Why Are So Many Games Free? Let the 'Dudeski' Developer Explain Why. Posted: 04 Feb 2015 12:29 PM PST Do you ever wonder why so many games go free? Here's some evidence that shows why paid games are going the way of the dodo, courtesy of Dudeski [$1.99] developer Benedict Fritz of Static Oceans. They just released Dudeski on Android as an ad-supported game, despite it being a paid game on iOS. Why? Because the game on iOS got 36 purchases from the period of September 1st to December 1st, despite still seeing a decent base of players playing it: over 91 players per day, and 2,144 per month, with 145 seconds per session. Fritz thinks that the users came from the free promotion that they ran for the game.
So, over time, it's hypothetically easier to get users to latch on to a free game, than one that has an upfront cost. And even with advertising, it's possible to make money off of those users. While Dudeski got lots of favorable coverage and an Apple feature that pushed it into the top paid games at launch, it quickly fell off and was a non-factor on the charts for months on end. So you wonder why so many games go free with ads? Because developers can find ways to get the users – it's getting their money that's the hard part. It's just the reality of the market right now. |
First 'NightCry' Gameplay Trailer Released Posted: 04 Feb 2015 12:01 PM PST The cult mid-90s horror game Clock Tower is getting a spiritual sequel, formerly called Project Scissors but now known as NightCry. The game is being developed by Nude Maker, which is comprised of former Human Entertainment employees who worked on the original Clock Tower. Just about a month ago, Nude Maker released a live-action teaser for NightCry, and this week they've put out the first gameplay trailer showing what an early version of the game is like in action. Set on a cruise ship, the protagonist must escape the creepy Scissorwalker–a direct nod to the Scissorman in the original Clock Tower–by running, hiding, and using ingenuity in order to not get caught and scissored to bits.
NightCry was originally planned as a mobile game only, but recently Nude Maker developed aspirations to bring the title to the larger screen of the PC. In order to do that they're trying their hand at Kickstarter. No matter which way the crowdfunding campaign goes, NightCry should still be coming to iOS, Android and Playstation Vita. Unfortunately no release date has been set, but NightCry looks nice and scary so we'll be keeping an eye out for more details as they come. [IGN] |
Photo of Alleged Chinese Pay-to-Review App Store Service Hits Twitter Posted: 04 Feb 2015 10:40 AM PST One of the most recent figures released by Apple on how much they've paid developers for apps and games in the App Store is twenty five billion dollars so far. On one hand, that's awesome, on the other, when you're talking about that much money, it inevitably leads to scummy side businesses trying to figure out how they can get their slice. In the world of iOS, this has lead to all sorts of gross services from straight up selling game installs to selling actual iTunes reviews. Who is writing these iTunes reviews? Well, according to Hong Kong-based Twitter user @simonpang, these people are: It's not that surprising, as the seedy underbelly of World of Warcraft gold farming has been exposed time and time again, and often leads to people in China working in conditions like this doing everything they can to earn gold in game to then sell to Americans looking to get ahead in game. There's a obvious caveat to this of course- It is just an image posted on Twitter, so we can't really verify that this is in fact an actual Chinese paid App Store review farm, but given this person has what looks to be at least 100 iPhones in front of them and a similar looking angled table on the other side, something weird is happening. Wall Street Journal reporter Lisa Fleisher is on the case, so keep an eye out for a potentially pretty crazy story on the world of paid app reviews from them in the not too distant future. |
'Exiles' Review - Lost in Space Posted: 04 Feb 2015 10:30 AM PST I hate when a game lets me down. Exiles [$4.99] had a cool premise, and was from a developer that has done big, expansive open-world games on iOS before. Yet, this just falls way short of what it promised to be. This is the latest open-world RPG from Crescent Moon, having you deal with a government conspiracy involving a deadly virus, and the eventual fight against a politician riding in a giant mech. The game is mission-driven, but there's a giant, expansive world that you can explore, though there's not a whole lot to actually find beyond what the missions have. At least you can ride in mechs and on sweet air bikes, and shoot the ironically-named Peacebots.
This is an open-world game, but without much incentive to actually explore the world. It's vast and barren at this point, and while there are vehicles to ride, some missions actually don't offer them, forcing you to go across the desert on foot, which is ridiculous. But why not have some side quests to incentivize exploring the world? Instead, this winds up being a game that you can play rather linearly, and between down times, you can maybe wander around a bunch of deserts. Considering that Ravensword: Shadowlands [$6.99] had a world that felt much livelier, this is just baffling. Plus, the main quest can be finished in a relatively short amount of time, possibly even just a couple hours. It felt a lot shorter than you'd expect from a game that feels so big.
The game is good-looking, especially on modern devices, and there's an impressive draw distance for the expansive world. The large bulk of the game takes place in corridor-filled environments, and without maps, it's very easy to get lost anywhere and everywhere. Pay attention to the markers where the teleporters are. See, this game just gives you little reason to stray from the beaten path, though there's at least one hidden cave with a special weapon. The combat is painful. This game needs the combat with the quality of a dedicated first-person shooter, instead you get the shooting mechanics of an open-world RPG, which feels far clunkier by comparison. Really, as long as you have your reticule pointed at an enemy and you fire when it's on them, you'll kill them. That's how this works. It's not even so much worth aiming as it is to just strafe out and about, firing when you get cented up on your foe. Some circle strafing comes in handy, but otherwise, just keep your distance and fire away. At least there's MFi support and the controls are configurable. The game doesn't control awfully, it's more about the feel of the game and the shooting than anything.
The RPG elements largely involve using certain weapons repeatedly in order to increase your mastery of them, with certain stats and skills that can be increased upon each level up. The big difference between each character is that they have a different special ability. I played as the Adept, and don't recommend them, because the time warp ability they have is not useful at all. The ability to turn invisible or shoot power blasts? Much more so, based on my testing! Otherwise, you have to treat this game more as a shooter where you can upgrade your stats occasionally. Considering that RPG elements are permeating gaming now, this really isn't much of a unique feature. Really, I wish that there was the ability to test out the characters, or train each of the three abilities, instead of having to blindly choose a character class early on.
Really, I'm just disappointed in Exiles. I wonder if this was the wrong game to be made with this idea. The world needs a lot more fleshing out to live up to its pedigree as an open-world game. It needs reasons to explore that world, people to talk to, things to discover, reasons to go and find it, rather than just following the main plot. If this game was going to be a purely linear experience, then it could have been built more for that. I don't think the storyline is very good, but a good futuristic space-shooter doesn't need a good storyline if it has good action. The good news is that Crescent Moon has indicated a willingness to update the game, and the game is ripe to have more content added in. There's so much where it could be added, and so much more that could be done in this world. Some of the fundamental flaws with the combat may be hard to fix, but if you create a world that's fun to explore with a lot to do, any clunky combat can be forgiven. It would also help if there was more character customization in terms of what a character's skills could do. I think a lot has to be done to make Exiles into a good or great game, but it definitely doesn't seem like it would be impossible to do.
But as it is right now? It's a pretty package, but an extreme letdown. I can't really recommend the game in its launch form. Down the road, if the game gets updated with more content, then sure. But right now? It's worth a pass unless you're the most die-hard fan of Crescent Moon games. |
'UniWar' Is Free Again If Your iOS Collection Is Missing This Classic Posted: 04 Feb 2015 09:45 AM PST We've been a little light on the freebies this week, but this one just scrolled across AppShopper and it seemed worth posting. UniWar [Free] is easily described as an oldie but goodie. It's actually among the first games I reviewed on TouchArcade, so it'll always have a spot on my iPhone. While the game definitely feels a little dated in 2015, it has solid turn-based strategy gameplay that feels timeless. When it was released, it was a big deal that we were getting something that even vaguely played like Advance Wars was on the App Store and with online multiplayer. Crazier yet, when UniWar first launched, push notifications in iOS weren't even a thing yet, so it emailed you when it was your turn. iOS capture hardware wasn't even a thing yet:
Surprisingly enough, UniWar is still getting updated, and still has people playing it. If for whatever reason you've missed out on this game in the last six years... Well, here's your chance. |
Lonnie Shows 'Skyward' Isn't the 'Monument Valley' Clone Everyone Thought It Was Posted: 04 Feb 2015 09:30 AM PST When Skyward [Free] came out a little over a week ago now, it seemed like everyone was rushing to point out how much they ripped off from ustwo's Monument Valley [$3.99]. (Admittedly, the developer is also responsible for the original release of 2048 [Free], so originality isn't really their strong suit.) While the art style is unmistakably similar, the gameplay itself is actually quite different. Instead of a methodical puzzle game experience sort of thing, it's a timing-based tapping game that could almost be described as a puzzle platformer, although it'd be a stretch. Anyway, here's YouTube superstar Lonnie playing through the game, which as you can see, really isn't anything like Monument Valley:
Like I said, the art style is similar, but ustwo didn't really invent that kind of impossible style, M. C. Escher did. |
'Yet It Moves' Review - Look Ma, No 'Ands' Posted: 04 Feb 2015 09:00 AM PST DeNA continues their strange new pattern of releasing iOS versions of PC indie games under new names with Yet It Moves [$2.99], probably the most famous of the batch so far. Originally titled And Yet It Moves, it was first released on PC back in 2009 before making its way to WiiWare, of all places, in 2010. It received a fair bit of praise back then for its clever take on platforming and unique presentation. Here in 2015, it's not quite as unusual as it once was, but its strong level designs and good pacing make it a game still well-worth checking out. As near as I can tell, there's no story or context for the game. It's a side-scrolling platformer that has you controlling a sketchy-looking guy who looks like he wandered out of an A-ha video. You need to make your way through the oddly-designed levels to reach the piece of paper you were apparently cut from. I don't know, friends. You have a relatively small set of tools at your disposal. You can move left or right and jump, like any decent platformer character. Those skills won't get you terribly far before you have to make use of the game's central mechanic, however. Rather than directly navigating the environment, you have to move the environment around your character to make progress. At any time, you can rotate the world in either direction, with gravity behaving appropriately once you stop moving things. Your character is quite susceptible to falling damage, though, so you have to be very careful to pay attention to his momentum and how long his drops are. You'll also need to make sure nothing squashes you from above or pinches you between it and a hard place.
While there are only 17 main levels and a few extra bonus levels to the game, they're quite large and can take some time to work your way through. There are frequent checkpoints scattered along the way that you instantly respawn at when you die. They're spaced apart well enough that death isn't entirely meaningless, but close enough that if you have to stop playing and do something else, you won't have to repeat much. The checkpoints also helpfully point out the direction you need to go in next, a vital bit of advice given how complicated some of the level designs are. You'll have to use your world rotating abilities to solve a few puzzles now and then, but they're almost all a variation on moving one object to another object to open the way forward. The trick, of course, is that you need to mind where your character is moving in all of this. These puzzles start to wear a little bit thin by the end of the game, but they provide a nice break from simply moving your character from point A to point B. Most of the fun in the game happens outside of those puzzles, however. The game's use of physics and momentum can make for some crazy situations and equally outrageous last-minute saves. Once you really get the hang of things, you'll be zooming around obstacles in impossible ways like some sort of wild super hero. The difficulty curve is so smooth that you might not even notice your steadily-building skills unless you actually stop and think about it. It manages all of this nearly wordlessly, an impressive and sadly rare quality these days. The game also has the courtesy to step off the stage just when it's starting to get a bit tiresome. The game was criticized for its brevity in its previous forms, but I think it's just about right for what it has to offer. You'll get at least a few hours of fun out of Yet It Moves, and each level feels meaningful and memorable. Without any extra gimmicks to offer, that's certainly enough to fully explore the central mechanic.
In addition to the main levels, the game also includes the extra levels from the Wii version and a special daily run mode where you can compete against your friends on a leaderboard. They aren't significant additions to the game, but they are certainly welcome. The only downside to the daily run levels is that they are relatively shorter, simpler, and are visually quite plain. It's a sharp contrast to the bizarre aesthetic the rest of the game has going on. Apparently, the game was originally designed to have everything use the same pencil-drawn look of the protagonist, but the developers thought it was a little dull. They added a bit of color by using scraps of clip art, and were happy with the outcome. On the one hand, it makes the game look and feel a little bit cheap at times, but on the other hand, there's nothing else that looks quite like it. Each level is like a living collage, with obstacles frequently taking the form of static pictures of things like gorillas or spiders. Sometimes, these images will surprise you by actually animating, but they usually don't move any more intricately than a torn piece of a magazine would. The controls have adapted fairly well. They can be a little fussy at times, but there's enough of a margin for error in the game's design that it's rarely frustrating. Simply press down on the left or right side of the screen to move in either direction and tap again while holding a direction to jump. To rotate the world, hold down on the screen and slide up or down. You'll sometimes find you're rotating when you want to run or vice-versa, but it generally works well enough. At the very least, rotating pauses the action, so it won't mess you up too badly if you were meaning to run. The character is pretty floaty and deliberate in his movements, something that normally bothers me a lot in platformers, but being able to make adjustments to the ground underneath your feet on the fly makes up for a lot. The bottom line, I suppose, is that the controls support the game's design well enough that you wouldn't suspect this of being a port job if you didn't know otherwise.
While it's a little on the short side and there isn't a lot of replay value to it, for the price the iOS version goes for, Yet It Moves is an easy recommendation for anyone who enjoys puzzle platformers. It has a look and sound all its own, and some rock-solid level design that takes full advantage of its main gameplay mechanic. I'm not sure why DeNA is suddenly taking an interest in porting over games like Yet It Moves, but as long as they're as good as this is, I sure hope they keep them coming. |
'Toysburg' from Angry Mob Games Soft Launched in Australia Posted: 04 Feb 2015 08:17 AM PST Angry Mob Games, the folks behind Muffin Knight [$0.99 / Free], have just soft-launched their next game, Toysburg, in Australia. We previewed the title a few months ago, but now the game is one step closer to being available worldwide. Angry Mob has also released a new trailer of the mission-driven sandbox game where you turn children into toys:
There's also the older, longer gameplay video based on an earlier version of the game, that shows more about how different missions work:
The developer is looking to get some more feedback on the game and its various aspects before they go worldwide with it. The game is free-to-play and has a mission structure, but there's loads of sandbox elements, with customization available for your characters, the toys you create, and the city you're playing in. Plus, there will be weekly contests for your creations to take part in. You can pick up the app right now from the Australian App Store. |
Posted: 04 Feb 2015 07:06 AM PST It's Wednesday again, and like clockwork there's a whole bunch of new iOS games that have popped up on the New Zealand App Store. Again, this is very likely not all of the games that are coming out tonight. It seems like ever since we had that weird week where Apple changed pricing around the App Store has been a bit more unpredictable regarding when new games get released. So, consider this a potential tease of what's to come.
Here's games that have threads on our forums so far:
Stay tuned for our full roundup at 11:00 PM Eastern when we go through everything that has appeared on the US App Store. |
'Dark Echo' is a Haunting Game Built on Sound, Available Now Posted: 04 Feb 2015 05:00 AM PST RAC7 Games just put out a curious new title that is designed around using sound to help navigate your way through dangerous rooms and tunnels, called Dark Echo [$1.99]. How it works is that you tap and hold in a direction to walk that way, with each step creating sound waves which are visualized in the game world. As such, it's not really sound-exclusive, but positional audio does play a role in pointing out to you where walls and threats are located. And yes, there are threats. Enemies will chase you down, and there are sections that can kill you, indicated by their red color-coding. Items like keys are colored gold, and other elements get involved over time.
The game is based on RAC7's You Must Escape, which was originally made for Ludum Dare 26, but this is a bigger and more expanded version of that. The concept is really cool, and the game is surprisingly gorgeous for a sound-centric game, with the geometric lines being created by the sound waves each step and generated noise creates. This is a fascinating little game, and our forum thread is already a-buzz about it. |
Posted: 03 Feb 2015 04:24 PM PST It's a fact: Making friends is hard. It's also super overrated. Modern advertising would have you believe that in order to be able to play a video game such as Pong, you'd need at least one other human being there with you. This simply isn't true, and the upcoming One Player Pong is here to prove it. Check out the trailer below which is set to a catchy '50s-era advertising jingle performed by Mark Saul.
Now, this isn't the first game to use the "solo circular Pong" idea, and in fact App Cow's Circle Pong! [Free] is probably the most popular of the bunch. However, as One Player Pong developer Sean Kearney tells us via email, the similarities between the two games weren't intentional, and he'd actually been inspired to create One Player Pong by something QWOP [$0.99] developer Bennet Foddy said during the Experimental Gameplay Workshop at GDC last year. He urged every aspiring game designer to create a variant of Pong and a variant of Chess, and One Player Pong is what Kearney came up with for his variant on Pong. It looks really cool, and really fun, and darn it if that trailer isn't catchy. One Player Pong should be arriving along with all the rest of the week's new releases tomorrow night, so keep an eye out for it. |
'Toast Time' Creators Get That 'Sinking Feeling' This Thursday Posted: 03 Feb 2015 03:35 PM PST The developers of Toast Time [$2.99], Force of Habit, haven't quite released their next big followup to that yet, but they have a smaller title that they're releasing this Thursday, February 5th, in case you've been waiting for more from them. Sinking Feeling is their take on the challenging high-score game, where you control a falling ball with a face, guiding them through successive gates, trying not to hit the spiked edges of each one. Now, you only get points for going through the gates, but you can skip them if you're afraid you will die by hitting the edges without penalty. The game gets faster with more difficult patterns every ten points, and if you hit sixty points, then the "Harder" mode gets unlocked. It is a lot harder.
Interestingly, Sinking Feeling will not be free with ads, as many games of the sort are, but will be available for $0.99 up front, which is great for those who prefer just paying up front. We'll see how it works out for Force of Habit, but this game is pretty fun and challenging, so those who check it out should get their money's worth. |
Posted: 03 Feb 2015 01:36 PM PST Aside from pasting imgur links to cat gifs and talk about wrestling, we do actually discuss a lot of super-relevant things at the virtual water cooler of the TouchArcade war room. This afternoon we got on the subject of what yet to be announced games we're likely going to see on the App Store in 2015, and it seems like we're just overdue for a new Grand Theft Auto game. Stay with me on this.
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas [$6.99] was released on December 11th of 2013. Before that, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City [$4.99] hit the App Store a little more than a year before that on December 5th, or 371 days apart. Prior to that was Grand Theft Auto III on December 14th, 2011- 357 days before GTA:VC. Chinatown Wars [$4.99] hit the App Store on January 17th, 2010, creating a 696 day gap between GTA releases. That puts us at an average of roughly 475 days between GTA releases. As of this writing, we're 420 days out from San Andreas- That average gets even lower if we take into account the HD version of Chinatown Wars. Yes, we have Metal now thanks to iOS 8, but I really think it's going to be a while before we see a proper GTA IV port. It'd be awesome to think it's possible one day, but I don't think we're there yet. All that leaves is us Vice City Stories and Liberty City Stories. Both games are from an era of GTA games that already are running on iOS, so it makes all too much sense that they'll eventually appear on the App Store. With the existing GTA games all fresh and updated, what else could Rockstar's mobile team be working on?
So what do you guys think? Do we have enough data here that our average makes statistical sense? If so, it means inside of the next two months we're going to see another GTA game. However, Rockstar seems to definitely prefer releasing their games around the holiday season. Is this going to be a year we're going to see a two year gap between releases like we did between Chinatown Wars and GTA III? I don't have any inside information on this (Or ... Do I?) but it seems interesting to think about. 55 days from now would be March 30th, but given the fact that iOS games are technically released on Thursdays, if our math is correct Vice City Stories and/or Liberty City Stories will be released on March 26th or April 2nd. I mean, I wouldn't bet money on either of those dates, but it's going to really amuse me if I'm right. |
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