There’s a surprising dearth of good roguelikes on mobile platforms. While I wouldn’t wish to shoehorn the ridiculous number of key commands from something like Angband onto a buttonless phone, the basic concept is a good fit. Explore randomly-generated dungeon, kill monsters, get treasure. The basic controls you need to make a roguelike work — directions and inventory, mostly — are pretty workable on a touchscreen, and the turn-based nature of the genre means that the frustration factor of trying to be accurate with non-physical controls is simply not there.
This isn’t to say there aren’t good roguelikes out there, however. On iOS, there’s 100 Rogues, Sword of Fargoal and several others I haven’t tried. On Android, the pickings are a bit more slim, though there are a few out there for the taking.
Today, iOS added Cardinal Quest to its lineup, a rather wonderful little roguelike with a pleasing retro aesthetic, streamlined gameplay and the kind of addictive nature that is perfect for mobile games.
Cardinal Quest isn’t a new title, however; it’s been available for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux machines for quite a while now, and there’s a free demo you can play over on Kongregate. But its release on iOS today marks its first jump onto portable devices.
For the uninitiated, Cardinal Quest is a simplistic dungeon-crawler that cites Gauntlet, Golden Axe and red-box Dungeons & Dragons games as its key inspirations. Taking on the role of one of three different pixelated heroes, the player descends into the randomly-generated dungeons to seek their fortune and hopefully defeat the evil minotaur lurking in the depths. Along the way they’ll discover treasure and a variety of different spells to make their journey easier.
Cardinal Quest adds a few nice little twists on the conventional roguelike formula. Walking over an item of equipment, for example, causes your character to automatically decide whether it’s better than what he already has or not, and replace it if necessary. There’s no faffing around with comparing stats, it simply takes care of it for you. This might irk purists a bit, but it keeps things nice and pacy.
Similarly, special abilities aren’t learned, but are instead found as treasure. Five can be equipped at once, while others are stored in the inventory. Instead of using a magic points system, each skill has a cooldown determined by one of the character’s stats, making some inherently more suitable for certain classes than others — though, so far as I can tell from my brief time with the game so far, any class can use any spell.
Also, while the game does feature permadeath as all good roguelikes should, there’s a bit of a safety net in place in the form of a “lives” system that lets the player walk away from a couple of fatal encounters before succumbing to oblivion. It makes the experience a little more friendly to newbies while still remaining brutal enough to provide genre veterans with a decent challenge.
Wrap the whole thing in pleasingly blocky pixel-art, retro sound effects and chiptune music and you’ve got Cardinal Quest in a nutshell. Grab it here for $1.99.
It’s not easy to change your own opinions, for any reason. It’s even harder to change it when someone else makes a convincing argument as to why you are wrong and therefore a big dumb-dumb poopy-head. But sometimes it’s something you have to do in order to move with the times.
I have two very different issues in mind for which I’ve encountered the above concept. I’ll tackle them in order of difficulty to comment on.
First up is mobile gaming.
Last year, I wrote this post. In it, I described how I thought the supposed pressure from Nintendo’s investors for the Japanese giant to start developing for smartphones rather than its own proprietary hardware might not actually be a terrible idea. I actually still don’t think it’s an awful idea, but after a year of reflection, observation and immersion in the mobile gaming industry, it’s clear that what I describe and suggest in that post isn’t going to happen.
For all some iOS developers’ attempts to take the iPhone and iPad seriously for gaming purposes, there are at least ten times as many developers churning out free-to-play or quick-hit casual games. For every developer who is up front about the cost of their app and refuses to nickel-and-dime the player with additional in-app purchases, at least ten times as many incorporate some sort of means of endless monetization, be it an “energy” system, a means for players to buy in-game currency without earning it or the facility to unlock content without having to progress naturally through the game.
I don’t begrudge these developers their income, of course — games cost money to make, and every developer wants to make it big with their titles. But, unfortunately, the prevalence of such business models in the mobile gaming space makes it all but impossible for the “core” gaming community to take it seriously. As much as many of us moan about grinding for levels or money in games, a lot of us secretly quite enjoy it — it provides us with “war stories” about how we played Mahjong for six hours straight in Yakuza 2 in order to be able to afford a fancy dress to give to a girl, or how we accumulated fifteen bajillion souls in Demon’s Souls only to die and then die again on the way back to retrieving them, losing them all forever.
In short, the effort and personal sacrifice involved in accomplishing feats in some of these games is rendered meaningless if someone can just come along and pay ten quid to bypass all the pain and suffering. Sure, it’s convenient, but it renders achievements meaningless — particularly if the game’s monetization strategy features “pay to win” items, whereby players can pay real money in order to gain a significant in-game advantage, be it the ability to “continue” after death without score penalty or simply acquiring powerful new equipment.
What this means is that “core” gamers as a community don’t take mobile gaming seriously, which means that when developers do come along wanting to do something serious and non-exploitative, they often get ignored — particularly if their game is seen as “expensive” compared to the myriad free and 69p apps out there. If you want a recent example of this in action, just consider the Kickstarter campaign for Republique that I wrote about here. Despite starting as an effort to get “triple-A” games on iOS, the team behind the project gradually had to accept that this mission statement wasn’t going to get them the funding that they wanted, and eventually had to expand and promise PC and Mac versions. Even then, it looked for a long time like they weren’t going to make it.
Anyway. I was wrong. I accept that. Mobile gaming is its own thing, and that’s cool. I will continue to appreciate it when a developer treats me as a player rather than a customer (or worse, cash cow) and provides me with deep, meaningful, worthwhile experiences on iOS, but I’m no longer holding my breath for it to be the next big thing in portable gaming — at least not for the “core” audience. There is still a place for dedicated handhelds.
Now for the second issue. I kind of don’t want to talk about this much because there’s been a lot of angry table-thumping surrounding it in recent weeks. There are, too, a lot of very vocal commentators on the subject and I really don’t want to attract their ire — firstly, because that is by no means my intention, and secondly, because I’ve seen people really get laid into as a result of such arguments.
I am, of course, talking about gender issues and the question of whether or not the video games industry constitutes a rape culture.
Some context, first. Apologies to those whom the following offends, but it’s necessary to include it for context. (NSFW, duh.)
This trailer for the upcoming game Hitman Absolution made a lot of people very angry, for various reasons. The ridiculous nun disguises covering impractical porn-star dominatrix outfits. The question of how exactly a nun conceals a rocket-launcher inside her habit. The fact that this really didn’t look like the Hitman series people knew and loved.
By far the biggest concern, though, was the violence towards women depicted in the trailer.
I am not going to get into the broader discussion of whether or not this is indicative of a rape culture here as, to be frank and honest with you, I do not know enough about the subject and therefore feel ill-qualified to comment on it.
What I can discuss, however, is how my own thought processes went.
My initial reaction to the trailer was simply “WTF”. This was shortly followed by “that’s clearly sexist and unnecessary”, and I commented as such on Twitter around the time it was emerging. My opinion was that the trailer was the result of a horny marketing department making deliberately sexually-provocative promotional material in order to get people talking about the game. On that note, it certainly worked.
I thought little more of it for a while, until articles like this one started to appear, claiming that the trailer was indicative of a larger problem — the trailer was, to paraphrase Brendan’s piece, not simply sexist, but evidence of a culture that normalised violence against women, and specifically sexual violence. In short, a rape culture by its very definition.
I had no idea what “rape culture” meant when I saw the initial discussions surrounding this trailer. My initial reaction, like many others, was to assume that “rape culture” in fact meant “directly endorsing rape”. Despite being conscious of the fact that I had publicly spoken out against the trailer, the accusations flying around and the increasing anger of commenters on the subject — on both sides — made me feel deeply uncomfortable and, yes, defensive. No-one likes to be told that something they care deeply about has such an odious undercurrent, after all.
But I stepped back for a moment and considered what was going on. This was clearly a hot-button issue for a lot of people, and one that I knew wading into with ill-informed opinions would be desperately, desperately unwise. I’d already seen a few weeks previously that a friend who had inadvertently ventured into a similar discussion got very publicly torn a new one (a little unfairly, I feel — though that’s an altogether different story) as he attempted to discuss the matter.
So here’s what I did: I stepped away. I read through the various angry tweets, blog posts and articles with a degree of detachment, attempting to understand where these people were coming from and why those who were saying “it’s no problem, what’s the big deal?” were pissing them off so much. I read up a little on what “rape culture” as a term actually meant.
And I came out of it feeling differently to the defensiveness I felt before. I already knew there was a problem with sexism in the industry, but now I felt I had an increased (though by no means comprehensive) understanding of the issue. I am aware that there are still things I do not understand about issues of feminism, gender, sexuality, rape culture and cultural norms — people spend years studying these things, after all — but I am willing to at least learn about these subjects before sticking my oar into a debate I am currently ill-qualified to have. I am also aware that many of the commenters who feel so passionately about this issue are not, as might first appear, condemning the entire industry and everyone involved in it as sexist, misogynist perpetuators of a rape culture, because gross generalisations are never helpful.
Let’s get off the specifics because, as I’ve said several times, I don’t want to get into that particular discussion right now.
The key issue is that a little consideration and reflection goes a long way. Knee-jerk, immediate, passionate, emotional and ill-informed reactions might feel good in the short term, but often they leave you looking like a jackass. I’m glad that I stepped back and considered the way I felt about the discussion surrounding this issue — and why — before even thinking about jumping in and potentially making a twat of myself.
It pays to have flexible opinions, a willingness to educate yourself and, yes, the ability to admit you were wrong (and understand why), in short. That’s not to say that you should blindly follow the herd — quite the opposite, in fact. You should take the time to explore an issue, find out as much as possible and gather sufficient information for you to be able to accurately decide whether or not your initial reaction was, in fact, correct.
If it was — in your opinion, anyway — then you’ll be well-equipped to argue your case. And if it wasn’t, it’s important to be humble enough to admit it.
Have you played any of the games by Kairosoft on iOS and Android devices? If not, you really should. They’re quite remarkable little experiences, all the more noteworthy for fitting surprisingly deep gameplay into less than 10MB in most cases. This is a big benefit for those of you who habitually fill your phone and/or tablet device with all manner of crap games that you never play.
Kairosoft’s games are business sims/strategy games at heart. All of them feature adorable pixel art and dreadful MIDI music. Most of them involve attempting to make as much money as possible over the course of a fixed period of time which varies depending on the title. Some are almost identical to one another, others take slightly different approaches.
All are utterly bewildering the first time you play them.
Most players’ first experience with this little Japanese software company’s work tends to be with their breakout hit Game Dev Story which, as the title suggests, sees the player running a fledgling game development company over the course of twenty in-game years. As the game progresses, players develop their staff, produce new games, try to woo the public and even have the opportunity to develop their own game console. Throughout, knowing tips of the hat are given to the games industry with pun-based names and not-quite-real game systems coming on to the market and acting much like their real-life counterparts. Develop for the Game Boy equivalent, for example, and you’ll be on to a winner. Decide to support the Virtual Boy equivalent and you may find that your sales aren’t quite what you expect.
Basic gameplay in Game Dev Story is pretty straightforward. Through a series of simple menus, you tell your minions what to do and keep a careful eye on your finances. What’s interesting about it (and all Kairosoft’s other titles, for that matter) is how much is going on beneath the surface. Markets are being simulated; seasonal growth and decline is taken into account; real-world trends form a key part of the game. On your first run-through, you may not discover everything the game has to offer. On each subsequent runthrough, you find out more until you’re making ridiculous amounts of money with each one of your blockbusters.
The most recent Kairosoft title I’ve tried is an Android title known as Cafeteria Nipponica. This, as the name suggests, is a restaurant management game where it’s up to the player to take between one and three restaurants to the very top of their game. This is achieved by hiring staff, levelling them up, researching new dishes and, occasionally, sending staff members out into the fields to look for ingredients and “treasure”. I haven’t got my head around everything the game is doing at the moment, but if nothing else, seeing little pixel people running around making a restaurant work is most entertaining. Like most of the company’s other titles, a lot of concepts are treated in a rather “abstract” manner, and so long as you don’t go in expecting a literal simulation of how a restaurant actually works, you’ll have a blast.
If you’ve read my previous post How to Play Pocket Academy, you’ll know that success in these games is sometimes quite hard to come by, and it’s quite easy to mess things up beyond all recognition. That’s okay, though, because the game remains so unerringly polite about the whole thing throughout that you can’t feel too bad even as your money spirals into the red more and more with each passing month.
In short, then, if you’re looking for something to occupy your time on the toilet/bus that isn’t Angry Birds, then almost anything by our Japanese friends here is certainly worth a look. While they may not be the cheapest mobile games out there, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. They’ll provide you with a ton of entertainment for about the price of a single Starbucks coffee. And you can’t complain at that, really. That’s just good business.
I know at least a few of my regular readers sport iOS devices, so I thought I’d take the opportunity to share a few titles I’ve downloaded and actually wanted to keep recently. Since my day job sees me downloading and reviewing a metric fuckton of iOS and Android games (all right… five) every week, I get exposed to a lot of great stuff… and a lot of crap, too, but we’ll leave that to one side for the moment.
Without further ado, then, here are a few iOS games that you may wish to check out if you have the chance.
Rebuild
Rebuild is a game about zombies. But wait! Don’t dismiss it just yet. While the whole “zombie” thing is incredibly played out now, a few games recently have provided a pleasingly different take on surviving the undead/infected hordes. One of these is Facebook game The Last Stand: Dead Zone, which is a surprisingly deep RTS/RPG that is worth taking a look at even if you typically hate Facebook games. But we won’t get into that now, as we’re talking about iOS games.
The other is Rebuild. As the name suggests, the game is about, well, rebuilding. Beginning with a custom character and a small cadre of survivors (all of whom can be renamed) it’s up to the player to recapture a town (which can also be renamed) from the groaning, brain-obsessed ones. This is achieved in a turn-based manner, with each turn representing a day.
Each day, you can assign survivors to locations that surround captured territory and give them a job to do according to where their skills lie. You might want them to scavenge for food on a farm, or search for survivors in an apartment building. Killing zombies clears the way for building specialists to capture territory, and once captured the survivors gain the benefit from whatever building the captured territory contained. Survivors can also be equipped with items (including dogs) in order to boost their stats and make them better at their jobs, and the zombies will occasionally attack the main hideout, meaning you’d better have left some people behind on defence duty.
Rebuild is a simple but deep turn-based strategy game that is in the remarkable position of being a zombie game that is actually both original and worth playing. It’s easy to understand but also easy to mess up, meaning it will take time to figure out and determine the perfect strategy. Each game is randomly generated and may take place on one of several different map sizes at several different difficulty levels, so there’s plenty of replay value here, too.
H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos makes for great games, whether they’re of the board, card or video variety. Necronomicon is no exception.
Necronomicon is a solitaire card game that pits players against the deck. The game takes place on two rows of five spaces: the top five belong to the forces of darkness, while the bottom five belong to the ever-present “investigators” — humans from disparate walks of life who are thrown into conflict against the Old Ones.
The basic mechanic of Necronomicon is in battling these cards by placing them in adjacent spaces — forces of darkness at the top, plucky humans on the bottom. Each monster and investigator card has a Defense and a Sanity rating. If one card has both Defense and Sanity higher than the other, it defeats its opponent immediately, scoring points for the player if the investigator won, losing points if the monster won.
If one or both of the stats are tied, however, an element of luck comes into play. Both sides make an attack roll, with the highest roll defeating their opponent. These attack rolls may be modified by playing additional cards onto the investigators and monsters — these cards may also be placed on spaces before investigators or monsters show up, allowing you to set up battlegrounds that benefit the investigators and hamper the monsters. Thematically, these extra cards represent weapons, allies, magic spells, potions, curses and all manner of other goodness.
The game’s end is determined by an evil portal thing in the corner of the screen. If the monster row is full and the player draws a monster card, the portal takes damage. If it takes three points of damage, the game ends in a loss for the player. However, if the investigators row is full and the player draws another investigator, the portal heals a point of damage. If the portal is undamaged and gets healed, it is sealed and the player wins.
Necronomicon is quite difficult to describe and even the in-game instructions don’t do a terribly clear job of explaining how to play. But after a couple of games, it becomes quick and simple to play, and a great little solitaire card game that doesn’t take long to get through a session of.
I’m lumping these together because although they’re developed by completely different people/teams, they’re almost identical in concept.
The two games are “room escape” games, an offshoot of the adventure game genre that has no plot and simply requires that the player find their way out of a series of rooms via increasingly-esoteric means. Both games make full use of the iPhone’s multitouch screen and accelerometer, and both give you absolutely no help whatsoever, which will ensure you get infuriated as you poke, prod and pinch at the screen, tilt the phone side to side and shake it just to see if anything happens.
While sometimes the solutions are irritatingly obtuse, successfully figuring out the correct way to achieve something is immensely satisfying.
To say much more about these games would be to spoil the infuriating puzzle-solving therein, so I shall leave it at that.
So, at the time of writing, the No. 1 free iPad app and No. 2 free iPhone app is this game. A quiz. About logos.
This seems to be something of a craze at the moment, as it’s far from the only title like this available in the App Store, and doubtless there are similar offerings on Android that I can’t be arsed to look up right now.
This is what we’re reduced to for entertainment now? Seeing how deep the brainwashing of advertising has burrowed into our skulls? I’d argue that scoring highly on one of these quizzes is not anything that we should particularly be proud of, as all it simply proves is that advertising has successfully drilled its way into your subconscious.
The same goes for anyone who uses the word “simples”, describes anyone as being “so Money Supermarket” non-ironically or sings that bloody “Go Compare” advert. (If you do the latter, I will likely punch you in the face. If you do the “so Money Supermarket” one, whether or not you get punched in the face will depend entirely on how good your Patrick Stewart impression is.)
The counter-argument to this, of course, is that many of these brands, logos and slogans have transcended their original meanings and become pop culture phenomenons or memes in their own right. And to an extent that’s true, but I can’t shake off the feeling that these things have been forced into the public consciousness, while true phenomena and memes should grow organically, naturally and without marketing spend. In many cases, they do, of course — look at the Know Your Meme page for Katawa Shoujo or the astonishing popularity of My Little Pony among people that it wasn’t originally intended for, for example. But I think we can all agree that anyone who takes an opportunity to sing the Go Compare song is a grade-A arsehole of the highest order.
Perhaps I’m just being grouchy. Or perhaps I’m just fed up with feeling like I can’t escape advertising any more. It seems to encroach on my time more and more. It’s all over the Internet. I get text messages from lawyers inviting me to seek compensation for the accident I supposedly had (funny, I don’t remember it). I get phone calls from twats trying to sell me shit even though I’m registered with the TPS. (Note: this is the main reason I never answer my landline. Call my mobile if you need to speak with me.) I get people knocking on my door trying to sell me double glazing or get me to switch energy suppliers. It’s plastered over certain games. It’s smeared all over Facebook like festering shit. It encroaches on Twitter occasionally in the form of “Promoted Tweets” and “Promoted Users” — though these are, thankfully, easy to ignore. I even had to remove a Chrome extension yesterday because it was inserting an ad at the bottom of every page I viewed.
Ads allow things to be put out there for free, of course, and without them we’d be having to pay a lot more money for the things that we do, so I guess we should sort of be grateful for them. That said, it doesn’t excuse the sleaziness of some ads, particularly on the Internet — take the large “Download” links on software sites, for example, or the “You Have 1 New Message/Virus/Picture” banners you get on mobile apps. Or indeed the “lose 3 tons of belly fat with one weird old tip” thing. (Spoilers: you probably won’t, otherwise the world would be talking about it.)
You know what? Thinking about it, I’d actually be happy to pay for more things and have them advertising-free. I pay for Spotify premium and don’t have ads. I’ll happily pay to remove ads in iOS games I intend to play for more than five minutes. I pay for Netflix and get movies and TV shows without ad breaks. I’d even happily hand over some money to WordPress if it became a premium-only service, such is the excellent use I’ve got out of it for free over the years.
In short, provide me with a quality product and the means to not be battered around the face with people trying to sell me shit I don’t want, and I’ll happily hand over some money. Yell “Buy! Buy! Buy!” repeatedly at me with no means of respite and I will, yes, punch you in the face.
I backed the highly promising-looking project Republiqueon Kickstarter recently. Despite it looking like a high-quality endeavour from a reputable team (including former Halo 4 creative director Ryan Payton, no less) it’s struggling to reach its goal of $500,000 — as of the time of writing, it’s sitting at $86,477 with 16 days left to go.
For the unfamiliar, Republique is a bold attempt to create a “triple-A” game experience on iOS. The goals that the team hopes to achieve include designing a game specifically for touch-based devices; creating an intense action game without a focus on killing; creating a game with a believable, non-sexualized female lead; exploring “heavy” topics and saying something “meaningful”; and pushing cutting-edge graphics on mobile devices.
All reasonable ambitions, you might think. The thinking behind the game’s design is that “gamers will embrace iOS when more games are made for them.”
That, unfortunately, is where the problem lies — a lot of people are still resistant to the idea that a mobile device can play host to a “proper” game — i.e. one that you play for more than five minutes at a time, that doesn’t feature a three-star rating system on every level and doesn’t offer the possibility of purchasing in-game currency for faster progress. (That said, the ever-greedy EA has been sneaking the latter mechanic into some of its recent games, much to the chagrin of people who hate that sort of thing, particularly when they’ve already spent $60 on the game itself, but that’s beside the point.)
To look at the popular titles on the App Store, you’d be forgiven for thinking that these naysayers had a point. Of the top free iPhone games at the time of writing, pretty much all of them are either casual or social fare, riddled with microtransactions and designed more as a moneymaking “service” than anything with meaningful gameplay. (Yes, even the ridiculously popular Draw Something falls into this category.) Paid apps don’t fare much better, either, with the super-casual (and a bit rubbish) Angry Birds Space topping the charts, closely followed by numerous other lightweight titles.
This isn’t to say there are no “core” titles on iOS. Far from it, in fact — Square Enix, for example, has put out some excellent role-playing titles including Final Fantasy I, II and III, Chrono Trigger, Chaos Rings and Final Fantasy Tactics. Sega has rereleased a number of its old Genesis titles including strategy RPG classic Shining Force. EA has put out mobile adaptations of its popular franchises such as Dead Space, Mass Effect and numerous others. But why do these titles flounder — relatively speaking, anyway — when compared to more casual fare?
It’s a simple numbers game. Not everyone who owns an iOS device is a “core” gamer. Angry Birds et al have their place among those of us who don’t know what RPG, HP, MP or FPS stand for, or who think “bullet hell” refers to driving through a particularly unpleasant part of Manchester in the middle of the night. As it happens, these more casual players probably outnumber the more dedicated “core” types to whom “triple-A” titles such as Republique might be marketed to. As such, they appear to dominate the charts on a regular basis.
Does that mean that “core” developers should give up and not even bother trying to put together something impressive on mobile platforms? Absolutely not, though they should be aware of what they’re getting into and the problems they will have to overcome in the process.
Firstly, one of these “core” titles probably isn’t going to top the charts.The Angry Birds series, for example, has enjoyed well over half a billion downloads in its lifetime and made developer Rovio a worldwide phenomenon in the process. Its simple gameplay and premise mean that anyone can pick it up, play and have fun. (Unless you’re me. I hate that stupid game.) Conversely, a “core” title likely has a barrier of entry — “you must be this familiar with video games to ride”, if you will. Not only that, but its audience must be people willing to sit down with a game for more than a few minutes at a time while they’re waiting for a bus, waiting for the kettle to boil or waiting for their bowels to evacuate.
Secondly, iOS players are curiously resistant to what they see as “high” prices. Square Enix’s titles, for example, have caught frequent flak for being anywhere between $8.99 and $17.99. Compared to a new release on PC, console, Vita or 3DS, however, these prices are still eminently reasonable — but they’re expensive compared to the $.99 you pay for Angry Birds, and the fact that they’re deeper, more impressive, bigger-budget experiences than Rovio’s avian-flinging nonsense isn’t often taken into account.
The problem here is that in order for a “triple-A” iOS title with high production values to be successful, it will need to overcome that particular resistance that players feel to paying more than, say, $5 for a game. The Kickstarter for Republique will provide those who pledge $10 or more with a copy of the full game when it’s released — and going by the pattern of other successful video game Kickstarters, the full version will likely cost more than this “backer’s rate”. We’re likely looking at $15-20 at least, and that’s a price point that takes the game well and truly out of “impulse purchase” territory.
Or does it? Consider Thatgamecompany’s recent PS3 release Journey. This game costs $15 and lasts approximately two hours. People have been willing to part with this much money for what they already know is a two-hour experience simply because other people have said it is good. In many cases, people have done this without a second thought — going into the game with “beginner’s mind” is regarded as an important part of the experience. Does the virtue of the fact that Journey is a game presented on a large television screen make it inherently more valuable than a portable title for a multipurpose mobile device? It’s certainly perceived that way, but why on Earth should that be so?
As the Camouflaj team say on their Kickstarter page for Republique, though, developers need to take more risks if “triple-A” gaming on iOS is to be taken seriously. Lengthy, deep games can and do work on the platform, even if they don’t chart very highly compared to casual and social juggernauts. The most important considerations for any developer thinking about doing this, however, should be designing it specifically for the device. That means building a game around a touch-based interface, not putting in crappy virtual joypads with no tactile feedback. A game with touch controls needn’t be shallow — games such as Undercroft that recreate what would have been the mouse-driven interface of old PC games work well, for example, so there’s plenty of scope there.
From what I know of the team behind Republique, I believe that they have a good idea of what they’re doing. I believe that their game could prove to be an excellent example of what mobile platforms is capable of for “core” gamers. And I simply believe that the project should be supported, not because I want to see an end to the casual titles on mobile — they have their place — but because as a format, mobile devices’ capabilities are more than broad enough to cater to more than a “lowest common denominator” audience. It should be supported because it’s a worthwhile project that, if successful, will benefit mobile gaming in general in the long run — not just iOS. That means you embittered Android types upset that this title doesn’t mention your chosen platform at all should consider throwing a few quid their way, too. Vote with your wallet, as they say.
Check out the Republique Kickstarter and pledge a donation here.
I’ve been spending quite a lot of time with my shiny (well, rather fingerprinty now) new Motorola Xoom since it arrived the other day, and I have to say I’m a big fan. While Android seems to be a little more clunky than iOS, particularly prone to slowing down for no apparent reason on occasion, I’m appreciating the things it does do. Having a fully-customisable homescreen is very pleasant, certainly, and the cool quasi-3D effect it does with the wallpaper is pretty neat.
What’s becoming abundantly clear to me as I continue to use it, however, is that using it simply feels very different to the iPad. It might be the fact it’s designed to be used in landscape as opposed to the iPad’s default portrait orientation; it might be the unique array of apps on offer on both devices; it might be a combination of interface elements. I’m not sure exactly what it is, but I can say that both devices certainly have a place in my life at this moment for different reasons — and also that getting the Xoom has caused my desire for a 3rd-gen iPad to drop to zero.
If anything, the Xoom seems particularly suited for more “serious” tasks (and by “serious” I mean “not games”) — I’m particularly fond of using it for Twitter, chat, email and that sort of thing. Google Currents has become my go-to app for reading the daily news. The built-in “share” functionality, which allows you to easily send stuff from one app to another easily, is pretty neat. The keyboard I have installed, which lets you type by drawing wiggly lines rather than tapping keys, makes me feel like a wizard, particularly with the sparkly particle pattern that comes from aforementioned wiggly pattern. And the inclusion of a USB port (albeit a micro-USB one that requires an adapter for pretty much every peripheral ever, making one wonder exactly why they didn’t just put a regular USB port on it) means that it’s possible to do things like hook up a keyboard and practically use the damn thing as a sort of laptop.
A big draw for me was the thriving emulation scene on Android, however. Within a few short moments of getting the device up and running I had downloaded NES, SNES, Mega Drive and arcade machine emulators and a few minutes later had successfully transferred my collection of ROM files of dubious origin. What I have now is a portable gaming device that plays pretty much any NES, SNES or Mega Drive game, and a whole heap of arcade games.
This… is awesome. I hadn’t anticipated quite how awesome this was going to be, but the ability to play Final Fantasy VI while on an exercise bike at the gym, or Elevator Action while on the toilet, or Golden Axe while waiting for the kettle to boil… well… yes. It’s awesome. The fact you can hook up a USB controller (or, for that matter, Wii Remote with Classic Controller via Bluetooth) and play these games as they were meant to be played — with actual buttons rather than floaty, crappy touchscreen controls — is a happy bonus. The fact you can use floaty, crappy touchscreen controls at times when having a controller is not convenient or socially acceptable is also most welcome.
I’m certainly not going to become one of those gits who bangs on about how much better Android is than iOS because there are things that both do far, far better than the other. But I’ve been very pleasantly surprised by my first experience with an Android device, and the fact it’s turned out to be a portable retro-gaming powerhouse is just a happy bonus, really. Now I can finally get around to beating all the Final Fantasy games that are still on my “to-do” list. (V and VI, as it happens. Also Chrono Trigger, which may as well be a Final Fantasy game.) And, as previously mentioned, playing Elevator Action on the toilet.
…and I’m also a PS3, a Wii, a 360, an iOS and an Android. I’m pretty frickin’ multicultural when it comes to operating systems and platforms, in short. Always have been.
The whole “platform wars” thing always bothers me. It’s usually started by the media and then perpetuated by fanboys who get angrier and angrier and spew more and more meaningless vitriol at one another until everyone leaves feeling rather embarrassed about the whole thing.
This isn’t a phenomenon limited to children and teenagers, either. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve seen grown men and women posting ridiculous comments about how much they “hate” Apple/Microsoft/Google/Sony/Nintendo/that guy Barry from the chip shop (to be fair, he is a bit of a wanker) and getting increasingly riled up when people try to talk sense into them. Or when people deliberately bait them. Or when people take their comments a little too personally and start yelling back. Or… you get the idea.
It’s been going on as long as there have been rival, roughly equivalent platforms doing similar things. We see it with every generation of computers, consoles, handhelds, smartphones, tablets, operating systems… it goes on and on. And, as I say, it’s usually started by the media, though in most cases it’s a bit of a “light the fuse and watch” sort of scenario, whereby they’ll sow the seeds of conflict and then just let consumers batter each other into submission with increasingly-dumb arguments.
I’ve never subscribed to this particular attitude. I don’t see the point. Every platform has its pros and cons. Some are likely to be more successful than others. Some will flop, hard. But they all have their place, and if you enjoy using them or find them useful, then that’s a win. If you have no use for them or don’t find them interesting, cool or exciting, then that’s no loss to you. There’s certainly no reason to judge people who do like them, though.
Let’s take the Android/iOS distinction. These two groups are regularly at each others’ throats, with Android users often hijacking iOS app Facebook pages with comments that just say “Android.” repeatedly under the mistaken assumption that this will make the developer of said app want to support them, and iOS users honking on about incompatibility, how much better their devices are and how cool they look. The vocal proportion of both groups are insufferable arseholes, and I really wish they would shut up.
I entered the Android brigade today with the arrival of my new Motorola Xoom tablet. I got it for several reasons — work, curiosity and the emulation scene. What I found was that I gained an immediate appreciation of what Android did, but did not suddenly find myself hating iOS, Apple and everything they stood for. Instead, from a rational, relatively neutral (well, I have been exclusively iOS for mobile for a number of years now!) point of view, I could see that both of these operating systems had distinctive purposes, and could appreciate both of them.
iOS is simple, easy, consistent and clear. You know what you’re getting with an iOS device. When you run an iOS app (games aside) you generally know what the interface is going to look like, and you can usually figure out how it’s going to work. This is true to such a degree that when apps make minor changes to what is seen as the “standard” way that things work, it’s very uncomfortable. A good example is the Spotify iPhone app, which has the “go back” and “now playing” buttons the opposite way around to how the iPhone’s native music player has — it’s a little confusing and irritating. Not enough to warrant INTERNET RAGE, obviously, but it highlights the fact that most iOS apps are a little more consistent with their interface design.
The “walled garden” aspect of iOS has its place, too. For those who are new to smartphones, tablets and technology in general, the fact that everything scary is walled off means that people can experiment and gain confidence with the device without breaking anything. Apple as a company has been increasingly moving towards the more “casual”, “consumer” market over the last few years — various changes to OSX indicate this, too — and the easier and more consistent things are for users, the better so far as they’re concerned. All this has the side-effect of irritating self-confessed “power users”, however.
But then there’s Android, which would be ideal for said “power users” if they weren’t so stubborn. Annoyed at lack of customisation? You can do that on Android. Wish you could transfer files to the device simply by connecting it to a USB port, not by farting around with app-specific transfer programs? Sure, go ahead. Want to use non Apple-branded accessories, including USB gizmos? Knock yourself out!
The side-effect of all this, of course, is that it provides more things to go wrong. It’s still pretty difficult to break an Android device from what I can tell — at least if you haven’t “rooted” it, a process which I still don’t really understand — but there are more variables in play. You can install apps from places other than one single “official” App Store. There’s a greater risk of malware — something which is practically nonexistent for non-jailbroken iOS devices. The interface(s) for Android apps is (are) maddeningly inconsistent at times. And although the iOS App Store carries a lot of absolute garbage, there’s even more on Android.
Both have their place, in short, and both have their own flaws — just as Windows and OSX have their place; PS3, 360 and Wii have their place; and if you really want to keep on using that Palm Tungsten you’ve had kicking around for years now, be my guest.
In short — and I’m aware I’ve said this before to little effect on the Internet at large, but it’s nice to at least try — people should pretty much just shut the fuck up and enjoy what they’ve got while ignoring what they haven’t got. We’d have a much nicer world without all this envy and jealousy floating around — since, after all, that’s pretty much what most fanboy arguments tend to boil down to — so why do we still do it?
I guess it’s fun to be contrary. Well, you can count me out. So far as tech goes, I’m multicultural and proud.
I last wrote about up-and-coming “fitness social game” Fitocracy back in… [checks] Ooh. October of last year. I thought it was more recently. I feel less guilty about writing about it tonight, in that case.
For the uninitiated, Fitocracy is a site which gamifies your exercise regime. Completing exercises rewards you with points. Points mean level ups. Level ups mean… well, nothing actually, but they provide you with bragging rights plus also give you a rough idea of how much cumulative exercise you’ve done since you started tracking it (and, in theory, “got serious” about it).
Tracking exercises can be done in two ways: manually logging them or linking to a Runkeeper account. The former is necessary for exercises which can’t be automatically tracked such as resistance machines, free weights and bodyweight exercises. The latter is the easiest way to track cardiovascular workouts — particularly those where you’ve actually, you know, gone outside — but you can also track CV stuff directly within Fitocracy if you don’t want to plaster your information over yet another site. (Runkeeper is a pretty cool app, though, so if you’re serious about your fitness, enjoy attempting to draw GPS penises via your exercise route and have a smartphone, it’s worth a download.)
If Fitocracy was just an exercise-tracking system with a levelling system, it’d be pretty decent. But the team behind it has gone the extra mile and included a bunch of other stuff, too. There are Achievements for a variety of things ranging from engaging with the site’s social features to performing challenging exercises. There is a Quest system that provides specific, one-off missions for you to undertake — a good means of setting yourself long-term goals if you can’t think of any of your own. You can save your favourite routines so you can easily recall and record them. There’s a solid Groups system whereby you and your friends can work together and even set up mini-challenges to see who can earn the most points in a set time period. And the whole thing is wrapped in a straightforward, conventional but effective and highly-polished social interface that encourages interaction and encouragement between “players”.
All in all, it’s an excellent motivational tool. Everything combined together forms a powerful system that makes you feel like you’re being “rewarded” for bettering yourself when, in fact, you’re simply making a variable go a bit higher each time or occasionally unlocking intangible shiny things. The thing is, though, you are actually rewarding yourself. You’re bettering yourself. You’re getting fit. You’re learning how to self-motivate. And, assuming you’ve managed to badger some friends into joining up too, you’re also being rewarded by positive encouragement and reinforcement from other people who are going through the same thing. It’s a social network for people who are serious about their fitness — or who want to get serious about their fitness. And it does its job extremely well.
Fitocracy was in closed beta for a pretty long time, and during that period it was only possible to use the service if you had an invite. Now, though, the whole thing is open to the public and is completely free to use — though power users have the option of shelling out $4.99 a month to become a “hero” and get early access to new features. The service has had a fresh new coat of purple paint, its site looks great and the new iPhone app is a pleasure to use with its simple, intuitive and attractive interface.
So why not give it a try? Here’s my profile. I’ll be your friend! NOW GET MOVING, MAGGOT!
I’ve been using our new toy, the iPad 2, for a little while now, and I have to say it is a most wonderful device of much majesty. Like many others, when the original model iPad was first announced, I was skeptical as to whether such a device could be useful when we already had smartphones. No one seemed quite sure who needed a tablet device, and it didn’t look like Apple did either.
That’s because, as it turns out, pretty much anyone can get something out of a tablet device. My experience with this particular breed of tech is, at this time, limited to Apple’s entry to the market along with my Kindle (not exactly the same breed of device, but does what it does very well and is making me read more — always a good thing) but I can imagine there are similar benefits to Android tablets, albeit without the robust infrastructure that is the App Store.
Let’s consider what I have used this device for today. I have browsed the Internet on it. I have looked at Twitter on it. I have shared images using it. I have played games on it — both five-minute diversions and deep RPG experiences. And right now I am writing a blog post on it, the cack-handed image you see at the top of which was also created on the iPad.
In short, I’m rather in love with it. In fact, the only thing I can’t completely do with it is my job, since the sites I currently write for use self-hosted WordPress that isn’t set up to work with the iOS app, and this means I can’t upload images via the Web interface. A bit of a pain, sure, but at least I can write the posts on the go and put the images in later should I need to.
I’ve been impressed with what an all round entertainment device it is, particularly now we finally have Netflix in the UK. Should I find myself wanting to watch Twin Peaks while on the toilet, I can. We really are living in the future.
I’m sure the novelty will wear off soon, but the fact that since I’ve come home from Americai haven’t played a single PC or console game as yet is somewhat telling, and the videos I’ve watched on the big TV were simply to have them on the big screen — if I wanted a more personal experience, it’d be no big deal to transfer them to the iPad, particularly now you can do it over Wi-Fi.
A sound purchase, then, and not a hint of buyer’s remorse. I may be done with Apple as an employer, but it’s hard to deny that they make damn good products through that gradual process of refinement they go through over the years. I’m intrigued to see what the third iPad may have to offer, should the rumours of its release in March of this year turn out to have any validity whatsoever.
