This latest group features some stand-out games in terms of visual presentation (as well as gameplay). These are the games sure to catch your eye, even before you see them in motion.
Match-3/RPG hybrids are cool. Always have been, always will be. Whether we’re talking Puzzle Quest, 10000000 or Puzzle & Dragons, there’s a flavor of puzzle-RPG out there for everyone. Fable Age is a game that plays closest to the latter, but don’t let that fool you – in a world of Puzzle & Dragons clones, Fable Age manages to take those familiar pieces and craft something that can stand on its own two feet.
The debut mobile project from developer Blue Tea Games, it’s no surprise that the team chose to explore the world of myths and fairy tales. It’s a theme that they’re more than familiar with, having developed the popular hidden object series Dark Parables (which never failed to get top marks from our reviewers here at Gamezebo – The Final Cinderella even netted a perfect 5/5).
But while Dark Parables took a rather sinister tone, Fable Age remains playful. Bright colors and cartoony designs rule the day.
Back in October I had a chance to visit King’s studio in Stockholm. I was mainly there to check out an upcoming game and absorb the culture, but as is often the case when talking with mobile-minded developers, the conversation eventually moved to Asia: the great white whale of gaming markets. How do you break into it? And how do you get to be #1?
This week King answered that question, at least as far as China is concerned – and based on my chats with the team, the move they’ve made isn’t the least bit surprising (and really, it’s the one any developer looking for success in the Asian market should consider). But what was it? Read on to find out!
As always, thanks to our pals at Laohu.com for providing Gamezebo readers with a roundup of the biggest gaming news to hit China each week.
Generally, people love getting presents in the mail. It's always a nice surprise to get a package from someone and exciting to open it up and see what's inside. Over the past few years, an industry has emerged that ships monthly subscription boxes full of random (generally themed) goodies to millions of people every month. In our nerdy corner of the world, Loot Crate and Nerd Block are the two big names competing with one another. Though starting this May, a new subscription service called Indie Box is set to launch.
Each month, Indie Box celebrates the old days of gaming where buying a game involved opening the game's box, pulling the game out and sorting through all the goodies that came along with the game.
"Opening the game box was an event in itself," a promotion for Indie Box reads."After eight months of development, we're happy to announce we've launched Indie Box: independent games in a collector's edition box delivered to your door every month."
Here’s some good news for all the up and coming game designers out there: in case being part of an indie studio isn’t enough creative freedom for you, there’s always the option of being an indie within an indie.
That unique set-up was what Jason Cirillo explained to me as people played his upcoming game Woah Dave! on two stations at the Gaijin Games booth at PAX East. Though he modestly deflects talk of being a solo act, Cirillo is for all intents and purposes the lone member of Robotube Games, a company he started in 2006 that now operates as a sub-label of Gaijin.
“I develop games myself inside of Gaijin as sort of a skunk works or experimental lab,” Cirillo said. “Gaijin is working on bigger projects now which are unannounced, so these are smaller games to kind of fill in the gaps.”
Woah Dave! looks every bit the kind of game that reflects the individual tastes of its creator. It’s a platformer with simple but frantic action that has players chasing high scores by trying to stay alive as long as possible, avoiding aliens and attempting to “pick stuff up and throw it.”
Roller Coaster Tycoon 4 Mobile is a building / simulation game from Atari. In this game, you build an amusement park (and roller coasters in particular) in hopes of attracting visitors and making money. Gamezebo’s walkthrough will provide you with some tips and hints that will help you make your very own scream machines.
Star Trek fans are among the most loyal and passionate in the entire spectrum of pop culture aficionados. That makes it all the more shameful that they’ve had their hearts broken by video game adaptations numerous times over the years.
A fan of the property himself, Disruptor Beam CEO Jon Radoff knows that it hasn’t always received the most love and care from game designers.
“Too many games have been made where they take some existing title, re-skin it, add a little Star Trek dust on top to make it look like Star Trek, and they ship it,” Radoff said to Gamezebo at PAX East. “Frankly, I think fans rightfully have some cynicism about these poor licensed products.”
Awareness of that state of affairs is front and center in Radoff’s mind as his company gets set to boldly go into full scale development of its next game, Star Trek Timelines. The Boston-area studio announced the project recently and has revealed some of the initial details.
Digital marketplaces like the App Store and Google Play are governed by a set of unwritten rules. RollerCoaster Tycoon 4Mobile from Atari breaks a biggie by charging players admission for a game packed with the waiting and premium currency purchases typical of a free-to-play title.
RollerCoaster Tycoon 4 Mobile has another problem: It's just not very good. It's not unplayable by any means, but there's little about the game that differentiates it from other mobile games based around developing and running an amusement park. That's kind of a sad thing to have to say about a title that bears the legendary RollerCoaster Tycoon moniker.
Nevertheless, build you must. RollerCoaster Tycoon 4Mobile puts you in charge of a patch of land that you need to nurture into a thriving destination of fun and games. If you don't, the mayor will turn the lot into a strip mall. Boo to shopping! Hooray for riding the teacups after eating corn dogs, and other bad decisions made in the name of good times!
Remember how you were nursing a serious Bridge Constructor addiction a few weeks back? Don’t be ashamed – we all were. And if today’s announcement is any indication, you should ready yourself for a relapse: Bridge Constructor Medieval will be available on iOS and Android on May 1st.
Travelling back to the days of yore, amateur bridge builders will need to use their old skills in some new ways. The Middle Ages were rife with war, and as such you’ll need to build bridges sturdy enough to withstand cannon fire and get your troops across, but also weak enough to collapse under the weight of enemy troops, sending them spilling to their deaths below. We’re not quite sure how the yin/yang of bridge design can balance such contrasting goals, but we’re excited to find out.
New materials, new challenges, and familiar gameplay await ye olde gamers brave enough to take the plunge. Keep an eye out for Bridge Constructor Medieval when it hits your favorite mobile marketplace on May Day.
Along with death and taxes, the only other certainty in life is that casual gamers love farming. It’s a good thing too, because otherwise Zynga’s FarmVille 2: Country Escape would be showing up unfashionably late to a party the company started itself with FarmVille back in the halcyon days of Facebook gaming. As it is, this fully mobile installment has much improved graphics and a fair bit of charm, but at the expense of the creative freedom that made the original such a monster hit.
This is the part where I’d usually go into the setting and object of the game, but this one should require little explanation. You’ve got a family farm to fix up, so you’ve got to get busy growing crops and harvesting resources from plants and animals, most of which can be crafted into more complicated and lucrative products at the appropriate stations: the dairy churns out milk products, the windmill can grind grain into flour, etc.
