Tag: Backflip Studios »

Hail to the king, baby! Backflip Studios are bringing the cult Evil Dead franchise's 3rd installment Army of Darkness and Bruce Campbell's famous protagonist Ash to the App Store with Army of Darkness: Defense. This castle defense game puts you in control of Ash as he tries to defend a medieval castle from the armies of the undead, known as the Deadites.

The game, created in partnership with MGM Studios, and based upon the movie of the same name, features over 150 lines of dialogue from the movie. The camera focuses on Ash as you play, but features otherwise traditional castle defense gameplay, as you have to summon and upgrade troops like peasants, swordsmen, spearmen, archers, and even Arthur to help you protect this castle. Ash can be upgraded to help dispatch the undead using gold you collect or pay for with in-app purchases. Backflip insists that these in-app purchases are purely optional, and just there for users who want a quick boost. You can upgrade your health, damage, chainsaw, broomstick, iron glove, and various spells with the gold you collect. Oh, and you can upgrade your castle with the Necronomicon itself to help protect you from the Deadites, including evil Ash.

The game will release on May 12th, and will cost $0.99 for the iPhone/iPod touch version, and $2.99 for the iPad version. Backflip promises that the game will be perfectly accessible even to those who aren't familiar with the franchise at all, although there is plenty of fanservice for those who are familiar with the franchise. As Backflip CEO Julian Farrior puts it, “We’re excited to be partnering with MGM on this project and to say that our studio is a fan of the Army of Darkness film would be a gross understatement. This has truly been a labor of love where we have had the joy of working with some of the best movie dialogue and characters out there. Our goal was to create a truly compelling mobile castle defense game and layer it with this rich and whimsical IP that already had a mass following. We think this game will be fun for the AOD fanboy and newbie alike.” Backflip has a tradition of addictive games, with 95 million downloads of their titles across iOS and Android, and this shows promise to be part of that tradition. As well as this game, Backflip is launching several new free games in May and June, and Ragdoll Blaster 3 is currently in development. Check out some screens and a trailer of Army of Darkness: Defense below.

Army of Darkness: Defense (Backflip Studios / MGM) from Backflip Studios on Vimeo.

Backflip Studios, of Ragdoll Blaster, Harbor Havoc 3D, and Paper Toss fame, has been making a living on creating short, arcade style games that are extremely fun and impossible to put down. Being the holiday season and all, they have some new apps coming out that will certainly waste away your precious moments in blissful fashion.

NinJump Deluxe: Endless high score games seem to be a dime a dozen in the App Store, but Backflip studios really hit gold with NinJump. Being a free game, I wasn't all that excited about the launch, but the unexpectedly deep match-3 elements along with the fantastic graphics and sound made the my favorite high score game of the year. The new edition of the game, NinJump Deluxe, is an extension of the original that gives you two entirely new levels and a slew of new enemies, including pirates, sea monsters, and bee hive throwing monkeys. Unlike the original, the deluxe version will sell for 99 cents, but will be updated with plenty of new content in the future.

Backflip Slots: The first in a series of "Backflip Casual" games that aim to "deconstruct, reinterpret, improve and add some much-needed pizazz to some old favorites," Backflip Slots is a typical slots game with a few twists. Like most casino games in the App Store, Backflip slots allows you to win and collect prizes, but these prizes have an impact on the game and can skew the odds in your favor. With great looking graphics and endless amounts of gameplay, Backflip Slots is sure to please any casino gamer looking for a quick fix.

Both games launch today (12/16), so be sure to pick up the latest and greatest from Backflip Studios. Happy holidays!

Backflip Studios are going all-out in unleashing their lineup of freemium games onto the App Store. After launching Buganoids on both the iPhone/iPod touch and iPad last week, Backflip Studios is now going through their back catalog of games released this summer, with NinJump now getting an iPad version, appropriately called NinJump HD.

NinJump HD is the same game as the iPhone/iPod touch version, just now with graphics and gameplay optimized for the iPad. The game really does look much more detailed and crisp than the original version did scaled up to 2X. As well, for players who may have been playing on their iPad and may occasionally have missed a jump due to tapping on the blank part of the screen in 2X scaling, you won't have this problem any more. While it may have been coincidental, I set a new high score the first time I played the iPad version.

Speaking of high scores, the game is similar to Buganoids where high scores are synchronized between the two versions, so you can track your high scores on whatever device you play on, as long as you use the same OpenFeint login. All the OpenFeint leaderboards are the same as the iPhone version, as evidenced by the over one million entries present before the iPad version was publicly available.

NinJump HD is currently free (with the possibility of being a paid download in the future, according to Backflip Studios), with $0.99 in-app purchase to remove ads, similar to other Backflip Studios freemium games. However, the game may go to paid at some point according to CEO Julian Farrior, so downloading it now is recommended. The gameplay is the same great addictive ninja jumping action that the iPhone version presented, just now in iPad form.

Backflip were also kind enough to drop some details on the future of NinJump. First, Android will be getting a free version of NinJump later this year. As well, a new paid version of NinJump will be released, expanding on what the original free version presented, featuring "new levels, enemies and other content, with plans to add frequent updates on a regular basis" according to Backflip Studios CEO Julian Farrior. NinJump fans could have a lot to look forward to in the coming months for their ninja jumping game of choice.

Backflip Studios has been extremely successful this summer with their free game sales. Paper Toss, an older classic, has been installed 24,000,000 times, Strike Knight has been installed 4,000,000 times, and Graffiti Ball has been installed over 1,000,000 times. The next free game, Ninjump, definitely has the makings of a huge success, and according to Julian Farrior, "showcases some of our strongest work to date."

Ninjump is a high score climber with a pseudo match 3 twist that has you, as a ninja, climbing up the walls on the sides of the screen while dodging protruding objects and attacking things in the air. Because your ninja is always climbing upwards, the only thing that you have to control is jumping across to the other side.

As you climb, there are all sorts of obstacles in your path, such as protruding building parts, other ninjas, squirrels running from side to side, and birds. Dodging everything in sight isn't the name of the game though... you are a ninja, and ninjas fight. As you jump through the air, you attack objects that are crossing (squirrels, birds, ninja stars, and dynamite). If you hit three in a row of the same object, you get a hugely animated mega jump that sends you way up the screen.

As with all of Backflip Studios apps, Ninjump has some great graphics that go along with the sweet ninja soundtrack (sweet ninja soundtrack not included in all Backflip games). If you're looking for a simple game to play on the go, check out Ninump, it's extremely fun.

By the way, my high score, as of Aug. 11, is 6515. I'm sitting pretty at #12 on the leader board, but I can't be too happy because the game hasn't been released yet as of this writing.

It seems that nobody ever realizes when they are in the midst of a summer of... anything. The Beatles kicked off the "Summer of Love" in '67, and I'm sure that there were some that had no idea. Bryan Adams probably didn't even think about the "Summer of '69" until years later. Same with the "Summer of Sam". I mean, who saw that one coming?

Well today I want to let you know, on this mid-summer day, that it is the "Summer of Free". No, don't go to the Apple Store now expecting a free iPhone (although if you do, please record your experience, I'd love to see it), just go download one of the many free games that Backflip Studios has released this summer. Titles include the "probably already owned by you" Paper Toss (22 mil downloads and counting) and Strike Knight (3 mil in less than a month).

The newest free title is called Graffiti Ball. It looks to be a fairly exciting physics game, especially if you can draw, but what makes it special is that it marks the first time that Backflip Studios has used iAds. Look, just because the game is free doesn't mean that they can't make money... and hey, if it's not your money, then what's the harm? Check out the demo video of Graffiti Ball below. Enjoy!

At GDC this year we got a chance to take a look at a new game from Backflip Studios, Strike Knight. The game is a recreation of shuffleboard-type bowling you used to find in bars in decades past. The device in the app has a blue knight that never fails to make fun of missed shots.

The game offers both single player and multiplayer (pass and play) bowling. Take a look at the video for an idea of what the game looks like and how it plays.

Strike Knight will be submitted to the App Store next week, we should see it shortly after that.The game will be released free (ad-supported) much like Backflip Studios very popular Paper Toss.

Take a look at some screen shots after the jump.

As you probably already know, GDC or the Game Developers Conference in San Fransisco is an annual conference at which game developer get together to share development, tools, tips and technologies. This year, independent development companies Semi Secret and Backflip Studios were quick to share just how successful their dive into the App Store has been. Between the two of them, they have 8 paid applications on the store.

Yesterday, co-founder of Semi Secret, Eric Johnson revealed to Pocket Biz that the company had sold 115,000 copies of their popular side-scroller adventure Canabalt. Whats interesting though is these download statistics he said were based upon Canabalt selling at the $2.99 price point over 5 months. He was also quick to estimate the ball-park piracy rate of Canabalt, which he put at 20 percent over those 5 months.

Similarly, Backflip Studio revealed it had generated $2.5 Million in around nine and a half months of being on the store. The company stated these figure were based on enjoying a staggering 22 Million downloads overall, revealing 17 Million of those came from just one of their App Store titles - Paper Toss. On a side note Backflip also announced mobile advertising is making them a substantial $1 Million in just six months and $379,000 in December last year, alone.