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.

A note on terminology

Just in case you’re unfamiliar with Windows Phone 7, it features a number of different notification methods. I’ll mention these later on, so I figured I should briefly explain what each type is:

• Live Tile updates
  Windows Phone 7’s Start screen features ‘Live Tiles’ - essentially large icons that can be used to launch applications, access music, files, or other useful parts of applications that you might want to jump straight in to. They can also be dynamically updated with badge counts, text, or images.
• Toast notifications
  Toast notifications are most similar to iOS notifications. They appear briefly at the top of the screen to notify you of events such as text messages or new tweets.
• Raw notifications
  These just push some data into a running app.

Twitter Apps

Windows Phone 7’s App Marketplace still feels pretty immature in comparison to iOS. There are a number of Twitter apps available (but nowhere near the number available on iOS), and thankfully you can try most of them out for free. Free trials are a huge plus for the WP7 Marketplace, and I’d love to see a similar feature on the App Store. Unfortunately I haven’t found a perfect app (sadly, no WP7 Tweetbot), but here’s a quick summary of everything I’ve tried that was even worth mentioning.

System-level integration

WP7 features great system-level Twitter integration. You can check your main timeline, send tweets and replies, and view mentions.

Pros:

• Fast.
• Updates your ‘Me’ Live Tile with any mentions you may have received.

Cons:

• No conversation views.
• No toast notifications.

Twitter (official app, free)

Pros:

• Looks really nice (I especially like the dark theme).
• Performance seems very good (scrolling, etc).

Cons:

• Doesn’t remember your position in the timeline.
• No toast notifications or live tile updates.

Mehdoh (free)

Pros:

• Has notifications.
• Remembers your position in the timeline.
• Gap detection.
• Instapaper support.

Cons:

• Only seems to do toast notifications, and they’re nowhere near real time. App seems to state that it does live tile updates, but I’ve yet to see it work.
• Not the prettiest app in the world.
• By default, it doesn’t grab many new tweets, but this seems to be configurable.
• Ugly splash screen

Birdsong (free, with trial)

Pros:

• Looks nice.

Cons:

• Says it does notifications, but they don’t work.
• Jerky scrolling (seemed to mainly be triggered after viewing a link and then returning to the timeline)
• Doesn’t remember your position
• Ugly splash screen

Rowi (£2.29, with trial)

Pros:

• Looks nice.
• Keeps timeline position.
• Paid version does notifications (haven’t tested these yet).
• Instapaper support.
• Really responsive devs, and a big update will be out very soon.

Cons:

• Conversation view isn’t great - have you manually click through each tweet.
• Doesn’t seem to multitask particularly well (this will be improved in the pending update).
• Scrolling occasionally goes a bit … clunky (again, I think this should be improved in the next update).

Which is best?

I’m currently mainly flitting between the system-level integration and Rowi. Rowi has most of the features I need, the developers are very responsive, and I’m looking forward to the upcoming update which is apparently going to bring full Mango support (Live Tiles, etc). It’s not perfect, and I think style-wise I prefer the official Twitter app, but Rowi offers more of the features I need. I’m currently only using the trial at the moment, but I’ll likely buy the full thing soon as I really want notifications (and Mehdoh’s just aren’t up to scratch).

All of these apps have free trials, so there’s no reason not to check them all out and see what suits you best.

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.

Gameplay

In Ascension, each player starts off with their own deck, containing the exact same 10 cards. Each round of the game sees you drawing a hand of 5 cards from your deck and using them to buy or ’defeat’ other cards from an ever changing selection in the middle of the play area. Defeating a monster gives you honour, buying a card means you get to add it to your deck, to use on a later turn. Each card in your hand gives you ’currency’ in one form or another, or allows you to perform an action such as drawing extra cards. As the game progresses you build up your deck from the same pool of cards as the other players, so nobody is at a disadvantage. Your only obstacles are luck and other players trying to prevent you getting the cards you need.

The game features three main forms of ‘currency’:

• Honour: the overall goal of the game is to obtain more honour than your fellow players. You can get honour from buying cards and defeating monsters.
• Runes: the currency used to acquire other cards. You can spend runes in order buy cards from the center of the table.
• Power: used to defeat monsters. All monsters have a power value; if you play cards from your hand worth an equal amount of power, you can defeat that monster and earn honour.

Those are the basics of the game: draw a hand from your deck, perform actions and spend runes or power to get more cards, earn honour and perhaps hinder other players. Keep going until all of the available honour has been expended, and then count up to see who got the most. There’s lots of room for strategy: do you go power-heavy and work on attacking monsters to gain power? Do you just try and buy as many high value cards as you can? Do you go for actions that let you draw more cards and work through your deck faster? The game feels deep but is easy to pick up and play.

The iOS Version

Ascension on iOS is universal, so it runs on both iPad and iPhone. I feel that it’s a much more enjoyable experience on the iPad, as the larger screen really gives you more room to play with (quite literally).

The app is really well made. It’s extremely responsive, with smooth animations, fun sound effects, and all the card artwork from the original game. There’s a great tutorial to get you up to speed and a complete rulebook if you want to check up on the rules.

Singleplayer works really well, with a couple of AI difficulty levels to choose from, but multiplayer is where Ascension really shines. You can play against up to 3 opponents, either randomly selected or chosen from your Game Center friends. The game very cleverly and seamlessly switches between asynchronous turn-based play (where you’re notified when it’s your go and you can take as long as you like), to real time updates if two players are both online. There’s a small status indicator next to each player’s name which tells you if they’re offline, idle, or actively participating in your game. If they’re online at the same time as you, you can see each card move around the screen as soon as they play it. If they’re offline, the game will notify them when you’re finished taking your turn. It’s very well done. In fact, it’s one of the best multiplayer experiences I’ve seen on iOS.

All in all, Ascension is a really enjoyable card game. For £2.99, you get a universal app which contains all the cards from the main Ascension game. For an extra £1.99 in-app purchase you can also get the first expansion pack; Return of the Fallen. The iOS version is well worth the asking price, and if you have any interest in board games (or would just like a fun multiplayer game you can sink your teeth into) I’d highly recommend you check it out.

• Ascension website
• Ascension on iTunes

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.

Running and debugging

When running your game, you can specify parameters (for example, a character’s speed or size) which show up as sliders in a debugging pane on the left hand side of the screen. You can then tweak those parameters as you play, and observe in real time the effect they have on the game. It’s very neat. You can also watch variables and print information out to a console. Games themselves run very smoothly (unless you write them badly, of course!) and look great. You can pause, resume, or reset your game state whenever you like. You can also flip back to your code with just one tap.

Help and examples

The app comes with a whole heap of examples, from the basics of using the provided graphics functions to clones of games like Doodle Jump, Snake, and Pong (the latter I wrote myself). The code editor also comes with a nicely presented documentation viewer which provides excellent help on graphics functions, the Lua language itself, parameters, multitouch, sounds, using the iPad’s accelerometer, and more.

To see some of the Codify examples in action, check out the following YouTube videos:

• Bit Invader
• Lua Jump (Doodle Jump clone)
• Dungeon Roller
• Ping (Pong clone)

The code editor

The code editor has clearly had a lot of thought and polish put into it. It has a lot of things you’d expect from an editor: syntax highlighting, line numbers, multiple files (with tabs to switch between them), and a function browser. But it also has a slew of features designed to ease the task of programming on a touchscreen device:

• For methods that take a colour as a parameter (RGBA values, for example (255, 150, 99, 255)), you can simply tap on the parameter and a colour wheel appears in a popover allowing you to choose a colour with touch alone.
• You can tap and hold on any number and slide your finger from left to right (or vice versa) to increment / decrement the number without typing.
• A row of custom keys above the onscreen keyboard provides shortcuts for common tasks: tabbing, access to documentation, inserting symbols / punctuation, and more.
• Codify includes support for displaying sprites (images) and comes bundled with a number of high quality sprite packs from Lost Garden. Similarly to selecting colour parameters, you can tap a sprite parameter and select your sprite from a nice popover without the need for any typing.

Check out my Flickr photo set for a couple more photos showing the Codify interface. I’ve also put together a quick YouTube video showing some of its functionality in action (embedded at the bottom of this post).

The Lua language was deliberately chosen for Codify because it has a rather ‘wordy’ syntax, which fits nicely with the iPad’s onscreen keyboard. It means less switching to the ‘symbols’ keyboard, and less frustration for the user. The Lua runtime is also extremely light, which helps keep things snappy.

An introduction to programming? - a brief aside

I think that Codify could shine as a tool for teaching programming. I’ve long lamented the apparent increase in difficulty for kids (and adults alike, I guess) to get started with programming these days. I began coding on a BBC B in BASIC. Back then, you turned your computer on and you were presented with a flashing prompt, into which you could just start typing your code. Commercial games weren’t too advanced, so it was entirely possible you could get at least close to making the sorts of things you played yourself.

These days, where do you start? If you have a Mac or Linux machine, chances are you have something like Ruby or Python built in, so that’s fairly easy to get going with. If you’re on Windows, you’re left to install something yourself. You’ll also likely have to install some kind of text editor and work out how to use a command prompt (not a bad thing to do at all, of course, but it’s another barrier to entry). And then you’ll have to find some kind of games or graphics libraries and learn how those work. And then you might be able to have a go at learning a language and making a simple game. It’s a lot to get through and a lot of opportunities for a newcomer to lose their enthusiasm.

We’re now finally starting to see some potential solutions emerging on the web. For example, Processing.js (a JavaScript port of Processing) and Sketchpad.cc (which lets you just start coding with Processing.js in your browser). Codify is very much like these solutions, but built specifically for iPad and a touch interface. From now on, somebody who wants to get started with simple programming and games may just be able to search the App Store for ‘programming’, install Codify, and have a go; perhaps starting off modifying some of the examples and observing the effects their changes have in real time. It may not be as easy to a newcomer as I’m imagining, but it sure seems a lot simpler to me than what we’ve had in recent years.

Wrap up

Codify was created by Simeon Nasilowski of Two Lives Left and will be launching on the App Store on Wednesday 26th October for £5.49 ($7.99), which I think is great value for everything it offers. It’s a high quality package that finally lets you code on the iPad, and it does so with style. I highly recommend checking it out if you enjoy programming or think you’d like to give it a go. I’d be really interested in seeing what you create with it!

I’ve also posted a video to YouTube showing some of Codify’s features in action:

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.

S&S EP references elements of geek culture and video games of the past to create a unique experience that still manages to feel comfortably familiar at the same time. You play a lone warrior, out to destroy the Megatome (a book of unimaginable power) along with the ancient evil that haunts the legendary mountain of Mingi Taw. The Legend of Zelda series and Shadow of the Colossus stand out as two of the biggest influences, or at least two games against which it is easy to draw parallels. Like Zelda, S&S: EP’s mute lead character’s ultimate goal involves collecting three sacred triangles that together form the ‘Trigon Trifecta’. Like Colossus, there are references to mysterious in-game mythology, fights with ancient creatures (leaving the player feeling morally conflicted), and a main character who gets weaker as they continue their quest. The game features beautiful pixel art graphics, and an outstanding original score. It’s clear that a lot of love was poured into this game.

Speaking of the score: the soundtrack is fantastic, and an integral part of the game. It’s available to download from Bandcamp or iTunes and has even been released on vinyl. It’s one of the best game soundtracks I’ve ever heard; kind of a mix between folk and chiptunes and lots more besides. You can listen to most of it for free on Bandcamp, so give it a spin. However, I think it sounds all the better once you’ve experienced it in-game. Some of the pieces are perfectly written and timed to coincide with sections of the game, and so I think you get something extra out of them once you’ve experienced their corresponding visual accompaniments. The game’s main antagonist, the Deathless Spectre, evokes an actual feeling of panic whenever it materializes onscreen which I think is in no small part due to the music that coincides its appearance. Sword & Sworcery EP really deserves to be played wearing headphones.

In fact, the whole game deserves your full attention when you play, as you’ll get far more out of it. The story unfolds in multiple chapters, like the acts of a play, even down to a triumphant musical cue and the literal closing of curtains when you finish an act. The story’s narrator appears at the end of an act to sum up what you’ve achieved and what is yet to come. The first act is rather short - something of an introduction to the rest of the game - and the narrator actually tells you to take a break once it’s over. It’s a nice way to spread the game out over multiple sittings and it frames the story really well. The presentation values are top notch, and whilst it may sound hyperbolic I do think S&S EP really is more of an experience than a traditional game.

As a touchscreen-controlled game designed for iOS devices, S:S&S EP succeeds brilliantly. It doesn’t attempt to crowbar ’traditional’ controls into somewhere they don’t fit (no onscreen d-pads) instead you simply either touch and hold or double-tap wherever you want your character to move. You can also pinch to zoom and pan around the screen. It works wonderfully and feels effortless. The majority of the game takes place in landscape orientation, but for sword fights you must rotate the device into portrait to take out your sword and shield. This reveals two thumb buttons at the bottom of the screen: one for your sword, and one for your shield. It couldn’t get much simpler. It’s nice to see a developer who understands the strengths and weaknesses of a touch-based control system.

Sword & Sworcery is without a doubt one of the best games on iOS. But more than that, it is one of my favourite games of all time. Unlike a lot of iOS titles, it’s not a throwaway arcade experience but an adventure that will stick with you long after you finish playing. It draws you in to its little world through beautiful pixel graphics, a stunning soundtrack, a believable world and characters, and slick presentation throughout. I highly recommend it. It’s available now on the iOS App Store as either a universal version for iPad & iPhone, or as a slightly cheaper iPhone-only version.

Hardware

The 3DS keeps the same form-factor as the original DS which shipped back in 2005, although it’s closer in shape and size to the DS Lite which followed in mid-2006. The DS Lite has been my favourite portable console since the day I got one, and I think it’s too early at this point to tell whether the 3DS will take its crown.

The console itself has a pretty solid feel and I like the finish on it. I picked up the ‘Cosmos Black’ model, which is ever-so-slightly metallic and has a gradual black-to-grey gradient. The weight and size of it are just fine to me; I don’t notice a difference between it and my DS Lite. However, I can’t help but feel that in general the 3DS feels a little rough around the edges (not literally; that paint job is silky-smooth) and to me looks a bit like prototype hardware. It has three different coloured body sections, several different textures, numerous joins and seams, six small holes dotted across the device (four of which might be for microphones, but they look messy), a large black block for the IR port (infra-red? Really? In 2011?), three hardware sliders (although one is a switch that just looks like a slider), and four indicator lights (one of which just illuminates the word ‘3D’ constantly, for no apparent reason, even when 3D is turned off). In short, it feels unrefined. I also think the dual cameras on the lid look ugly, but I have no suggestions for how they could’ve better hidden them.

Add to this the seemingly arbitrary repositioning (from their previous locations on the DS Lite) of key controls: the power on / off button, volume slider, and stylus are all in entirely different places which is jarring when you first switch over from using a DS Lite. I’m sure there are design constraints due to the layout of the internals which meant things had to be placed like this, but in particular the new stylus position is just plain bad. It sits at the back of the device next to the game cartridge, so it’s very hard to locate and remove without looking. On the DS Lite, the stylus just slotted into the side and was really easy to get to.

The battery life is also not good. Most quotes seem to be between 2.5 and 5 hours, with a ~3 hour charge time. Nintendo provide a nice charging cradle, however, which makes it super easy to charge the 3DS. You just drop it in and off it goes. No doubt this is partially due to the 3D screen technology, the fact there are two screens to illuminate, and the wifi radio, but the battery life is rather disappointing when we have tiny devices like the iPhone 4 whose batteries last forever (even when playing games). It’s already affected me a few times, where I’ve taken out the DS to play on (having left it ‘asleep’ and with charge left) only to find it totally drained. I hope Nintendo can improve on this in the future.

I feel at this point like I’m being overly harsh. The 3DS does have some nice hardware additions and improvements over the previous version, which it would be remiss of me not to mention.

• There’s an SD card slot built in for storing images, music, and game data, and the console actually comes supplied with a 2GB card (not bad at all, when most consumer electronics devices that use SD cards come with totally useless ones).
• The stylus is metal and extendable. It feels much nicer than the old plastic one.
• The 3DS is the first of Nintendo’s portable consoles to come with with an analogue control stick, and it’s fantastic. It’s actually more of a pad than a stick, and it slides around as you push it, rather than tilting. It’s compact and feels great to use.
• The screens have had a resolution boost, but in my opinion not enough. I think my main criticism of the old DS was simply how terribly low resolution the screens were - text and graphics just didn’t look at all crisp and the whole thing felt very dated¹. Perhaps I’m just spoilt by the incredible screen of the iPhone 4, but the 3DS still feels blocky and behind the curve. It’s likely that the somewhat low resolution is a tradeoff on account of the 3D display (which is in actual fact 800 pixels wide, but only 400 are visible to each eye). I think it’s probably acceptable that Nintendo sacrificed resolution for their new-fangled no-glasses 3D tech (if that’s indeed the tradeoff they had to make).
• Last but not least, the actual graphics hardware inside has gotten a significant boost. This manifests itself mainly through software, so I’ll discuss it more in that section of the review. Needless to say, though, 3D graphics (as in computer-generated 3D, not stereoscopic 3D) are streets ahead of the old DS.

The 3DS feels more like an entirely new device that just happens to share a form-factor with its predecessor than a simple hardware revision. Despite its shortcomings, I think the 3DS hardware feels much less like a toy than previous versions. However, the DS Lite felt much more refined. Perhaps this is simply a symptom of this being the first generation of 3DS. Knowing Nintendo, there’ll be numerous revisions of the hardware in the future.

That 3D thing

So, the 3D, then. I mean, that’s what this whole thing’s about right? It is called the 3DS after all.

I’d like to preface this section by laying out my opinion on some similar technologies, so you know where I’m coming from as I discuss the 3D aspect of the 3DS.

• I don’t like 3D films. In a minority of places I think it adds something - Pixar do it pretty well as it’s used subtley to give the film extra depth, and Avatar actually felt a bit more immersive in 3D. However, I really dislike having to wear what are essentially sunglasses over the top of my normal glasses, I really dislike 3D being used as a thinly veiled ploy to get cinema-goers to fork over even more money (don’t even get me started on cinema food!), and I can’t stand it when 3D is needlessly shoehorned into films where it has no place whatsoever. So, I’m not a big fan and I find it largely a gimmick intended to get people to go to the cinema more, pay more and pirate less. I also have absolutely no intention to buy a 3D TV.
• I’m not big on the whole motion-gaming thing. The Wii was fun and a novelty when it first came out. Wii Sports is still pretty fun, and The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess actually used it quite effectively for controlling ranged weapons. Other than those, I can’t really think of a single Wii game I own where the motion controls really add something. Many are downright terrible (Red Steel and Goldeneye being just two examples), and my favourite Wii games tend to be those that use little to no motion control at all. What’s wrong with buttons?

Because I really dislike cinema-3D, you’d perhaps expect me to dislike the 3DS’s 3D, and write off as a gimmick too. Only, I don’t. I like it.

First up, it’s just plain impressive. The adverts are right when they say you’ve got to see it to believe it, and you’ve never seen anything like it. Everyone I’ve shown the 3DS to (and people I’ve spoken to who have otherwise seen one themselves) have that ‘wow’ moment. It’s a bizarre feeling when you look at this little screen with your naked eye and see a scene that appears to stretch away into the distance. It’s just… cool. In some ways the screen looks like a little diorama that you’re peering into, and displays an impressive amount of depth.

I don’t like 3D films because it’s is often used where it doesn’t belong. Pixar films use it well and appropriately, and perhaps in some ways it feels like a better fit because the films are already sort-of-3D anyway. I think this may be one reason I like it on the 3DS though: the majority of games are already 3D. They’re already computer generated and artificial and 3D is just an extra visual filter to try and add an extra level of realism.

The tech is obviously still very early on, but I think it shows a lot of promise. The effect is achieved by the screen having a doubled horizontal resolution in conjunction with a ‘parallax barrier’, which blocks out particular pixels. In short, you can see a slightly different image from each eye which, when combined, form a 3D image. There’s no need for special glasses and you don’t need to go cross-eyed. It just works. This diagram roughly shows how the 3D screen works if you can’t quite visualise it.

The main downside seems to be that there’s a pretty limited viewing angle. If you’re just a few degrees outside of the optimum area where your eyes see the right images, you start to get a double image or a dimmed screen. In reality though, it doesn’t seem too difficult to keep yourself in that sweet spot - although I definitely see some occasional ghosting.

The other downside, of course, is that some people can’t see it (for example if they only have vision in one eye, or have a bad astigmatism). Fortunately, the 3DS features a ‘3D slider’ which lets you increase or lessen the 3D depth, or turn it off altogether. This is a big help if you want to play socially (for instance, Hannah and I have played through the Professor Layton games together in the past, and that just wouldn’t be possible with 3D on). I’ve read a number of reports of people leaving it turned off all the time, but for me it’s a big draw of the console and I enjoy how it looks.

The 3D is really going to prove itself as more games come out. At present, there’s a very limited range of launch titles, and I only own one of them: Ridge Racer 3D. I think it was a good first choice, however, as the tracks and cars feel solid, the 3D really draws you in to the first-person viewpoint, and there’s a good mix of distances to show off the effect. I can only imagine how awesome some of the upcoming titles are going to be. In particular, I really hope Super Mario 3DS introduces some new and interesting gameplay elements based on depth (although there are rumours that it won’t, so that people who can’t see the effect aren’t left out). Even if it doesn’t, it should make jumping between platforms a lot easier.

In summary, I really like the 3D effect. I think it’s clever, it’s something new, it’s innovative, and to me it doesn’t feel like it’s a gimmick (although I’ll be the first to own up if I’m proved wrong at a later date). You can certainly get by without it, and certainly the 3DS has enough of a hardware / graphical boost (and great titles coming in the future) it to warrant the upgrade without it, but I don’t see why you’d want to.

System software

The 3DS’s menu system feels much improved over the DS Lite. In some ways it’s similar to the Wii’s channel system, but overall is bit more modern and refined. There are, however, a few places where it does still feel somewhat outdated. For example:

• You can only store settings for 3 network connections, when other modern mobile devices let you store as many as you want.
• You can now ‘suspend’ a game and access the main system menu. The only problem with this is that if you want to access anything via the menu, such as system settings, you lose the suspended state of the game. What, then, is the point of ‘suspending’ it in the first place?
• The system software is still very modal. You can do one thing at a time, and one thing only. Want to check for a software update? You have to sit there watching a progress bar, and you can’t do anything else until it completes.

I don’t really want to spend too much longer on the software, as this review is already gargantuan and I’m not sure how much of value I can add. The system software does its job, but I wouldn’t say it’s anything special. There are a number of features missing (a web browser and downloadable software / games are the main ones), but these are due to launch in the next few months. It’s yet another example of the system feeling rushed to market, though.

Games

There’s not yet much to discuss regarding games. The 3DS’s launch titles were largely not worth bothering with and were one of the big reasons I wasn’t sure whether to buy the system on launch. Since owning it, I’ve played Ridge Racer 3D (which I got with the console) and Rayman 3D (which I rented). Ridge Racer is pretty good fun and shows off the 3D well, but is just a fairly generic racer. Rayman 3D is a lazy port of a 12 year old game which was fun when first released but feels tired today.

I really bought the 3DS based on the promise of what’s to come. There are a number of exciting titles due out this year: The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Star Fox 3D, a new Mario title, a new Mariokart title and a new Metal Gear Solid title among others. I really hope they can live up to my expectations. Ocarina of Time and Star Fox are both remakes (hey, this is Nintendo after all), but the originals were great, so I can’t wait. Mariokart DS still remains the best in the series, so there’s a lot of potential in a new DS title. And any new 3D Mario game instantly has my attention.

Future promise

The 3D brings something new to the table. I feel it’s currently let down by rushed first generation hardware, rushed and incomplete system software, and a poor lineup of games. However, I bought into it because of the promise of how it may evolve over the coming months. In June we’ll have Ocarina of Time which may well justify the purchase all by itself. The original DS was host to some great games, and some truly original concepts and as a Nintendo fan, I hope that upcoming titles deliver on their promise. The 3DS has a lot of potential, but if I’m completely honest I currently feel some amount of buyer’s remorse as the 3DS sits on a shelf gathering dust.

Your move, Nintendo.

As a brief introduction, the single player game of Minecraft is all about adventuring and carving out an existence for yourself in a randomly generated, nearly-infinitely large world. It might be mountainous, islandy, foresty, snowy; you must harvest resources and built yourself tools and shelter; there’ll likely be huge underground cave systems for you to explore, containing precious minerals for you to mine, and monsters lurking in the darkness. It’s all about survival and exploring, in a world that you can literally shape as you please - pretty much every single block in the world can be destroyed, moved, or placed by you.

Mine the Gap

First up, there’s a brilliant series of five articles over at Rock, Paper, Shotgun¹ called Mine the Gap. The author had never played Minecraft before, and charts his progress through the game for the first few days. He very quickly falls in love with it, and does a good job of conveying what it’s like to play Minecraft. I could quote pretty much all of the articles, but I’ve tried to pick out some of my favourite bits:

At this point I need to state just how unspeakably fun all this is. Shredding and re-assembling the game world is quick, tactile and satisfying. The entireity of MineCraft taps directly into that part of your mind that made it so fun to build forts out of sofa cushions as a kid. Even digging a hole in MineCraft brings on an inexplicable thrill of freedom and panic. It’s embarrassing.

Spelunking, it turns out, is kind of breathtaking. Everything- the risk of encountering monsters, the natural cave formations, the chance of discovering something unusual- comes together to form a thrilling whole.

MineCraft’s randomised caves are some of the most spellbinding locales I’ve ever encountered in a videogame, and a large part of that, I think, is because you’re always at risk of getting lost. It’s an omnipresent enemy you’re forever dueling with, and sometimes that means he gets the better of you. And that’s fun too.

Why aren’t there more games about exploring? I’m not talking learning the corners and shortcuts of some dull “open” world here. I’m talking about games which let you pick your way through a world that’s every bit as secretive, hostile and surprising as our own. I’m talking about letting the player get lost. I’m talking about making a world so tactile, so absorbing and so believable that an exciting discovery can be as simple as a big-ass tree.

We need more of this. Because this? This is brilliance. MineCraft is brilliance in such a simple, raw form that developers the world over should be smashing their heads on desks with a force usually reserved for heading footballs, simply because they didn’t do this first.

It took going on today’s expedition for me to realise it, but after a dozen hours I’ve already gotten more out of MineCraft than I get from most commercial games, so I’m just going to tell you straight up: You want to buy this game. It’s already fantastic, it’s still a long way from finished, it’s only €10 and once you’ve bought it, all future versions of MineCraft will be yours for free.

I encourage you to go over and read through these, starting with number one, of course:

Here’s all the articles: Mine the Gap on Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Or here they are individually:
Mine the Gap, Day 1 | Mine the Gap, Day 2 | Mine the Gap, Day 3 | Mine the Gap, Day 4 | Mine the Gap, Day 5

Expedition Minecraft!

Next, a brilliantly made set of videos on YouTube called Expedition Minecraft!, from Sebastiaan de With, a designer from the Netherlands. He’s made 7 videos so far which show him adventuring in Minecraft, starting out from scratch in a new world. I watched these before I bought Minecraft myself, and at least the first video or two almost act as a nice little tutorial of how you play the game - before watching these, I didn’t really ‘get’ what it was all about. It’s also odd how strangely compelling and addictive it can be just watching someone else play. Each video’s about 15 minutes long.

And finally…

Finally, here’s an utterly hilarious video of someone attempting to do a nice little tutorial, but not quite getting the results they were after…

Seriously - if you love games, I can’t see how you can’t enjoy Minecraft. I’ve already got far more out of the game than the €9.95 I paid for it. You can play it in your browser or download the client, and it works on Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux. It currently costs €9.95 while it’s in alpha, and will be double that whenever it’s finally released.

Minecraft.net

P.S. If you do get it, I think you’ll likely find the Minecraft Wiki very useful. In particular, it has ‘recipes’ for all the tools and items you can build.

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.

App Store Developer’s website

Broken Sword

A classic point-and-click adventure, updated for the iPhone and touch controls. The original came out in 1996, and it’s still awesome. If you’ve never played Broken Sword, I highly recommend it. Fantastic historical-thrillery-mystery storyline, great visuals, good humour, and memorable characters.
[iTunes]

Canabalt

Canabalt’s probably the simplest game on this list. It has one control: tap the screen to jump. Your character runs and jumps along rooftops in some dystopian future that’s going all to hell. Nice pixel art, and an awesome soundtrack (headphones recommended). Seems like it’ll be a one minute wonder, but it’s very much “hmm, just one more go…”. There’s a flash version on the Canabalt website, so you can try it out there.
[iTunes] [App website]

Carcassonne

Carcassonne’s my newest acquisition and it’s so so SO well made. Carcassonne is an iOS version a of a board game, and it really feels like an authentic board game. You place tiles to build up countryside (consisting of towns, roads, and fields), and place your ‘meeple’ on the structures you create to capture them and score points. The Carcassonne website has a nice introductory video explaining how the game works. Lovely graphics, music, and sound effects, and a great tutorial with voiceover introduces you to the game. Also, lots of nice casual multiplayer¹ and replayability. I’m jwfrosty, so if you grab the game, come play against me online!

Carcasonne is £2.99, but I can’t recommend it highly enough. The price will be going up when the app gains iPad support, too (to $9.99 in US money), so if you’re interested buy now!
[iTunes] [App website]

Flight Control

The quintessential iPhone game. One of the first, and still one of the best examples of touch screen gaming. I think there’s some sort of law that states that every iPhone owner must have a copy of Flight Control. Chances are you’ve probably seen or played this already but if you haven’t, you should.
[iTunes] [App website]

Fruit Ninja

A recent acquisition, but pretty addictive. Fruit get thrown in the air, you swipe them with your finger to cut them in half. Avoid the the bombs. Bombs are bad. That’s all you need to know. Nice graphics, although not updated to high res versions for the retina display yet. Another “just one more go…” game.
[iTunes] [App website]

geoDefense

I’m not the biggest fan of tower defence games, but geoDefense is well done, and adds some nice restrictions to the format which make it much easier to pick up and play. The enemies move ‘on rails’, so it’s not such a free-for-all as other games; you know where they’re going to be headed and can plan your defenses appropriately.
[iTunes] [App website]

Orbital

An iPhone remake/clone of a flash game, Gimme Friction Baby, but better. Gorgeous visuals, easy to learn, good game mechanics, good for pick up and playability.
[iTunes] [App website]

Plants vs Zombies

Popcap, the kings of the casual game market. Plants vs Zombies is their take on tower defense games, and it’s pretty addictive. Plant plants in a garden, all of which have different zombie-resistant abilities - some shoot seeds, some stop baddies dead in their tracks (dead! Zombies! See what I did there?), and others just explode. Good fun, and the difficultly level ramps up perfectly - each level introduces you to some new item, ability, or bad guy, so you’re always making progress. There’s a free online flash demo if you want to try it out there.
[iTunes] [App website]

Strategery

Apparently Strategery is quite like Risk, although I’ve never played Risk so I can’t really vouch for that. You take over enemy territories on a map. Some element of luck involved. The game scales pretty well from really easy on tiny maps all the way up to ‘give me full control over everything’ with brutally hard CPU opponents on epically-sized maps. I prefer the smaller easier ones, because I can win at those. There’s a free, lite version of this (which is slightly dated now - hasn’t been updated for a while - but it’s still good), so give it a whirl.
[Lite version - iTunes] [Paid version - iTunes] [App website]

Words with Friends

Words with Friends is a Scrabble-like game which allows you to play with friends over the internet. It’s very well done, and the multiplayer works seamlessly. More people need to come and play this with me! I’m jwfrosty. There’s a free ad-supported version, so there’s no reason for you not have a go!
[Free version - iTunes] [Paid version - iTunes]

If there’s anything I’ve missed out that you’d like to recommend, please let me know about it in the comments! And please come and play against me at Words with Friends and Carcassonne!

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.