iGame Radio

 

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, Steve Jobs’ offered Apple his resignation letter this past week. Omaha and Corey talk about his resignation and the impact Jobs and Apple has made on gaming on the Mac and iOS over the years.
• Omaha reports back about last weekend’s PAX Prime, the huge gaming convention in Seattle. Summary: no one makes fun of Mac games anymore.

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.

Telltale Games and Straandlooper have released the second episode of Hector: Badge of Carnage. If you didn’t get enough of the raunchy, rude, repugnant lawman from the first episode, now’s your chance to double your fun.

Senseless Acts of Justice has launched across PC, Mac, iPhone and iPad, with a PlayStation Network release coming in the near future. Follow Hector as he hunts down a psychopath while he’s pulled down a twisted trail of meat, sin, sleaze and….more meat. Fans can also now take on the role of the hapless Lambert and be approached by new and unnecessarily distasteful characters like flaming strippers and street urchins…yum!

To celebrate this launch, Telltale is offering Hector Episode 1 HD for iPad We Negotiate with Terrorists for a discounted price of $2.99, and for iPhone for $0.99, through September 1. Telltale says the final episode, Beyond Reasonable Doom, should release in September.

Hector: Badge of Carnage – Senseless Acts of Justice can be downloaded from the Telltale website, for iPad for $6.99, and for iPhone for $4.99.

With so many Angry Bird clones, it’s nice to see a game in the same genre take a new turn. Enter Sprinkle by Mediocre Games. Inhabitants of Titan are burning, and need you to man a water canon to put out the fires. Realistic water physics and clever puzzles make for some intriguing gameplay with this little puzzler. You can pick the game up for $0.99 on iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad, and get 22 levels of play. Unlock more levels for $0.99 or by earning enough points on each level on the previous world.

Com2uS has decided to go the way of the Tamagotchi, and released MiniGame Paradise. Play with 35 different cartoon animals in over 70 mini-games with one-touch control schemes. Games range from puzzle to arcade style games, and features include clothes for your characters and decorations for their houses. MiniGame Paradise is $2.99 for iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad, and includes some in-app purchases as well.

Lastly, Nevosoft has released Landgrabbers, a real-time medieval strategy game for the iPad and claims to be recognized as the Best Casual Game of the Year at the 2011 Russian Game Developers Conference. The game features 36 levels in four locations and is free. However, the game page also states that the full version can be purchased for $4.99, implying that the free version is really just a short demo.

• LandGrabbers: real time medieval conquest strategy
• MiniGame Paradise
• Sprinkle: Water splashing fire fighting fun!

Today Steve Jobs tendered his resignation at Apple as their CEO. Like so much of Jobs’ communications, his resignation letter was simple, clear, and to the point. We could come up with all kinds of weepy tributes, or farcical puns…but we won’t.

Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Mike Markkula started Apple in their garage because they loved what they did. Jobs continued with Apple, and many of the other work he did (founding NeXT, acquiring the graphics division of Lucasfilms and spinning it off as Pixar, etc) because he had a passion for creating things. And though his biggest passion wasn’t gaming, he still created one of the most legendary platforms for casual gaming…the iOS.

We wish Jobs’ the best of luck in everything he does. And we’ll know every time we play a game on our Mac, iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad, he made it possible.

Thanks, Steve.

 

What’s inside this episode:

• A review of Piclings, by Pan Vision. Let’s you create game levels from your own pictures and share it with others, but doesn’t do any of the explaining about how. Gameplay tools are simple, but not always responsive, so your fun value may vary.
  
• Also, a review of iShot, published by IZ Ventures. A cute little fake drinking game for about 15 minutes of your time. It will probably be a lot more fun if you are drinking as much as your iPhone is.
  
• Plus, a review of Mosquito’s Insonmia, published by MeanMob. An eerie, bizarre, excellently drawn game arcade game with great music and simple, basic gameplay but a bit of a difficult playing curve.
  

Soup Du Jour for the iPad is the latest from Digital Eel. This matching game includes rubbery physics, stretchy sound effects, and promised rule-breaking gameplay. Colorful shapes fall into your pot, and you tug and toss them together to burst the matches. Beware the pesky Kitchen Gremlin that adds in explodee things, though. You can grab the game from the App store for $1.99.

Golden Arrow Studio has released Mr. BBQ, a platform collection game in which a vigilante pig negotiates the urban sprawl to collect bbqs and save all porcine kind from the firey demise. You have to defeat traps to move from one level to the next, but get powerups to help you along the way. The graphics are simple, hand-drawn visuals where even the enemies are cute. The game is downloadable for $1.99.

The Marbians, a game for iPhone/iPod Touch and iPad, was released last week. A physics-based marble themed puzzler from Nordisk Film, players can send marble-like Marbians careening off walls and around obstacles to collect moon rocks, racking up points to eventually reach their UFO homes. Though the game is initially free to download, this will only get you the first 6 levels. Continued play includes a cost…$0.99 for the iPhone version, $1.99 for the iPad version. This has already rubbed some people the wrong way, as the biggest complaint from low star reviews so far is this issue.

Ankama announces a major update to DOFUS: Battles, the iOS version of their DOFUS MMOG game. Blending tower defence, RTS, and a taste of RPG, DOFUS: Battles pits you against Jeff Stobbs and the demon Naz T Peasawerk, stopping them and their hordes of monsters from taking over the Krosmoz. The update includes a new survival mode, two new bosses, two new battles, new achievements, and more. To celebrate, Ankama has dropped the price of the game to $0.99 for all iOS devices through Monday evening.

Bit Barons released Astroslugs for iPad recently, and decided to celebrate their first month live by making the game free yesterday. They jumped to #1 in the German App Store. To celebrate that and keep the energy going, they will keep the game free for “every day that we hit another #1 position in an AppStore.” Astroslugs is a puzzle board game where you draw different shaped pieces onto an always varying board.

Hungribles by Futuremark Studios was released last night and found itself the iPhone game of the week in over 110 countries. In this unique puzzle shot game, players aim food particles to Hungribles, little creatures whose appetites cause the path of the launched food to veer towards them. The trailer gives some unique gameplay for the game. You can pick it up for $1.99 from iTunes, or visit the Hungribles website each day this week to try and catch a free promo code.

Mobigames, in partnership with Two Tribes, is bringing their award-winning iOS game Edge to the Mac and Windows platforms.

This retro-styled platforming game with light puzzle elements allows players take direct control of a cube as it rolls around over forty block-based levels in search of colorful prisms and the fastest routes. Throughout the game’s levels, unique techniques – such as the balancing act called ‘EDGE time’ – are introduced to deepen the experience. To top it all off, EDGE will include all the content of the soon to be released iOS game, EDGE extended, as free post-launch DLC, albeit only for the Steam version.

This is the third Indie game to be redeveloped and taken to other platforms by Two Tribes, after Swords & Soldiers and Frenzic. Two Tribes promises custom bonus levels built by them will be included in the release. Edge will be coming to a Mac near you via Steam and the Mac App Store on August 11th. No price has been set as of this date.

If you listen closely, you might hear the weeping of Tim Langdell.

Ambrosia Software has released HypnoBlocks, a 3D block matching game for the iPad. The game allows you to rotate the game field with something called Multi-Touch, and grab bonuses for clearing multiple blocks at a time. You compete against a time limit, and can compare your score with others using Game Center. HypnoBlocks is available from the iTunes App store for $0.99.

The developer of Melon Truck has let us know that a major update has made its way to the App Store. Melon Truck 2.0 comes with some big additions, including full Game Center integration, updates to the firing mechanism for the game, new melons, and more. You can pick this melon shooting game up for $1.99.

Golden Helicopter has released a rather unusual time management game for iOS. In Rig Fire, the player has to pump as many barrels of oil as possible while keeping a disaster prone sea-based rig standing. The player must choose between putting out fires, repairing the failing rig, pumping additional oil, or tending to wounded riggers. Over 100 rigs are available to unlock, with 15 oil fields to explore. Game Center integration is included. The game is available for $0.99.

 

What’s inside this episode:

• A Casual Connect 2011 Game Chat Series. Z2Live began life as a platform for iOS gaming, but picked up speed when they decided to develop games as well. But that’s just not enough for them, as COO Lou Fasulo explained to Omaha Sternberg during Casual Connect 2011 last week. For them, games and gaming need a purpose, too.