When life starts to get a little overwhelming, do you ever just wish that you could go someplace far, far away where you didn't have to think about all that pesky real-world stuff that's always weighing on your mind? That's why video games can be such a great escape, as there's often no greater way to forget about your responsibilities, if only for just a minute or two, than by venturing to some far-off distant planets, or saving the world one princess at a time!Well this week's batch of new iOS releases have no shortage of great places to go when you just need to take a break from life. Whether that place is a dark and mysterious space station, a time when Game & Watch games ruled the industry, or even a pixelated zoo where all the animals and visitors love to get their funk on every now and then, you're sure to find a fun and quirky place to lose yourself in tonight. Just make sure you remember to return to the real world every now and then while you're playing!
As I've mentioned before, every game developer I know buys ads on Facebook to drive games installs and uses HasOffers to track them. So it was a bit of a shock when Facebook dropped HasOffers as a mobile measurement partner a few weeks back. We virtually sat down with HasOffers CEO Peter Hamilton to ask him: What happened with the Facebook relationship? Who else is out there to advertise with aside from Facebook? What gives HasOffers the edge over their competition? What to do if you have the aspirations of King.com but not $350 million to spend? And what's going down at the Mobile World Conference that he's currently attending in Spain? All in 5 questions and in a less than 5 minute read.
To be more precise, it's not his own money, but the $6.5 million raised for his latest venture, If You Can Company. The startup's first title, If…, is an episodic RPG intended for kids ages nine to 11 that just hit the iOS App Store a few days ago.Hawkins has been somewhat under the radar since leaving another studio he created, Digital Chocolate, in 2012. His current project has apparently been in the works since then, and he obviously has high hopes for it, telling VentureBeat's Dean Takahashi that it will mean more to him than creating Madden NFL Football to see If… catch on.The game doesn't seem to be lacking in ambition, as If You Can co-founder Ben Geliher has named Pokemon, Animal Crossing and The Legend of Zelda as influences for its look and feel. Built on Unity, If… allows young gamers to design their own anthropomorphic animal characters and set them on the path to rebuild and restore peace to a town called Greenberry, with a heavy focus on making moral decisions and getting conflicting factions of dogs and cats to co-exist peacefully.
Improbable? Yes - but as any hoopy frood knows, improbability is The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy's stock and trade.Based on the trilogy in five parts, the late great Douglas Adams teamed up with Infocom (makers of Zork) in 1984 to create the wildly popular text adventure game called (not surprisingly) The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. It was witty, it was fun - it was everything the books were.And it's about to turn 30.To celebrate, BBC Radio 4 Extra (a comedy station in the UK) has announced that they'll be publishing a 30th anniversary edition of the Infocom classic. It sounds surprising, but when you realized BBC Radio 4 did the same for the 20th anniversary… maybe less so. And when you remember that Hitchhiker's started life as a BBC radio program in 1978, all the pieces seem to fall into place rather nicely.
If you've been floating around the interwebs in the last week or so, there's a good chance the name GBA4iOS has crossed your vision more than once. A Gameboy Advance emulator for the iPhone and iPad, GBA4iOS works flawlessly. Better yet, it's an easy install that doesn't require jailbreaking, and it has a direct pipeline to a ROM store built right into it. For fans of emulation, it's a pocket dream come true.Emulation, of course, is a touchy subject. The legality around it scream "grey market" at best. But regardless of your feelings on the subject, you have to admit that GBA4iOS is a technical marvel - especially when compared to all of the mediocre GBA emulators that have tried to sneak onto your iOS devices in recent years. And it's install method - requiring nothing more than visiting a website and changing the date on your phone - is a wonder in and of itself.With all of that magic under the hood, there must be some crazy team of coders and hackers working around the clock to get this thing together, right? Actually - it's just one high school student with a passion for apps and retro gaming.
Who knew that while we go about our days, a giant war is raging all across the floor of our very own bedrooms?! Romans In My Carpet! from Ravenmark developer Witching Hour Studios lets players partake in the epic battles of the war between Rome and Britannia, all condensed into wonderfully bite-sized and 16-bit visuals. The game looks to be just as cute and adorable as it is engrossing and strategic.The bite-sized action of the game takes place across the sprawling terrain of a modern-day dorm room, complete with "its mite-ridden carpets and other dusty paraphernalia." Both the "Romites" and the "Breetles" will have six unique unit types to use in the turn-based strategy battles, complete with spider-driven chariots and poop-flinging catapults. It sounds like a truly terrifying war, doesn't it?The game will feature a single-player campaign called "Romans" that spans 10 battles long, as well as an asynchronous online multiplayer mode. You can download Romans In My Carpet! on Android or iOS devices when the game launches sometime this spring.
For a substance so sweet, it's surprising how bad a taste the word CANDY has left in people's mouths this year. And it all started in January, when it was revealed by Gamezebo that King (Candy Crush Saga) held the European trademark on the word CANDY, and was in the process of obtaining a similar mark in the US.But now, Kotaku reports, that trademark filing has been withdrawn."Yesterday, King filed for abandonment of the trademark in the United States," Kotaku's Jason Schreier writes. "When reached by Kotaku, King confirmed the trademark abandonment but declined to comment."
Don't you ever get tired of all those sidescroller games that, you know, scroll sideways? Me too. And that's why I'm so pumped to play Super Kid Cannon, a new Donkey Kong-inspired action game that keeps the lighthearted action moving upwards on a vertical plane.Super Kid Cannon, or SKC for short, is a courageous Red Panda who is on a quest across 30 levels and 5 worlds to rescue his love interest Justine from the evil Snow Leopard Khan. Described as the world's first "vertical launcher," Super Kid Cannon will find players launching their little hero out of all kinds of contraptions, from the titular canons and mine carts, to even geysers, bubbles, and spaceships.One look at the game's debut launch trailer and you can see the Donkey Kong and Mario Bros. influence in spades. Much like the barrel-blasting mechanic of the Donkey Kong Country games, you'll be carefully lining up your barrel blast shots to launch SKC upwards through a number of jungle environments with wonderfully illustrated designs. You can also expect to find a quirky cast of characters and lots of other fun obstacles and hazards to overcome along the way.The free-to-play game will be getting a soft launch in New Zealand this month on Android and iOS, with a worldwide release to follow sometime shortly after.