Humble Bundle for Android 2!!!

Hi guys, I have excellent news! The awesome guys from Humble Bundle are running another Android bundle!!! For those of you who still don't know what the Humble Indie Bundle is, it's basically a bunch of independent developers who makes their games available through the Humble Bundle site, and then, the best part is that YOU can decide how much to pay for them!

You can even then allocate the money you're spending as you want to the developers, a charity or the guys from Humble Bundle.

This time around, they have the following games available on the bundle:

• Canabalt
• Zen Bound 2
• Cogs
• Avadon: The Black Fortress

And if you pay more than the average people are paying, you get Swords & Soldiers included in your bundle as well! And, based on past experiences, they usually add another game or two as the bundle comes to an end... ;)

Edit: They've added another game!! (I like it when they do this!) - Snuggle Truck is now part of the bundle :)

Now, Avadon appears to only be for tablets, but the rest I've already downloaded and tried, and they are pretty awesome! I'm really liking Zen Bound 2 at the moment, here's a couple of screen shots of it in action:

I'll do a review of it soon, it's really a fun little puzzle game :)

They've already sold 53000+ copies as I'm writing this post, and there's still 13 days remaining! So head on over to www.humblebundle.com and get yours as well!

Enjoy!

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QR codes to some of my Favourite Games

Here are some QR codes to some of my favourite games (at the moment, sure it'll change in the future hehe):

Alchemy (see review here)

Edge full version and the demo

Minecraft Pocket Edition and the demo (see review here)

Osmos and the demo

World of Goo and the demo

Game Dev Story (see review here)

If you don't know what to do with these codes, have a look at my review on QR Droid

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Game Review: Minecraft Pocket Edition

If you don't know what Minecraft is, chances are you've only started using the internet this very second. :)

Minecraft is the Indie game that took the world by storm. It's a big sandbox game where you can shape the world to your exact liking. Add to that the harvesting of resources and building stuff (anything from a small log cabin in the woods to deep underground mines and glorious works of art!), as well as zombies and sheep, and you've got a pretty amazing and addictive game!

People will complain about the blockiness of the graphics, but that is what gives this game so much charm and personality! It just shows you, a games doesn't necessarily need awesome and high detailed graphics to be awesome!

Now, the pocket edition is a work in progress, much like the desktop version was for so very long. As you can see in the above screen shot, we're on version 0.2.0 alpha. So at this stage, it's not even close to what the desktop version is, but it's definitely getting there!

I bought the game for $0.10 when Android had there massive app download drive, but you can still buy it for $6.99 - a little steep for my liking (very happy that I got it for ten cents!), but I foresee great things for this little gem in the mining (see what I did there?? Gem? Mining? Minecraft??? ;P

Luckily, a demo version is available, so you can get that to first check it out.

Get the full version here

And the demo version here

So, at this stage the game has two modes - Creative and Survival. Creative mode just gives you this big, randomly generated world which you can sculpt to your exact liking, where the Survival mode adds a few things, like gathering some resources, and fending of zombies at night!

Here is my little house by the sea, which I started when the game was still version 0.1.0 (no survival mode back then):

In the second screen shot, I'm actually flying (something you can only do in creative mode) - you'll also see the on-screen controls on the left. The button in the middle is to jump - double tap that one to fly.

I must say, the game's performance on my Galaxy S2 is extremely smooth and without drops in frames per second at all. It does take some getting used to using the onscreen controls like that. Looking around is done by tapping and moving your finger across the screen. If you tap an hold in one spot, you'll start digging that specific block if it's close enough.

Here's a few from my little house's "porch" :)

The survival mode introduces a few extra things, most notably zombies that want to do nothing but eat your brains. So the first thing you always do in a Survival game is build a shelter, so that you can survive the night's horrors!

As you can see in the above screenshot, I made my little shelter by digging out a cave in the side of a hill. I recommend doing that because it's quicker.

You'll also notice the health bar, so in Survival mode you can die! EEK! ;)

Furthermore, you can start gathering some resources, with which you can only build at this stage. In the desktop version, you can craft all kinds of stuff, like weapons, doors, furniture, traps, etc. I'm sure these will be added to the game as new versions get released! (Hopefully!)

With this version you have a limited range of blocks that you can place, but I'm sure this list will also keep growing as time goes by:

As you can see, you have an unlimited supply of most of the blocks and items, but some of them you have to gather in your adventures.

I was lucky and survived my first night :) I did face a few zombies, but that wasn't too hard:

Anyway, this is a really good little time waster, and the promise of more updates to expand the features of the game means it'll keep on getting better and better. (I'll keep everyone posted on the updates as they happen!)

One thing I haven't tried out though, is joining some friends in a multiplayer game. If you have, feel free to leave some comments on how that is! Also, if you've build a masterpiece, and would like it to be featured on this blog, please let me know, I'd love to show off some of your hard work here :D

Time to go build a basement for my house! (will post some screen shots of that later!)

Till next time!

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Nintendo Entertainment System (aka NES) Emulator

I'm going to cut right to the chase. See the below screen shots:

Yes, your eyes aren't deceiving you! I was playing Super Mario Brothers on my phone! To do something like that, you need something that we call an emulator, and together with that, you need the actual ROMs, which are the games themselves.

The emulator I'm using here is a very nice, and most importantly, free one called John NES Lite (NES Emulator).

Get it here.

The free version works just like the paid for one, but it is ad supported.

It includes several customization options. For example, you can hold the phone portrait or landscape, you can alter the size of the buttons on screen, you can take screen shots, etc.

Now the only thing you need to actually play some games on it, would be the games themselves. I am not sure how the copyrights and that kinda stuff works for games on the NES. I take it, if you own the game, you can download it without worrying.

To get some games, simply google "nes roms", download the roms, copy them to your phone, and the app should automatically scan your phone for new games :)

Ahh, nostalgia! Enjoy!

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Android games on Humbe Indie Bundle

If you don't know what the Humble Indie Bundle is, allow me to tell you :)

Firstly, Indie is an abbreviation for Independent Developer. That means it is someone, or a small team, who, in their spare time, writes apps and games. These guys do amazing work, and it feels really good supporting them, as they put in many many hours of time and effort into creating awesome apps and games.

Now, the Humble Indie Bundle has a very unique concept. That is, YOU decide how much you're willing to pay for the specific bundle they have going on at the time. Be it $0.10, or like Notch (the developer of MineCraft) did once, $4096 - it remains up to you.

You can then even decide where your money goes to, be it the developers, a tip for the guys arranging the bundle, or some charities, or split up any which way between the three!

Another bonus is if you pay more than the average, you usually get a free game thrown in. I have also seen on several occasions that as the bundle's closing date gets closer, they add in more games!

I just bought Edge, Osmos, Anomaly and World of Goo for a very reasonable price (I did, after all, decide on how much I wanted to pay).

I'm busy downloading them, and will do a review on each one as I get around to it.

So, if you also wanna get into this amazing special, head over to http://www.humblebundle.com/ and support these awesome guys! You have 5 days left to do so!

The other awesome part is that these games are cross-platform!! So even if you don't have an Android phone yet, you can still get them on your Windows PC, your Mac as well as Linux.

Till next time!

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Game Review - Game Dev Story

I first saw this game on our iPad - I downloaded the free version, but wasn't prepared to pay a few dollars for it - but when it came out for $0.10 on the Android Market, I couldn't resist!

The whole idea behind the game is that you are a game developing company. With that comes doing research, hiring staff, training and leveling up the staff, doing contracts, going to gaming conferences, and, most importantly, creating games :)

You start the game by starting your game development company, and a small office with only a few employees. Also, at first, you can only develop games for the PC.

Tapping anywhere on the screen opens up the menu, from where you can do all kinds of stuff, like start development for a new game, hire, fire, train and level up your staff, check out your statistics, etc.

When you develop a new game, you get to choose a few options for it, like which platform, the genre, type, and also the direction (for example, you can allocate extra money towards how quickly you develop the game, or even double the whole budget to increase all kinds of stats for the game)

As the game progresses, several companies release consoles, which you can then buy a license and develop for. The licenses get quite expensive, but can mean you make lots more money, since they hold a much bigger market share. I like how the consoles have names like "Play Status" and "Microx 480" :)

You start with only a few options for Genre, but as your staff gets more skilled, you unlock more Genres to choose from. Each Genre you also level on its own, by using it with a suitable Game Type. A few examples for Genres are "RPG", "Action", "Shooter", etc.

Then you have a few Game Types - these can include options like "War", "Robot" and even "Swimming".

Obviously not all Genres and Types go together, but that doesn't mean you can't give it a shot anyway!

Next you select the Direction for the game:

This can improve your game, but at greater cost. Usually I select the Budget+ option if I can afford it.

Lastly, you can allocated more points in certain aspects of the game, like Realism, Cuteness or Game World:

(Hint: From what I've seen, you get more points for the Direction of the game whenever you level one of the Genres or Types to Level 5...)

After you've selected the parameters for the game you're developing, your team will get to work. Now it's mainly a case of sitting back and watch what they do. Each staff member have 4 stats, namely Program, Scenario, Graphics and Sound. As they develop the game, they add points to each of the 4 areas of the game.

In the process, they inevitably add bugs as well, which needs to get sorted out before you ship the game (or, if you want, you can ship the game with bugs and all!)

At certain stages of the game, you can select specific employees to focus on a specific area of the game, for example Graphics or Sound.

Here you can see the team hard at work:

Every once in a while, one of your staff members will ask if he/she can attempt to boost one of the aspects of the game - this has a certain percentage to succeed - if they fail, you add a whole lot of bugs to the game, which means it takes a bit longer to get finished.

You can, however, use some research points to increase the percentage of success with a boost attempt. (Research points you get as your team figures stuff out, and so on - it happens pretty much automatically)

I usually just do it, because fixing bugs at the end of development, gives you more research points (which you use to level up your staff, among others...) - so in my opinion, it's a win-win.

That's basically it, you carry on until your game has been completed, give it a name, and hope it sells. 

There's a few things you can do to help make your game better - you can, for example, buy "items" from the traveling salesman who makes an appearance every now and again. Items cost 30 research points to use, and can boost one of the aspects of your game.

There's also bad stuff that can happen, like blackouts, which causes you lose some points in your current game:

It can also happen that a rival gaming company is developing a similar game to yours, which means fewer sales.

You can advertise as well, which costs money, but increases your fan base (your fan base even ages as time goes by, so you lose some, and get some new ones).

Then there's contracts you can do for a quick buck, and even the annual GameDex (gaming conference) and Gaming awards!

For a small game like this, there's definitely lots of aspects to keep you coming back for more!

This is probably the game I'm playing most at the moment - it's lots of fun, and well worth the money in my opinion! You can always try out the demo of course, but I'm sure you won't be sorry if you buy the full version - it's selling for $3.00 or so, I was very lucky to have paid only $0.10 - but knowing what I know now, I'd buy it for the full price as well!

Get it here

Till next time!

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Lots of apps for $0.10

This is just a quick post, for those who didn't know, Google is pushing 10 billion app downloads, and with that they have 8-12 apps everyday marked down to only $0.10! That's R0.80 for us South Africans!

I've bought several already, so lots of reviews that will be coming in the next couple of weeks!

My favourite at the moment - Game Dev Story - get it here

Stay tuned!

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Lots of FREE, PREMIUM GAMES

Please have a look at this screen shot:

Yes, you're seeing it correctly. On the Samsung Galaxy S2, via the Samsung App Market, all of these games have finally come to the S2 for free as well!

Here's the list:

• Assassin's Creed
• Hero of Sparta
• Modern Combat 2
• Brother in Arms 2
• Avatar
• Dungeon Hunter (I'm busy downloading this one :)
• Spiderman
• Ganstar Miami Vindication

I'll try to go through them all eventually! Like I said, I'm busy getting Dungeon Hunter, will let you guys know what I think of it!

EDIT: Dungeon Hunter, sadly, appears to only be a demo :( They shouldn't say Free, when it is, in fact, NOT FREE. GRRR - will let you know about the others...

If you didn't know this before, these games weren't available on the S2 (only the normal Galaxy), but it looks like they've finally updated them all to be compatible with the Galaxy S2!

Sheesh, wish I weren't so busy :(

Will keep you posted! Till next time!

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Game Review: Asphalt 6: Adrenaline Part 2

This is only going to be a short post regarding the very awesome Asphalt 6: Adrenaline, which is available on the Samsung App Market for free (for the first 300000 downloads that is!).

If you haven't downloaded the game yet, you better do it, I'm sure a sweet title like this one will be very popular, and the allocated free copies will get claimed real soon!

Then, I've already covered my first few minutes of the game, and only did the normal racing game mode (see that post here).

I just did a quick career elimination race. How that basically works is there is a timer that counts down, and every time the clock reaches 0:00, the racer who is last gets eliminated.

Once again you must place at least 3rd to be able to continue, but I had a luck and came in first on my first elimination game.

By winning the races, I unlocked a few more stuff, like a tuning kit, and a new car, the KTM X-Bow. Each race also has secondary objective, like scoring a certain amount of drifting points, and so on. Depending on how you fare, you get stars for each race, and these you use to unlock more cars and bikes.

Also, you can easily change the colour of your car, and as you go a long you unlock decals. See some details about the tuning and customization options in the screen shots below:

Very fun game, will do some more coverage when I've played some more!

Stay tuned!

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Game Review: Asphalt 6: Adrenaline Part 1

This is going to be my first full review of a big game on my Galaxy S2. If you're also lucky enough to have a Samsung Galaxy S2, then you can download this very awesome title from the Samsung App Market.

It appears to install quickly, but as with most of Gameloft's games, the installation is only the installer for the game. This one is a whopping 563MB download - so take care if you're using your cell network's data connectivity, and get charged as much as we do here in South Africa!

Ok, now to get to the actual game - at the time of writing this post, Asphalt 6 is available for free, and it's a full featured title. Here are some screen shots:

Now, you have to admit, these are very awesome looking graphics for a phone! Luckily the Galaxy S2 has the hardware capable of running games like this.

Anyway, I have only played the game for a few races, and this first part of the review will cover what I've experienced so far.

You start off the game with 3 cars in your garage - a Mini Cooper, Nissan 370Z and a Fiat Abarth, but there's lots more to unlock.

There are several game modes available, and I only played a few normal races so far, will cover the others as soon as I've done some!

The controls are really easy, and you can customize it as well. You drive the car by tilting the phone in the direction you wish to turn, and with the default control scheme the accelerator is on automatic. If you tap on the screen on the left you brake, and tapping on the right activates your nitro boost.

There are also different camera positions available, which is quite nice.

I was quite surprised to see Cape Town as one of the available tracks, and since I live here, I decided to drive there first :) - I was shocked to see snow, something we never have haha!

Each track has various shortcuts, and there are bonuses you can collect to, for example, recharge your nitro's charge.

Anyway, the graphics are really cool, and the Galaxy S2 really handles the game well. The phone does get a bit warmer, cause I'm sure pumping out graphics like this is quite hardware intensive!

While racing you can knock-out the other drivers, which gives you a cash bonus at the end of the race, but they're not out of the race completely though, it just buys you a few more seconds.

To "win" a race, you must place at least 3rd, and with your winnings you can buy new cars, apply decals and upgrade your cars as well - I have only unlocked one car so far, but haven't even started with the tuning and so on - will let you know how that goes!

So far I'm very impressed, and I see it even has multiplayer, both Local and Online. You also have a career mode, with lots of other cars and bikes you can unlock as you complete races.

The sound is also very cool, and a woman commentator keeps things interested with comments about your driving and close calls, etc.

This is a big game, so I'm going to stretch out this review over a few parts - I must admit, I look forward to review it completely - so far I'm very impressed! Not only by the game itself, but also by the Galaxy S2's capabilities in running it so smoothly!

Will keep you posted!

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