[A final - we promise - reminder for anyone who hasn't signed up for GDC 2009 and still wants to. You can save 30% by doing so today or tomorrow, so get to it.]
Organizers of the 2009 Game Developers Conference are reminding potential attendees that early registration for the March 23rd-27th San Francisco conference ends on Thursday, February 12th, with 30% discounts only available until that date.
Game Developers Conference, which is run by Think Services, as is this website, has been running a weblog covering the major GDC news this year, which includes the latest information on the Moscone Center-located conference.
Major recent announcements include major keynotes from Metal Gear creator Hideo Kojima, with his GDC debut ‘Solid Game Design: Making the ‘Impossible’ Possible’, and from Nintendo president Satoru Iwata, with a lecture named ‘Discovering New Development Opportunities’.
In addition, organizers have profiled each of the individual Tutorials and Summits on the GDC website. These Summits, which take place on the Monday and Tuesday of GDC, include standalone events devoted to AI, casual games, mobile games, game outsourcing, education, independent games, serious games, localization, and online worlds.
The main GDC event takes place from Wednesday to Friday, and includes major three-day tracks regarding audio, business and management, game design, production, programming, and visual arts. In hundreds of lectures, major developers from all the year’s big games (from LittleBigPlanet through Gears Of War 2 and Fable II) will discuss the art and science of game creation.
On the Wednesday night of GDC, the flagship Independent Games Festival Awards and Game Developers Choice Awards, honoring the best titles of the year, will take place. Other major events at the show include the Independent Games Festival Pavilion, located on the Expo Show Floor, which will also have exhibits from major tools companies and game publishers.
Early registration savings for the 2009 Game Developers Conference end at midnight PDT on Thursday, February 12th, and more information about registration and content is available at the official GDC website.
Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
- Price: $4.99 (Get it)
- Version: 1.0
- Official Site: Persuasive Games
Like many other journalists, I do a fair amount of travelling. And like many other gamers, I have a secret addiction to getting achievements.
I know they’re lame and completely pointless-oh how I wish I could convert my Xbox 360 achievement points into marketplace points (I’d accept a 10 to 1 ratio) or at least clothes for my avatar (though he’s got a natty Scotland top on now, so that’s good) but they’re addictive, and Jetset ups the ante by requiring you visit 100 airports in the real world to receive all of the “achievements” (called “souvenirs”) that the game has to offer.
I shudder to think about how much that would cost in air travel, and I know that even as a jet setting journalist I’m not going to get to Nairobi or Buenos Ares any time soon. And there’s no way to cheat; you actually have to be in the airport for it to count (so I can’t get the souvenir for even my local airport without physically going there.)
Despite the (arguably rather limiting) requirement to receive souvenirs, they’re a neat idea and a cute way to give a game with an airport theme real-world context, making it far more likely that I’ll have a quick go the next time I’m in an airport. The question is if the game is worth playing more than that.
I’m not so sure. As great as the metagame is, I’m genuinely not impressed with the actual game itself.
Jetset can roughly be described as a time management game — though it’s not exactly similar to titles like Diner Dash, the game essentially relies on the player being able to remove the correct prohibited items from passengers’ luggage and move them along (without removing acceptable items) before the queue gets too large and the game ends.
The “fun” comes into the fact that (satirically) the prohibited items keep changing near-randomly. One minute, you’re not allowed to bring snakes on board. The next, snakes are fine, but you have to remove your pants and shirt. The next, pants are fine, but no shoes, native artifacts or coffee are allowed.
This is fun, but there’s a problem: the rules can change while you’re working on passengers. You can remove a passenger’s shirt, and the second you press “proceed,” you receive a rights violation because they’ve suddenly decided shirts are allowable.
In addition, I’m not entirely sure the game is bug-free. I’ve sometimes received violations despite leaving no prohibited items on a passenger, and I’ve had at least one crash.
The end result is that Jetset is a very frustrating game that’s hard to like. There’s no reason the game couldn’t only allow rule changes between passengers, for example. If you’re going to do a lot of traveling and love achievements, then this is a cute game for a few minutes of wasted time, but I really don’t think it’s of general interest otherwise.
Publisher IndieAn’s latest iPhone title, Heavy Mach ($2.99), debuted in the iTunes App Store earlier today. Billed as a “tank action game with full of reality” (what), Heavy Mach is a side-scrolling shooter that closely resembles SNK’s Metal Slug in style and in gameplay
More specifically, Heavy Mach looks to be what Metal Slug would play like if none of the characters ever left their vehicles. You control a tiny tank (depicted on the far left of that screenshot up there) equipped with all kinds of weaponry, which you must use in your fight against enemy helicopters, missile trucks, and armored cars.
The game promises “about 800″ different enemy types, which has to be a typo, but the 30 stages and 21 tank upgrades noted in its App Store description are hopefully accurate, and should ensure a lengthy gameplay experience. Check out IndieAn’s website for more details.
Every Thursday, FingerGaming rounds up the most popular free iPhone and iPod Touch applications, as current that day on the iTunes App Store. This week’s top titles are:
- Fastlane Street Racing Lite
- Bounce On Lite
- Super Monkey Ball Lite
- Zombie Attack! Free
- iSniper Lite
- Rolando Lite
- LightBike Free
- Whack ‘em All! (Free)
- Falling Balls
- Duck Shoot
Fastlane Street Racing Lite wrests the top chart spot away from last week’s chart champion Super Monkey Ball Lite, which falls to third place in this week’s results. The demo version of platformer Bounce On debuts this week at second place, as the tower defense-styled undead shooter Zombie Attack! Free comes in at fourth.
The free version of LiteBike continues to spur sales of the paid chart-topping full version, meanwhile, as iSniper achieves similar results with its popular Lite edition. Whack’em All, Falling Balls, and Duck Shoot close out this week’s top ten, while promising titles from last week like Save Kitty and Tank drop out of chart range.
As previously announced, Gameloft’s western-themed shooting gallery title Wild West Guns ($4.99) debuted in the App Store earlier today. Though the title is a port of a game originally seen on Nintendo’s WiiWare service, the iPhone port also includes a pair of exclusive weapons, along with the expected touch-based controls.
Gaze upon the full list of features:
- 18 challenges featuring typical Far West environments (saloons, deserts, stables, trains, etc.)
- Diverse targets and enemies (cowboys, sheriffs, signs, flying sombreros, balloons, vultures)
- Interactive backgrounds that allow you to shoot elements in the environment to earn more points
- Extended lifespan thanks to 5 different game modes
- Exclusive weapons available only in this iPhone version: enjoy using the shotgun for extended damage and the machine gun to blast the background
I personally thought that the WiiWare version was only barely worth playing, thanks mostly to its somewhat off-putting eight dollar price point. It’s a much more reasonable proposition at only five dollars, though, and assuming the touchscreen controls work out well, this one could be worth checking out.
The 2009 Independent Games Festival (IGF) Mobile has announced the finalists in its “Next Great Mobile Game” category. The finalist titles span multiple portable platforms, including mobile phones, the Nintendo DS, Sony’s PlayStation Portable (PSP), and Apple’s iPhone and iPod touch.
The “Next Great Mobile Game” category highlights prototyped titles that offer truly unique and groundbreaking mobile gaming concepts. Finalists will present and demonstrate their concept and game during the IGF Mobile ceremony, to be held during the Game Developers Conference Mobile conference on March 24th at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, California.
This year’s “Next Great Mobile Game” finalists are:
- Depict (VillaVanilla) - iPhone
- FastFoot Challenge (Urban Team) - J2ME
- Picopoke (Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab) - Photo/Internet-capable Mobile Handsets
- Rhythm of War (SME Dynamic Systems Ltd) - Sony PSP
- Reflection (Team Reflection - University of Southern California) - Nintendo DS
The winning title will be chosen by audience vote during the IGF Mobile’s ceremony. Along with receiving $2,000 from IGF Mobile’s $30,000 prize pool, the “Next Great Mobile Game” will be given floor space in the IGF Mobile pavilion, in which its developers will showcase a playable demonstration of their title alongside finalists in the main IGF Mobile competition.
The “Next Great Mobile Game” prize will be presented by IGF Mobile Platinum and Founding Sponsor NVIDIA. The Game Developers conference is produced by Think Services, the organization behind Gamasutra and its affiliated websites.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
- Price: $1.99 (Get Full Version or Free Demo)
- Version: 1.0
- Official Site: Nonverbal
I don’t think my poor brain is cut out for games like these. Years of gaming exclusively in 2D has apparently made me incapable of being able to perceive flat objects in a three-dimensional space. I was only able to play Sega’s Crush on the PSP for about an hour before the puzzle solutions started to elude me completely, and the less said about my attempts to play Super Paper Mario, the better.
Monospace, thankfully, is much narrower in gameplay scope. Each level in Monospace presents you with a three-dimensional cube filled with white squares. After rotating the cube to your liking, you can then crush the cube and the squares inside down to a flat, two-dimensional plane. From here, you must drag a blue square across all of the white squares in order to complete the level.
The tricky part is that your blue square can only move if a white square is directly next to it. You’ll often have to revert to 3D and then return to 2D multiple times during a level in order to solve it. Careless moves will leave you stranded with no adjacent cube to travel to. Instead of frustrating me as other games of its type have done in the past, however, Monospace was intriguing enough to keep me playing long enough to overcome many of its more aggravating moments.
The puzzles start off easy. Rotate the cube. Crush. Drag. Rotate. Drag again. Level complete. Once you get into the higher difficulties, though, black squares are introduced. Black squares cannot be rolled over, and must be avoided through clever crushing and cube navigation. It won’t be long until levels have more black cubes than white ones, making for an entirely different gameplay feel and challenge. Later on, red squares will make your cube jump two spaces at once, adding to the difficulty.
Inevitably, you’re going to be presented with a puzzle that you just simply can’t wrap your head around. Fortunately, Monospace’s level progression is lenient enough to be forgiving in these situations. Every time you finish a level, you’ll unlock whatever stages were adjacent to it on the level selection screen, giving you an alternate level path to work through in case you hit a dead end with a particularly difficult puzzle. Of course, this can also sometimes mean that you’ll be stuck on four puzzles at once instead of just one, but it’s nice to have a little variety to ease the frustration.
Monospace is an excellent title. The concept is solid, the controls work well, and there’s 64 puzzles in all — enough to occupy hours of your time. If you’re looking for a puzzler that tries something a little different than the average App Store fare, it’s very much worth its $1.99 asking price.
Stephen Hey at Connect2Media brings word that Go! Go! Rescue Squad! will soon be released for a number of platforms, including Apple’s iPhone. Rescue Squad! features puzzler-platform gameplay in the context of a series of timed rescue challenges.
Players will control a squad of firefighters as they attempt to save civilians from a burning building. Gameplay involves extinguishing fires, fighting marauding robots, and carrying survivors to safety.
No release date has yet been set for the title, but it’s looking good so far. An official and very red website is here, and a trailer (featuring comical pants-pissing!) can be seen below.
Oh boy, this one brings back obscure memories. Ballsy ($2.99) is a Spigot Games-developed iPhone interpretation of Diamonds, a Breakout-like puzzle title made famous on the Macintosh and TI calculator platforms. Unlike Breakout, however, there is no paddle, and you are actually able to control the ball’s horizontal movement. Quick reflexes and smart strategies are needed to clear every brick from each of the game’s 50 levels.
Diamonds is one of those games that you’ve almost certainly played at some point in your lifetime, even if you can’t quite remember the exact circumstances. In my case, I think I first played it on one of those “Galaxy of Games 1001-in-1″ shareware compilation CDs, shortly after I got my first computer. Ah, good old 486 technology.
In case you’re still unsure of whether you’ve played Ballsy before, check out the trailer below, which will surely have you saying “Oh, THAT game,” within mere seconds.
D4 Enterprise exploits two of my biggest weaknesses — 8-bit graphics and cute kittens — with its latest iPhone conversion of a classic MSX computer title. Following up on December’s release of Aleste is Nyanpi ($7.99), a Compile-developed puzzler that, in all likelihood, you’ve never even heard of. I sure hadn’t, anyway.
From what Google Translate could make out from the official website, Nyanpi (also known as Goro Nyan Puzzle) originally found fame in the Compile-produced MSX disk magazine Disk Station. The closest I could get to a gameplay description was “They break all the yellow balloons move the kittens!” Which…yeah, good enough, I guess.
Nyanpi includes 40 levels and 8 different kinds of kittens. It should be interesting to see what kind of audience Nyanpi attracts, especially at its comparatively high App Store price point. Are MSX fans willing to pay eight dollars for a single game that was once featured in a disk magazine compilation? D4 seems to think so.
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