Tag: GDC 2014 »

Touch controls can be a tricky thing to master, especially for designers. Too many inputs can clutter the screen, fingers can get in the way, and sometimes virtual controllers just don’t cut it. That’s why I found Caonpy’s Sensus iPhone case to be so intriguing.

The Sensus attaches to your iPhone 5 or 5s (with future support for more devices planned) and protects it from bumps and scrapes like most other cases can and do. What’s different about it is the inclusion of touch sensors along the back and side that can work as extra control inputs - that use variable pressure, no less. This means that it measures the strength of your taps to create something akin to virtual analog button sensitivity. It also means that, potentially, you’ll be able to use the back and side (or top if you’re playing with a landscape orientation) of the case to control what’s happening on-screen.

A lot of what happens with the Sensus is dependent on whether developers embrace the technology and what they decide to do with it, but there’s so much potential there. No more obscuring the screen with a finger when playing a game. Entirely new control methods that measure how hard you press down on the sensors. Honest-to-goodness virtual shoulder buttons in a place that feels natural!

Canopy is planning to release the Sensus in mid-2014, and the case will retail for $79.99.

Action RPG KingsRoad has been doing pretty well for itself on Facebook, and now it's on its way to the iPad.

In addition to the touch-centric interface and controls, it will also feature cross-platform play for a total of three different players. With drop-in, drop-out play no less. Weapon enchantment and socketing, guilds, in-game chat, and a constantly updated list of dungeons.

KingsRoad should be hitting the App Store early this summer for free. With no energy timers, either!

Funcom's upcoming Lego Minifigures Online that we told you about at the beginning of this month was demoed extensively at GDC 2014, focusing in particular on the previously yet-to-be-seen Pirate World.

The game is going to feature a large number of playable characters, this time being the standard Lego Minifigures rather than the licensed famous characters seen is many of Lego's other games. The ability to unlock different characters and use them to play through the countless adventure maps and battle bosses is definitely the main allure to this game; each character has its own set of special abilities for you to play with.

The game is planned to be available as a public beta sometime this summer and is going to see a release this "fall." As for pricing, Lego Minifigures Online is going to be free-to-play, but there will almost certainly be in-app purchases to more quickly unlock those bags of characters. While you wait, be sure to check out the previously-unreleased screenshots of the game's Pirate World below.

Coatsink demoed a pair of their upcoming games at the UK Interactive Entertainment booth at GDC: one coming to mobile now, another more likely for the future. Chip is a puzzle game where players must redirect electricity in order to succeed. Expect this one on iOS and Android relatively soon.

As well, they demoed Shu, a floaty platformer where players must outrun the end of the world by controlling a variety of characters floating and using their various abilities throughout a wide array of worlds. A PC/console release is planned for this with mobile down the road. As well, Superglad, an adventure game based on characters first seen in Fatty, was demoed and likely coming to mobile at some point in the future.

Sets & Settings' Trestle takes the core combat of Mega Man Battle Network (the Game Boy Advance series of card-battling RPGs), gets rid of the cards, and mixes in some Super Crate Box elements. The game, still in development and planned for mobile down the road, presents fast-paced action built around surviving enemy waves to collect the crates and use a variety of weapons to manage the enemy threats. The game is still well in development, with enemies still being added, and release planned for "when it's done."

Fixer Studios is formed of veterans of PopCap Games, a studio that has become prominent because of games that appeal to a very wide demographic. Sinster Dexter, Fixer's first game, will not be anything like that - and they know this game will only appeal to a certain segment of gamers.

Built around gameplay inspired by multi-user dungeons of the 80s created by Richard Bartle, players will trade spells with players online, comprised of various in-game hand signals. Multiplayer will be asynchronous, and there will be detailed information on how players have acted before, so serious players can study how their opponents have reacted in similar situations before. Sinister Dexter is still early along in development, with some public testing planned soon.

Madgarden, the solo developer label of Paul Pridham, is hard at work on Death Road to Canada, his second collaboration with Rocketcat Games after Punch Quest. According to him, the game's not really ready to show off quite yet - much of the work being done is under-the-hood stuff that will form much of what will be the actual game. But Madgarden doesn't just stick to one thing: between quickie projects like Chillaxian and Flapthulhu, he also has a variety of prototypes he works with occasionally.

He showed off a couple of them at GDC: Roguebot, a dual-stick shooter with hacking elements and a chill-out pace. As well, there's Mars Brutalis, an arena-combat game where players must swing around their fists and sacrifice their weapons to advance. The final existence of the games isn't a known quantity at this point - he jumps around a variety of projects - but there's something quite compelling about just what could be.

Wadjet Eye Games is pretty much synonymous with point-and-click adventure, which is why it’s great to find out that they’re bringing the Blackwell series to Apple Devices in the near future.

For the unfamiliar, the Blackwell series is all about guiding a spirit medium and her spirit guide as they investigate ghost sightings and attempt to help the lost souls come to terms with their deaths. Of course there’s also plenty of intrigue and hidden agendas to keep the story moving along.

These noir-style adventures, beginning with Blackwell Legacy, should begin appearing on the App Store this summer - with the hope of eventually releasing Wadjet Eye's entire back-catalogue in the future. No specific pricing information is available yet, but they’ll most likely sell for under $4.99.

Virtual Reality was a major theme at GDC this year, but Seebright’s prototype head-mounted display (HMD) stood out to me for one very important reason: it’s not a gadget-filled headset, but rather a frame to hold your iOS device and turn it into an affordable, self-contained VR headset.

The device is still in the preliminary stages, and as such will undoubtedly be seeing some deign tweaks in the future, but what I was able to see during my hands-on demo was quite promising. Using special software, the iOS device will display two separate images at slightly different angles. Once it’s placed into the headset interchangeable mirrors (one for a translucent heads-up display and another for a more solid image meant for gaming) reflect the images back to the user’s eyes and create the 3D image. What’s more, it’s able to use the device’s own motion tracking technology in order to allow users to look around in their virtual environment.

Personally I’m quite interested to see what Seebright does with their prototype in the coming months. The combination of accessibility (due to pricing) and the fact that it use preexisting iOS technology certainly opens it up to all manner of possibilities.

It's not exactly a secret that Peter Molyneux/22cans deity simulator, Godus is coming to iOS. However, we were able to learn about a few more specifics here at GDC.

Godus was really designed with mobile in mind from the beginning, and it shows when watching the game in motion. "My passion has been to reinvent a genre of games I stumbled upon back in the early 90s called Populous," said Peter Molyneux, "I wanted to reinvent the genre around this beautiful, wonderful, incredible device. What you've got here is a god game reinvented for this touch device, and reinvented for the audience."

What's more, the game will feature a sort of continuous form of multiplayer - kind of like an MMO. When you play, you're playing with however many other players/gods are on at that moment (possibly into the tens of millions), all at the same time. And all of their lands are connected as a part of one extremely large and continuous world filled with other islands and other gods.

This even carries over into the game's cross-platform functionality as changes made to your land on the iPad, iPhone, or PC will display in real time on any of the other platforms. "You're connected to thousands, even millions, of people," explained Molyneux, "We tried this out on this crazy app called Curiosity, and we connected together hundreds of thousands of people who simultaneously touched on the cube. Well now we're connecting millions of people together. We did a cube, and now we're doing this vast planet."

It's also been confirmed that Godus will be free to download for iOS, but no specifics have been given on its approach to monetization. The plan is to encourage players to want to spend money, but not force or require them to. "I love free to download. I never want to go back to having to pay money before having an idea if I'll like something," stated Molyneux. "What we have to do is get people to want to spend money, rather than need to spend money," he continued, "I'm inspired by the way that the supermarket, especially American supermarkets, tempt you to spend money. We call it 'Invest-to-Play'." Personally I'm rather curious to see how all of this will work in practice.

Godus will be soft-launching in select territories (New Zealand, The Philippines, Sweden, Ireland, and Denmark) within the next few weeks.

Tilting Point demoed several titles that they are helping to bring about and promote for iOS at GDC 2014, including a pair of games from big-name studios and an intriguing indie platformer.

Inspired by the Sonic series, Leo's Fortune is an action-puzzler where players must navigate through hazardous environments utilizing jumps, and only the ability to puff out and float, or compress down to apply more gravitational force. With loop-de-loops and tricky platforming puzzles to solve, this should prove to be a challenge for core gamers, which is what this premium-with-no-IAP title is aiming for. There's also iOS 7 gamepad support. Expect this one relatively soon.

As well, Toy Rush from Uber Entertainment is chugging along: new features have been added, monetization and IAP modified to be clearer, and just more polish added to the game. It's nearing its eventual release likely at some point in May.

Signal Studios, creators of the Toy Soldiers series on PC also showed off their game The Sleeping Prince, which is currently in a soft launch phase. This game has players flinging a ragdoll prince around, trying to collect coins and stars, reaching the end of levels safely. There's an interesting system where players can buy unlimited energy, referred to as magic in-game, in each level in order to bypass that. The aim is to release on iOS first by the end of April with Android down the road.

My.com has unveiled Evolution: a hybrid base builder, base defense game, and RPG.

Players have access to both story missions and a player-versus-player mode, and will have to protect their base from hostile forces using a mixture of automated defenses and direct interaction (i.e. tapping on badguys). Combat, on the other hand, has a much larger emphasis on player interaction. Your character will fire automatically but you'll have to swipe vertically in order to defend and pop out of cover, tap incoming grenades to deactivate them, swap between weapons manually, and activate consumable items like grenades and health packs.

Evolution is set to release in early April, and will be free to play.

Chronology from Osao Games has seen a long and turbulent history, transferring from one company to another, but the game is now in stable hands and about to release on iOS and Android. This time-travelling platformer has players controlling a gnome who can switch between two different worlds, and a snail who can freeze time. Using the two characters' abilities in concert effectively is the key to victory. The game releases later this year.

Like Dungeon Raid but believe it was highly lacking in vampires? Then Darkin might just be up your alley. While highly-familiar, the game adds in unique touches with buy-anytime upgrades, clans like assassins which make use of the position of tiles on the boards, and game modes that play with how health works. The game is coming soon, and we have lengthy direct-feed gameplay footage below.

The original Doodle Grub was pretty popular (to put it lightly). Well, Pixowl is getting ready to release a sequel, simply called Grub.

Grub will use a similar series of accelerometer controls, naturally. However it's also going to include new power-ups, new enemies, new obstacles, and bigger maps that scroll to follow the grub as he crawls along. You can also save and share video replays with your friends to see who's grubbiest. There's even the possibility (possibility - it's not a certainty yet) of simultaneous multiplayer in future updates.

Much like the original, Grub is going to be free-to-play. You can keep an eye out for it in the App Store at the end of April/the beginning of May. Or you could always request access to the beta right here.