Popcap Games is known all over the world for a wide array of flash-based games. From the incredibly successful colorful match-em’ Bejeweled, to the marble-smashing Zuma, Rocket Mania and Bookworm. Their portfolio of games is, all in all, quite impressive. Today though, Popcap Games announced via their Twitter stream that their well-loved plant-munching, zombie-infested tower defense title Plants Vs Zombies, which is available for both PC and Mac, is coming to iPhone February 15th.

The game involves using a variety of plants including potato mines, peashooters, cattails and hypno-shrooms (to name just a few), to repel an army of zombies led by “Doctor Zomboss”, a giant machine with zombie commanding it. The homeowner, along with a neighbor (called Crazy Dave), must defend the homeowner’s house during day or night, in the front yard, the backyard, and even on the roof!

“Several plants are nocturnal, like mushrooms, having a lower sunlight cost and are ideal for nighttime levels, but will remain asleep during daytime levels unless startled by a coffee bean. In the “back yard” levels that includes a swimming pool, seeds must be planted atop lily pads on water spaces, while on the roof levels, all seeds must be planted in clay pots. The various plant abilities range from firing projectiles at zombies, turning zombies against each other, quickly exploding and wiping out an area of zombies, and slowing down zombies through a high defensive value. Certain plants are highly effective against specific types of zombies, such as a magnet-shroom that can remove a bucket or another obstacle being used for defense from a zombie’s head.”

Continue reading PopCap Games Announces Plants Vs Zombies for iPhone. Hits February 15th. »

Game trailers are serious business. The decisions that you come to on a daily basis sometime come down to whether or not a quality game trailer has been made. Even if you don’t particularly care for trailers, I watch them religiously and often highlight apps that put in that extra bit of effort.

Last week I went ahead and put in my best trailer ever vote for Chillingo’s newest title, The Hero. Perhaps my vote was premature. This week I’m not even going to leave it up to me. Let the readers be the judge! This weeks showdown is between two game trailer powerhouses. On one side, we have Chillingo’s trailer of the hero, which is still all sorts of amazing to me. On the other side, we have ustwo’s trailer for ..™. They pride themselves on their trailers for the entire .™ coolectable series, but I personally like the ..™ trailer the best. Watch both trailers after the break and let us know who wins… I have to know!

The App Store is known for its sales, and just like December and the holiday discount, February is no different, at least for London UK-based mobile development studio Origin8. Developer of “The Sentinel” series, Origin8 have announced “February Freebie Fever,” a sale which will see the company drop the price to FREE on one of it’s App Store hits. Every Friday in the month of February, Origin8 will make one of their App Store titles absolutely free for the busy weekend period.

The sale comes as Sentinel: Mars Defense is about to turn a year old on the 19th February. The sale has already started with Car Mania becoming free last Friday up until today. Details of future weekend deals will be announced via the company’s various social networking accounts on the day of the sale.

“The Sentinel: Mars Defense anniversary provides us with a great excuse to spread some love to our players, and it’s a logical point for us to take a look back over an exciting year. Our aim is to develop games that stand out for their high quality and we want to get them into as many hands as we can. The iPhone as a gaming platform has grown spectacularly over the past year – many current players won’t have owned an iDevice at the time of the original Sentinel release, so we’re giving them a chance to catch up with our back catalogue for nothing.”

Continue reading Origin8 Launches App Store “February Freebie Fever” Sale »

I’m off to Vegas for the second time this calendar year, and like every other app obsessed individual out there, I need apps to keep me entertained. Sure, I could just sit at the airport bar, have a beer, and watch Super Bowl coverage, but I’m a bit sick of it. Dwight Freeney still doesn’t know if he’ll play, the city of new Orleans is still excited, and Archie Manning still doesn’t know who he’s going to cheer for. Instead, I think I’m going have a few cups of coffee and play iPhone apps… well, I guess I’ll be writing about the iPhone apps that I would be playing if I weren’t writing.

Crush the Castle – There’s something oddly refreshing about blowing up castles instead of defending them. As the castle destroyer, you, with your trebuchet, get to fling all sorts of objects at the enemy. You first start with small little stone, but soon progress to throwing bomb clusters at your poor enemies. With a ton of levels to play through that take about a minute each, CtC is a great app for getting you through the security line.

Crush the Castle

Category: Games / Strategy
Released: 2009-09-18
Price: $1.99

This isn’t a joke, well at least the title isn’t. The tagline on the e-mail that I got about the game was “IFUN4ALL AIMS TO CREATE WORST GAME EVER ”. They really do know the way to a man’s heart. The e-mail goes on to say,”Games developer and publisher iFun4all is quick to expand his portfolio of game series in most bizarre way one could think of. They’ve created game so bad that the best title producers could think of was Crap of Defense. To achieve such horrible quality company CEOs limited the budget to equivalent of 500 Russian Roubles and tried to combine remote work of “cost effective” workers worldwide.”

“Our idea was to make tower–of–defense type of game and reverse the concept” says Fülöp Mészáros, one of most world–renown Hungarian designers (out of two). “In normal ToD game you place the towers and they shoot automatically. In our game you have your tower already placed and you shoot it yourself. It has to be fun!” continues Fülöp, who was fired from the company as soon as beta tests proved correctness of his assumptions (or rather lack of it).”

I don’t often get excited about app previews without awesome trailers, but if Rudy’s “Country Store” taught me anything, it’s that you should always trust things that claim they are the worst.

With all the iPad mumbo-jumbo going around, I decided to ask an industry vet about the situation. I got in contact with Keith Adair, I-play’s VP of Sales & Marketing to ask some questions about where I-play is going, where the App Store will go, and most importantly, where Waldo is. You’d think he would be easier to find with those stripes!

Continue reading 4Q Interview: I-play »

As you may know by know, I have this obsession with high quality game trailers. Chillingo’s new trailer for Traplight Games new app “The Hero” just obliterated the rest of the iPhone trailer competition, with what could be the best promo video for a game since the commercials for the original Gears of War. Enjoy!

According to the superhero evaluation on Traplight’s website, The Hero “reveals clear signs of Super Human Stress Disorder (SHSD) caused by exposure to threats such as meteors, zombies, UFO’s, ninjas, giant insects and falling babies. Constant impacts and flying at high speeds have also caused micro tears in brain tissue, possibly explaining momentary episodes of disorientation. SHSD is a condition caused by both, psychological and physiological elements. Condition can be summarized as mental breakdown caused by physical stress combined with inflated ego and a sense of omnipotence.”

I can’t wait to play. Expect “The Hero” to take over the App Store later this month.

While the guys over at iTextSpeed aren’t quite the Guiness Book of World Records committee, they probably do have a pretty good grasp of iPhone texting speed. According to this recent youtube post, the fastest iPhone texter comes in at 56 WPM. Considering the fact that most adults don’t type faster than 56 WPM on a real keyboard, this is quite impressive.

Even if you don’t plan on challenging these serious typing skills, iTextSpeed is probably a great app to have for those of you who say ridiculous things like “I’m all thumbs” and “my fingers are too big”. Pick it up, it’s only 99 cents.

iTextSpeed

Category: Games / Educational
Released: 2009-07-18
Price: $0.99

It’s no secret that the App Store economy is artificially deflated, but none have been quite as outspoken as the guys over at ustwo™. Their blog proclaims that “UK studio ustwo™ have launched a tongue-in-cheek (yet serious) campaign against 59p app pricing (that’d be 99 cents in the US, obviously). “F*** 59p. I’d rather nothing than that insult price.” Inspired by their tongue-in-cheek rage, I decided to send a few questions over their way to get the real scoop.
Continue reading 4Q Interview: ustwo™ »

You may remember towards the end of the year, Apple introduced a new online system which allowed you to preview information for both singles and albums in its current iTunes back catalogue, using its official iTunes URLs, without the need to physically launch iTunes. Then, as we noted, later in the year they also added the ability to actually listen to 30 second audio snippets of these products, effectively moving the iTunes catalogue online. This system became more commonly known as iTunes Preview.

Following on from the music-centric previews added to iTunes Preview, Apple has today quietly activated the same system for all of its App Store URLs associated with its application catalogue. So, what does this mean? Well, this means you can now fully preview applications, including the application’s icon artwork, its accompanying screenshots, pricing information, App Store ratings, customer reviews, release date, seller and more, directly within your browser without ever needing to open iTunes. This, of course, comes alongside a “View in iTunes” button which then takes you directly to the product stated on iTunes. The new page replaces the old page which featured a simple dialogue box which asked if you wished to launch iTunes.

Even though an iSight camera (or its accompanying UI) wasn’t shown off last Wednesday’s iPad media event, speculation has now fallen to if the iPad will ship with one. These rumors started when Steve showed the device to the media. For a split second (around the 9:24 mark on the video podcast), you’ll see the studio lights catch what appears to be a concealed hole in the top center of the iPad’s new bezel. Sure, we’ve been here before. This could be a number of things, an ambient light or proximity sensor for one.

Granted, this “evidence” is pretty sketchy, and probably likely to be debunked, but it gets better. Mission Repair today started to receive replacement Apple iPad parts of which it posted some shots of on their blog. Among the parts was the iPad’s outer frame .. and guess what? It has a molded slot which fits the iSight camera part, perfectly. The photo shows the iPad’s outer frame (top), an Apple Macbook iSight unit (middle), and the Macbooks inner frame (bottom).

Wired reports the iPad simulator seeded as part of the iPhone OS 3.2 SDK still features a “Take a Photo” OS action, when adding a contact’s photo to Contacts.app, for example. There’s even speculation that the reason Apple didn’t show the camera at the event was due to its then unfinished supporting UI. This image posted by Shaun supports the rumor, suggesting that Apple didn’t just leave in the same UI from iPhone OS, but that it has been modified to look and feel dedicated to the iPad, although as you can tell, it’s far from final.

Maybe we’ll see another event at the end of March, just before they launch the Wi-Fi iPad model. “One More Thing?” .. Or could this be a design choice for a future iPad model? I’m sure we’ll find out soon!

It hasn’t been long at all since the release of Assassin’s Creed II: Discovery, but the folks at Ubisoft have already announced their plans to release a third Assassin’s Creed game on the App Store. Titled “Assassin’s Creed II: Multiplayer,” this iPhone-exclusive title will feature some sort of four-player assassin deathmatch. The screenshots show a top-down view and feature environments inspired by the cities featured in Assassin’s Creed II.

It’s all live, and will use a WiFi connection for matches, which is a bit disappointing—Bluetooth is so much simpler!—but it’s possible that that detail was simply omitted for brevity’s sake. You’ll have six powerups at your disposal, but perhaps your most important tool will be your assassin’s stealth, as you can take advantage of your environments and hide within crowds of citizens. The teaser website also mentions a “notoriety” system, which will use a “dynamic ranking system” to place players on the leaderboards, as well as built-in achievements. You’ll be able to challenge friends to matches, but I hope that random matchups are also included.

You can read the full details revealed so far on Ubisoft’s website. In the meantime, we’ll anxiously await the release of more information (or better yet, the game itself!). We’ve already seen two solid ports of the Assassin’s Creed DS games to the App Store, and this iPhone-exclusive title should be very interesting.

Falling Balls

Falling Balls is a super basic FREE game app from developers WickedPissahGames and Bit-101. Now what do I mean by “super basic”?

I look so tough down there... it's a real shame that THE MOON IS FALLING ON MY HEAD!

The game starts with you as the stick figure hero, with the unenviable task of dodging falling balls. At first I thought, “Hey, this is pretty easy, I tilt left – dude goes left; I tilt right, dude goes right.” Mere seconds go by when suddenly balls fall off the top left corner! I screeched with surprise as I was nearly squished. More time went by and more and more balls were dropped. It became apparent that I did not have the skill to continue at this pace, so the game decided it was time that my fate would be death. A ball bounced off the little stick figure creating a splat of blood, and an extremely annoying scream. High score…19. Throughout the next hour I continued to play, getting higher and higher scores until I eventually hit the amazing score of….50. The scream of the dead stick man eventually got to me and I was done. I can still here the screams of those little guys, they haunt my dreams.

Continue reading David’s Low Budget App Corner: Falling Balls and Marbles Multiball 3d (Free Edition) »

Well, this is certainly a neat idea. Navizon, a global positioning software development company, needs to gather data on WiFi access points and cell towers. Guess what? Plenty of iPhone users drive past such spots every day. And now Navizon has an iPhone app…as well as a rewards program.

Here’s how it works: you open the iPhone app, and you get points for driving past WiFi access points and cell towers. Cell towers net you 15 or 2 points (you get more points if you’re the first to discover them) and WiFi access points get you 3 or 1 point(s). Once you accumulate 10,000 points, Navizon pays you $15. Cyril Houri, CEO of Navizon Inc, claims that some of their users make as much as $15-$100 per week. Now, that’s probably a little high for most of us, but for cab drivers, truck drivers, or those who simply have long commutes, it could be plausible.

There are a few downsides that become apparent when you dig a little deeper. For one, the app is free…sorta. The lite version only allows you to get one $15 reward, so for an “unlimited” number of rewards, you’ll need to get the $10 app.

Also, the app needs to be running in order for you to earn points. That means leaving it open, constantly—so if you like to listen to Pandora or use a GPS app, well, tough luck. This isn’t Navizon’s fault, but just one irritating result of Apple’s ban on background processes. Apparently jailbroken iPhones can download an app that runs in the background from Cydia, the so-called alternative app store.

Those few caveats aside, it’s still an intriguing idea, especially if you spend a lot of your day in a car. 10,000 points is an awful lot, though, so don’t expect to become rich off of this app. Let us know if you’ve tried it!

Navizon Lite

Category: Utilities
Released: 2008-12-06
Price: FREE

Just under a week after Apple’s media event, iPhone OS 3.1.3 is now available for both iPhone and iPod touch. The update comes after Apple released iPhone OS 3.2, which is iPad exclusive, to developers in its ADC network. As expected by many, this new update includes no new features however it does come packed with a few security fixes.

Including:

- Improves accuracy of reported battery level on iPhone 3GS
- Resolves issue where third-party apps would not launch in some instances
- Fixes a bug that may cause an app to crash when using the Japanese Kana keyboard

The update is compatible with all iPhone and iPod touch models, and is available for download from iTunes right now.