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The Official iPhone/iPod Touch Gaming Thread

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everyone knows about http://www.freeappaday.com/ right? had some amazing free games this week.

today its istunt, pretty cool game.

28_shot.png
 
Boom Brigade got a fairly major update. Includes save games and a buch of other new stuff.

It's a cross between Tower Defense and those route tracing games like Harbour Master.

Very good. 10tons is a criminally underrated iPhone developer (they made Azkend and the awesome Rope Raider too)
 
whatevermort said:
How are you tracking the amount of pirated copies of your game? I'm fascinated in this. I'm fascinated in pirating iPhone software in general, because I cannot for the life of me work out who is doing it. I know maybe 50 people with iPhones, and not a single one of them even has it jailbroken; not one of them balks at the cheap prices of games and apps on the platform. So who the frick is doing it?
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Here's the thing about those with jailbroken phones, or software pirates in general. They are the only ones able to download pirated games, and since it doesn't cost them anything they are more likely to download and try random or popular titles. So even though there are far fewer jailbroken phones than legit ones, the ones with the jailbroken phones are more likely to download and play paid content, for free, than honest users that are on the fence about the cost. So that's why you get the higher, surprising, numbers. I don't doubt the developers that claim 90% piracy.


Anyone have a good picross-style game to recommend? I tried a couple Lite versions, but they kind of sucked.
 
dock said:
I'm giving away 5 promo codes to Neogaf! Who wants one? I'll PM it to you!
Click to expand...

Great job on Tumbledrop! Fun, simple, polished physics puzzle game. As has been said in the thread before, great art style, music, and sound effects as well. It's the little touches like the face of the star as it falls into the water, that make it an outstanding iPhone game.
 
enzo_gt said:
I have circumvented the issue by listening to hip-hop. Most of the good stuff is free in mixtapes anyways :lol
Click to expand...

Hah! I just did the same. Deleted all of my illicit mp3's a few weeks back. Half of my collection is now mix tapes.

My final stop on the path toward legitimacy: fonts.


Do any of you devs do stuff for Android / Web OS? Is the piracy problem as bad there?
 
All tumbledrop codes are now gone!

Mikekennyb, thanks a lot. I really tried hard to make this a little more polished than most iPhone games.
 
Weenerz said:
Tumbledrop is such an awesome game, what are you working on now?
Click to expand...
Thanks! I have three games on the boil atm.

One is a 'deluxe' version of Tumbledrop for PC and iPad.
Another is a side scrolling cute adventure thing for Mac/PC/iPad/iPhone (hoping to share something about this next month).

I'm also doing new graphics for Minecraft, which is what I'm doing right this moment. :)
 
Why don't devs adopt the same model that XBLA uses, where you download the game, and you get a demo's worth of play until you pay up for the full version-all in one download(vs a lite version, and full version being seperate apps).

Wouldn't this largely end the whole piracy thing???
 
WolfgangK said:
Why don't devs adopt the same model that XBLA uses, where you download the game, and you get a demo's worth of play until you pay up for the full version-all in one download(vs a lite version, and full version being seperate apps).

Wouldn't this largely end the whole piracy thing???
Click to expand...



Pretty sure thats what the Lite version of releases are intended to do.
 
The process for doing that is pretty terrible. You'd lose a lot more sales than you would gain from the loss of pirates. Also it would mean that anyone could rate and review your game, and demos often get terrible ratings because people expect something entirely different.
 
Doe anyone use the casemate naked case? I just picked one up, I like it but it seems to make typing a little less responsive, maybe that's just me.

This is also off-topic but can I get a Twitter app reccomendation? Twitter mobile crashes quite often. (Any developers/media concerning iPhone software/news worth following?)
 
Anyone make it through Mass Effect Galaxy? I finished it earlier, the combat was eh but I enjoyed the story stuff and the Citadel section. Does anyone know what the bonus content is that it unlocks for Mass Effect 2?
 
Been a long time since I bought any games for my 3gs. Going to support dock and the other gaffer by buying tumbledrop and bird strike.

HBP
Bonus dialogue at omega or something like that.
 
The iPad can bring loads to the table. People who don't see it are just visualising bigger versions of games that exist.

Even that isn't a bad thing. Full scree point and click adventures? Yum.
 
Just tried both games out and I'm impressed, can't wait to spend more time with them later. By the way, is there a bug with tumbledrop? My gf messaged me and the push notification killed the sound in the game, had to restart it.
 
Speaking of jailbreaking, my iphone and ipod touch are jailbroken because the app management on the devices and in itunes is absolutely fucking atrocious. I've purchased over 1500 games on the app store so I'm not pirating anything, but as far as managing these games? A sad joke.

You can't just load them all onto your device because of the 11 page limit on the springboard.

Yet you can't search for the hidden apps, either, because once you get over a certain amount of installed apps on the phone, any search crashes the phone or touch, guaranteed 100% of the time. Not sure how many apps you need exactly to crash the search. I'd guess about 400-500. Of course, the search would work fine if it didn't start producing results on the first letter typed, or you could choose not to have icons displayed, but these really simple solutions have eluded the geniuses at Apple.

You can't categorize your apps into folders.

You can't just get a text list of your apps.

And in itunes? Having this many apps bloats the program to 700mb of RAM as soon as you click on the applications tab, and once you start scrolling through them (which takes ~10 minutes to load, by the way!), I'm up to 1.5gb of RAM and more. FOR LITTLE FUCKING ICONS!

Sure would be nice if we could just manage apps in a text based manner in itunes like you can with songs. Nope, sorry. You can manage things with pretty pictures only.

Can you tell I'm a little frustrated? I'm pretty much stuck between a rock and a hard place for being such a good customer! Can't have too many games on the phone or touch. Can't manage them efficiently in iTunes. I guess I'll just stop buying games. Jailbreaking is the only thing that helps here thanks to the Categories jailbreak app, but my 64gb touch is of the latest hardware and jailbreaking it is still seriously glitchy (the tethered reboot usually doesn't work and the device needs to be restored and re-jailbroken all the time).

So back to the point, there are plenty of legitimate reasons to jailbreak your phone/touch, too -- specifically to compensate for Apple's god awful app management.
 
wondermega said:
Piracy of iPhone games is stupid. Esp. when you are a tiny developer releasing games for next to nothing as it is. But it is human nature at this point, so I am not gonna cry over spilled milk - I would prefer people hear about my game thru piracy than never know it exists at all!

We'll put out a free demo for our new game, which is pretty much all you -can- do to tempt those who would pirate otherwise and possibly get a sale out of (some of) them, while still giving them the chance to "see what a game is all about without paying a cent"

Overall it is irritating, but like someone above mentioned, you gotta look at most pirates as no-sales anyway.
Click to expand...
Not something that I do, as I feel good to support good (and cheap) games on iDevices, but everyone forgets about one BIG issue that is... the App Store isn't available in every country around.

Take for example, the App Store from my home country (Brazil). 80% of the cool games just aren't there. And worse, Apple won't let nobody, even with a international credit card, to make an account on the US store.

Guess what people upset and annoyed with those stupid restrictions do?
 
VALIS said:
Speaking of jailbreaking, my iphone and ipod touch are jailbroken because the app management on the devices and in itunes is absolutely fucking atrocious. I've purchased over 1500 games on the app store so I'm not pirating anything, but as far as managing these games? A sad joke.

You can't just load them all onto your device because of the 11 page limit on the springboard.

Yet you can't search for the hidden apps, either, because once you get over a certain amount of installed apps on the phone, any search crashes the phone or touch, guaranteed 100% of the time. Not sure how many apps you need exactly to crash the search. I'd guess about 400-500. Of course, the search would work fine if it didn't start producing results on the first letter typed, or you could choose not to have icons displayed, but these really simple solutions have eluded the geniuses at Apple.

You can't categorize your apps into folders.

You can't just get a text list of your apps.

And in itunes? Having this many apps bloats the program to 700mb of RAM as soon as you click on the applications tab, and once you start scrolling through them (which takes ~10 minutes to load, by the way!), I'm up to 1.5gb of RAM and more. FOR LITTLE FUCKING ICONS!

Sure would be nice if we could just manage apps in a text based manner in itunes like you can with songs. Nope, sorry. You can manage things with pretty pictures only.

Can you tell I'm a little frustrated? I'm pretty much stuck between a rock and a hard place for being such a good customer! Can't have too many games on the phone or touch. Can't manage them efficiently in iTunes. I guess I'll just stop buying games. Jailbreaking is the only thing that helps here thanks to the Categories jailbreak app, but my 64gb touch is of the latest hardware and jailbreaking it is still seriously glitchy (the tethered reboot usually doesn't work and the device needs to be restored and re-jailbroken all the time).

So back to the point, there are plenty of legitimate reasons to jailbreak your phone/touch, too -- specifically to compensate for Apple's god awful app management.
Click to expand...
Agreed. The current setup is ridiculous.
 
VALIS said:
Speaking of jailbreaking, my iphone and ipod touch are jailbroken because the app management on the devices and in itunes is absolutely fucking atrocious. I've purchased over 1500 games on the app store so I'm not pirating anything, but as far as managing these games? A sad joke.

You can't just load them all onto your device because of the 11 page limit on the springboard.

Yet you can't search for the hidden apps, either, because once you get over a certain amount of installed apps on the phone, any search crashes the phone or touch, guaranteed 100% of the time. Not sure how many apps you need exactly to crash the search. I'd guess about 400-500. Of course, the search would work fine if it didn't start producing results on the first letter typed, or you could choose not to have icons displayed, but these really simple solutions have eluded the geniuses at Apple.

You can't categorize your apps into folders.

You can't just get a text list of your apps.

And in itunes? Having this many apps bloats the program to 700mb of RAM as soon as you click on the applications tab, and once you start scrolling through them (which takes ~10 minutes to load, by the way!), I'm up to 1.5gb of RAM and more. FOR LITTLE FUCKING ICONS!

Sure would be nice if we could just manage apps in a text based manner in itunes like you can with songs. Nope, sorry. You can manage things with pretty pictures only.

Can you tell I'm a little frustrated? I'm pretty much stuck between a rock and a hard place for being such a good customer! Can't have too many games on the phone or touch. Can't manage them efficiently in iTunes. I guess I'll just stop buying games. Jailbreaking is the only thing that helps here thanks to the Categories jailbreak app, but my 64gb touch is of the latest hardware and jailbreaking it is still seriously glitchy (the tethered reboot usually doesn't work and the device needs to be restored and re-jailbroken all the time).

So back to the point, there are plenty of legitimate reasons to jailbreak your phone/touch, too -- specifically to compensate for Apple's god awful app management.
Click to expand...

What the hell? :lol Seriously, WAT?
 
Enjoyed both tumbledrop and path-pix, and will be buying the full versions of both.

Didn't get on with Valet Hero though. Too hectic right from the start, and the path guidance wasn't very forgiving - it should lock into spots more easily otherwise you spend too much time on one car getting the trajectory right. With games like this you need to be able to flick your finger around to redraw a path to avoid collisions, and stack things up quickly, I couldn't do that in Valet Hero. Mostly pissed because I dived in blind as there was no 'lite' version :/ Won't be doing that again in a hurry
 
Dreamwriter said:
I view that as a big misconception. Because I've known people who bought all of their games all the time. Then they discovered a way to pirate, and didn't buy another game ever again. Without the ability to pirate, there would most definitely be a lot more sales, because people like that would still be purchasing games.
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Depends on the person. Younger people with less disposable income will probably pirate no matter what, while the older audience (other than nerds...most people that post on video game/tech forums) may not even bother with jailbreaking in the first place.

Of the pure pirate pirates the most annoying thing is...that they'll pay for piracy. I can't find the link but there was some post from a cracker dev (crackulous/hackulous or something?) asking for donations cause "it costs money to run a forum and take the time to crack the protections" and stuff. That's bad enough. I'm not sure that was worse or the amount of posters that were all gung ho about shelling out donations so they could keep pirating (I get the logic, pay a few bucks to get $INFINITY but still it's retarded).
HBP said:
Anyone make it through Mass Effect Galaxy? I finished it earlier, the combat was eh but I enjoyed the story stuff and the Citadel section. Does anyone know what the bonus content is that it unlocks for Mass Effect 2?
Click to expand...
More combinations of awkward interspecies sex?
Tobor said:
What the hell? :lol Seriously, WAT?
Click to expand...
Packrat? I know there's a lot of free apps and everything but damn, have some self control. Most of those are probably shitty to begin with, just don't download that shit.
 
Weenerz said:
Pretty sure thats what the Lite version of releases are intended to do.
Click to expand...

That's true in theory, but lite versions are still optional to do.

The mandatory demo policy on XBLA works. It's why I have many games that I would otherwise never have bothered with, and why I have comparatively few PSN games.

Even if a game is 59p, £1.79 or whatever, I think the sell through rate would be enhanced by demos. Certainly for the £3.99 + efforts.
 
WolfgangK said:
Why don't devs adopt the same model that XBLA uses, where you download the game, and you get a demo's worth of play until you pay up for the full version-all in one download(vs a lite version, and full version being seperate apps).

Wouldn't this largely end the whole piracy thing???
Click to expand...
Dont know how piracy works on iPhone, but it the apps are just distributed and not cracked that would be a good idea.
 
mrklaw said:
Enjoyed both tumbledrop and path-pix, and will be buying the full versions of both.

Didn't get on with Valet Hero though. Too hectic right from the start, and the path guidance wasn't very forgiving - it should lock into spots more easily otherwise you spend too much time on one car getting the trajectory right. With games like this you need to be able to flick your finger around to redraw a path to avoid collisions, and stack things up quickly, I couldn't do that in Valet Hero. Mostly pissed because I dived in blind as there was no 'lite' version :/ Won't be doing that again in a hurry
Click to expand...

Sorry you're not enjoying Valet Hero. I think the key difference with the line drawing is you can't draw a path through your target here, otherwise we couldn't allow for cars to drive through spots. Are you making sure your dragging and stopping on a specific spot and not dragging through it?

Also the levels are designed for score attack type gameplay, and with the limited number of spots on each level they can get a bit hectic quickly. Although, the bronze and silver challenges should be pretty forgiving and are designed to be enjoyed and replayed by more casual players, whereas the gold and marathon were designed to be more challenging.

I will concede though that it is probably a bit harder then other games of it's type, but if you spend a little more time with it and learn how to manipulate the combo system with the gas button the gameplay can be very rewarding.
 
Lijik said:
I wasn't really excited about games on the iPad until one of the developers in that article brought up the possibility of digital board games. That idea is a perfect fit for the device, and I hope its capitalized upon.
Click to expand...

I thought the same thing when I read that. Can you imagine a multiplayer version of something like Warhammer on the iPad, in which you can set the device down between the players and make your move on the screen? That would be so much fun! :)
 
I think my favorite thing about Sword & Poker is it is light fun but super long. Most similar IPOD games sort of end just as they're getting good.

Man would I love to see them flesh out the game, maybe increase the complexity a touch (e.g., make higher cards more valuable), give you more customization options, etc. Just a really fun title.
 
Hojaho said:
Dock,

Just got Tumbledrop, it's really nice.
Damn those medals are not easy to get. =P
Click to expand...
Thanks Hojaho! XD
You know, originally, I made the medals compulsary! I had it so that you needed 20 medals before Medium would unlock, and 60 before Hard would unlock. This was considered too harsh. :)
 
Lijik said:
I wasn't really excited about games on the iPad until one of the developers in that article brought up the possibility of digital board games. That idea is a perfect fit for the device, and I hope its capitalized upon.
Click to expand...


One thing that I would like to see is using the iPad as the board and using individual iPod Touches/iPhones as players individual cards or decks. For example, in Monopoly the iPad is laid down on the table and acts as the board. The individual players have an iPod/iPhone to look at their money/properties and roll the dice by shaking.

I realize it'd be pretty niche as you'd need a lot of expensive equipment to pull it off, but you could always do 'pass n play' with one iPod/iPhone amongst all the players.
 
infiniteloop said:
One thing that I would like to see is using the iPad as the board and using individual iPod Touches/iPhones as players individual cards or decks. For example, in Monopoly the iPad is laid down on the table and acts as the board. The individual players have an iPod/iPhone to look at their money/properties and roll the dice by shaking.
Click to expand...
This is so nerdy and goes completely against the tangible, tactile experience of rolling dice, moving pieces, and counting money... and I love it.
 
Lijik said:
I wasn't really excited about games on the iPad until one of the developers in that article brought up the possibility of digital board games.
Click to expand...

Well at the top of my head there is Scrabble and Monopoly. Both I bet could be played a ton on flights or something..
 
infiniteloop said:
One thing that I would like to see is using the iPad as the board and using individual iPod Touches/iPhones as players individual cards or decks. For example, in Monopoly the iPad is laid down on the table and acts as the board. The individual players have an iPod/iPhone to look at their money/properties and roll the dice by shaking.

I realize it'd be pretty niche as you'd need a lot of expensive equipment to pull it off, but you could always do 'pass n play' with one iPod/iPhone amongst all the players.
Click to expand...

This is like GC connectivity, but way more better. I would be up for this.
 
infiniteloop said:
One thing that I would like to see is using the iPad as the board and using individual iPod Touches/iPhones as players individual cards or decks. For example, in Monopoly the iPad is laid down on the table and acts as the board. The individual players have an iPod/iPhone to look at their money/properties and roll the dice by shaking.

I realize it'd be pretty niche as you'd need a lot of expensive equipment to pull it off, but you could always do 'pass n play' with one iPod/iPhone amongst all the players.
Click to expand...

I'm down for this for sure. :)
 
infiniteloop said:
One thing that I would like to see is using the iPad as the board and using individual iPod Touches/iPhones as players individual cards or decks. For example, in Monopoly the iPad is laid down on the table and acts as the board. The individual players have an iPod/iPhone to look at their money/properties and roll the dice by shaking.

I realize it'd be pretty niche as you'd need a lot of expensive equipment to pull it off, but you could always do 'pass n play' with one iPod/iPhone amongst all the players.
Click to expand...

Crazy idea, but why not ?
 
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