Posts Tagged iPhone
Feeding Time is Coming!
Posted by The Management in projects on January 22, 2012
We’re making a small iOS puzzle game, let us know what you think!
Infinity Blade Bits
Posted by The Management in games on March 4, 2011
With the recently announced Deathless Kings update, I figured I’d take a quick look at the extremely popular Infinity Blade.
The bits:
— The entire game consist of only about a dozen or so “pit-stops” along a short but branching path. Each stop can include any of the following: a one-on-one battle, a treasure, a fork in the road, or any combination of the above.
Moving from environment to environment is done automatically, allowing the player to appreciate the vistas while hunting down optional loot.
— Traversing the environment is automatic, with the player’s avatar walking along a rail from one pit-stop to another. These segments can be fast-forwarded, although they represent opportunities to collect extra loot via a hidden object minigame. Unfortunately, there’s not a whole lot of randomization to the placement of objects, resulting in the player quickly memorizing all the potential treasure spots.
— Combat is timing-based and includes dodging (pressing either the lower left or lower right area of the screen), blocking (pressing the lower middle area of the screen), parrying (swiping in the opposite direction of an incoming attack), casting spells (tracing magic runes on the screen), and attacking (tapping/swiping the enemy itself).
— Although blocking is the easiest of the defensive maneuvers, each subsequent attack degrades the equipped shield and can eventually destroy it.
— In order to score hits reliably, the player must create openings by successfully dodging/blocking/parrying incoming attacks. The player can even stun the enemy with a well-placed counter, initiating a slow-motion effect complete with a hotspot that can be stabbed for extra damage.
It’s a small feature, but it works well as it prevents the player from swiping around as quickly as possible in order not to miss any opportunities to deal bonus damage. The only downside to this is that some enemies have ridiculously long wind-up periods that seem like slow motion, suckering the player into attacking at the wrong time.
Enemies are usually much larger than the player, but it's still fairly easy to deflect their blows with the proper timing.
— Occasional segments where the combatants’ weapons clash add further variety. These result in a tug-of-war that has the player rapidly tapping the screen in an effort to overpower the enemy and score a few free hits.
— The battles progress through phases accompanied by cinematic transitions, e.g., an en enemy retreating over a bridge and away from the player’s onslaught. When an enemy is defeated, it goes into a stunned phase that allows the player to score a bunch of free hits (each one granting an extra bit of experience) before being dispatched with an auto-executed fatality.
— Infinity Blade has a bit of a Demon’s Souls vibe, both in aesthetics and gameplay. The visuals and the God King’s speech are somewhat similar, as is the ability to retain one’s stats/equipment after dying (admittedly, though, Infinity Blade is much more forgiving than Demon’s Souls).
— The enemies level up with the main character, and although the encounters are always the same, the opponents’ armaments change with each subsequent playthrough.
Each piece of equipment has its own experience counter that -- when leveled up -- adds to the player's base stats.
— One final note of interest is that each equipable item gains experience along with the player. This not only encourages equipment-swapping for visual and physical improvements, but also to maximize the rate of advancement. In a game that’s largely loot-based, this works great as an additional motivator for seeking out extra treasures.
I had a few issues with Chair’s breakout hit Shadow Complex and its plethora of mechanics, but I found Infinity Blade a very focused and enjoyable experience.
Nelson Tethers – Puzzle Agent Bits
Posted by The Management in art, games on July 12, 2010
Nelson Tethers: Puzzle Agent cribs quite liberally from Professor Layton, and relies heavily on its art style, but it’s still my favourite of Telltale’s episodic games to date.
The bits:
— Obviously the most noticeable thing about Puzzle Agent is its offbeat, crayon-drawn art style. What’s interesting here is that the game relies on stop-motion like animations reminiscent of old, low-budget cartoons. The effect is actually quite good and and the choppy movements are consistently utilized even when smooth animations could have easily replaced them (e.g., a snowmobile driving in a straight line).
The system made me wonder if other art styles not conducive to animation could successfully adopt a similar approach.
Nelson Tethers: Puzzle Agent is quite a cinematic game that uses lots of different framing techniques for both its interactive and non-interactive sequences.
— Aside from the visual style itself, PA is a very atmospheric title in the vein of the old LucasArts adventure games. The characters are bizarre and expressive, the Fargo-esque setting is unique (at least for a videogame), and the great music and voice acting enrich the overall experience.
— PA was clearly designed with the iPhone/iPad in mind. The player never walks his avatar around the screen, and clicking most places sends out a helper-shockwave. As this shockwave expands, it highlights any points of interest that can be clicked on to initiate conversations, puzzles, scene transitions, etc.
These icons briefly pop-up whenever the player clicks on any close-by, non-interactive areas.
— The actual puzzles in PA are a bit of a letdown. This is due to two main reasons: lack of instructions, and the inability to jot down notes in-game.
A lot of the puzzles are quite obtuse, sometimes to the point where a hint needs to be purchased just to figure out what the game wants the player to do. Unfortunately this seems like a concession to the game’s hint system (all puzzles must contain 3 individual hints) as some cases actually contains an additional screen that explains the controls and the goals of the minigame.
The secondary complaint deals with the nature of the puzzles themselves. Many of them are common math/logic problems that are meant to be solved in a series of steps. However, the player is often forced to visualize and work through them without any in-game aids. This artificially inflates their difficulty, especially when compared to the visual jigsaw puzzles.
These points certainly don’t ruin the game, but do I hope the various minigames are improved in future episodes.
Unfortunately most of the other puzzles are not described in nearly as much detail.
- Many puzzles are completely optional and make exploring the world feel more like a non-linear, interactive experience.
- The actual hint system is quite clever. The game starts off with the protagonist trying to solve a crossword, and, having some problems with it, eventually reaching over for some gum to help him concentrate. As we soon learn, the town he visits is experiencing a gum shortage. This forces the player to pick up old, discarded pieces of gum to aid Agent Tethers in his puzzle solving endeavours. Yes, it’s quite gross, but perfectly fits the mood of the game and gives the designers a great excuse to sprinkle virtually all parts of the environment with a useful collectible.
Agent Tethers comes face-to-face with Mike "The Lobster" Lobb.
Old gum also seems to be a reusable resource, reappearing in new spots as the Agent Tethers travels around town. This provides the player with an unlimited source of hints and prevents him from getting stuck on any one puzzle.
- As a nice little touch, the time of day on the title screen changes up periodically while the camera slowly scrolls around the Scoggins eraser factory.
- The UI of the game is very flashy but intuitive, with lots of animating widgets composed of labels and icons. The unskipable puzzle submission is a tad long, but the overall interface is a joy to use (especially when compared to many other adventure games).
My favourite scene with the creepy gnomes had one of them invade my puzzle in the middle of me trying to solve it! The sequence worked very well since the puzzles (at least up to that point) were a separate, uninterruptible segment only exposed to the player.
- Agent Tethers uses a tape recorder throughout the game to narrate his experiences. This provides extra personality and context while clearly outlining what must be done going forward.
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9000 BC, Castle Defense Games and Touch Controls
Posted by The Management in design on October 10, 2009
A few days ago I bought 9000 BC on a lark. It looked colourful and vibrant, and I thought it was a great idea to style the game after cave paintings. It was also only $0.99, so I figured what the hell?
As it turns out, 9000 BC is yet another entry in a slew of iPhone “Castle Defense” titles. This subgenre of a subgenre is fairly simple in concept: the player’s avatar stands on one side of the screen while swarms of enemies make a bee-line for him/her/it from the other side. The avatar is immobile, but can launch various attacks at his foes, and every so often upgrades become available for purchase.
I do love the cave-painting art style.
9000 BC uses this exact same formula with a few little twists (such as being able to throw dead bodies into a volcano as sacrificial offerings), but ultimately it’s not a very fun game. The reason for this is its interface.
Castle Defense games require the player to constantly interact with mobile objects that appear on virtually all parts of the screen. With a touch-based system, this means that the screen is often obscured by the player’s own hand. What makes this even worse in 9000 BC (at least for right-handed individuals) is that the main form of attack requires the player to touch his avatar — who stands on the left side of the screen — and slide his finger in the direction of an enemy. This effectively covers most of the screen, and, combined with the inherent lack of precision when aiming, makes for a hectic and unsatisfying experience.
It doesn't actually get quite this crazy in the game.
Letting the player choose his side (or simply flipping to a vertical orientation so enemies come in from the top) would’ve helped, but it wouldn’t have solved the problem altogether. These types of games work fine as online Flash titles, but they’re not well suited to being directly ported to the iPhone.
Mouse-based controls offer pixel-perfect precision and hardly ever obscure anything due to small cursor sizes. Styluses aren’t quite as accurate, but they’re close, and only their thin shafts cover the screen. With pure touch-based interfaces, though, that fine level of precision is lost and the user’s hands often get in the way.
These are all fairly straight-forward points, but, curiously, they’re often ignored by iPhone developers. It’s still a young and evolving platform, though, so hopefully these types issues will become rarer in the future.
Ruben & Lullaby
Posted by The Management in games on February 7, 2009
Created by Erik Loyer, Ruben & Lullaby is an iPhone/iTouch game that quickly grabbed my attention.
The titular Lullaby?
The premise of the game is a very identifiable one: a couple having their first fight. It’s meant to be an interactive graphic novel, with the illustrations supplied by Ezra Claytan Daniels. The black ‘n’ white ‘n’ single-tone art is reminiscent of what Michael Cho did for Everybody Dies, relying on thick outlines tracing the individuals’ major characteristics. This approach creates a clean look that’s very easy to make out — something that should be vital to a game based on reading and responding to people’s emotions.
The controls are fairly simple too: rub the screen to calm a character down, shake the device to make him/her angry, and tilt it to switch focus between characters. This is a very limited toolset with not a lot of depth, but at the same time it makes Ruben & Lullaby that much more approachable. There’s no complex gestures or movements to memorize, and the interface is more than enough to tell an interactive story. I particularly like the tilting mechanic as it’s easy to associate it with physically turning to face a person.
Overall the whole package is very attractive and should be easy enough to pick and play for any casual user. I’m not sure how successful it’ll be, but it’s definitely an interesting game and I’m curious as to what might follow it.
About
Hi, my name’s Radek Koncewicz, and I'm the Creative Lead of Incubator Games, a small development studio I started with a few former coworkers.
I think a lot about videogames, and when I find the time, I post those thoughts here on this blog.
