Voting for Pocket Gamer’s annual mobile gamer awards has begun. Sponsored by Cocoa China, Everyplay, and ARM, with additional support from Quality Index, Free App Alliance and Appromoter, Pocket Gamer Awards 2013 celebrates the best of portable gaming in 2012.
The awards are divided into 16 different categories such as the best game by format, best game by genre, best developer, best publisher, and the overall game of the year. Nominations are hand-picked by the editorial team of Pocket Gamer from iOS, Android, Vita, 3DS, Windows Phone and beyond released in 2012. Voters now have until 12PM (midday) GMT on the 18th March 2013 to vote in the awards.
If you’re headed to PAX Prime this weekend, one booth you will want to hit is Indie game dev BitFlip Games. They’ll be showing off their debut title, Minion Masters, which they’ve billed as a digital boardgame. BitFlip has revealed a full slate of goodies for interested gamers, both who attend PAX and even those not so lucky, which include pre-order discounts, giveaways, and a contest.
The BitFlip Games booth hosts six stations of multiplayer Minion Master matches. Gamers can train with new in-game tutorials, challenge friends to matches, build customized decks, and dabble to their heart’s desire with the Level Editor. You’ll even get a chance to interrogate ask questions of the developers to get tips and tricks of the game.
BitFlip is also giving away limited edition Minion Master trading cards to everyone who comes by the booth. The cards feature the art of Raul Arbolea Santos and is the first ever collectible material available from the game. You can also pre-order the game at a 25% discount. The pre-order gets you into the closed beta running right now, as well as exclusive access to ‘Play with a Developer’ events, where you can join in weekly multiplayer matches with the BitFlip Games dev team.
Finally, BitFlip is running a Twitter hashtag contest that everyone is invited to participate in. Anyone who tweets with the #MinionMaster tag during PAX (Friday, August 31st at 9AM through Sunday, September 2nd at 6PM) will be entered to win. The Grand Prize winner will become immortalized as an in-game Minion. Two first prize Minion Master Founder’s Accounts are available and include the Minion Master game, instant access to the closed beta, and will receive every expansion released for the lifetime of the game. Finally, fifteen second prize winners will receive the complete set of Limited Edition Minion Master Trading Cards.
If you’re not familiar with Minion Masters, in this digital board game that merges collectible card game tactics with miniature war gaming strategies on a digital screen, players control armies of figurines on a hex-based board and summon their Minions using a custom built deck of cards. Minion Master will boast a Deck Builder, 6 player co-op and versus multiplayer, a Level Editor, and a constantly expanding universe of Minions to control.
BitFlip Games will be hosting a booth on the 6th floor, space #6011, open to all PAX attendees. And we’ll be interviewing them, so watch out for that podcast episode!
After 6 weeks of vigorous competition, the winner of the iPhoneAppCafe App Idol contest has finally been revealed. Eric Egong won the grand prize with his idea for Boom!erang against some stiff competition. Eric wins a prize of $1,000, courtesy of us at iGame Radio, and gets his app developed by leading development company Locassa as well as continued mentoring from the App Idol judging panel and exposure on iPhoneAppCafe, iGame Radio, iPhone Life Magazine, and numerous other partner sites.
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Today, Atari’s Pong Indie Developer Challenge has wrapped up and three top indie developers have netted cash prizes and the chance to release their new interpretation of Pong on the App Store. Chosen from a group of 7 finalists, the top winners are zGames, MadRuse Games, and Eppy Games. Looking over the YouTube videos of their game ideas really gives you an idea of the creativity in the indie game development scene.
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On Tuesday, we got intel that told us OSX listings of Call of Duty: Black Ops were showing up in the Steam database. Now we have confirmation: Aspyr Media has just released news that CoD: Black Ops will be coming to the Mac this fall. The game will be available for both digital download and in boxed format.
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UPDATE: We forgot to mention that we have THREE cards, so get on it! They’re burning a hole in our pockets!
Ready for a $15 iTunes gift card? We thought you would be! R-Tap, the new music rhythm tapping game from SK Planet for iPhone and iPad, is hosting this baby. So check the game out, and whoever replies on Facebook or Twitter first, gets it!
Today, Atari revealed the 20 indie developers that have made it past the first round of the Pong Indie Developer Challenge announced back in February. These semi-finalists, chosen from a total of 87 submissions, will now work to deliver a game build and compete to become contest finalists, earning Atari’s publishing support, upfront cash prizes and a position on Atari’s Developer Spotlight.
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The Indie shmup Brick-Force has launched their open beta today. All players who have registered for the Open Beta will be granted immediate access to this free-to-play sandbox shooter. Every registered player will also receive a special key code that will allow them to invite an unlimited number of friends to the VIP Open Beta as well.
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