Wednesday, July 18, 2012

Unlimited Buffet, Now With Limitations

I'm a little under the weather in a facial sense today, so I'm going with the Golden Corral approach today: lots of different items in one post, and hopefully they taste better than the fried shrimp.

First off, on the game front, there are two recent iOS games I want to mention. The first is Tiny Wings 2.0, the sequel to the incredibly charming and brilliantly designed game by Andreas Illiger. An entirely wonderful trailer came out a few weeks ago, so I was very much looking forward to the release. Then Illiger surprised everyone by releasing the game as an update to the original--for free.

Illiger noted in a blog post (which I unfortunately can't find right now) that his close friends thought he was crazy for doing this. He said it was done in appreciation for how the purchasers of Tiny Wings had helped change his life for the better (which is a tremendous gesture on his part). In addition, though, it was sheer genius in a business sense.

Why is that sheer genius? Because at the same time, he introduced an HD version for the new iPad, and I'm guessing that almost everyone who had the old version was so pleased to get a free upgrade that (if they had an iPad) they immediately purchased the iPad version as well. For $2.99.

There's a new mode where you race against other birds (which is quite fun), and in the HD version, split-screen multiplayer is available. And it's all as incredibly charming as the first game.

Both Eli 10.11 and I have also been playing a ton of  Flick Home Run! HD in the last week or so. It's a simple game--a baseball comes toward you, and you flick your finger to hit it--but it's utterly addictive. The backgrounds are interesting, the animation is flawless, and the baseballs have a wacky variety that is consistently interesting. Plus, and this is always important for a simple game like the skill upgrade system is pitch-perfect (that's a bad pun, all right).

Once we returned from Detroit, I've resumed playing Penny Arcade's On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness Episode 3, and I continue to be impressed with how interesting and funny the game is on a continuing basis.

Okay, that turned out to be a buffet with only one type of food. I'm a little low on fuel today, but will recover quickly.

Site Meter