Glu Mobile Takes Aim At Your Wallet With Another Freemium Game, Contract Killer

Glu Mobile, well-known for their World Series of Poker games and games like the freemium Gun Bros., have released their newest freemium game, Contract Killer, to the App Store. This first person shooter has you accepting contracts to take out a variety of targets. You play as a stationary sniper, looking and zooming around the levels to find and take out your targets before they escape or kill you. Successfully completing a mission nets you money and experience to improve your weapons and stats, so you can steady your weapon longer, for example. To accept contracts, you have to use Energy, which can be conveniently - for Glu's bottom line, at least - restored by purchasing food items to replenish energy, which you have to spend Credits on. How do you get Credits? Through in-app purchases, of course.

The game features 17 Story mode missions, as well as an unlimited number of Random Missions across 5 locales for theoretically endless replay value as you level up your character and buy new weapons and ammo to use on missions. Obviously, there's in-game currency that is used to help generate revenue, and similar to Gun Bros., there are 2 different forms of currency you can purchase to help you in your assassination attempts. You can buy in-game money ranging from $1.99 for $12,000 of in-game money to $49.99 for $350,000 of in-game money. You can also buy credits, ranging from $1.99 for 30 Credits, to $49.99 for 950 Credits. This is a similar model to how Gun Bros. worked, and Glu is likely hoping for similar success with this model for Contract Killer. Contract Killer also comes with Game Center support for leaderboards and achievements, and is a universal app for the iPad as well.

Glu have released plenty of traditional paid apps on the App Store, but appear to be embracing the freemium model between this, Gun Bros., Deer Hunter Challenge, and World Series of Poker Hold'em Legend. It will be interesting to see if they continue to embrace the traditional paid model for their other future releases, or if they follow the ngmoco:) model of just releasing freemium apps, or if they do something similar to Gameloft's freemium model, by continuing the traditional paid app model, but offering free downloads, and offering to unlock the full app via in-app purchase. Check out a trailer and screens of the game below, available now.