TA Plays Live: Tomorrow's Games Today Posted: 12 Feb 2014 12:59 PM PST Last Wednesday's stream was our biggest stream yet, so fingers crossed for this one being equally huge! Here's how these work: I download all the new games that are due to be released tonight from the New Zealand App Store, and play through them in order. The amount of time I spend on each game varies highly, depending on how in depth they are. Anyway, if you haven't yet, please follow us as it's the best way to get notified when we're streaming. To tune into the TA Plays Live stream you've got three options:
I usually stream until around 7:00 Eastern, at which point I toss the videos up on YouTube for everyone to see that missed the stream. Here's what we'll be playing, in order:
...Aaaand then we'll follow those up with any games that might randomly pop up. It seems like a slim list, so there might be more games that pop up today. |
Posted: 12 Feb 2014 12:50 PM PST Last month, Candy Crush Saga creator King.com angered the entire internet by announcing their intention to trademark the word "candy" (and the word "saga" but that's another, er, saga). People were outraged that a company would try to own the rights to a common word like candy, and it brought up all sorts of bad memories of the long battle Mobigame fought with patent troll Tim Langdell over their game Edge. But the trademark and patent system itself is something of a mess, and there are countless games that have tried to ride the coattails of Candy Crush Saga's success by purposefully using the word "candy" and trying to create consumer confusion. King argued they had a right to defend their IP, and was quick to explain that they wouldn't go after every instance of "candy" being used in a video game. King's CEO Riccardo Zacconi even posted an open letter addressing everyone's concerns about their IP protection practices. However, CandySwipe [$2.99 / Free] developer Albert Ransom has posted his own open letter to King today, and according to his account of what's transpired between himself and King, any benefit of the doubt the Candy Crush Saga maker had been given in regards to their IP protection philosophy has gone straight out the window. CandySwipe originally launched on Android way back in November of 2010, several months before Candy Crush even appeared on King's website, and a full two years before Candy Crush Saga would appear on the App Store. Ransom, like any good developer should do, was quick to trademark the word "candyswipe" to protect his creation, and was granted the trademark in July of 2011. So when King tried to trademark "candy crush saga" he opposed it, not simply because of them using the word candy in the title but because the game itself was strikingly similar to his own CandySwipe game which predated any version of Candy Crush. Check out what I mean.
The pieces of candy and even the "Sweet!" in Candy Crush Saga were just too similar to CandySwipe's to be coincidence, and unfortunately once Candy Crush Saga became a huge sensation people actually were confused by the two titles, most thinking that CandySwipe was just another cheap knockoff of King's game. Obviously this was tough to deal with for Ransom, as he legitimately was there first, but he kept quiet during the whole "candy" trademark drama last month in hopes that the matter would be settled through the trademark system, though he did tell Gamezebo in January that he'd planned on opposing their "candy" trademark in addition to his current opposition of the "candy crush saga" trademark. Well, it didn't end well for Ransom, as King went out and purchased an even earlier trademark for "candy crusher" which according to King covers game software and mobile apps dating back to 2004. Now they are using this earlier "candy crusher" trademark to invalidate Ransom's trademark on "candyswipe." Basically, this goes against everything King's CEO explained in that open letter about how they only wish to "protect our IP and to also respect the IP of others." King.com has not commented on this particular matter just yet, but if they do we'll let you know. [Gamezebo] |
Tired of Losing in 'Impossible Road'? Then 'Possible Road' is For You! Posted: 12 Feb 2014 11:59 AM PST Originally reviewed by us in summer of last year, Impossible Road [$1.99] is a game that definitely lives up to its name. The entire gameplay mechanic hinges around the fact that you often can't turn as sharply as you need to in order to follow the track, so you'll often need to jump off and hope you can hit the track below you. It's incredibly difficult, but when you pull off a particularly impressive run it feels like finally making the shortcut in Rainbow Road. Well, if Impossible Road was too difficult for you, you're in luck, as Jacque Rabie just released Possible Road [$0.99]. Instead of dangerous curves and treacherous jumps, you just roll forward on a straight line. It's a hilarious parody of the original, and the iTunes text is fantastic:
Is there any reason to download Possible Road? Probably not, but as someone who loves Impossible Road, Possible Road's existence made me chuckle. |
'True Skate' Update with New Schoolyard Level Now Available Posted: 12 Feb 2014 10:58 AM PST Hot on the heels of a new park being added to Touchgrind Skate 2 , True Axis has just updated their fantastic skateboarding sim True Skate [$1.99] with its own new park and lots of other new features. The new park is the Schoolyard, available as an 99¢ in-app purchase, and it's one of the four new parks planned for the game. Unlike the game's previous two parks which feature a lot of transition, the Schoolyard is more street-focused and is filled with plenty of stairs, ledges, handrails and benches to skate on. And it's a ton of fun. While the new park is the big ticket item in this update, there's a lot of smaller improvements in it as well. The swipe sensitivity can now be adjusted in the options, and the default sensitivity has been lowered, which makes the game feel a tad more realistic. Anti-aliasing is also enabled on the newest iOS devices, and on my iPhone 5s True Skate is now razor sharp. It really makes a difference. There are also some tweaks to how certain grinds work, ollie heights, camera views while on transitions and more, all of which are detailed in the update description. Here's a few screens from the new Schoolyard level.
Unfortunately, a couple of bugs have slipped into this True Skate update. The first is a graphical glitch that might make your customized board graphics (and wheels and trucks) flicker, but it's not game-breaking. In fact it looks sort of cool, even if unintentional. The second isn't exactly a bug, but this update was supposed to feature online leaderboards with replays, but there was a problem on True Axis' end with the connectivity so sadly those aren't in this particular update. However, they're already working on a fix for both of these issues, so it should be taken care of shortly. If you're like me, and have spent countless hours playing True Skate since its release in late 2012, then this new skatepark is reason enough to blow off any sort of productivity for the rest of the week. Check it out, and we'll keep tabs on when the leaderboard and replays will get patched in as well as when we can expect the rest of the new skateparks sometime later this year. |
Check Out 'Cubed Snowboarding', An Upcoming Game from the Developer of 'Cubed Rally Racer' Posted: 12 Feb 2014 10:58 AM PST Jared Bailey is responsible for a heck of a lot of games I really like. Namely, Cubed Rally Racer [$0.99], the pseudo-sequel Cubed Rally Redline [Free] along with Baby Lava Bounce [Free] and it's odd premium Halloween cousin Zombie Volcano [$0.99]. There's more too, but those are the noteworthy ones, at least in my eyes. Anyway, he's been hard at work on a new game, which feels like a bit of an evolution of the Cubed Rally series but with snowboards and loads of backflips. Check out the trailer:
Per the thread in our forums, here's what the game is all about:
Cubed Snowboarding has already been submitted to Apple for approval, and should be out in the next week or two. |
Posted: 12 Feb 2014 09:02 AM PST
With Flappy Bird totally blowing up everywhere, of course it only makes sense for there to be a Flappy Jam, with the following prompt:
The whole "hate must not win" thing comes from the insane amount of toxic, venomous crap that Flappy Bird developer Dong Nguyen has had to endure since the start of all this. Anyway, as of this writing, 66 Flapp-likes have been submitted so far. Here's a few of my favorites: Maverick Bird - Super Hexagon [$2.99] creator Terry Cavanagh whipped up this incredible Flapp-like that takes hints directly from the game he's known best for. Make sure you play this with headphones, as much like Super Hexagon, the music is amazing. MegaFlap! - Another game with catchy music, this one by Luke Dirago, MegaFlap! is basically Flappy Bird but with MegaMan. The only thing that could make this better is if on contact with spikes you did the MegaMan explosion of white circles. Floculus Bird - This Flapp-like by Holden Link is a 3D recreation of Flappy Bird with one large exception: It runs on the Oculus Rift VR headset. If there's a more ridiculous escalation of Flappy mania, this simply has to be it. I love it. Flappybalt - Ever wonder what it'd be like to play as one of the birds from Canabalt [$2.99]? Well, Adam Saltsman, creator of Canabalt answers that question with Flappybalt. Unlike other Flapp-likes, gameplay doesn't involve flying through pipes, but rather, bouncing from one side of the screen to the other avoiding spikes. It definitely nails the "impossible difficulty" thing. FlapMMO - While I don't think this is technically part of the game jam, it still seemed worth including. This online version of Flappy Bird has you playing with everyone at the same time. It's actually sort of amazing, as by the time you get past the third or fourth pipe you're basically flying solo compared to the massive herd of birds trying to get through the first pipe. Be sure to check out the rest of the Flappy Jam, there's a ton of games to fiddle with, most of which can be played right in your browser. |
New iPhone Games Coming Tonight: 'Card Wars - Adventure Time', 'R-Type II' and More Posted: 12 Feb 2014 08:30 AM PST It's Wednesday again, which means precisely two things: A whole ton of new iOS games are slowly filtering across various regions of the App Store before finally appearing on the App Store and I'll be streaming them all on our Twitch channel starting at 4:00 PM Eastern. Last week's stream was our most popular stream yet, so I've got my fingers crossed for something similar this week.
Here's what's on our radar so far, and like all these early posts, this could just be the tip of the iceberg of what we'll see released tonight:
Stay tuned for the full listing when all these games hit the US App Store at 11:00 PM Eastern. |
'Cloudbreakers' Review - An Endless Climber Free of Smoke and Mirrors Posted: 12 Feb 2014 08:21 AM PST In an age of horse armor and pay gates, the debate for and against monetization in games rages on. Jan Tomasik is a big fan of genres unique to the platform, namely endless runners, but not as keen on the over-monetization that too often favors money-making opportunities for the publisher at the expense of design and fun. Tomasik decided to team up with his girlfriend to create a game free of freemium trappings. That game is Cloudbreakers [$0.99], and it is an absolute blast. Cloudbreakers is an endless runner that is neither endless nor involves any running. Your goal is to climb to the tippy top of a mountain made up of themed regions. You ascend by holding the game's single virtual button to plant your climbing tool in the nearest ledge and swing around and around like a trapeze artist. When you're lined up in the direction you want to go, release the button and your avatar goes flying. Press and hold the button again to stick your pickaxe in the nearest ledge and swing higher still. As you climb, a bank of clouds bubbles up from below. Tumble into the clouds and your climb ends. Vaulting skyward is easy enough for players of all skill levels to get the hang of after just a few tries. The real lark lies in learning how to send your avatar precisely where you want to go: soaring up and over to a distant cluster of coins, or ricocheting off the cloud bumpers that run along both sides of the screen like a cue ball to snag a giant coin and barely latching onto the lowest ledge just visible over the rising clouds. After just a few minutes, I was swinging confidently up, down, and all around, and feeling like a gold-medal gymnast while doing it.
Just be sure to watch your finger placement. Most of my screw-ups occurred because my thumb slipped off the small virtual button, and you'll need exact precision to survive each region's numerous obstacles--waterfalls, blocks made of gold that reward you with extra cash by latching onto them but disintegrate after just a few swings, and ledges that blink in and out of existence. I'd also like to see a brief tutorial that explains how to swing around clockwise, an action I had no idea was possible until I consulted the forums (and which didn't hamper my ability to reach any area I wanted or needed to reach). Cloudbreakers fulfills its developer's ambition to craft a game according to the classic what-you-see-is-what-you-get formula. There are no coin packs in Cloudbreakers. No fast unlocks. No advertisements. No notifications or social media integration. There are heroes to unlock, each with a special ability like an extra life or starting at a higher level on the mountainside, and you unlock them the old-fashioned way: by saving money you earn in-game, or by collecting wooden body parts that make up each hero's doll-like figures. The placement of hero parts never changes, so you can plan ascents around gathering parts.
IAP has its place on the App Store, but Cloudbreakers is proof that you don't have to pay (and pay, and pay, and pay) for a game to get the most out of it. Its easy-to-learn-but-difficult-to-master gameplay, beautiful graphics, challenging environments, and rich selection of ambient sounds have gelled together into one of the most enjoyable and pure gaming experiences I've had on a mobile device, one that all gamers will enjoy. |
'Monster Loves You!' Review - A Brief Dip in the Monster Pool Posted: 12 Feb 2014 05:00 AM PST Monster Loves You! [$0.99] is the story of a monster, a story your choices help tell. The first collaboration between Radial Games and Dejobaan Games lets you decide how monsters live their lives: rampaging, caring for each other, or just plain old causing a fuss. You begin your life as a Morsel, a tiny speck of potential floating in a vat. It's there your story begins, and at each step you direct it. Are you going to be the sort of monster that begins life by floating passively, by kicking your little Morsel legs to the surface, or by hunting and killing the weaker Morsels in the pool? Each choice has consequences, helping to build the kind of monster you'll become. The consequences are rarely far-reaching, however. Monster Loves You is an interactive story, but it's not a branching narrative. Your choices affect the sort of monster you'll become, not the world you live in. If you behave compassionately, you'll be seen as a kinder monster. If your choices are vicious ones, you'll be seen as ferocious. Cleverness, honesty and bravery are also ranked, and so is your fellow monsters' respect for you.
These choices are presented in stages. At each stage of life, you're given a bunch of scenarios to choose from, and a countdown of days until you reach your next phase of life. Each scenario takes a day, and gives a few things back: an interesting addition to your life's story, a few choices, and, depending on how you approach the situation, a boost or hit your personality stats. Building stats high enough can open up new approaches to monstering. If you live well enough to get through the big tests in a monster's life, your decisions become truly important: the stuff that decides the future of both monster- and human-kind. It's never all that difficult to see where your choices will lead. Run around gobbling up human children and you can be certain the humans won't like you much. Treat them with kindness and there may be a chance for peace. After playing through once, it's easy to massage your decisions toward the ending you want to unlock. Between that and the limited pool of scenarios for each life stage, the game can get a little repetitive. If it weren't so unrelentingly charming, that might be a bigger problem. That's the thing about Monster Loves You: it makes itself easy to love. The cadence and tone of its storytelling, the cheerful music and colorful environments—it's a pleasure to play around with. Its world, too, is well thought out - little touches bring it to life.
Monster Loves You could have been a virtual pet, concerned with the day-in and day-out care of monstrous life. Instead it's concerned with higher matters—virtue, morality and the choices that define us. You can play it dark, or you can play it light. Neither is held up over the other, and both are lighthearted and occasionally even touching. Still, the game is a little too shallow to stand up in the long-term. Its charm will carry well past the point where its actual interactions run out of steam. These little monsters have lives worth observing, and playing with them is a good bit of fun for a time. Like their little lives, however, all good things must come to an end—and both monsters and Monster Loves You run down a little too soon. |
'Banshee's Last Cry' Review - A Chilling Classic In English For The First Time Posted: 11 Feb 2014 03:28 PM PST If a remake of a historically significant game in one region is finally released for the first time in others and naturally finds itself outdated by more modern takes on the genre, how should it be approached? Banshee's Last Cry [Free] is in a bit of a weird place, to be sure. On the one hand, finally getting such an important game in English is certainly a good thing, especially with the quality of the localization work found here. On the other hand, English gamers have no nostalgia for this game, and in the iOS market in particular, the competition in the interactive fiction genre is absolutely savage. Banshee's Last Cry is the first ever English version of Spike Chunsoft's landmark interactive story, Kamaitachi no Yoru. For those who don't know Chunsoft, which would be understandable given the low profile of their games outside Japan, they're broadly known for three things: coding the first five Dragon Quest games, creating the Mystery Dungeon series of roguelikes, and their series of "Sound Novels", which are basically a video game version of a Choose Your Own Adventure book. Their recent games 999 and Virtue's Last Reward were released in English by Aksys Games, and have developed a small following among gamers. Perhaps on the strength of those releases, Aksys has opted to take a chance on Banshee's Last Cry, the game that really got the ball rolling for Chunsoft in this genre.
If we judge this game by modern standards, it's hard to recommend, like many games 20 or more years old. The gameplay aspects are minimal, consisting almost entirely of turning pages and making choices here and there. Although the story is well-written, it's a lot more simple than modern games in this genre. Visually, it's not much more than text plastered on top of mostly-still photographs. Compared to things like Sorcery! [$4.99] or the gamebooks of Tin Man Games, Banshee's Last Cry doesn't fare all that well. The story of the game has you playing as a young man named Max who goes with his friend Grace to her uncle's ski lodge. A terrible storm snows in everyone staying there, which is only a minor problem until the corpse of one of the guests is found in his room. From there, things start falling apart pretty quickly if you can't solve the mystery of who or what killed him. The game has more than 40 endings, but unless you've got remarkably good intuition, you're going to be seeing a few bad ones before you get anywhere near the best one. The choices you make along the way influence the story quite a bit, and some paths will be completely closed off to you by what you decide. The game never really comes out and tells you the answer, no matter what path you pursue, but it'll often cleverly hint at things indirectly. You'll have to put together a lot of these indirect, unrelated clues to figure things out. The story may be simple, but it shines thanks to an excellent localization by Jeremy Blaustein, who did the English versions of Snatcher and Metal Gear Solid. The gutsy choice was made to do a heavy localization, switching out the Japanese setting and characters for a Canadian lodge with American guests, complete with new photos from an actual lodge in Whistler, BC. Even the monster referred to in the original title did not escape, with the Japanese version's sickle weasel being cleverly switched out for a banshee, which carries a little more cultural familiarity for most English gamers. If you're familiar with the original game, it's a bit off-putting at first, but it works out well in the long run. The game is so heavily dependent on its text, I'm happy to see it turn out so well. There are a couple of secret routes you can uncover, and the writing in them kept me laughing all the way through.
The game gives you a free taster, with an IAP to unlock the rest of the game for four dollars. That puts the cost of it on the lower end of what gamebooks usually go for, but in some ways, you get what you pay for. Forget the bells and whistles you see in things like Forest of Doom [$5.99]. You're not getting much more than a chapter select and a few options for things like the gore level here. The app itself feels really odd, with the settings screen using the default iOS settings layout, and saving your game booting you out to the homescreen unceremoniously. The one favor it's willing to do you is to show which choices you've already made in a prior run by darkening out the text for them. I would have appreciated the flowchart from the PlayStation version, because it really helped for finding all the endings. The large amount of endings lend Banshee's Last Cry a lot of replay value compared to other games in this genre, but once you've found them, you're finished. There are no random elements to the game whatsoever, with the whole game resting completely on the choices you make. It's an interesting story, the localization is sharp, and I think for people who are interested in seeing how interactive fiction looks on the other side of the Pacific, it's worth checking out. Compared to the broader landscape of the iOS gamebook market, though, Banshee's Last Cry doesn't have much to offer beyond historical value.. |
TA Plays Live: Taking Requests or Playing 'Flappy Bird' [Offline!] Posted: 11 Feb 2014 01:59 PM PST These streams are getting more and more fun to do as our community is growing. Yesterday you guys saw me do awesome in Threes!, and not so awesome in a bunch of other iOS games. Tomorrow I'm playing New Zealand games, so if you've got any game requests, you better join the Twitch chat and let me know! Anyway, if you haven't yet, please follow us as it's the best way to get notified when we're streaming. To tune into the TA Plays Live stream you've got three options:
I usually stream until around 7:00 Eastern, at which point I toss the videos up on YouTube for everyone to see that missed the stream. Feel free to request games in chat, just do me a solid- Try not to be too pushy, as someone badgering me to play a certain game kills the flow of the chat, and if you're a developer please say so if you're requesting I play your own game. Update: Thanks for watching, everyone! These streams are a blast. Here's what we played:
...And of course, here's the video which will be up whenever YouTube finishes doing its thing:
|
Check Out These Screenshots of the Upcoming 'Aralon: Forge and Flame' Posted: 11 Feb 2014 01:36 PM PST
Well, strap in for an exciting 2014 as Crescent Moon Games and Galoobeth Games are revealing screenshots of the sequel. The same artist behind these is the same guy who did Ravensword: Shadowlands [$6.99], so RPG fans should know to expect some pretty awesome stuff. Details of the actual game itself are pretty vague as it's still in development, and these screenshots come with the massive caveat that they're very much a work in progress. Regardless, check out what Aralon: Forge and Flame looks like:
Aralon: Forge and Flame has full day and night cycles, as well as all the fancy visual effects that come with dynamic lighting. It's built in Unity, and features three different contents to explore, each with their own dungeons and unique environments. Obviously, we'll totally be on top of developments of this game so be sure to add it to your watch list. |
Posted: 11 Feb 2014 01:20 PM PST
Nguyen's Super Ball Juggling [Free] and Shuriken Block [Free] are still charting well, but it's nothing compared to anything Flappy. It's easy to assume these are all terrible games, but I wouldn't be so quick to judge, particularly if you even vaguely found yourself enjoying Flappy Bird. So, let's go through the top four games on the App Store and figure out what's worth checking out and what you should totally skip: Fly Birdie - Flappy Bird Flyer , Free - The top of the App Store charts currently is dominated by the game with the weakest mechanics of the other flappers. The framerate is shockingly low, the interface is crazy (The button to tweet is a upside down Facebook "F"?) and the challenge of the game seems to come from fighting against the buggy game mechanics than actually playing the game itself. For instance, you have three lives, but get a game over when you've got one life left. The spaces between the pipes you fly through are huge, but the collision detection is even worse than Flappy Bird pre-update. Oddly enough, it also has some seriously out of place background music. Ads are fairly obnoxious, but don't seem to get in the way of gameplay. Ironpants , Free - Number two is actually a pretty decent Flapp-like, and was already charting before the removal of Flappy Bird. In Ironpants, you play as a masked super hero of sorts. Instead of tapping to fly up, you hold your finger down on the screen and the hero flies up. I feel like Ironpants caught on as well as Flappy Bird because this control method is equally tricky, as the rate that your dude shoots up doesn't make a whole lot of sense and takes loads of practice to master. Instead of flying through pipes, you're flying through stacks of boxes. Scoring works the same, and because of the difficulty it's often pretty difficult to get more than a few points. Ironpants has some seriously obnoxious ads, not necessarily in regards to frequency, but rather, their placement. These games lend themselves to retrying over and over, and the clever developers behind Ironpants have the ad pop up what feels like only a few milliseconds after the retry button comes up, in the center of the screen. Playing Ironpants will truly test your patience in regards to accidental ad clicks. Splashy Fish - The Adventure of a Flappy Tiny Bird Fish , Free - I like this game quite a bit, and of all the Flapp-likes I'd say it's the closest to feeling like Flappy Bird when you play it. It controls very similarly, with you fish feeling ever-so-slightly floatier (I mean, you are underwater.) than Flappy Bird. Difficulty levels seem to be in between pre and post-patch Flappy Bird. The advertising in Splashy Fish also isn't terrible. A constantly rotating Google ad banner sits on the bottom of the screen, but it stays there. Even though you're viewing ads constantly, it doesn't feel obnoxious at all as it doesn't get in the way of gameplay and is very easy to tune out. Flappy Bee , Free - Easily the worst of the high charting Flapp-likes. First off, it's stealing its icon directly from Bee Leader [Free], and the game isn't even called Flappy Bee on your device, it's Happy Bee, making this by far the most transparent of all the developers cashing in on the success and removal of Flappy Bird. Insane difficulty, which seems to be the core component of what makes a Flapp-like a Flapp-like is curiously absent. Instead, you just control a bee flying up and down on the screen collecting flowers. It seems the only way you can die is flying off the top or bottom of the screen, both things being very easy to avoid. While Ironpants wins in the obnoxious ad placement category, Flappy Bee dominates it in ad frequency. It seems like everything you do in this game triggers a full screen ad. Starting the game, pausing the game, dying, you name it, you've got an ad. Avoid this game. So, there you have it. The brave new world of the Flapp Store. I'd definitely check out Splashy Fish, particularly if you missed Flappy Bird. It's the best of the bunch, and it'll be interesting to see if it stays that way as more Flapp-likes hit the App Store. Right now it'd be easier to list the developers who aren't making their own Flappy Bird knock-off. So, batten down the hatches if you can't stand Flappy Bird. We're going to be in for a wild ride before we reach App Store equilibrium again. |
Wednesday, 12 February 2014
Touch Arcade
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