Casual Articles on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog

King claims 70 million daily active players, Pet Rescue Saga coming soon to mobile

by Mike Schramm (May 16th, 2013)

King, which used to be called King.com it pulled a name change at GDC this year, has announced that it has 70 million daily active players, which is a crazy number. By far, King's biggest title is Candy Crush Saga. The company notes that the game has 15.5 million active players on Facebook every ...

Daily iPad App: Sid Meier's Ace Patrol is an excellent game sold badly

by Mike Schramm (May 14th, 2013)

My birthday was last week on May 6, and Firaxis must have heard about that because in recent weeks they've released not one, but two great turn-based strategy games. First, Haunted Hollow was released as a great, original free-to-play title, and now the legendary Sid Meier (of Civilization and ...

Charadium resets, rebrands as Draw Mania

by Mike Schramm (Sep 10th, 2012)

The Pictionary-like iOS game Draw Something has been a huge hit on the App Store, so much so that it claimed millions of users in a shocking amount of time, and was even acquired by Zynga for the trouble. But Draw Something was hardly the first app out on the store to borrow an idea from ...

Daily iPad App: Puzzle Craft is puzzle farming bliss

by Mike Schramm (Aug 20th, 2012)

I came to a realization a little while ago: I love grindy games. I really enjoy games with a certain amount of repetition to them, games where I slowly but steadily build up resources and a character (or an empire) while performing somewhat mindless but infinitely amusing tasks. Puzzle Craft ...

Big Fish Games scores a hit with Fairway Solitaire

by Mike Schramm (Mar 14th, 2012)

My meeting with Big Fish Games' Patrick Wylie was one of my last meetings at GDC, but it was also one of my most satisfying. It turns out I'm not alone in my esteem for the great Fairway Solitaire app this company has put together; "This game is growing our audience," Wylie told me. That's quite a ...

Digital Chocolate buys Sandlot Games

by Mike Schramm (Aug 17th, 2011)

Mobile game developer Digital Chocolate, one of the biggest developers on the App Store, has acquired Sandlot Games, makers of Cake Mania and a few other popular App Store titles. Sandlot has offices in Seattle and Eastern Europe, and Digital Chocolate says it plans to use the developer to ...

TUAW's Daily Mac App: Bejeweled 3

by Samuel Gibbs (Aug 1st, 2011)

Fancy an addictive, fun, casual game for your Mac? Look no further than the classic Bejeweled, now back in its third iteration on the Mac. Played either in full screen or windowed, the standard game hasn't changed, you still match three or more gems in a row to clear them from the board. ...

TUAW's Daily iOS App: Candy Train

by Mike Schramm (May 24th, 2011)

As expected, the second game from PopCap's sub-studio 4th and Battery hit the App Store last week, and I like it a lot more than I did Unpleasant Horse. Candy Train is actually an older PopCap title that was originally posted online, and it's been brought back as a free universal app for iOS. ...

TUAW's Daily App: Drawn: The Painted Tower

by Mike Schramm (Mar 14th, 2011)

A little while back at GDC, I was introduced to a market for games that I'd never known much about before. There is a whole ecosystem of casual game companies out there that make PC games that appeal to an audience outside of the usual gaming crowd (read: usually older and female). Big Fish ...

TUAW's Daily App: Sticky

by Mike Schramm (Feb 28th, 2011)

I'll say this: Sticky is an original one. It's sort of a platforming game, though there are no real platforms involved. You play as a little orange blob named Sticky, tasked with saving the world from invading black blobs that slowly move from one side of your iPhone's screen to the other. ...

Determining Game Center's current popularity

by Mike Schramm (Oct 18th, 2010)

The always insightful Stuart Dredge over at MobileEntertainment has crunched some numbers on Game Center's actual popularity. Since Apple's own gaming social network on the iPhone launched, I've heard lots of different things from developers in terms of how they're implementing and using it. Some ...

OpenFeint announces PlayTime, real-time multiplayer with voice chat for iOS and Android

by Mike Schramm (Sep 2nd, 2010)

Game Center is almost out in consumers' hands, but that hasn't stopped the folks at OpenFeint from pushing forward on their unofficial social network for gamers. PlayTime is a newly-announced feature of the third-party social networking software that will allow players on both iOS and Android to ...

TUAW's Daily App: Above

by Mike Schramm (Apr 27th, 2010)

Our tipsters have been raving about Above, which is sort of a cross between Doodle Jump and Canabalt. It appeared in the App Store a little while ago. Odds are, after that description, you probably went looking for it already. Just in case you're still here, though, I'll tell you that it does offer ...

360iDev: The future of Jason Citron's OpenFeint

by Mike Schramm (Apr 14th, 2010)

OpenFeint's VP of Engineering, Jakob Wilkerson, took the stage here at 360iDev in San Jose to talk about something most people might not have expected: Game Center. Ever since Apple's official social gaming network was announced last week, the question's been in the air about what will happen to ...

GDC 2010: Interview with Faraway's Steph Thirion

by Mike Schramm (Mar 16th, 2010)

Steph Thirion is a game designer who's been releasing some of the most inventive games I've seen on the iPhone. He started out with Eliss a little while back, and he recently announced Faraway, which I got to play at GDC. The night after I played the game (it was at a party called Gamma IV), I sat ...