Tag: Blue Defense »

Some of my favorite all time iOS games - made by Cat in a Box Games - have been updated for iOS 7, the iPhone 5 screen size, and Retina displays. Years after release, these games have remained some of my favorites. If you've never played them it's a great time to pick them up and give them a spin now that they are all updated for the latest hardware.

Blue Defense was the first game released. It used the accelerometer in an interesting way; having the player rotate their phone 360 degrees to defend the blue planet in the center.

Blue Attack has the other end of the story with the blue side attacking the red invaders in their home land. Different control methods and unique game play.

Blue Defense: Second Wave! amps up the original title with new attacks and new fun. It's a great place to start if you've never played any of the three.

Fastar! is a completely different game, a lightweight RPG and a ton of fun. [Editor's Note: Yes! Fastar!]

Red Conquest is a new take on the Red/Blue storyline and is full blown real time strategy game. Deep and fun.

All great games and all worth supporting. It's always nice to see a developer keep games like this alive by updating for the latest hardware and iOS versions.

The App Hall of Fame (the original App Hall of Fame, not the Apple knock off) is an independent initiative launched by 148Apps that includes selection committee members from over 40 web and print publications.

Our goal is to archive the very best mobile apps by honoring only 12 applications per month. To be eligible, applications must be available for download from the App Store for at least 6 months. Applications are nominated and voted on monthly by the selection committee with the applications that get the most votes being inducted into the hall of fame.

We want you to join in on the celebration. We'll be giving away copies of the newly inducted applications to subscribers of our mailing list later this week. Subscribe now for a chance to win.

We are very proud to announce the November inductees into the App Hall of Fame:

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Harbor Master from Imangi Studios, LLC
OmniFocus from The Omni Group
Reeder from Silvo Rizzi
Yelp from Yelp

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Pocket God from Bolt Creative
Real Racing from Firemint
Tilt To Live from One Man Left
Facebook from Facebook

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Bebot - Robot Synth from Normalware
Fruit Ninja from Halfbrick Studios
Dropbox from Dropbox
Blue Defense! from John Kooistra

One game has cows in it. The other involves saving Earth from destruction. Take a guess which is which.

On This Episode:

Carter talks to Jared Bailey of No Can Win about Cubed Rally Racer and its new iPad version, Cubed Rally Racer HD. We talk about the inspirations behind the original game, and what the new HD version has as well.

Carter talks to John Kooistra of Cat in a Box games to discuss the making of Blue Defense: Second Wave, the philosophy of the game design and what went into differentiating the sequel from the original.

Who Are We:

Host: Carter Dotson

Guest: Jared Bailey, No Can Win

Guest: John Kooistra, Cat in a Box Games

Music:

"Beatnes7 (Theme to The Portable Podcast)" by The Eternal - Download on iTunes here:

"Nanocarp" by The Eternal

How to Listen:

Click Here to Subscribe in iTunes:

Click Here to Subscribe via RSS.

Listen on WRGT Radio every Friday at 4pm Central

Listen Here: [powerpress]

Apps Mentioned on This Episode:

Fresh off of their fantastic quirky action-RPG Fastar!, Cat in a Box games are returning to the game that kicked off their App Store career with Blue Defense: Second Wave. The original game was a well-received shooter that had you defending a blue planet of approximately 6.7 billion people from invading red forces, using the accelerometer to tilt left and right to change your direction of fire. Second Wave follows roughly along the same line of thinking, but with graphical and gameplay enhancements.

One of the big additions to the game is the ability to set up points that you can fire at - by either dragging a finger to where you want to shoot at, or by double tapping to lock where you want to fire. Each target you set, up to 10, reduces the power of your main stream of fire, so you don't want to just set a bunch of targets and not worry about it as it will make your main firing stream that much less effective. Also helping you out is a new planetary laser beam, activated by dragging out from your planet in the direction you want to fire, but you only get to use this three times per game, so use them wisely.

The game still makes you play in each possible orientation of your device, but the transitions from wave to wave are smoother, as the game just simply adapts your view as each wave comes in, without any popups: it's all smooth gameplay transitions from wave to wave. Sadly, the count of humans doesn't recover as time goes on, so all damage must be treated as permanent. The game lacks any kind of music or sound effects in this pre-release version, and much could change when the final version comes out, but the game as it currently stands shows promise towards making this be a worthy sequel to the original, when it launches in the near future, hopefully by the end of September.