iGame Radio

JiGSAW Puzzle 99 by App Developer 99 is one of the most feature rich jigsaw puzzle games we’ve seen for iPhone. You get 99 puzzles built in, but you can create an infinite number of them through connecting to DeviantART and NASA Feeds and searching Flickr with any keyword search, as well as just taking pictures out of your own library or taking a snapshot right then and there. There’s both a single-player and two-player mode, although it’s unclear whether two-player is bluetooth or online. Shake your iPhone to start over. The game has a lite version, and the full version goes for $1.99.

The initial description for Running Sheep HD was not very attractive to us. We highly recommend that developer Ladia Group change that, because it was the trailer that won us over. Sheep that have been abducted by aliens must now find their way back home. But doing so requires strategic thinking in real-time, as while you are trying to direct their movements, the sheep keep running. It’s a frantic game of planning, replanning, and then replanning again how to change the sheep’s direction. The game goes for $2.99 for your iPad.

For far too long tower defense games have been giving the evil guys short shrift. Well, no more, says Simutronics, the developers of Tiny Heroes. The guys who previously brought us geoDefense and geoDefense Swarm has created a tower defense game within the dungeon where the heroes are the bad guys, and you are defending the dungeon. The trailer is an awesome spectacle of the many ways you can slice and dice the heroes down through building towers, setting traps, summoning minions and conjuring spells. Game Center and OpenFeint integration is included. For $2.99 you can get the game for all iOS devices.

• JiGSAW Puzzle 99
• Running Sheep HD
• Tiny Heroes

Machinarium is back, and this time for the iPad 2. Amanita Design has finished their port of their popular Indie strategy puzzler, but only to the iPad 2. We spoke to Jakub Dvorsky of Amanita, and he regretfully stated that to keep all of the animations and details, they needed more memory than a 256MB iPad would give. Follow the path of the little robot searching for his girlfriend in this wonderful post-human game of love and revenge. The iPad 2 version is available for $4.99.

Sketch Games has released a new take on an old idea. ArkanoArena takes the arcade game Arkanoid and merges them with some new gameplay mechanics and great Steampunk visuals. You won’t just be blasting breaks in the traditional sense…you’ve got powerups and upgrades to add into the fray as well. This game that was previously released for iPad is now out for iPhone for $1.99.

Lastly, PopCap Games has released a major update for Plants vs Zombies for iPhone. This wildly popular tower defense game pitting zombie against plants now sports nine mini-games from the original PC/Mac version, a new micro-game, and Game Center Achievements. The mini-games include favorites Walnut Bowling 2, Bobsled Bonanza, and ZomBotany 2, while the micro-game seems to be a take off on the original digging to China achievement in the iPad version, called “Race to China”. Mini-games come in packs which can be purchased through in-game coinage earned, or purchased via in-app purchases of $0.99.

• Machinarium
• ArkanoArena for iPhone
• Plants vs. Zombies

G5 Entertainment has released the next installment in the Jane’s business ventures series for iPhone. In Jane’s Hotel: Family Hero, Jane must try to save her family’s hotel chain from being sold. She must buy hotels one by one, then develop a management strategy to earn enough profit to pay out the loans in time. The game offers strategic thinking to coordinate purchasing the right hotels with skill upgrades. The game is being released for free, with an in-app purchase for full content. Normally $4.99, G5 is offering an introductory price of $2.99 through the end of today (September 9).

Playpen Studios has taken the concept of Guitar Hero to its next logical step. In Skillz: DJ Hero, players select a DJ and strive for superstardom, gaining fans by scratching and tapping their way through original remixes of popular tracks from Kid Cudi vs Crookers, People Under the Stairs and Diplo, among others. The UI looks familiar…a guitar neck wherein the required notes to play stream down. But the videos show that you have multiple tools to use to play those notes, including virtual vinyl on each side, and require in many instances two hands to do it. On hard, it looks quite the challenge. The full version for iPad has released for $5.99 with 25 mixes, and a lite version with several select songs released for free. Playpen promises more mixes in the future as well.

NaturalMotion Games, developers of the Backbreaker Football franchise, has released NFL Rivals for the iPhone. This game brings fantasy football to the iOS. However, rather than managing a team, players are actually playing games, then having their score uploaded to the team’s global ranking through the game’s NFL Points system. So each score increases your team’s global rank. The game features all 32 NFL teams and the league’s official license and promised amazing visuals (which the screens seem to bear out). NFL Rivals has been released for iPhone for $2.99.

• NFL RIVALS
• Skillz for iPad
• Jane's Hotel 2: Family Hero

 

We sat down with Mark Jessup and Lane Daughtry of Tinkerhouse Games at a booth in a little-known restaurant hidden away at PAX Prime 2011. This booth was their Booth, with quiet to boot. Tinkerhouse Games has released Current, what one might call a match-3 shooter, as well as a clever app called The Airhornsman, and are working on a children’s app called Monster Orchestra. We talk with them about their games, their philosophy about development, and why they left the traditional game dev scene to work on mobile game development.

Transgaming showed off Kula Blox at Casual Connect 2011 and we got an opportunity to play it before it was released. Today it sees the light of commercial dawn for iPhone/iPod Touch, iPad, Mac, PC, and GameTree TV, Transgaming’s gaming for television platform. Kula Blox is a vertical platformer wherein you play an animal seeking your prey. You get bigger as you eat, but you have the added dimension of having to avoid the predators that would eat you. Gather powerups and upgrade your animal’s abilities as you play along. The game is definitely an all-ages thing and we found it quite a lot of fun for the short time we tried it out. It’s available on iPhone for $0.99 and iPad for $1.99.

Some of you may remember King of Dragon Pass. This game was a turn-based strategy game with RPG elements, and won the Best Visual Arts Award at the 2nd IGF. You can’t play it on your Mac anymore…requires Classic to do it. However, A-Sharp decided to solve that conundrum by bringing King of Dragon Pass to the iOS instead. Take your clan to preeminence by battling other clans and foreign elements in the world of Glorantha (also the setting for RuneQuest and HeroQuest). The UI has been reworked for the iPhone, the least interesting gameplay elements dropped, and more story added. The game was originally intended to be 40+ hours, so don’t think you’ll be playing this game while waiting to buy stamps! That’s why the game isn’t scrapping the bottom of the barrel for price either…$9.99 for this one.

Defen-G Astro by innodis is an action strategy game. The screens look nice, but the trailer really gives a sense of the gameplay which is much more intriguing. However, if one were to go by the comments of those on iTunes, the biggest complaint seems to be that the AI hits its peak quickly, and the game bores after that. Whatever the case, the game certainly has some interesting gameplay elements, and fast action. Defen-G Astro costs $2.99, but does include a $4.99 in-app purchase for the “Total Package”. So the whole game would be $7.98…a bit steep in our minds.

• KULA BLOX
• King of Dragon Pass
• Defen-G Astro

Tricky Software has released Emma and the Inventor HD, a hidden object game for the iPad. Emma must save her crazy-inventor grandfather who has accidentally trapped himself in a mysterious void courtesy of his latest invention. Originally released for the Mac and PC, Tricky Software seems to have redesigned the game UI for the iPad. From the trailer, it looks to be a fairly standard looking hidden object game with a variety of puzzles to solve and hidden objects to find, and some beautiful hand-drawn art. A limited version of the game is free, but you can unlock the full version for $4.99.

Blood Bunnies by Mentalwarp Games seems to have more potential than anything else. As a bunny, you jump around grabbing powerups and weapons and trying to defeat other bunnies by jumping on top of them. Which results in the bunnies disappearing. There is an option to turn on blood splatters, but from the trailer that would seem out of place in the artwork. There is a multiplayer version that pits you up against others online, but the biggest complaint seems to be that it doesn’t work very well, or at all. The graphics are also not retina-based, and can look rather blurry on higher end devices. The game is free to play, but you can unlock some of the modes with in-app purchases.

Anooki Jump is a rather psychedelic vertical physics puzzler for iPhone and iPad. Published by Bulkypix, the game was just released yesterday. You must maneuver two little Eskimos over ice blocks. As you do, you lose energy, but Anooki Jump introduces a new idea. When one Eskimo has run out of energy, you can have the other one take over. The game is available for all devices for $0.99.

• Emma and the Inventor HD
• Bloody Bunnies
• Anooki Jump

 

What’s inside this episode:

Omaha Sternberg talks with Will Stallwood and Dain Saint of Cipher Prime about the origins of the company and the reasoning behind the design and development of their games. Cipher Prime likes to buck trends to achieve the most important thing…hitting the fun mark for their games. Also, Cipher Prime applies the “scientific method” to figuring out how to make their business models work.

UPDATE: Frima got back to me with a great screenshot, and a couple of corrections, including that they are the developers of the Facebook version of Pocket God.

Frima Studios, developers of the Facebook version of Pocket God, have a new quirky game up their sleeves. A Space Shooter for Free is the iOS version of their PSN arcade game A Space Shooter for Two Bucks. Showing the game off at PAX Prime last weekend, Frima talked to us about this arcade game in detail, complete with an arcade cabinet to play it. Also, a hint at their new tower defense game for iOS, Nun Attack (which Frima likes to call a “Tower Offence” game), featuring a team of covert nuns. Nun booth babes, FTW!

 

Audrey Leprince and Emeric Thoa have spent the past decade or so working with Ubisoft on Tom Clancy games, among other console games. But the lure of the mobile smartphone has brought them to the dark side. With the creation of The Game Bakers, they are now developing high quality mobile games where players experience an extra layer of depth and narration.

We spoke to Emeric at PAX Prime, where they were showing off their latest game, Squids. This clever and graphically rich game for iOS has players pulling on the squids’ tentacles to maneuver them through their environment as they seek to defend their world from invading evil crabs and snails.

Every year since 2008, a panel of game industry experts have selected ten Indie games from among dozens to be showcased at PAX as a selection called The PAX 10. These ten games have, in some way, shined in gameplay mechanics, design, audio, graphics, etc, and deserved to be showcased.

This year’s PAX 10 showed the popularity of the Mac and iOS platform. Six of the ten games were either developing their game for platforms that included Mac and/or iOS, or were in the process of porting their already released game over. A seventh is waiting for the Mac version of his game engine to be released (Unreal Engine 3).
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