Trading card games have always had a high barrier of entry between cost, practicality, and convenience. Indie game developer MOGAMU is working on reducing that barrier by bringing both practicality and convenience with their new internet trading card game, Force of War.
MOGAMU has only recently started initial development on Force of War so it won’t be released until the fourth quarter of 2012. Once it goes live, it will be an in-depth strategic experience, featuring a unique game play system that will allow for faster matches than most trading card games. The idea of an online only trading card game will get rid of the need for the physical space usually necessary for cards as well as making it much easier to consistently find other players.
Force of War is being developed using HTML5 so that it will not only be as accessible as possible but can be played on all the latest HTML5 enabled devices without depending on special platform specific software.
MOGAMU LLC is a new indie developer that evolved from a game blog in 2010. Force of War is their first game so players can get a first taste of their developers skills when it launches at the end of next year.
What’s inside this episode:
-
Omaha reviews Osmos HD for iPad by Hemisphere Games. A great port of a beautiful ambient arcade game, Osmos HD has taken everything good from the original and dumped any bad stuff. Except for getting it to go fast, fast enough.
Show Notes:
- Apple announced today their fixes for so-called “antennagate”, the issues with the iPhone 4 antenna and connectivity. Free bumper cases for all (till September 30, at least). So, what does this all mean? How will gamers benefit? And shouldn’t Apple have figured this one out during testing?
- Omaha Sternberg and Corey Tamas of MacGamer talk about Blizzard’s re-decision to nix requiring their RealID to use their official forums. They do the Strike-Counterstrike thing and come to some interesting conclusions.
- A mysterious picture is floating around the net, sporting an image of a zombie hand holding up the date of August 2. Could we be looking at an announcement of Plants vs. Zombies 2??
- DS Effects has created what is probably the first HTML5 gaming portal. What could this mean for the future of iPhone gaming?
Music Notes:
- Digital Droo produced our theme music here at iGame Radio.
- Digital Droo featured music from Active Lancer; pick up the Active Lancer soundtrack
- John Gatti for featuring music from El Ballo; pick up the El Ballo soundtrack
Brainium Studio has taken Steve Job’s vision of the future of online gaming to heart and released an HTML5 web app demo of their iPhone game Hand of Greed. Published by Appular, the demo can be viewed via Safari on iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad by navigating to either the Appular or Branium websites.
The HTML5 web app version contains a demo of this game of grab the jewels while blades constantly sweep past threatening to cut off your hands. The same touch screen controls, lighting effects, and animations are in place. The demo contains 3 levels of the game, after which the player is must navigate to the App Store to purchase the full $0.99 version.
The HTML5 web app demo is still in its infancy. The resolution of the game is sized for an iPhone, and this doesn’t change when navigating to the webpage using an iPad. Turning the iPad resizes it; turning it back resizes it yet again to a different resolution. When I reloaded the page, an artifact of the screen remained in a tiny size on the reloaded screen and wouldn’t go away.
Still, the game does work, and flawlessly. I was able to pick up the gems without a problem, and when I didn’t get a gem in time, found my health declining with suitable flashes of red on the screen.
Appular intends on using this web app in conjunction with an advertising model. They are already working with Admob to do this, and are intending on working with Medialets and Apple’s upcoming iAd network as well.
“Creating rich media ads like this will allow unparalleled opportunities for consumers to try out games without having to install a new app” says Brian Akaka, founder of Appular. “Looking forward, we’re excited to work with developers on using this technology to revolutionize app discovery.”
Because the iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad do not use Flash, developers have been looking towards another method to get online interactive media, including games, into the hands of iElectronic devices that Apple releases. Steve Jobs recently wrote an open letter regarding his views on Flash, and spoke of his support of HTML5 for just such a method. HTML5 is an up and coming standard of the Internet for interactive media, such as integrated video and audio on websites, online games, etc.
This is another step towards HTML5 gaming, and hopefully as these types of games become more mainstream, more and more will show up on the iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad.
It’s been a couple of weeks since the historic announcement from Apple revealing the iPad, and the reactions have been an interesting mix of heavy criticism and excitement. The heavy criticism stems mostly from the geek community, that seem to feel that they have been betrayed. Months of hype that at sometimes felt like the inevitable return of the Messiah (or the Jobsiah?), the iPad was far less than many of us perhaps fantasized, though in fact really not that far off the mark from what most analysts and the geek community in general had expected.
Meanwhile, many developers are crowing about the potential the iPad has to offer. For example, former Facebook iPhone developer Joe Hewitt believes that the iPhone’s OS still has a huge amount of potential that hasn’t been tapped. “I felt strongly that all Apple needed to do to revolutionize computing was simply to make an iPhone with a large screen.”
But, to quote one of my all-time favorite movies, “I didn’t make him for *you*!!”
Yes, indeed, Steve Jobs did *not* make the iPad for you and me, fellow members of the geek community. But for your mom, your dad, your grandfather, and my stepdaughter who most decidedly wishes to identify as anything but a geek (while she gleefully texts and gmails her way through life), this is the perfect device. These are the media consumers that will be attracted to the iPad. To quote iShoot developer Ethan Nicholas, “The iPad is a computer for people who don’t like computers…if you have managed to convince yourself that the iPad is a useless, locked-up DRM-laden failure of a ‘computer’ before even touching one, I have two words for you: My mom.”
And, hopefully, they will be attracted to the games that the iPad has to offer. We’ve already seen a few offerings of those possibilities in what both EA showed with Need for Speed and Gameloft showed with N.O.V.A. Many more have already piped up with me-toos of games that they intend to show up on the iPad as well. Others have listed out games that they want to see on the iPad, or speculated on games that would work well for the platform.
Remember that quote of Joe Hewitt’s? That bigger screen really does make a bigger difference. Aspyr Media put out a game early in the iPhone game rush called Buggled. It was a cute little game about trying to touch all the ladybugs on the screen in order, and you could play two person. Unfortunately, the iPhone screen is so small that what could be challenging fun ended up being frustrating. Not to mention how many times the phone kept falling from their hands. My kids got tired of it after a while.
This game on the iPad, however, would be a blast. With a larger screen, it will be easier to find where you need to place your fingers, and easier to expand the number of levels to include. Most importantly, the biggest frustration of the game, the threat of dropping your iPhone, would be removed. Place your iPad on your lap or table top. Include more players. FTW!
But, what about online games? Many are Flash based, and as we well know from the presentation last week, the little blue lego tells us that Flash has been banned from the sacred iPad screen. Ain’t Adobe pissed (enough to use the pr0n card, no less).
Or is it? Adobe had already announced an iPhone tool that would allow developers to create native iPhone applications using Flash. They are in the process of expanding this tool for multiple screen sizes to use on the iPad as well.
Then there’s HTML5. The next version of HTML seeks to reduce the need for proprietary plug-in based internet applications, such as Java and Flash. There are even some preliminary HTML5 platform games that have been created, although they are very rudimentary. These show the potential and power of this new version of the web’s basic markup language.
But none of this means the end of Flash, or Flash-based games. Even if more online games will be using Adobe’s iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad tool and even if more online games start using HTML5 with javascript for the foundation of their game development, you can be sure that Flash will be around for quite a while at least.
So, what’s the conclusion that we can reach? The iPhone has proved that you don’t need Flash to have a healthy mobile game scene. And Facebook has proved that Flash games are extremely popular online. Both can coexist, and I’m sure we’ll see a hell of a lot of great games to come from both sides.
Polls
Loading ...Stuff We Like
