iGame Radio

 

What’s inside this episode:

• An interview with John Graham of Wolfire Games about their game in development, Overgrowth, and their use of the Open Development method.
• Also, a review of Zuma’s Revenge by PopCap Games, a match-three arcade shooter. Zuma’s Revenge hits the sweet spot of fast-paced arcade action and casual relaxation.
• And a review of Lifeboat, Fuel Games’ light-hearted iPhone game pitting you against the dangers of the deep.

Freeverse has released a new iPhone game, but be warned…the fairies are watching. Fairy Trails takes advantage of the iPhone OS 3.1 features to provide an augmented reality game for young and old alike. Your job? To locate the fairies and other magical creatures all around you. Find them, tap on them, and store them in jars. Using iPhone Edge, 3G and iPod Touch, access the accelerometer-based vertical movement and camera support features. If you are lucky enough to have a 3GS, the game takes advantage of the compass by providing full AR and range of motion. For iPod Touch users with no built-in camera, a forest setting is rendered within the game.

Fairy Trails is available on the iTunes App store for only $0.99.

 

What’s inside this episode:

• An interview with Michael Agustin, CEO of Gendai Games about the iPhone Early Access Program for GameSalad, a series of iPhone development tools for using GameSalad to publish your games for the iPhone.
• Also, a review of Sprouts, a lite Sim game by Reflexive Entertainment. Or is it a fast-paced time management game? You decide.
• And a review of Rainbow Web II for the iPhone. Sugar Games’ sequel for the Mac hits the iPhone, courtesy of Big Fish Games.

Back in March, Gendai Games launched GameSalad, a game creation tool for non-coders who have a mind for design. Now, Gendai has taken a step further with the iPhone Early Access Program, putting that power towards the development of iPhone games.

The iPhone Early Access Program includes a two-tiered membership system, Indie and Pro. Both give creators unlimited access to the system that exports their games for publishing to the App Store, but Pro gives access to advanced game development features and customized branding. However, access to the iPhone development tools are not available in the Basic (and free) GameSalad membership…Indie starts at $499/yr, and Pro is $1999/yr.

Gendai Games also released two iPhone games using the Game Salad iPhone Engine, to show some of the abilities of the engine:

In Spark of Life, players take control of the Spark that protects and guides newborn planets, helping them build life and civilization as they traverse the hazards of space. Spark of Life utilizes GameSalad’s support of the iPhone’s built-in accelerometer to control the gameplay in a fun and challenging way. In Rock, Paper, Scissors: The Movie: The Game, players take the role as the mysterious Nameless Master who must do what he vowed never to do again: wield the three ancient weapons of battle and seek vengeance against the Deadly Dragon Clan. This game features stylized hand-drawn art that demonstrate GameSalad’s support for rich graphical interfaces, sprites, and animations. Both games are now available on the iPhone App Store.

You can check out a trailer of GameSalad, or listen to an interview about the iPhone Early Access Program with Michael Agustin of Gendai Games later today.

Been so busy, I haven’t had a chance to put out a watch list for a week now. So, now we have dice and bling.

Blister’s Dice Game reminds me of Cosmic Wimpout. And basically, that’s what it is, wrapped within a simple story interface (you are hiking). But the gameplay is the same. I love Cosmic Wimpout!

Diceworks is a simple matching game. Match sets or straights of dice and you get points. The game keeps playing until there’s no more matches. The game has a wonderful steampunkishness to it, and has a potential that I don’t quite see realized yet. Maybe if the developer stretches his mind to what he can do…

In the need for bling? Get yourself a Gangstar! Gameloft’s long awaited sandbox action game for the iPhone is now available. The screens are certainly impressive, the game world is immense, and Gameloft promised online play and social features over time.

PopCap Games has announced that they are working on an iPhone/iPod Touch version of Plants vs. Zombies. The game should become available around the end of this year. Unfortunately, no other details are available, so we’ll have to sit tight and wait for more info.

Podcast Episode 77 is now available. Great episode wherein I talk about the dangers of game studies, whether to OS 3.0 or not to OS 3.0, and why you can’t be Obama in Second Life anymore.

Also:

• A review of Braid, by Jonathan Blow, ported to the Mac by Hothead Games. Braid is one of those unique games that stepped outside the development box of safety and won the game of risk. Truly a game that will be remembered for its game mechanics, its art, and most importantly, integrating all of this together into a truly fluid piece of art that is eminently playable and fun.





• A review of Ice Road Truckers, Slitherine Software’s first foray into iPhone games. A racing game wrapped with a History Channel show.





• An interview with Dennis Fong, CEO of Raptr, about their social gaming utility.

ETA: Heard back from developer Paul Hutson. The iPhone app will cost $2, starting low to catch as many people into the game as possible. The browser portion is a subscription model which only charges after level 10. Pricing schemes of 1 month $3.99, 3 months $10.99, 6 months $19.99 and 1 year $37.99. They’ve also got a special offer of a lifetime subscription for $99.99 right now, too. Oh, and I’ll be doing an interview with Paul soon, so look for that in an upcoming podcast!

I heard about this before but haven’t had a chance to look it over in detail. A MMOG game for web browser and iPhone, specifically targeting the EVE Online and such-like crowd. The game is called Outer Empires, and the browser side just went live yesterday. The iPhone/iPod Touch version was submitted to Apple around the 15th, so it may be a few more days before we get access to it.

From the site:

“Outer Empires is a new-born galaxy, just waiting for players to begin building history by colonising planets, exploring the far reaches of space and forming powerful cadres of miners, traders and pirates,” says Iron Will Studio lead designer Paul Hutson.

Sounds like a cool game, and you don’t need to be sitting in front of your computer to do it. Okay, EVE Online, the gauntlet has been thrown. It’s your turn now. ;-)

That’s one of the biggest pieces of news to come of out yesterday’s iSee the Future and it’s iPhone panel at Casual Connect casual game’s conference. Panelist’s, including Brian Robbins of Fuel Industries, Kyu Lee of Gamevil, Tom Hubina of Amplified Games, and John Grotland of Oberon Media/I-play, agreed that a large proportion of users of the popular Apple mobile devices had not yet moved over to the 3.0 upgrade, although the actual numbers varied.

For example, one panelist stated that 80% of iPhone users had upgraded, but only 18% of iPod Touch users had. Another panelist said that the conversion rate he saw was about 50/50 for both devices. All believed that it would be some time before any application, game or otherwise, would require the use of the 3.0 upgrade.

Panelists also discussed the downward trend towards $0.99 pricing on the App store. They agreed that the average pricing on the App Store was $2.39, but felt that the pricing was pushed down due to a large number of poor quality applications and games and a trend towards low pricing to push applications up the ratings chart first.

Methods discussed to survive the $0.99 trend included releasing a smaller version of one’s game with limited features first, then if successful, releasing a larger version with a higher price. However, all panelists said that it was too early in the App Store’s life cycle to figure out the economic trends of its pricing structure quite yet.

Panelists discussed monetization, and universally agreed that advertising could not just be “slapped on”, as one panelist put it. If a developer’s game is played in less than one hour, for example, than advertising could not be a monetization tool. They also felt that applications should move away from CPC advertisement and start using CPM advertisement. Lastly, a call for more diversity in advertisement was made. One panelist complained that so many ads seemed to be for other people’s applications.

Finally, panelists created a wish list for Apple to review for the next App Store upgrade. It included ranking apps by revenue rather than sales, peer pricing (creating several pricing tiers), allowing free app to full app unlocks without taking the user out of the game, and a forum for consumers so that user to user support can be provided.

 



Today’s episode is an interview I did with Gendai Games’ CEO Michael Agustin. Gendai Games’ first product is GameSalad, an application that allows one to develop an iPhone game without having to learn any programming languages. We talked about Gendai Games, what GameSalad is and what it can do for people, what the MarketPlace will be, and what other ideas Gendai Games has on the horizon. Screens below!