James Frost, Mobile Wrangler
I recently picked up a Nokia Lumia 800 phone, running Windows Phone 7. In short: I’m a geek, I like trying out new tech, I’ve had an iPhone since mid-2008, and I really liked the look of what Microsoft has done with Windows Phone 7. I’m working on a full review, but as I’m getting to grips with the phone and the OS I figured I’d write up some of the issues I run up against.
Today: finding a Twitter app.
Ascension: Chronicle of the Godslayer is a card game that has some similarities to the popular Magic: The Gathering collectable card game. My first introduction to Ascension was through its well-received iOS version, which I liked so much that I went straight out and bought a copy of the physical game too1. This is primarily a review of the iOS version, but both versions play exactly the same and are equally enjoyable.
Ascension is a deckbuilding game designed by a former Magic Pro Tour champion. I’ve played a small amount of Magic in the past but was put off by the amount of pre-game preparation that is necessary and the sheer number of cards that are available (although I realise that it’s exactly these elements that draw many people to the game).2 I think Ascension struck a chord with me because it’s reminiscent of Magic but (in my opinion) improves upon it in a number of ways.
I love the iPad. It’s casual, immediate, and more intimate than a laptop ever will be. There are wonderful apps available for most activities you could want to do on an iPad: reading, writing, drawing, listening, watching, playing; the list goes on. Much of the time when I want to perform some task (or just relax), I will now reach for my iPad instead of my laptop if possible. However, until now I have been unable to use the iPad for one of my favourite pasttimes: programming1.
Enter Codify. Codify is a new iPad app that lets you create simple games, prototypes and simulations directly on an iPad. You write code in the Lua language using a fantastic code editor (more on that later), with an API that’s very similar to Processing. You can then run that code straight away; play your game, experiment with your prototype, tweak your simulation. It’s fast, easy, impressive, and fun.
Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP is an experience. It’s an audiovisual treat and, in my opinion, a wonderful example of games as art. I don’t think it would be too bold to describe S:S&S EP as iOS’s Shadow of the Colossus1.
At the end of March, I picked up a Nintendo 3DS. I wasn’t initially sure whether to get one up at launch, but in the end I went for it. This post is an attempt to come to some conclusion regarding how I feel about the device, and why I bought one.
I’ve recently become somewhat addicted to Minecraft – the hit indie game that’s currently earning its creator over £100,000 a day. I find it quite hard to summarise what I find so brilliant about Minecraft, so I’ve collected together a few links to articles or videos that give a good idea of why Minecraft is awesome, and why you should be playing it right now.
Helsing’s Fire is a fun, brilliantly presented, innovative puzzle / arcade game for iOS.
You play as Van Helsing, on a mission to destroy the foul Count Dracula. To do this, you progress through 90 levels across 3 worlds, all filled with a hordes of monsters. The monsters in each level stand stationary, and are coloured red, blue, or green. To defeat them, you must move your flaming torch, casting rays of light around and between objects scattered across the level. Once your light falls upon the monsters you want to vanquish, you tap one of a selection of coloured potions to match the colour of the monster. This gets tricker as you progress through the game, as you must avoid monsters of a different colour to the potion you’re using. Different types of monster also present other challenges: bats fly around the level once you’ve attacked them, werewolves turn into innocent maidens who you must avoid with your potions, and ghosts turn invisible in your torch’s glare, so you have to remember their locations. The mechanic of casting light and shadows works really well and looks great.
The game is nicely presented, with a good little story, fun characters with humorous dialogue, and catchy gothic tunes to accompany your adventure (I really recommend you play this one with the sound on – or at least the introduction). I especially like the little touches such as the way Van Helsing and his assistant bump fists or high five one another when you finish a level.
The game starts off pretty easy, but there’s a Mario-style difficulty curve where new gameplay elements are regularly introduced, spicing things up a bit.
There are 90 levels in the main campaign mode, including some more arcade-style bosses that fly around the screen and require you to keep your torch on the move to avoid their attacks. Each ‘world’ also has an unlimited, randomly generated survival mode. A recent updated added a new campaign with 30 more levels, some new enemies, and another survival mode arena. I found it to be quite an addictive ‘just one more go’ pick-up-and-play game.
Very good value for 59p – they really should be charging more for this. Highly recommended.
I play quite a lot of games on my iPhone. I thought I’d write a quick post to highlight some of the games that I’ve really enjoyed and I keep coming back to. There’s a lot of good stuff out there, but there’s also a lot of rubbish to wade through (either games that are just plain bad, or fun for five minutes and then you’ll never play it again); so here are the ones that have stood the test of time with me. Continue reading “iPhone Games”
I just wanted to share an iPhone app I came across the other day which I’ve totally fallen in love with. It’s called Momento.
Momento is a diary/journaling app, which I guess is fairly self explanatory – you can add text to days in the form of ‘moments’. You can also attach photos to days, as well as tags for people, events, and geolocation information if you wish. Momento also has the ability to passcode your journal, to hide it from prying eyes (the main reason I want an electronic journal rather than a paper one). It’s super-simple to use, which is part of its charm; it gets out of your way and makes journaling easy (low barrier to entry: check!).
You can browse through your entries in a sweet calendar view or flick through individual days. Take a look at the screenshots on the Momento website – this thing is gorgeous. It’s a joy to use, both for writing and reading, and feels pretty damn close to using a paper journal. It brings to mind Tweetie 2 in terms of its visual polish – in fact, it even has that cute little arrow that slides along the tab bar at the bottom of the screen when you change modes, just like Tweetie.
In addition to its kickass-as-it-is journaling functionality, Momento can pull in ‘social moments’ from Twitter, Facebook, Last.fm, and Flickr. Fill in your account details for any of these services, and it’ll show your Flickr uploads, Twitter updates, etc, alongside your handwritten journal entries. In fact, it even grabs this data from the past, so you instantly have a very rough historical journal without having to write anything yourself.
My only real criticism of the app as it is is that there’s no easy / automatic way to export / import data. As it stands, you can email yourself an XML file of your journal entries from within the app, but there’s no way to re-import that data and the export is a manual process. Some kind of sync might be nice. It’s mainly for security purposes, just so I don’t lose my entries – I’m not interested in sharing them with anybody (I have a blog for that!). That said, paper journals don’t have a backup system!
I’ve been using Momento every day for the past week, and it’s brilliant. I’ve been wanting to keep a journal for a long time now, but I’ve never really given it a proper go. I’m intending to carry on with this now I’ve found a great way to do it – I’m going to try and write every day for a month, and then hopefully just keep on writing.