Last week was Macworld, the annual pilgrimage for Mac geeks to travel to San Francisco and pay homage to the tech god that is Apple and its products. This year’s Macworld saw a decrease in numbers of attendees compared to past Macworlds in which Apple participated. But the almost 25,000 who walked the Expo floor, attended the over 100 educational sessions, and visited the over 250 exhibitors was still slightly more than last year’s Macworld, proving that Macworld isn’t going away any time soon.
From a gamer perspective, Macworld did not offer a huge amount for the Mac or iOS gamer. Gone are the days when row upon row of Macs were LAN’d together for daily game tournaments, circled by game developers and publishers, big and small. And to be fair those days began to decline before Apple stopped attending Macworld. It was a slow decline over the years, and difficult to determine really where the true source of it began.
But despite that, Mac and iOS developers and publishers were there, and I had the opportunity to see them and talk with them. Read more
What’s inside this episode:
- A review of Payload by Propgroup. Better catch those falling objects before they hit the ground. Wait, rocks bounce??
- Also, a review of Finger Physics by PressOK Entertainment. A thoughtful, meditative game moving objects with real-time physics…WATCH OUT, THAT BLOCK IS FALLING!!!
- And a review of Slug Wars by Republic of Fun. A tower defense game of slug-on-slug combat. In the slug world, salt is a WMD.
Show Notes:
The Macworld 2010 GameSalad Challenge finalists have been announced. Hosted by Gendai Games, creators of the web-based iPhone and Mac game development tool GameSalad, the Challenge encouraged participants to submit games created using the tool for judging by individuals from the Mac and gaming communities (including yours truly).
The Macworld 2010 GameSalad Challenge Finalists are:
BORK’S ADVENTURE by Elie Hang, Justin Knapich, and Ben Knapp.
THE CAT RIDES THE ASTROBUS by Drew Daycross and Jamie Potter.
KILL THE KING by Eastbound Studios.
STUNT SQUIRRELS by Fire Maple Games.
TRAFFIC NINJA by Steve Hoffman.
Judges for the contest included Michael Agustin of Gendai Games, Jason Citron of Aurora Feint, Omaha Sternberg (I wonder who that could be??), Zachary Waibel of Tricky Software, and Sean Vanaman of Telltale Games. All five finalists’ games are available to play free on GameSalad, but three of the five have already launched completed version on the App Store: Kill The King, Stunt Squirrels and Traffic Ninja.
“I was really impressed at the diversity present in the submissions for the GameSalad Challenge,” said [the incredibly smart and fantastic looking] judge Omaha Sternberg, producer of the iGame Radio Podcast. “There were some real creative ideas in game design, art, and sound. There are budding game developers growing in the GameSalad community.”
The GameSalad development team will be exhibiting at Macworld Expo next week. All attendees can also stop by the GameSalad Bar, booth #1478, to play the finalists’ games, attend the training session available on the GameSalad tool (including tips and tricks), and even participate in mini-game jam sessions held daily on the show floor. Winners of the game jams will receive a GameSalad Express Membership.
The Macworld 2010 GameSalad Challenge winner will be announced during an award ceremony at the GameSalad booth on Saturday, February 13th.
ETA: Apologies, everyone…with all the whirl prepping for Macworld, the wrong episode had been playing here. Fixed now.
What’s inside this episode:
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A review of the long awaited Bioshock, by Feral Interactive, the FPS that pits you against the insane inhabitants of the underwater city of Rapture, and their Little Sisters.
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Plus, a review of Crush the Castle, a strategy shooter of sorts for the iPhone. See yon castle fair? Now go beat it down with thy trebuchet in tiny bits!
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Finally, a review of Groovin’ Blocks, a musical puzzler that brings new life to old Tetris-clones worldwide. Bring ‘em down to the beat, and multiply your score. Because I love my C64. Well, that should have been one of the lyrics to the song, I think.
Show Notes:
- The trials and tribulations of being a Macworld 2010 GameSalad Challenge judge. Pity me.
- The Apple iPad. Did you think I’d talk about anything else? Oh, and the cool games we might see….Plants vs Zombies…oooooooooh….
Music Notes:
- Michael Hu-wong featured music on the show from Fizzball. You can get more information about Michael Hu-wong’s work from his site Game Noise.
- Steven Johnson featured music on the show from Escort Wing.
Now I can reveal an awesome piece of news, and on my birthday, too! I am one of the judges for the Macworld 2010 GameSalad Challenge! Woot. Gendai Games CEO Michael Agustin asked me to judge a couple of weeks ago, but now that it’s confirmed, I can make an official announcement.
This means I’ll be participating in the judging of who knows how many cool games from all across the world, because the Challenge has also been opened up to international participants. I’ll be judging alongside Jason Citron of Aurora Feint and Zachary Waibel of Tricky Software. Jason is creator of a great social gaming system for the iPhone, and Zachary develops iPhone and Mac games, working on, among other things, Spore Origins for the iPhone.
I’m going to have a lot of fun with this. I’ll keep you updated as the Challenge progresses.
ETA 2: Oops, forgot all about this interview here. Dan Conners, CEO of Telltale Games, says:
I definitely think there’s huge potential there and right now we’re working on getting our content over to some more channels, over to new consoles and the Mac.
I think we’ve basically got it confirmed, folks!
ETA: Got a response from the folks at Telltale Games. They claim that at this time all they can say is that it is a rumor, not confirming or denying it. That, in itself, is very, very interesting.
Via InsideMacGames, I found this tidbit: Gamertell is reporting a rumor that Telltale Games may be bringing their entire collection of games over to the Mac within the next month…just in time for Macworld 2010. Telltales Games is the studio that publishes Sam & Max, Tales of Monkey Island, and Wallace and Grommit’s Grand Adventure, among others.
Gamertell cites a “trusted source” but also mentions an “Emily, Formerly of the Telltale Team” in the forums as saying “Telltale has *a lot* of Mac users in the company, and we are very interested in porting Sam & Max to the Mac.” Whether this Emily is their trusted source or not they do not confirm. However, Telltale games brought Out from Boneville to the Mac in 2006. They haven’t released anything else for the Mac since then.
I currently have a query into Telltale Games asking confirmation of the rumor. I’ll update you as I get any feedback.
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