Not to be left out of the Halloween fun, Chillingo has a game coming out and a bunch of updates to get us into the Halloween spirit.
Zombie Party - I unfortunately don't speak German and can't accurately translate the official press release from Mobile Bits, but the Google translation leads me to think that Zombie Party is a four player party game for the iPad (and a number of other platforms) based on the Delta Engine. The game has four included minigames, Pinball, Tanks, Zombie Hockey & Brain Dart, all of which are able to be played with virtual controls in each of the corners of the iPad screen.
According to Mobile Bits, Zombie Party will be out before Halloween for 4.99 Euros ($6.99).
Updates
Minigore - In addition to Game Center scoring, some graphics updates, and a new mode called Inferno, Minigore is adding "undead Jane" to the roster of characters for some Halloween fun.
Monster Mayhem - Monster mayhem is adding Zombie Pumpkins to the "goriest, bloodiest, hack-and-slash monster game you've ever seen". It's also 50% off for the month of Halloween, so pick it up while it's cheap.
Pro Zombie Soccer Lite - Not really an update, but the new lite version of Pro Zombie Soccer lets players brutalize the walking dead for the price of nothing.
Vampire Origins: RELOADED - Vampire Origins is adding a new survival mode to the game, as well as a new gyroscopic gun range that has you playing the game through Vincent's eyes. LIke Monster Mayhem, the game is also on sale for 99 cents for a limited time.
Zombie Wonderland - This new update adds good and bad ghosts that appear when the zombies that get shot (like zombies have souls... psh). Also included are tornadoes that blow zombies away and zombie termites that can eat through boarded windows.
Zombie Party and the rest of the updates will be out in the days leading up to Halloween. Check out the included screenshots of the Halloween updates after the jump. Enjoy!
Chillingo attempts to put a new spin on the zombie survival game with Zombie Wonderland by adding task management and tower defense elements. They only partially succeed; while there's some fun to be had in blasting away zombies, the game suffers from bei
Late this summer we saw a stylized little shooter by the name of Minigore race up the charts priced exactly right at $0.99. As many other people did at the time, I picked it up and enjoyed it quite a bit. Sure it lacked a few extra features that would have taken the game over the top (more weapons, a new map, some enemy variety). But, the formula worked, you just ran around and killed the monsters that attacked you in a survival mode style game type and had fun doing it.
The game is an excellent way to kill a few minutes while waiting for a friend in a coffee shop or on a bus ride. Exactly what I look for in my iPhone games. On purchase though, we were teased with new content, updates, and episode packs that were sure to excite and bring us back which didn't seem to come. I don't think I'm alone when I say that I got distracted by other games, and this one slowly lost its place on my device. Even with the Episode 2 update, it wasn't enough to bring me back. But ALAS! Mountain Sheep the Minigore developers have announced details on promised Episode 3. Roughly 5 months after the release we are going to see Minigore's first real sizable update which will include a Boss unit named Wormwolf, a Day/Night cycle, Grenade Launcher, upgradeable weapons and some new playable characters(one of them even being Santa).
I'm glad to hear the team is still supporting this little gem of a game. This content pack on the surface is definitely enough for me to reinstall, and even up my recommendation of the game to my friends. I love DLC content, especially when it's free! If you love stylized comedy survival horror, then make sure you don't miss this one, now with even more Christmas spirit!
Here is a complete list of the features from Mountain Sheep's blog post:
New features:
- Enviro-Bear as a playable guest star
- New playable characters: Jerry Gore, Evan Hsu, Xmas Gore, Sensei Evan, Kid Gore and Santa
- New boss unit Wormwolf who comes in several sizes
- Grenade launcher
- Upgradable weapons
- Day & night cycle
- Snowy forest level
- New voice acting by Egoraptor (Jerry Gore and Santa)
- New achievements
- New sound effects
- PlayHaven community features
This weekend, in a protest against supposedly 3400 emails complaining about the $2.99 price of their app Alchemize, Schiau Studios raised the price to $39.99 for the weekend. Yes, it's a hilarious protest against whiners who complain about spending a few bucks, but Schiau is not entirely in the right. Alchemize was originally priced at $9.99 and then quickly lowered until it was only $.99 for a short time. I can't blame people for waiting for another sale. If Schiau truly wanted to protest App Store pricing, they would have come up with a fair price, stuck to it, and never changed it amid protests. By acknowledging the whiners, Schiau has granted them some legitimacy.
PSP Minis
Sometimes it's good to take a look at our beloved App Store's rival, the PSP Mini store. The store has launched and two of its biggest name games have already made an appearance on the iPhone (and for cheaper): Hero of Sparta and Fieldrunners. In addition, Chillingo and Mountain Sheep's Minigore is on the way. What do all of these games have in common? In my estimation, they're three of the most overrated games on the App Store. Hero of Sparta had good visuals for its time, but the dull one-button hack and slash affair has so many pre-rendered cinematic animations it's like watching a movie. Fieldrunners has a great art style and was admittedly one of the first open-path TD's on the App Store, but there's only a few enemy types and tower types, and it lacks the depth of the genre luminaries such as Sentinel 2 and Defender Chronicles. Minigore has nice aesthetics as well, but it's an average two-stick survival shooter with little depth, easily outclassed by games such as Alive 4 Ever. Sony, wake me up when you manage to get some good games.
Nimblebit's Freebie Friday
This Friday, Nimblebit lowered all their apps to free in celebration of their newly launched site App Classics! Even if you missed the deal, the apps are still worth buying; Nimblebit is the best in the business at creating fun, short, and addictive games such as Scoops and Textropolis. This move was interesting from a marketing standpoint, and certainly created buzz. In fact, Ian Marsh reported via Twitter that Saturday's sales were double normal and more than made up for Friday's losses.
This week's upcoming app that looks frickin' awesome!
This is the inaugural issue of this feature where I'll be showing off some upcoming games that look awesome (though I've been doing it unofficially for quite some time). This week, we have Jet Car Stunts, an awesome-looking racing game in the vein of Track Mania. The game is due to be submitted within the next week. Enjoy!
This week's sign of the apocalypse
A few weeks ago, Chris used this space to talk about how happy he was that Glu's awful Family Guy cash-in was doing poorly in the App Store. Well, times have changed, and apparently Stewie is enough to make a poor game reach #9 on Top Grossing Apps.
App of the Week
Soosiz
Soosiz is without question the best platformer yet on the App Store. The game uses gravity-centered gameplay, like that of Gomi, but much more fast-paced, to turn a good platform adventure into something extraordinary. The level design is excellent, and the difficulty curve is just right. Controls are great as well. There's only a left arrow, a right arrow, and a jump button, but they are all perfectly responsive and work brilliantly in unison, making you almost forget you're playing on a touch screen.. The graphics are cartoony and playful, and the only big flaw of the game is the sometimes overly-childish music. Other than that though, Soosiz is a magnificent achievement is App Store platforming, and it's one of the most fun games I've played in a while, coming highly recommended.
Minigore doesn't do a lot, but what it does do is executed perfectly-don't get mauled by the black furbies. Actually, don't just avoid a beatdown, shoot the crap out of them. Furbies were annoying anyways...
[caption id="attachment_15283" align="alignleft" width="200" caption="Minigore = Mini content"]
[/caption]Minigore, a dual-stick survival shooter, has finally been released onto the App Store after weeks of intense hype and anticipation. So what was all the hype about? Honestly, I don't know. Compared with its survival shooter kin, iDracula (App Info), Minigore is as shallow as a puddle. It has one map, two weapons, four enemy types, and two health points. It definitely has a unique art style going for it, but beyond that, not too much. There seems to be some sort of story, and while it is never even touched on, there will apparently be Pocket God-style episodic updates. I'm sorry, but I don't like this approach unless it's done with a complete game. Minigore is clearly not a complete game, and I'm tired of getting incomplete games with promises of updates that aren't always fulfilled. There seems to be a bit of a logjam cycle going on with apps nowadays - developers won't add to their apps unless they do well in the App Store, but consumers don't want to pay for an incomplete app. But hey, it worked for Pocket God (App Info); it went from being a boring, mindless, stupid time waster to a... boring, mindless, stupid time waster. But seriously, Minigore is not a bad game, just an average one that without a bevy of substantial updates is undeserving of the immense hype that preceding it.
Freeverse joins ngmoco's Plus+ network
As I touched on last week, there is an emerging social game network competition on the App Store. And, as I loosely predicted (thank you, thank you), ngmoco's Plus+ network has taken the lead. Freeverse, who may not be my favorite developer but is certainly among the most popular and has a large volume of games, has announced that they will be implementing the Plus+ network in their upcoming action space trader Warpgate, their incredibly popular Flick Fishing (App Info), and presumably more upcoming games. Having two of the premiere App Store developers certainly bolsters Plus+, and could induce a chain reaction of developers braking for Plus+. At this point, OpenFeint may be implemented in more games, but that catalog is very scattered, not all of those games are exactly quality controlled, and some apps were clearly not made for OpenFeint (have you ever tried to go into a Pocket God chat room?). I'm definitely putting my money on Plus+ for now.
From the developer of Trace - Gomi submitted
Bovine Dragon has finally submitted their new game, Gomi, to the App Store. Gomi appears to be a platforming game in which you, as a Gomi, replace the pollution in the world with trees and other natural things. The artwork is certainly unique, and the gameplay looks good, but perhaps the most impressive thing about Gomi is the staggering amount of content. Gomi will have over 140 stages, each lasting several minutes, spread across 8 worlds, with a boss battle for each world that unlocks a new ability. There are also 8 unique mini-games, hundreds of achievements, hundreds of playable Gomis, a complete soundtrack of 17 songs, and online scoreboards for everything. Wow, talk about a complete game! The developer estimates that playing through each stage once, without trying to unlock any achievements
or playing any mini-games, will take over 12 hours. The price for a game of this size? Reportedly just $1.99 upon release. This looks to be an incredible value and if the production values and unique gameplay of Trace (App Info) were any indication, Gomi should be an incredible game.
This week's sign of the apocalypse
[caption id="attachment_15285" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Locating sex offenders will be rendered pointless when the ENTIRE WORLD IS DESTROYED!"]
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Offender Locator (App Info), an app that locates nearby sex offenders, is currently sitting at #4 overall in the App Store. First of all, are people really that paranoid? And second, if you do find an offender in your area, what are you going to do? Move away? Complain to your neighborhood police patrol? Set up barricades? No, you are just going to be more worried than you were before.
App of the week
So normally, I would list more than one app of the week, but this week, there is basically only one app deserving of the honor, only one game I have been playing all week:
[/caption]I have to admit, after seeing SIIG appear on the App Store, I was skeptical. After all, how fun can a remake of Space Invaders be? It might be fun, but for $4.99? I figured they just slapped some neon backgrounds on the old tried and true gameplay. Well, after reading the 148apps review, I decided to buy the game, and, happily, I was utterly, completely, and unequivocally wrong. TAITO brings a shining example of how to remake retro games for the App Store. The graphics are fantastic, the action is frantic and heart-pounding, the music is techno bliss, and the controls are perfect. The evolution concept and implementation is fantastic, with unlockables aplenty. And on top of all of this, there is the ridiculously awesome ability to generate completely original levels based on your iPod music. I really need some good songs for this mode, so if anyone has any suggestions, post away! This isn't just a great App Store shooter, this is a great shooter period. Probably in my top three iPhone games ever, and at $4.99, if you've ever enjoyed a shooter, you owe it to yourself to buy this game.
Wow, they actually let me write a second Monday Morning App HQ. Hopefully everyone is enjoying the column, and feel free to post feedback.
