Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Gaming, iPhone
iPhone Assassin (and 100 other iPhone games)
Reader Silver sent us his site of iPhone games, basically just a big linklist of online web games for the iPhone. There are buttons there for voting and "favorites," but I couldn't get them to work. Still, if you're looking for a big lineup of what's out there to play, there you go.And on that list, I found a pretty cool "game" that I'd never heard of before called iPhone Assassin. The concept is pretty interesting-- basically, you sign up on the web to play, and then whenever you see someone in real life with an iPhone, you call out that you've "killed" them, and then on the site, it tracks how many kills have been made and who's still alive.
Now, yes, it does occur to me that while the idea may sound good in theory, the execution (pardon the pun) leaves a little bit to be desired-- I do agree that most iPhone owners probably don't want maniacs running at them yelling about a kill. And yes, it's probably true that not many iPhone owners have actually seen this game yet, and so there are probably way too few people in on the joke-- more often than not, you'd have to explain the whole thing to anyone you assaulted on the street, and even more likely, they probably wouldn't be amused.
Still, for the easily amused like myself, the idea seems really fun. If they come up with a way to make it a little more secret (maybe a special phrase that you could drop), and a little more automatic (although I have no idea how they'd do that-- can you make iPhones "see" each other over WiFi or Bluetooth?), a real-life iPhone scavenger hunt might be fun.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Brian Allen said 11:35AM on 9-13-2007
By the way, your killed.
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Joe King said 11:46AM on 9-13-2007
http://appsafari.com/games/ More games listed here
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Josh said 12:41PM on 9-13-2007
I've been mentally taking notice of people's cell phones as I pass them on the streets of Manhattan, and also if their white iPod headphones have the mic on them, and since the iPhone went on sale, I've only seen about 5-8 people in public walking down the street. Granted, I don't get down to SoHo or the Village that much these days, but still, I haven't seen that many of them out-and-about.
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Tanner said 12:45PM on 9-13-2007
Shouldn't you say 'Mobile Safari' now? I suppose the games will work on both over WiFi.
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buzzert said 1:37PM on 9-13-2007
Quite honestly, if it's not native, I don't care!
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Victor Agreda Jr said 10:17AM on 9-14-2007
Ah yes, Assassin is a very old game indeed. Sorta like "tag" for grown ups (well, maybe not "growed ups")... We used to play in high school, way before iPods or iPhones were a gleam in Steve's eye.
Here's how:
- There is a "master list" of targets and assassins for all who play the game
- Each assassin is assigned a target (one person has to play ref, sorta like a Dungeon Master)
- Each pair is unaware of their relationship to each other, which is where the fun begins... You basically stalk your target, and walk up to them at some point and say "You're dead"
- The dead person reports to the ref that they've been killed, and the assassin does too, thus gaining another target
That's what I remember anyway. Last man standing wins.
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madbadger2742 said 11:19PM on 9-15-2007
Killin' 'em old skool:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089222/
Yeah, I'd suggest to the developers to make it a little less invasive. Perhaps a photo of the other user?
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Sergey said 1:27AM on 11-21-2007
Mike, thanks for this post.
for those of you looking for free games for iphone (ipod touch as well), i've created website - http://www.iphonefreegames.com/ - there are game previews, so you can play them online. safari browser recommended ;)
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