iPod Games, You're Doing It Wrong

Derrick Sanskrit — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 14:00:00 GMT

Like it or not, the iPod/iPhone has become a gaming platform. There are tons of statistics out there and I'm not going to bore you with them, but the fact is a lot of people are making games for the iPod and a lot of people are downloading and playing them. This post is not about educating the blog-reading public so much as a friendly word of advice to the game developers out there.

iPod game developers, remember what your platform is. No matter how Apple dresses it up or the media hypes it, the iPod is first and foremost a portable music player. The iPhone is just an iPod that also happens to make phone calls. So please, when you want us to play your games on our personal music players, do take care when shutting off our music.

Just using the examples that are currently on my iPod Touch, the biggest offender is probably Scramble Live, Zynga's Boggle clone. There is no music in the game and very minimal sound effects, so why does clicking the icon automatically shut off my music? Are you worried that listening to Nas will distract me from finding words, and if so isn't that really more of my concern than yours? Scramble is clearly designed for short bursts of casual play, so every time I play a round on the train I have my music interrupted, then end the game and go back to start my music all over again. Not cool. The same goes for THQ's de Blob. The game does thankfully use the same wonderful music as the infinitely better Wii game (sans player interaction) but it asks you upon loading the game if you want sounds enabled AFTER it has already stopped the music. Why offer sound options after turning off the preexisting sounds? Just set sounds to "on" and I'll mute my iPod if I don't like them. Or better yet, let me paint the town red to the Replacements!

Some games get away with it because the music is so integral to the gameplay, as you'd think it should be on an iPod game. Newtonica, for example, has an incredibly simple gameplay mechanic in merely flicking a sphere around to catch crystals in the correctly colored quadrants, but without the bright and lively electronic soundtrack it would be dreary and impossible to play for more than ten seconds. Radio Flare plays like a 2D side scrolling Rez by targeting up to four obstacles or enemies at a time and blowing them all up in beat with the music. Neither game has a soundtrack I'd listen to on its own, nor particularly interesting gameplay, but the play and the audio element work perfectly together to make them compelling. Both games force my iPod to stop playing music, but they would be impossible to play set to any other music, so it's okay.

And then there are the games that simply get it right. The critically acclaimed RolandoEdge, a game that I've pretty much raved about on here before, is exactly the same story. Great original soundtrack, but no problem replacing it with your own mp3s. Aurora Feint, Sway, Adventure, all great games, fun for long stretches and short bursts alike, with wonderful sound effects and the ability to keep playing your own music while you play the game. has a fantastic original soundtrack, but it's more than happy to let you listen to your own tunes instead.

With OS 3.0 coming this summer - promising access to the iPod's media library within other apps - we can look forward to greater interaction between games and the user's existing music and photos (and hopefully a legit portable version of AudioSurf), so I ask you, iPod game developers, please, think twice before shutting off my tunes. If you have to interrupt Super Furry Animals, at least make the audio component an important part of the game.

Whatcha Playing: Feintly Familiar

Derrick Sanskrit — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 20:30:00 GMT

Way back in the summer, when the iTunes App Store officially launched, iPhone owners were inundated with hundreds of sloppy applications and poorly constructed games. It was understandable, very few platforms have quality applications so early in their lifespan. There were a few surprisingly solid apps, though, that found their supportive base. One of the first games to really endear itself to JesusPhone users was Aurora Feint: The Beginning.

Here's the high-concept: the match-three puzzle play of Nintendo's Puzzle League plus the RPG character-building of Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords with touch and tilt controls thrown in. If that sounds deliciously addictive to you, you're right.

I'd read about Aurora Feint months ago, but I only got around to downloading it and playing around with it this past weekend. As a big fan of both of the above mentioned puzzlers, Aurora Feint instantly had me hooked. In order to fit your finger, the play field is smaller than that of Puzzle League, so it's a bit harder to pull of massive chains and combos. It also doesn't have the competative head-to-head aspect of either "Puzzle" game. What it does have is compelling casual fun. Just playing in "The Mine" (essentially "Endless" mode) allows you to level up, increasing the number of magicbooks and blueprints available in the "store". Blueprints are taken to the Smith and turned into time attack challenges to introduce special item tiles into the playfield and magicbooks open limited-move puzzles (exactly like Puzzle League's "Puzzle" mode) that multiply the resources collected for each colored tile.

For fans of action puzzlers like Tetris, Puzzle League and Rotohex, Aurora Feint is very likely to please. The Beginning is a great place to start, especially as its free. That's right, pay nothing. If you like that enough, there are three versions of Aurora Feint II now available on the App Store with improved graphics and new features. The biggest of the bunch, The Arena, includes new character classes, online leaderboards, online chat and offline dueling (which really seems essential, considering the atmosphere of the game as a feudal sorcery RPG), but that version will set you back eight bucks. Thankfully, you can transfer your built-up character from Aurora Feint: The Beginning over to The Arena, so your time grinding away in the freeware version won't be wasted if you upgrade.

Previously:
Myst III: Exile
Persona, Fallout, and the Trans-Pacific RPG Ideal
Holiday Blessings... and Curses
On The Road Again
Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World

61 Frames Per Second : aurora feint

iPod Games, You're Doing It Wrong

Whatcha Playing: Feintly Familiar