Tag: Mini games »

On the weekend of 20th July, some of the best developers in the UK decided they didn't want to spend their free time on the beach (or, more likely, dodging rain showers), they wanted to join together to demonstrate just what the best of British means!

Joining together and in the space of 48 hours, developers such as Mind Candy, Mobile Pie, Greenfly Studios, Spilt Milk Studios, Onimobi and many more created Best of British: Summer Sports. Together, it's a celebration of quirky gaming and the UK's fine summer of sport courtesy of the 2012 Olympics in London.

The game is a collection of their impressive efforts and owes a lot to mini-game collections such as the Warioware series of games. Each game takes only a short time to complete, before moving onto the next one, but there's quirky humor galore. Even better, it costs absolutely nothing to download!

To learn more about the Best of British game jam , we shared some words with a few of the fine folks behind Best of British: Summer Sports.

As Dave Mitchell from Onimobi explained, his favorite aspect was "getting to know all the other developers at the event. It was great to find out about what everyone does, what they're working and also share game ideas for the jam. Being part of Best of British is about coming together and sharing skills, contacts, ideas and cross promotion. These game jams really capture that essence of collaborative and camaraderie!".

Time was a big problem, of course, with Dave having never used the Unity engine before to create games, but that just rallied the team together to ensure he had a great crash course in it, courtesy of Laurie Brown of Indie Skies.

Alistair Aitcheson of Greedy Bankers fame explained that part of the fun came from overcoming the technical issues that couldn't have been anticipated beforehand.

"Keeping everyone up-to-date with the latest version of the framework was hard work, and required a lot of running back and forth between teams. But that was part of the fun - it was like being in Scrapheap Challenge, building cool stuff and fixing it on the fly!", explained Alistair.

Mind Candy's Daniel Atherton went with a lighter note of expressing his delight at the "fantastic" Micro Machines tournament that was arranged thanks to the appearance of UK developers Kwalee, including the original developer of the Micro Machines series of games.

Was any sleep gained? Well, no, hardly any, even despite the comfortable bean bags at MindCandy HQ. Still, no one seems to be too concerned at such sleep deprivation as there are already plenty of hopes for another Jam in the near future.

Given how much fun Best of British: Summer Sports is, we can't wait to see what the collective can come up with next. The British iOS development industry is looking pretty strong indeed.

If watching the Olympics with young children and all their questions has been driving you a little crazy there’s an app featuring Channel 5/Nickelodeon's British small screen and small people mega-star Peppa Pig available in most Commonwealth App Stores to the rescue. Peppa Pig's Sports Day should distract budding fans, but keep them on topic. Regrettably it's not currently available in North America

The universal app is more like Peppa’s color war than Peppa’s Olympics with its blend of sporting, crafting and even cooking mini games, but the six diversions along with bonus sports-themed digital sticker book pack in a lot of play time.

The activities include Olympic favorites cycling, and long jump along with an obstacle course, tug of war challenge, ice cream shop and Rosetta design shop giving little fingers lots to explore. The app is presently only in the UK New Zealand and Australian App Stores, and we hope to see it on this side of The Pond soon too.

A series of absurd mini-game platform challenges, Pizza vs. Skeletons is one of the strangest – and yummiest – casual games on the App Store. Suspend disbelief and jump in, this silly action title has more variety on the menu than Pizza Hut and Dominos combined.

The games pits the player, a giant pizza, against the skeletal remains of humans and the odd beast in short levels. Don’t try to make sense of it, just roll with the dough. There is no backstory, only simple instructions. Use a combination of tilt controls and one-tap jumping to keep the pizza safe from anything sharp on the level.

The game starts with a pepperoni pie rolling into or jumping and tilting over skeletons holding spears. The pizza needs to crush the bundles of bones by rolling into or jumping onto them without hitting the spear point. Simple right?

But, master that dynamic and suddenly the pizza is rolling down a ski hill following a coin trail, dancing atop a giant skull, saving puppies, or rapidly consuming fish skeletons. Just when I was certain I’d seen everything the game would throw something new and wonderfully bizarre at me.

There are Sumo wrestling boss battles, which are slow-paced compared to the regular action and a bit of a hit or miss when it comes to strategy, but the other levels are zippy and full of challenges, however ludicrously or sublimely dressed.

My only problem with the game is, well, I really don’t like pizza. But that's ok, with money earned players can dress their pizza with mushrooms and sausage, or morph it into anything from a snowflake to an old tire and add toppings like beetles and Ben Franklin. Yes, you read that right, and it’s this delicious nonsense that makes the game a standout.

With all that customization, the attention to graphic detail is not just on the pizza. Each level is actually beautiful – not an adjective used often to describe death matches between sauce and bones – but they are lush and look hand painted and the attention to every detail is striking.

The controls work so well they don’t really seem like controls at all. And, the tilt can be calibrated easily. The only real issue with the game is it can become repetitive after 100 levels, but this isn’t the kind of game you sit down with for hours. It’s a perfect pick-up-and-play game packed with silly charm.

Pizza vs. Skeletons is what I love about reviewing. In an endless queue of redundant concepts out pops a game that is utterly unexpected, irreverent and loads of fun to play. Expect this one to be a long-time hit and to spawn many cheesy copycats; it’s just that tasty.

Pocket God is still going strong, blasting right through update number forty-three (43!). The newest episode, "Killing Time," deals with the kind of stuff that turned Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd, Deloreans and use of the word "paradox" into national phenomena. In other words, it has to do with futzing around with time. Like time, time. Not wasting a few minutes at the bus stop, time. Players will be able to visit the new Apocalypse Island, home of a multi-roomed temple that includes a time-shifting chamber. It also houses a creepy Aztec calendar that's counting down to 11:11am, December 21st, 2012.

This is just the first of many apocalypse-themed updates, according to Bolt. Each of the temple's many rooms features some sort of Armageddon-like power, each to be opened with future updates, but at the moment no other specifics have been revealed. Bolt will be continuing to release more doomsday content over the course of the next 10 months. Hopefully they'll be able to move on to a new theme after that, assuming the world still exists.

Pocket God in all its dark-humored glory can, as usual, be downloaded from the App Store for $0.99. The other 95% of iOS users who already own it can simply update it like they normally would to get the new stuff.

[Via VerticalWire]

It feels like it's been ages since I first set eyes upon Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of the War of the Worlds Minigame Adventure. Back then it consisted of a mere two games. Now the last of them have been added, bringing the total up to the initially promised twelve.

It makes for an extensive collection of mini-genres, from the "find the item" graphical adventure style of the Prequel through the old-school puzzle gameplay of The Red Weed (Part 1) and ultimately drawing to a close with the arcade-like viral infection of Dead London. It's a collection that I'd easily recommend to fans of H.G. Wells' classic tale for the typical going rate of $5. However, in celebration of Minigame Adventure's completion the price is getting a temporary 60% price cut for the weekend (2/3 - 2/5).

It should go without saying that being able to grab a collection of a dozen well-made, War of the Worlds-themed mini-games for $2 is significant. Even if it should, I feel the need to reiterate it. Both for dramatic purposes and because it would be foolish for fans of the novel/movies to pass this up. So here I go: Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of the War of the Worlds Minigame Adventure, a title which offers twelve mini-games, is currently on sale for $2. It's a ridiculously good deal, and one that I'd recommend jumping on before it's over.

A 3D mini-games collection based around politics might not seem like the most obvious choice for a new game but that didn't stop French game developers Frogames.

Titus is an agoraphobic watchmaker who decides to achieve his dream of becoming the president of Wealland. The player must help Titus achieve that goal by participating in the campaign mode and progressing through five mini arcade games. Each mini game might feel familiar to fans of such titles but it's the backdrop of Titus that looks set to make it stand out from the crowd.

It's a pretty cynical campaign simulator all in all with an Election mode to boot, promising low blows and corruption throughout. The entire atmosphere of the game is sombre and gloomy with some very dark undertones. It all feels a little like something Tim Burton could have conjured up. Even the music feels suitably eerie. Fun is promised too though and an encyclopedia of game tips and character descriptions keeps things interesting.

Titus offers an intriguing mix of game types and it's available now as an universal app and currently on sale at $1.99.

Go ahead and call me crazy, but ever since I was a child I dreamed of having a dog for a pet.  This is not just any kind of dog though, I envisioned a ROBOT dog!  So imagine my excitement when I heard that there was a game that was recently released for iOS that lets you actually have a Mega Man style robot canine.

The problem with a mechanical puppy is that it still likes to behave like a rambunctious flea bag, but now it has the strength to cause some serious damage.  In Brains' Atomic Adventures you are on the hunt for your riled up pup, and have a series of mini-games and

challenges that need to be accomplished in order to throw a muzzle over the mental mongrel's mug.

Best of all, the game is free so you have no excuse not to give it a look!  Just be ready to have your brain inundated with tons of scientific information in the process.  This is a small price to pay to have a digital dog of your very own.

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Gamania Digital Entertainment this week released Hero: 108 for iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. The app is based on the popular Cartoon Network animated series by the same name.

Hero: 108 brings six mini-games to iOS, allowing fans to take on the High Roller and Zebra Brothers. In the app, you get to play as several characters from the show, including Lin Chung, Mighty Ray, Mystique Sonia, Jumpy Ghostface and Mr. No Hands.

In one mini-game, you have to protect Jumpy from arrows by tapping them to knock them down before they hit him. Another mini-game has you beating up the Rhino King by furiously tapping him as he approaches your character. If you don't tap fast enough, it's game over. One of my favorite mini-games takes on the form of air hockey – it's Lin Chung versus Mighty Ray in a game of, well, air hockey.

Hero 108 is now available on the iTunes App Store for download. Until March 25, the app is available for free as a special promotion. Its publisher has yet to announce the price of the app for when the promotion ends, however.