Tag: Halfbrick »

There's a new addition to the Fruit Ninja series, from Halfbrick and Krome Studios, that multiplies the fun of learning. Fruit Ninja Academy: Math Master.

Halfbrick and Sony Pictures are celebrating the 30th anniversary of Ghostbusters with a spooktacular update to Monster Dash.

Now you'll get to play as Dr. Peter Venkman, proton pack and all, as he fights ghosts on New York City rooftops. You'll also get new daily events including the new “Who You Gonna Call?” challenge where you get to bust Slimer. Additionally, Halfbrick has added an offline mode to the game so you can play anytime you want.

You can download Monster Dash for free on the App Store now.

The holiday season is upon us, and Australian developers Halfbrick have decided to make their complete iOS catalogue free for a limited time to celebrate. Listed below are the games on sale, listed the only way games should at this time of year: to the tune of 'Deck the Halls.'

Deck the Halls with Age of Zombies,
Fa la la la la la la la la.
'Tis the season to Fruit Ninja,
Fa la la la la la la la la.
Troul the Fish Out Of Water!,
Fa la la la la la la la la.
See the Monster Dash before us,
Fa la la la la la la la la.
Strike the harp and join the Colossatron,
Fa la la la la la la la la.
All of these are free for now,
Fa la la la la la la la la.

Things are getting weird in Fruit Ninja, and it don't look good. You ya gonna call?

That's right, with Halloween even more around the corner than the last time I mentioned it was around the corner, Halfbrick has gone and put Ghostbusters in your Fruit Ninja. Ghostbusters gear for all the characters, special Ghostbusters fruit, a Ghostbusters dojo - they went all-out for the film's 30th anniversary.

You can grab the Ghostbusters update now for free, and you can download Fruit Ninja for $0.99 (assuming you haven't already).

Halfbrick makes some pretty great games. Games like Fruit Ninja and Jetpack Joyride. In fact, I'm betting there's a pretty good chance you've already played many (if not all) of their games. But if you haven't, now is the best possible time to fix that.

At the moment, just about every single game in Halfbrick's library is on sale for free. This includes the aforementioned Fruit Ninja, Fruit Ninja HD, Fruit Ninja: Puss in Boots, Fruit Ninja: Puss in Boots HD, Fish Out of Water!, Colossatron: Massive World Threat, Age of Zombies, and Monster Dash.

Whew!

So if any or even all of those titles sound interesting, get yourself to the App Store and start downloading!

Are the fine people at Halfbrick rather angry? Their last game, Colossatron, was about destroying humanity as a giant serpentine robot. Bears vs. Art can't escalate on that concept, but it does try to go for something a bit higher-class: namely, destroying art as a rolling bear. The game's currently in its soft launch phase, so I put on my monocle for this edition of It Came From Canada!

Players control a bear who hates art because museums wrecked his home, so he goes to various museums and wrecks up their paintings - and occasionally the snooty patrons there. Makes plenty of sense. This bear prefers to get around by rolling in the cardinal and ordinal directions, perhaps because he's a big fan of Sonic the Hedgehog, and he can only roll in a straight line. There are also a number of parameters dictating just how many times the bear can roll in a level, or how much time there is to complete it. Okay, now we have stepped deep into video game logic.

Most levels just feature the bear and the paintings on the wall to destroy, but patrons are a frequent occurence. The patrons behave chaotically, though with certain rules: they always move if the bear gets near them. Thus, this requires an intelligent approach to taking them down; though if time and moves are a factor, this can be rather difficult. This is a system I'd be kind of wary of since it seems like it could be a real energy-drainer, but Halfbrick's a reputable enough company that I would trust to not use this kind of system against players.

So, the levels become about figuring out the proper sequence to solve the various puzzles. Some paintings require rolling from a specific spot. Being able to roll diagonally really opens up the puzzle design. The introduction of timed levels, and ones where players must try to take out patrons and thieves (or even avoid them!), add even more variety, especially as levels start to blend each type together.

This game gets a lot of clever details right. For one, it's legitimately pretty funny - from its rhyming storybook intro, to all the bear-themed art that can be destroyed. There are some art history students who made this game - perhaps disgruntled ones - because of all the parodies of real paintings and pretentiously-named modern art pieces that can be destroyed. Oh, and the destruction occurs by the player slicing up the paintings in a Fruit Ninja-esque way. The dialogue before some levels from the snooty patrons is often quite humorous and at one point self-aware that these museums were built without doors for some reason.

The game is ruled by an energy system, though energy gets refunded for completing a level successfully. There are coins to be earned and costumes with different effects to buy with them, along with extra turns and rage mode. There are permanent turn and time additions, but they come at rather expensive costs: $14.99 each as of the soft launch. The energy bar is lengthy, but later levels start to use more than one unit of energy and it refills very, very slowly. Like "16 hours of waiting didn't refill it all the way" slow.

Of course, since it's a soft launch these could all change as time goes on, and it's quite possible they will. Free-to-play requires some exploration to see what works, and this game feels like it could be enjoyed long-term for free, so paying customers may need to shell out more for the game to be financially viable. Still, time will tell how players will take to it.

Halfbrick has released a new live report from Action News 6 as lead anchor Rick Dalton provides more breaking news on the Colossatron. The gigantic robot snake is blowing up everything in sight as it makes its way across the planet, causing major problems for general Moustache. Apparently, the Colossatron can use the damage it creates to its advantage by repairing and upgrading itself. The report also talks about General Moustache's newest toys that are being used in the battle, including high-tech gunships and super tanks.

Colossatron: Massive World Threat is scheduled to be available before the end of the year.

Colossatron: Massive World Threat continues to get closer to its chaotic and destructive release, which is still set at sometime in 2013. For now, lets turn it over to the reporters at Action News 6 who are covering the havoc up-close. Field reporter Katie Hazard is catching up with General Moustache, discussing the capture of one of the Colossatron's Power Cores. Tune in now by clicking the video below!

Halfbrick’s first published title is Band Stars by Six Foot Kid, a free-to-play band manager that shows some promise, or at worst the ability to be amused by random name generators. First seen back at GDC, it’s available right now in Australia, the native country of both developers. I take it for a spin in this installment of It Came From Canada Australia!

The first step to creating a great band is to get a cool-looking band with an awesome name – with nary any great ideas coming to my head, I hit the random name generator a few times, and it came up with “The Black” – simple, succinct, and totally metal. Let’s do this. The goal is to make the band rich and famous by coming up with popular songs, training the band to be better at what they do, and hiring new people to replace the terrible old ones.

Songs are created by assigning band members of different stats to different tasks – imagine the job rankings from Tiny Tower playing a more active role. The band members of Band Stars are multitalented in a way that actual pop stars are often not, being singers, songwriters, multi-instrumentalists, and even willing and able to mix their own tracks. That they even need a manager is kind of a surprise.

Also surprising is that their only real bad habit seems to be energy drinks. Every action undertaken with a band member drains a bar of energy, which can be refilled by letting them rest on furniture or instantly replenished with energy drinks. At least the energy system makes sense as a limiting mechanic here in that a character is actually doing something in-game, rather than it being an arbitrarily-defined limit.

There’s plenty of things to spend the two currencies on. Coins are spent on permanent things like hiring new band members, buying items, and training sessions. Inspirado is used during solos to help raise certain point values on the songs as they’re being created.

How interesting this is long-term and if the monetization gets annoying are still to be seen over time as the game nears worldwide release. Until then, check out footage below of the early days of my band, The Black:

Halfbrick announced the first gameplay details today for its upcoming game, Colossatron: Massive World Threat. In this title, players will be dealing with fast and action packed gameplay as they control a robotic snake known as Colossatron. Success in this title is met by the amount of damage that is caused, leading to high scores that players can compare through social features.

Keep an eye out for more information about this giant robot snake that crash landed on earth, leaving nothing but destruction in its path. Also, give the trailer a viewing!

Halfbrick (Jetpack Joyride) gave us an early look at its new Game Dev Story meets Rockband game, Band Stars. Choose a genre, band members, and lyrical topics to create hit songs and build your following. Train musicians, keep them well supplied with energy drinks, and you'll have a dream team rockin' in no time.

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One of the quintessential iOS games goes from for the first time ever and only for 24 hours. Grab it!