iPad
Universal News
by RevStu (October 26th, 2010 at 12:35 pm)
The staggering degree to which the App Store has rewritten the entire economic model of the videogames industry was illustrated in spectacular fashion today with the revelation that Backflip Studios (publishers of games like Paper Toss, NinJump and Buganoids) is currently raking in over $500,000 a month in revenues from the free ad-supported versions of its games alone.
In an interview with Mobile Entertainment, Backflip CEO Julian Farrior claimed that the company’s revenues had tripled since March this year, and that the huge numbers of players of the free versions of the games (according to Farrior, 15 million “active users” every month) was generating 600-800 million ad impressions and the half-a-million bucks that translated to, on top of the money Backflip makes from people upgrading to ad-free versions.
Speaking as someone who can’t stand ads and happily paid for the (59p/€0,79/99¢) ad-free versions of Paper Toss, World Tour and NinJump, these are truly staggering figures to have produced from a modest stable of very well-made but incredibly simple games. It’d be intriguing to know how the paid-version revenues compare to the cash the ads are pulling down – something Farrior didn’t reveal – but clearly freemium works, and works bigtime. That’s one hell of an amount of money to be making from games that people can (legally) choose whether to pay for or not.
Universal News
by Nathan Grayson (October 26th, 2010 at 6:07 am)
ABSURDLY GOOD DEAL ALERT. There are deals, and then there’s this deal, which strolls up to all the others, unhinges its horrific mutant snake jaw, and physically eats them for breakfast.
A battle. Presumably for Wesnoth.
It is *drumroll played by Friend Of Podgamer Animal of Muppets fame* Battle For Wesnoth. What’s a Wesnoth, you ask, and why should you be battling for it? Allow me to explain: Battle For Wesnoth is an open-source turn-based strategy game that’s been practicing its “Why yes, would you like to have your go at murdering me? Oh, don’t mind if I do” take on war since 2003. As a result, its iThing port comes pants-poppingly stuffed with nearly 200 scenarios, which – after we tried counting with real numbers, got mad, and gave up – totals out to about three jawzillion hours of content.
The best part? The game’s Halloween sale brings it down to a mere 59p/€0,79/99¢. I don’t care whether you even like turn-based strategy games or not; you don’t pass up this kind of value. So go buy it! Then fire up the tutorial because, otherwise, you’ll lose so fast that your utter defeat will tear through the fabric of space and time, instantly obliterating us all.
Universal Review 
Podgamer Recommended
by Craig Grannell (October 22nd, 2010 at 6:02 pm)
I never could get excited by golf. As a kid, the thought of hitting a ball with a stick and then wandering slowly around a rather dull rich-person’s lawn never caught my imagination. Oddly, though, from C64 classic Leaderboard onwards, I’ve always been partial to golf games. I am contradictory—don’t judge me.
There are loads of golf games for iOS devices, but Stick Golf has become my firm favourite; and, oddly enough, it wouldn’t have looked out of place on an 8-bit micro.
Brian was happy with the shot, but then realised he had no idea how to get down to the green.
Continue reading this post…
Universal News
by RevStu (October 19th, 2010 at 8:00 pm)
Is the one whose name is printed in enormous whacking great white capital letters in the screenshot below, which is taken from a different game entirely.
However, if you already own Arthur Ham’s classic, or if you’ve just spent all your cash but still quite fancy a bit of decent running-man action, you could do worse than Cave Run, which is the game in the picture . It’s actually closer to Canabalt, being a super-simple endless-level affair with only a single control – touch the screen to jump – but it’s going for nothing at the moment and it’s pleasingly addictive, with OpenFeint leaderboards and achievements to give it extra replay value.
Clearly you’re just supposed to imagine the big boulder rolling along behind you. We blame the lawyers.
Universal News Podgamer Recommended
by RevStu (October 13th, 2010 at 2:24 pm)
(You’re thinking of skittles, not pinball, you idiot. And even then, not the right kind of skittles. Still, I suppose at least we should be grateful it wasn’t a Tommy line, like everyone else who’s ever reviewed any kind of pinball-related game at any time in the last 20 years. I mean, do they think it’s THE FIRST TIME ANYONE’S EVER THOUGHT OF IT or something? Jesus. – Ed)
Bargain-alert time, chums. The fantastic Pinball HD is one of the App Store’s top three pinball games, offering as it does three top pinball games. Or at least, one top pinball game* and two pretty okay ones. But anyway. This used to be three separate pinball games played in uncomfortable portrait mode, until the advent of the iPad and then the iPhone 4′s retina display made it possible for it to be all pretty in landscape mode and for developers Gameprom to put all three games into one app. Which would probably have been possible before too if they’d really wanted to, but anyway.
The point we’re trying to make is, Pinball HD is really good, and is now on sale for a ridiculously low 59p (99c) for either the iPad or iPhone 4 versions, which are normally £1.79 ($2.99) and £1.19 ($1.99) respectively. Even though they’re the same game.
Although now that the newest iPod Touches have Retina screens too, we’d imagine it’ll work on those as well. And although there are two separate versions, we’re not sure what happens if you run the iPhone one on the iPad. But we do know that the iPad one definitely WON’T run on the iPhone, so don’t buy that one. Unless you have an iPad, obviously. Unless you have an iPad AND an iPhone, in which case you might as well get the one that’ll run on both. If it will. And definitely DEFINITELY don’t buy the three individual games, which are inexplicably still on sale for 59p each. Man, this got complicated.
Continue reading this post…
Universal Review
by Craig Grannell (October 13th, 2010 at 11:00 am)
If first impressions were everything, this review would read OH MY GOD YOU HAVE TO BUY THIS NOW *HEADEXPLOSION*. Luckily for you, Podgamer prides itself on playing games for more than thirty seconds. Stay tuned, then, for a salutory example of how quickly love at first sight can turn to PUNCHREPEATEDLYINTHEFACE hate when it comes to iOS gaming.
At this point, I loved The Incident about as much as a cute puppy doing cute puppy things.
Continue reading this post…
Universal Review Podgamer Recommended
by Craig Grannell (October 4th, 2010 at 6:24 pm) WITH SPECIAL GUEST STARS
Space Invaders was the first arcade game I remember playing. Due to my tender age, my dad had to lift me up to see the screen properly, something he instantly regretted, not least because I rapidly became hooked and I weighed quite a bit more than he realised.
These days, I find Space Invaders about as much fun as being sandpapered, and so I’m not a big fan of Taito’s serviceable ports for iPhone/iPod touch and iPad. The original Blue Defense was a different matter, its glorious twisty neon destruction rekindling the spark that had ignited when I was a kid. And the amusingly short instructions also helped: “Tilt to aim. Bullets shoot straight up”.
Now Blue Defense has got its ‘second wave’—and I’m hooked again.
Die, alien slime!
Continue reading this post…
Universal Review Podgamer Essential
by RevStu (October 4th, 2010 at 10:46 am)
No.1: ElectroMaster
One of the less-welcome aspects of the App Store is how hard it is for good new games to get noticed. There’s a very small window of opportunity on release, and if you’re not fortunate enough to pick up some coverage and/or word of mouth straight away, you’ll be swept away un-noticed in the avalanche of the next day’s apps and by the gaming media’s neurotic obsession with the new.
One of the reasons we started Podgamer was that we didn’t want to see so many great games be lost to posterity, and their creators go unrewarded for their excellent work, because nobody knew they existed. So as well as exciting new releases, you’ll find us regularly covering older titles that slipped undeservedly under the radar for one reason or another, and the first example is the fantastic ElectroMaster.
Continue reading this post…
Universal Feature
by Craig Grannell (October 1st, 2010 at 3:14 pm)
Due to reviewing a lot of iOS games of late, I now have an RSS feed that spits an overview of every new iOS game into Google Reader. And, my word, there’s an awful lot of utter crap out there. While I remain of the opinion that iOS is the greatest gaming system to date, it probably also has the worst ratio of good to bad games.
Ironically, much of the problem stems from Apple’s openness. Yes, you read that right. People bitch about the App Store approvals process, but it’s a hell of a lot easier to get a game on to the App Store than, say, make it for the Nintendo DS and get it on to store shelves. Apple recently in its review guidelines made a plea for quality, saying professional developers didn’t want their apps surrounded by ‘amateur hour’; from what I can tell, they already are.
So, if you’re planning on releasing an iOS game, I’ve provided some helpful tips.
Continue reading this post…
Universal Feature
by Craig Grannell (September 30th, 2010 at 11:39 am)
I receive an early preview of a game on the App Store. It has a great concept, but is insanely difficult, to the level that it makes Squareball seem forgiving. (And if you’ve played Squareball, you’ll know it’s forgiving in the same way that iOS games are expensive—i.e. not at all.)
I email the developer, outlining my gripes in full and making suggestions. I get an email back, thanking me, and after a brief to-and-fro about some specific points, I don’t hear anything else. About a week later, I get a polite thank-you and am told some of my ideas have already been integrated into an update. Today, that update went live and the dev name-checked me in the update notes. It remains to be seen whether they improve things (I’ll review the game during the next fortnight at some point), but it looks promising.
With the exception of the name-check, this isn’t the first time this has happened to me. And while it’s not the kind of thing that happens with major publishers (otherwise Scrabble would have an online turn-by-turn mode—c’mon, EA!), it’s relatively commonplace with indies. This kind of feedback—in terms of something actually happening and something happening quickly—is almost unheard of on other platforms and certainly on other mobile platforms. However, it’s something that hugely improves both the user experience and the games themselves.
