: Kamikaze Attack is an iOS game by Be-Rad Entertinament, Croteam and Devolver Digital released ahead of Serious Sam: BFE. You’ll be able to pursue Same by directing the Headless Kamikaze through 40+ levels and challenge modes. The game looks to be a horizontal platformer sporting iconic art from the Serious Sam series. The game is available for $0.99.

Big Blue Bubble has released a sequel to their rope burning game, Burn the Rope: Worlds for the iPhone/iPod Touch. The goal of the game is to burn as much rope as possible without letting the flames burn out. As the flames only burn upwards, the phone must be rotated to keep the flames going. Along the way different types of bugs crawling along the rope can help or hinder players as they try to solve each puzzle. The game sports 100 levels, four themed worlds, and a mini-game called Endless Burn where the player tries to collect as many bugs as possible. The catch is that as the player collects bugs their flame trail gets longer, and if they run into the flame trail the round is over. Burn the Rope: Worlds is out now for $0.99.

…you can create a site like Pwndbygirls, where gaming meets sex head-on. Alana “superpinkninja” Evans and Misti “meowmistidawn” Dawn are gamer girls that just happen to be porn stars as well. They want to share their gaming passion with other gamers.

But according to The Escapist, they want to also share their passion for porn by including topless playthroughs. The site will have streaming gaming parties where the gamer girls will play games and jiggle their bits. Seems a bit distracting to us. The last thing we want to catch our eye when we’re trying to snipe someone is a bouncing boob.

The site will also include reviews, profiles, and other gaming coverage. We’ve looked over the reviews posted so far (all by Evans) and can’t really tell exactly what kind of reviewer she is. The review of LA Noire is a fairly competent review covering the basics and doing a decent job of giving impressions and feedback. The second review, of Bulletstorm, is a mishmash of LOLs and HaHas, bad grammar, and even worse formatting for a difficult read and an even more difficult understanding of the game itself. In fact, it almost seemed as though the two reviews were written by two different people.

You can even become a Gamer Girl on the site. There are a list of requirements, including the fact that you can’t participate in any of the live streaming if you don’t live in the LA area. There is also no mention of financial recompense, so we don’t know if this is a paid or volunteer position.

Gamers will be able to watch and chat with Evans and Dawn over Xbox Live and PlayStation Network. The site launched today to celebrate the release of Gears of War 3, which Evans said was her favorite game series.

*Note: yeah, we know it doesn’t have to do with Mac gaming, but we couldn’t resist.

Okay, we missed this one when it first came out at the beginning of the month. The Baconing, by Hothead Games, has hit the Mac App Store with sizzling vengeance. And thongs that taste good fried.

Really. Watch the trailer if you don’t trust us on that one.

Join Deathspank as he defeats Anti-Spank and his army of Cyborques created when Deathspank..err…erred. It’s an arcade style shoot-em-up and puzzler combo with over the top graphics and story that will make you laugh. And wonder how much LSD the writers were on that day.

You can also play local co-op with friends and choose from four different side-kicks, such as Bob from Marketing. You can download The Baconing from the Mac App Store for $11.99.