The 32nd Annual Eli Hodapp iOS Games Birthday Sale is Underway Posted: 28 Feb 2015 11:30 AM PST Back in 2012, the App Store was a very different and arguably crazier place. Free to play, and all the tricks that go into promoting a free to play game didn't exist yet and really the easiest way to get additional interest in your game after launch was to drop the price. This resulted in the pretty hilarious trend of game sales for reasons that didn't even make sense. Universally recognized 100% useless Hallmark-invented holidays like Sweetest Day even had their associated deluge of iOS game sales. So, I figured if developers were looking for a reason for a say in the dead zone between George Washington's birthday and St. Patrick's Day, why not observe my own birthday with a iOS game sale? And that's exactly what happened. Well, it's 2015, and there's already a bunch of games on sale this week for my birthday early, but people who are tighter with their promotions put their games on sale just for today only in observance of National Hodapp Day which falls on February 28th of each year.
Personal favorites Ow My Balls! [Free] and Ow My Balls XL! [Free (HD)] are free. If reproductive destruction isn't your cup of tea and you like to slow things down a bit with minesweeper, Planet Minesweeper [$0.99] is also available for zero dollars. The Retro Dreamer guys are observing the Hodapp Birthday Extravaganza with their vertical shooter Velocispider [Free] going free. The guys from Fun Fetched regrettably can't price lower than 99¢ for their game Top Tank [Free], so they just had to make it free too. But what if you like space and potatoes, well, you know what, you're in luck. SpaceSpuds [$0.99] is free too (or should be free soon, iTunes is weird). We loved Sentinel 4 [$2.99] in our review, and while the game is normal price the awesome Juggernaut Commander IAP is on sale for 99¢. DotEmu is having a huge birthday sale (celebrating their birthday, but I'll take credit too) on their PC side, so if you've had your eye on any of their iOS games and want to have the PC counterpart, there you go. Squishy Cats [$0.99] and DUNGEONy [$0.99] are both a buck too.
Last, but not least by any stretch of the imagination is Benediction [$9.99] by notorious internet curmudgeon, podcast host, and improv mastermind Mike Schramm. It's usually free, but in observance of my birthday it's on sale for $9.99. I deserve this kind of thing. |
The TouchArcade Show - 195 - GDC Pre-Show Posted: 27 Feb 2015 07:24 PM PST
Don't forget to shoot us emails with any questions, feedback, or anything else relevant or irrelevant to podcast@toucharcade.com. We read 'em all, even if they don't make it into the podcast. As always, you can listen to us with the links below... And if you like what you hear, please subscribe and/or drop us a review in iTunes. Much appreciated! iTunes Link: The TouchArcade Show Oh, and if you didn't last week, be sure to listen to the inaugural episode of The RPG Reload Podcast! Additionally, if you're interested in sponsoring either of our podcasts, we've got ad packages that can fit any budget. Shoot an email to ads@toucharcade.com for more information. This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
TouchArcade Game of the Week: 'iNetHack2' Posted: 27 Feb 2015 06:51 PM PST The idea behind the TouchArcade Game of the Week is that every Friday afternoon we post the one game that came out this week that we think is worth giving a special nod to. Now, before anyone goes over-thinking this, it doesn't necessarily mean our Game of the Week pick is the highest scoring game in a review, the game with the best graphics, or really any other quantifiable "best" thing. Instead, it's more just us picking out the single game out of the week's releases that we think is the most noteworthy, surprising, interesting, or really any other hard to describe quality that makes it worth having if you were just going to pick up one. These picks might be controversial, and that's OK. If you disagree with what we've chosen, let's try to use the comments of these articles to have conversations about what game is your game of the week and why. Without further ado… iNetHack2The term "roguelike" gets thrown around a lot nowadays (i.e. Hodappy Bird [Free] is a roguelike), but once upon a time roguelike was only used to describe a fairly specific type of game. It all started with the grandaddy of them all, 1980's Rogue. That groundbreaking game led to many, ahem, Rogue-like games that kept most of the core concepts of Rogue intact but put their own spin on the formula. One of the most revered of these spinoffs is 1987's NetHack.
Once upon a time, around August of 2009, an excellent iOS port of NetHack was released, called iNetHack. It was developed by Dirk Zimmermann and was based on 2003's NetHack 3.4.3, the most recent official version of NetHack to be released. Despite a few quirks and bugs, iNetHack was an awesome mobile port of the classic roguelike, and a cult favorite amongst many iPhone gamers. That is until September 2013 when iOS 7 was released and basically broke the game. Eventually, iNetHack was removed from the App Store, leaving its fans without a portable version of an all-time favorite. One of those rabid iNetHack fans was Jeff King, and he decided to do something about the broken iNetHack. So he fixed it. After contacting Zimmermann and receiving his blessing, King took the busted iNetHack and fixed it to work on iOS 8 and all the latest iOS device screens, as well as made it Universal to work on the iPad. The result is the just-released iNetHack 2 [Free]. As King notes in our forums, "Really Dirk Zimmermann is the real developer of 99.9% of this and I put in 0.1% to fix it up and add a few things, and get it available again." That means that if you were familiar with iNetHack previously, don't expect a whole lot to have changed. However, there are some nice features in iNetHack 2, like multiple tile sets to choose from, touchscreen gesture controls, customizeable keyboard shortcuts, and file sharing capability through Hearse. (Pro tip: a full options menu resides in the Settings app, not in the game itself.) Though he's being modest, I'm sure there are plenty of NetHack fans who really appreciate King getting in there and bringing iNetHack back to life. Amusingly, King was actually the last person to post in the original iNetHack thread in our forums, noting the issues the game had on iOS 7. Funny he turned out to be the one to fix those very problems he was complaining about.
Besides making people who are already NetHack fans happy, the arrival of iNetHack2 creates an opportunity for a whole new audience to experience this classic. Be warned, though: This game is not easy, and it's not especially noob-friendly. However, there are countless resources out there that can teach you the ins and outs of the game, including links to some directly in the game itself. If you're patient and put in the time you'll be rewarded with a game that you can literally play for years and years to come, and still might never see everything it has to offer. It's so incredibly deep, which is why many people consider it "The Greatest Game You Will Ever Play." So if you were an iNetHack fan who has been missing having a working version, a regular NetHack fan who's in the market for a mobile version, or a total newbie who likes incredibly challenging dungeon crawlers and RPGs, then you all have a reason to download the new iNetHack2 for free. |
Posted: 27 Feb 2015 05:37 PM PST Another week of awesome games, including one kinda-sorta weird review where we focus on a specific IAP item inside of a game. But, to be fair, figuring out what to do with content-centric IAP is still a little weird for us... Bur, whatever, you need Pinball Arcade any way you slice it. Again, these are the highest scored reviews we published this week:
Pinball Arcade , $0.99 [Review] - The developers behind The Pinball Arcade [Free / $0.99], FarSight Studios, are nothing if not extremely passionate about pinball. They've been in the games industry a pretty long time, over 20 years now, but they didn't truly find their niche until the 2004 release of Pinball Hall Of Fame: The Gottlieb Collection on the PlayStation 2. Its initial release was perhaps a little too early to catch the renaissance of video pinball, but it at least did well enough that they followed that up a few years later with The Williams Collection. With Williams tables being a lot more well-known among Americans, that release ended up doing pretty well, earning high praise for its faithfulness to the real machines. While this was all happening, digital storefronts started to become more popular. Soon, retail retro collections were becoming retro themselves, with a la carte offerings proving more popular with fans. It was a natural fit for the type of work FarSight was doing, and so The Pinball Arcade was born.
AG Drive , $3.99 [Review] - You just don't see a whole lot of ugly futuristic racers. Even if a game has ugly visuals, it can be excused away as a lo-fi stylistic choice to represent the vagueness of the future, or some artsy gobbledygook like that. But often, because the games can be big, bold, and colorful because they're playing with exaggerated fantasy, futuristic racing games can be gorgeous. Wipeout has always been a great-looking franchise. AG Drive [$3.99] follows that Wipeout formula - deliver fast-paced futuristic racing that's absolutely stunning to look at. This is a solid futuristic racing game that's quite easy on the eyes.
Planet Quest , Free [Review] - Like Parappa The Rapper, Planet Quest [Free] has a pretty odd theme to its visuals. Also like that game, it only offers up a handful of songs, but with a great deal of variety between them in terms of speed and complexity. Its closest cousin is probably Nintendo's fantastic Rhythm Heaven series. You don't have to worry about following complex chains of different buttons. As long as you can tap to the beat, you're nine-tenths of the way there. Additionally, we reviewed a few other games this week. As always, you can dig into all of our reviews by clicking here. Alternatively, you can hit up specific scores by using these links: |
First 'BlazBlue: Battle Cards' Gameplay Trailer Hits Posted: 27 Feb 2015 04:01 PM PST Last month Metaversal Studios announced BlazBlue: Battle Cards, a competitive card battling game based on the popular BlazBlue fighting game series. In that announcement Metaversal released a teaser trailer, that was pretty darn teaser-y. It didn't really show anything from the game itself, so we've been kind of wondering what the actual game will look like in motion. Well, the cat is now out of the bag as today Metaversal has released the first gameplay trailer for BlazBlue: Battle Cards. Check it out.
BlazBlue: Battle Cards will feature 9 different characters from the 2012 arcade and console fighting game BlazBlue: Chrono Phantasma, with plans for adding additional characters to the game post-launch. One of the coolest features of BlazBlue: Battle Cards is that it'll have real-time multiplayer, which is usually left out of competitive card games in favor of the more mobile-friendly asynchronous multiplayer. BlazBlue: Battle Cards is looking really cool, and while no specific release date has been given yet it sounds like it's pretty darn close. So be sure to follow along in the forums and we'll bring you any further news on the upcoming game as it hits. |
'Badland' Update #23 Brings New Co-Op Levels, Achievements, and Missions Posted: 27 Feb 2015 02:32 PM PST The Badland [$3.99] update train keeps rolling along! Update #23 for the hit platformer is out now, and it brings the levels added to the Daydream level pack earlier to the game's co-op mode, so up to four players can go through those levels together. While those levels were free at one point in time, they can now be had for $0.99, along with the Doomsday level pack. Even if you've already played the levels, you can now collect 4 new achievements and play 30 new missions in the game.
Badland has been regularly updated since its initial release, and there's nothing to suggest that more content isn't on the way. The game is also making the leap to other platforms, where it will be interesting to see how people take to the one-touch gameplay of Badland on systems where physical controls are the norm. Future Badland games are in the works, and while they have a lot to live up to with the critical and financial success of Badland, I'm curious to see what Frogmind has up next. |
Posted: 27 Feb 2015 01:41 PM PST A few weeks back, our crack Japan-based reporter Shaun Musgrave wrote about a new update for the iOS version of the original Final Fantasy [$8.99]. It was the first update to the game in more than two years. While the game didn't receive true widescreen support, it did get some lovely border art to fill in the dreaded "black bars" when playing the game on any of the widescreen iPhone devices. Similarly, the previous iPhone-only version of the game became Universal, though its scaling was a bit weird on iPad devices. Strangely, some of the long-standing bugs in the game didn't get fixed with that update at all, but at least it was nice to see Square Enix paying some kind of attention to one of their oldest iOS games. Anyway, the bummer at the time was that the update for Final Fantasy was only available through the Japan-exclusive Final Fantasy Portal app, which is basically a one-stop shop that houses all the various iOS Final Fantasy ports. We don't have that here in the US, but today Square Enix finally did roll out the update to the standalone Final Fantasy app for folks outside of Japan.
Again, this update does leave a lot to be desired, but at least Square Enix is actively updating the game and perhaps there's a chance they'll continue to update it fixing bugs and working on new features. Or, maybe this is it, who knows. It's definitely better than nothing, and now I'm hoping that we'll see a similar type of update for Final Fantasy 2 [$8.99] someday. |
Saturday, 28 February 2015
Touch Arcade
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