iPhone/iPod Touch Games Thread

[newbrof]

okay, here is the first tutorial video (see the description in the youtube video)

Tutorial 1

(should I make a Tutorial Quozzle thread on QT3…?)

I will try to put out every day at least one new video… I will make you to Quozzle masters in no time :-))

p.s. my voice sounds like MickeyMouse, so you will not hear me talking… :-)

[Equis]

Cool, I picked this up. I’ll write it up on my web site (and here) once I’ve played for a bit.

Found your write-up on Bee Spelled.

Thanks for the kind words and positive comments.

Though I have to clarify. The difficulty does not affect letter mix. It only affects the amount of damage an enemy does to you per hit.

[Adree]

The problem you are facing as a player is, that you only have 10 moves to fill up the green XP bar. On the first levels that’s not a big problem, but as you progress levels the XP is filling up slower. What do you do? There are butterfly effects which increase your move counter or clear the board … or you can use the deck combos.

When you play a combo from the deck, you do get a combo letter Q, for the next, U … so: Q-U-O-Z-Z-L-E

when you play with every move one combo or more, you can get the Q-U-O-Z-Z-L-E bonus -> clearing the board and setting your moves to 10.

So the failure rate is at the beginning 0% for every combo. But whenever you use a combo on the board, the failure rate goes up by +2%

Failure means: say you have Q-U-O- spelled, then you play a combo with a failure rate of 20% und you get a failure when playing that combo. You lose the Q-U-O combo (you can hear that)… So you don’t want to use a combo too often, because the failure rate goes up.

The Quests will not be saved. When you turn off and go back to continue your game, the quests are reset. But you might want to exploit that… when you place an color on a butterfly the move is finished, but it will NOT decrease your move counter. That’s great, right?

When you touch a butterfly with your finger, sometimes (50% chance) you get some nice loot like clear a board, increase move counter…

Now how should I explain that all in the game with 20 words, I have no idea :-)

This was a good explanation, thanks. I feel silly that I didn’t notice the round counter was counting down, you might consider renaming it to be more clear.

[newbrof]

hi, thanks. English is my 3rd language, sorry… what would be a better term? Moves? Counter? Limit? I know Round from boxing, so I thought that would be OK…

/George

wow, that was a tough tutorial to write.

It might contain the most important information of all tutorials. So definitely a must read and watch…

cheers,

[Adree]

hi, thanks. English is my 3rd language, sorry… what would be a better term? Moves? Counter? Limit? I know Round from boxing, so I thought that would be OK…
,

“Moves” would be fine, “Remaining” would be good as well. I got to Level 3 last night, still a bit mysterious (this was before I read the above post) but I like it.

[Tracy_Baker]

Based on a writeup at Touch Arcade I bought Sword & Poker today and it’s pretty damn good. The core game is a 5x5 grid, with the middle 3x3 area filled with cards (standard playing cards) at the start of each fight. You and your opponent each have a hand of four cards and on your turn you play two of them on the outside perimeter, attempting to make the best possible poker hand horizontally, vertically, or diagonally (or several ways if you manage to fill in multiple rows with a single play).

The neat trick here is the sword part. You collect coins as you progress that are used to purchase more health along with various weapons that unlock. The weapons all have different stats based on the type of hand you create. For example, I had a hammer today that did relatively weak damage when pairs were created, but massive damage when straights and flushes were formed. Some do more consistent damage with weak hands like pairs, and others have magic effects so when you form a certain hand an effect is triggered like paralysis (skips enemy’s turn), life stealing, card stealing, etc.

Later you get shields that absorb damage and spells that manipulate cards on the board.

Depending on your equipment some battles are over on the first play if the initial layout is in your favor, but you can also get bad beats so even weak opponents whittle you down. This is a big deal because you must progress through a number of enemies to clear each level, and some of them are powerful bosses with a lot of health and infuriating spells. The good news is that there’s no major death penalty – you keep all the equipment and coins you’ve accumulated getting to the point where you died and simply have to restart the level from the beginning.

Well worth $.99.

[Tracy_Baker]

Also, appventcalendar.com has evolved into freeappaday.com. The first free app is Navy Patrol Coastal Defense Zero, and there should be more after the thing officially kicks off on January 18.

[newbrof]

some funny company just released a small game named GTA. What’s that all about? And then it has a subtitle: Chinatown wars. That is such a stupid name, best to ignore. They are not going to sell with that name…

[Brakara]

Hmmm, it’s not available on the Norwegian App Store. I hope it’s not the same bullshit as with Civ:Rev (not available here either).

[Hans_Lauring]

Hey, I’m too lazy to search for which of you guys were behind Monkey Preschool Lunchbox, but I just want to note that my four year old was excited that new fruits and stuff were added.
(When you do the “Find the red fruit”-type game, could you colour the word telling which colour to look for like you do in “Begins with the letter B”-games, that would help the non-reading preschoolers).

Also, way not to toot your own horn and announce here, that you launched Monkey Preschool When I Grow Up, which she also loves - bringing the Nintendo DS on a trip to the city the other way had me stuck on the train with the DS while my kid played on my iPhone…

Great games if you have small kids.

[sam_and_the_firefly]

The whole portable gaming economy is so bizarrely messed up. Even I don’t know what I think is acceptable pricing, so how on earth should publishers?

I loved GTA Chinatown Wars on DS, and double-dipped with the iPhone version today. I would’ve picked it up for my PSP Go sooner, except that that version is fully five times more expensive than the one that hit the App Store today, and from playing a bit on iPhone I can’t see how there’d be improvement to anywhere near that degree. It is literally the DS game in widescreen with better graphics and pretty good touchscreen controls, with the added advantage of it being constantly in my pocket.

I don’t doubt that Chinatown Wars is as worth its PSP pricetag as anything else, but it’d likely also be borderline insane to pick that version over the iPhone’s. Are real buttons really worth that much?

[Jazar]

The whole portable gaming economy is so bizarrely messed up. Even I don’t know what I think is acceptable pricing, so how on earth should publishers?

I loved GTA Chinatown Wars on DS, and double-dipped with the iPhone version today. I would’ve picked it up for my PSP Go sooner, except that that version is fully five times more expensive than the one that hit the App Store today, and from playing a bit on iPhone I can’t see how there’d be improvement to anywhere near that degree. It is literally the DS game in widescreen with better graphics and pretty good touchscreen controls, with the added advantage of it being constantly in my pocket.

I don’t doubt that Chinatown Wars is as worth its PSP pricetag as anything else, but it’d likely also be borderline insane to pick that version over the iPhone’s. Are real buttons really worth that much?

Do you have a 3G phone? I’m interested to see if there’s any performance issues.

[sam_and_the_firefly]

I do have a 3G, but actually have only played on my 2G iPod touch so far due to space issues. It runs on that without a hitch, though, so from past experience I’m sure it’s totally playable on the 3G - probably more so than on DS.

[PeterGinsberg]

Hey, I’m too lazy to search for which of you guys were behind Monkey Preschool Lunchbox, but I just want to note that my four year old was excited that new fruits and stuff were added.
(When you do the “Find the red fruit”-type game, could you colour the word telling which colour to look for like you do in “Begins with the letter B”-games, that would help the non-reading preschoolers).

Also, way not to toot your own horn and announce here, that you launched Monkey Preschool When I Grow Up, which she also loves - bringing the Nintendo DS on a trip to the city the other way had me stuck on the train with the DS while my kid played on my iPhone…

Great games if you have small kids.

That was me, thanks! Our site for the games: monkeypreschool.com.

The follow up game (“When I Grow Up”) actually got picked up and featured by Apple this week as well, which is pretty awesome. I was a little worried about it as it’s less overtly educational and more toy-like than Lunchbox, but it seems to be doing well.

I’m setting aside the iPhone work for a while since we’ve got finally got some client work coming again (we’re doing a Farmville-parody Facebook game that I think is going to rock), but we’re definitely going to do another free update to Lunchbox sometime in the next 2 months or so.

I probably do need to be better at self promotion, but it’s just not of much interest to anyone who doesn’t have a young kid so I try not to overdo it.

[The_Other_Guy1]

Based on a writeup at Touch Arcade I bought Sword & Poker today and it’s pretty damn good.

[//snippage//]

Well worth $.99.

Ditto, ditto, ditto. Those of you who dug Culdcept on the PS2, for example, would also dig this, I think. It hits that “simple to learn, hard to master” sweet spot, is easy to pick up and put down at any point (a requirement for me with games on the iPhone/iPod), and has a crazy amount of content for its price.

[XPav]

How can the GTA controls not suck?

[theblackw0lf]

How can the GTA controls not suck?

I played the DS version and I don’t see how that version is notably better in terms of controls after playing the iPhone version.

[Chris_Nahr]

Two rather disappointing games…

Castle Warriors is like Galcon, except played on a rotating planet and with little knights running around. Since the gameplay is nearly as simple as Galcon’s this merely makes operating the game more cumbersome. Not seeing the point here.

Space Station: Frontier is the latest tower defense game by Origin8 who made the splendid Sentinel games. This one’s set in outer space: you place asteroid miners and defense systems around a space station. Unfortunately, there’s one critical flaw: space has no terrain! Enemies just come in waves from essentially random directions and converge on the space station. Consequently, all you do in every single scenario is build up your defenses in one big blob around the station. I like everything else about the game, but essentially replaying the same scenario over and over gets old fast. I hope they make a sequel that somehow constricts building and enemy movement so as to make scenarios more distinct.

[sam_and_the_firefly]

I played the DS version and I don’t see how that version is notably better in terms of controls after playing the iPhone version.

The d-pad is easier to use for driving, because on iPhone the “buttons” are a little small, but otherwise the controls are great and I’d actually rate them over the DS’s when you’re on foot. Not having to play with the stylus in your mouth is a pretty big bonus, too.

On balance, I think the iPhone version is clearly better than the DS, and that’s without even taking price into account.

[Torbe]

Also, appventcalendar.com has evolved into freeappaday.com. The first free app is Navy Patrol Coastal Defense Zero, and there should be more after the thing officially kicks off on January 18.

Today’s free app is Zombie Pizza, and have to admit it’s pretty good.