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IphoneGame posts

Filed under: Gaming, iPhone, iPod touch

Destroy the Death Star from the comfort of your iPhone

Wanna blow up the Death Star? There's an app for that! At least there should be soon.

StarWars.com
has word of the upcoming iPhone and iPod Touch game "Star Wars: Trench Run," letting players do the cool stuff Luke Skywalker did in Episode IV (minus the whining), namely: blow up the Death Star.

Developers say "Trench Run" uses simple motion controls, relying on a player's command of the iPhone's accelerometer to avoid walls, other ships, gun turrets, and inexplicable solid beams laid across the trench (video). Manage all of that and they can take their shot at the Death Star's exhaust port and send the Empire reeling. Why did they never cover that port, anyway (YouTube)? If blowing up a space station the size of a small moon isn't a player's cup of tea, they can engage in dogfights with TIE fighters over the Death Star instead.

The game's pitch promises music, sound effects, and clips from the movie for immersive gameplay, varying degrees of difficulty (from Easy to Jedi), and Leader Boards to let pilots see how they rank with other would-be Jedi from around the world.

As exciting as blowing up the Death Star may be, the game screams for in-app purchases. Can pilots buy "Battle of Hoth" expansions down the road? And fly against the second Death Star? Can we?!? I mean... can they?!? Please?

Until then, "Star Wars: Trench Run" has a price set of $4.99. No word on when the game will hit the App Store but it needs to happen soon. The Death Star must be stopped!

[via starwars.com]

Filed under: Gaming, WWDC, iPhone, iPod touch

WWDC Demo: Master Jumperton and Battle of Pirate Bay (preview)


Master Jumperton is a simple game where you swipe to create platforms for Master Jumperton to continually jump higher and higher. There are some similar games on the store, but Jumperton is well-crafted and features a high scores board and basic options. Master Jumperton isn't yet available on the store.

The Battle of Pirate Bay will be available July 1, we are told, and it's a more involved game. That isn't to say it is complicated, as anyone familiar with Flight Control or Harbor Master's game mechanic will understand what to do. Battle goes one step beyond time and path management to add the element of battle with waves of enemies. You have to balance ammo and the health of your base in the bay plus the routing of faster or slower ships with different capabilities all while moving your finger around to direct traffic, as it were. Very fast-paced, and it looks like a lot of fun. We'll tweet when it lands in the store this week.

Both games are from veteran mobile developers Muteki, who developed Maze Finger and Topple 2 for ngmoco. Topple 2 won an Apple design award at this year's WWDC.



Update: The Battle of Pirate Bay (iTunes link) is now available in the store.

Filed under: Software, iPhone

Lights Off: a native iPhone game

Given the fast and furious rate that iPhone native apps are becoming available you might get the mistaken impression that Apple has finally released an API for coders to get their hands on. Nope, Apple is still defending AT&T's network from third party developers, but that doesn't stop motivated people (and it helps if they are clever to boot).

The latest iPhone application is the first fully native iPhone game, Lights Off. The game is simple enough; turn off all the lights by pressing them and you advance to the next level. The real shocker here is the polish. This app looks like it shipped with the iPhone, and that's a huge accomplishment especially when compared with the command line iPhone apps that have been available as of late, impressive as those may be.

Sadly, the lack of support from Apple means that getting Lights Off running on your iPhone is harder than it should be, but I'm hopeful that Apple will see all this cool developer activity and open up the iPhone a little. It could happen, right?

A word of warning, this software is provided as is, so if you aren't comfortable mucking around with your iPhone's innards it might behoove you to wait until Apple supports this sort of thing.

[via Daring Fireball]

Tip of the Day

Holding the Command key (aka the Apple key) and pressing Tab will cycle through your open applications. It's easier to Cmd-Tab if you are Copy (Cmd-C) and Pasting (Cmd-V) to and from various applications.


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