FingerGaming

Touchgrind and Labyrinth creator Illusion Labs has debuted its latest App Store effort — the table-top soccer sim Foosball HD ($2.99).

Foosball HD’s key gameplay component is its head-to-head multiplayer mode, which allows up to four players to compete using a single iPad. One or two players control a series of levers on each side of the table, with the object being to spin the characters on the game board so that they knock a ball into the opponent’s goal.

Illusion Labs claims that Foosball HD offers a great way to show off your iPad, as the game features realistic physics and graphics that use the OpenGL ES 2 shaders “to the max” (righteous bro, tubular). Foosball HD also includes a single-player mode that pits players against an AI opponent.

Tags: foosball hd, freeverse, iPad, Multiplayer, Sport

After tackling sports ranging from bowling to basketball to fishing, App Store developer Freeverse adds another entry to its popular Flick series with Flick Baseball Pro ($2.99), a 3D baseball sim for the iPhone and iPod Touch.

Flick Baseball Pro includes 34 teams, though you’ll likely want to check out the team creation feature, which allows players to customize team stats and uniforms.

For those in the mood for a lengthy play experience, Flick Baseball Pro’s season mode can include up to 165 games, though you’ll have the option of simulating any game that you don’t feel like watching or playing.

Flick Baseball Pro also features Plus+ integration for online leaderboards and unlockable awards.

(Side note: if you’d prefer a baseball sim with a little more depth to its gameplay, Konami released MLB Power Pros Touch 2010 ($7.99) earlier today. Despite its cutesy exterior, the Power Pro franchise boasts a really solid adaptation of the sport.)

Tags: flick baseball pro, freeverse, sports

Rating:

• Price: $4.99 (Download here)
• Version: 1.2
• Official Site: Freeverse, Inc.

Anyone who has been gaming for a while has almost certainly experienced The Itch — that compulsive desire to complete just one more quest, to finish just one more turn, or to finally get that last item you were looking for.  Warpgate may look like a new entry into the time-honored space trader game genre, but once you spend time with it, you realize its true nature is a vector for The Itch.

Unlike many entries in said genre, Warpgate is not a very deep game. In many ways, this makes sense; the average person pulling out their iPhone on the bus is looking for an entirely different experience than someone sitting in front of their PC with a flight stick in their hands.

Combat is simplified to the point of picking a target and pressing the fire button, and while trading is important in the beginning of the game, after a couple of hours your interaction with the galactic economy mostly boils down to choosing which planet is best to offload your loot.

The only genre staple I really found myself missing was the ship customization. While you are able to buy new ships and change your weapons, that’s the extent of your options; you won’t be swapping ship components, recruiting crew members, or finding equipment that alters your playstyle. In most cases, buying new equipment felt more like a progression of upgrades than actual customization.

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Tags: freeverse, reviews, strategy, warpgate

After releasing Flick Bowling 2 ($2.99) earlier this week, Freeverse has launched Flick Bowling 2 Free, an ad-supported but otherwise fully functional free version of its sports sim sequel.

Freeverse takes an unusual approach with its Flick Bowling follow-up, adding a new story mode that “takes you on a journey through time and space to defeat the insidious Baron Von Schtopwatch.”

With bowling.

Playable characters include a number of famous historical figures, all of whom were apparently secret bowlers. Cleopatra? Totally a bowler. So was Napoleon. And Genghis Khan’s first order of business after forming the Mongol Empire was to build the world’s first bowling alley. True story!

Both the free and paid versions of Flick Bowling 2 include Plus+ network leaderboards and unlockable awards.

Tags: bowling, Free Games, freeverse, sports

Prominent iPhone publisher Ngmoco has acquired multiplatform developer Freeverse (Skee-Ball, NBA Hotshot) and just closed a round of funding worth $25 million, which CEO Neil Young tells FingerGaming sister site Gamasutra will help the company “scale as quickly as possible” to its exclusively free-to-play business model.

The series C round closed at the end of last year, and was led by Institutional Venture Partners. IVP general partner Sandy Miller will be joining Ngmoco’s board of directors. Previous Ngmoco investors Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Norwest Venture Partners, and Maples Investment also participated.

“We’ve been thinking about how to accelerate our strategic growth though acquisitions of companies and intellectual property, and Freeverse was really at the top of our list,” Young told Gamasutra in advance of the formal announcement.

The feeling is mutual: Freeverse was the first developer to adopt Ngmoco’s “Plus+” social network into its games, and Freeverse VP Colin Lynch Smith told Gamasutra the relationship between the two companies has been “like the perfect dating situation.”

Ngmoco recently said it is abandoning the traditional paid application model entirely, in favor of games that are freely downloadable but which include the option for players to buy additional paid content.

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Tags: freeverse, Industry News, iPhone, ngmoco

App Store publisher Freeverse announced today that it has sold more than five million games and applications for the iPhone and iPod Touch.

Freeverse’s most successful App Store titles to date are Flick Fishing and Skee-Ball, each of which surpassed one million sales units last year. Both titles have made several appearances in Apple’s top paid app charts, and both remain consistent sellers months after their initial release.

Other popular games in Freeverse’s catalog include the slot car racing title SlotZ Racer, basketball free throw sim NBA Hotshot, and licensed stock car racer Days of Thunder.

“We’re excited to be hitting such a major milestone, and want to take the opportunity to thank the development teams and partners who have created such compelling content,” said Freeverse president Ian Lynch Smith. “The iPhone has changed the way we think about and interact with games, and we want to keep learning and innovating as we strive for the next milestone.”

Tags: flick fishing, freeverse, Industry News, nba hotshot, skee-ball

With its smash hit Skee-Ball ranking as the App Store’s top seller more than three months after its initial release, developer Freeverse has launched another arcade mainstay for the iPhone — the free throw simulator NBA Hotshot ($0.99).

You may also know NBA Hotshot as “that basketball game” — it often sits directly next to the skee-ball lanes at any decent arcade. You’re given four basketballs to throw at a hoop behind a plexiglass wall. Balls you throw will continue to roll back at you down a ramp until time expires.

NBA Hotshot includes both a Classic Mode and a more challenging Three Strikes mode, which focuses on accuracy. The game also features Plus+ leaderboards, a prize gallery, and multiplayer support for up to five players in every gameplay mode.

Tags: arcade, basketball, freeverse, nba hotshot, skee-ball, sports

In a new postmortem feature at FingerGaming sister site Gamasutra, Freeverse programmer and designer Justin Ficarrotta explained how staying true to a licensed game’s source material is important even in smaller iPhone games.

Freeverse is the developer behind the iPhone title Top Gun, an Afterburner-like game based on the classic 1980s Tom Cruise movie. Ficarotta explained what went right and what went wrong in the creation of the game, and some positives and negatives stemmed from working with licensed material.

Ficarrotta said it was extremely important to the development team that the game featured the Kenny Loggins song Highway to the Danger Zone:

“Paramount got us the rights to cover Danger Zone and even recorded a cover for us. And shallow as that may sound, this alone can be the difference between people giving Top Gun a look or not giving it a rat’s ass at all. I’m dead serious. Look up reviews of every Top Gun game ever made and every one of them mentions its lack of the song. Some reviews even list it as one of the overall ‘cons’ at the summary of the review.

Ficarrotta said that the rights to the song weren’t actually locked down until near the end of the project.

“While Paramount negotiated for the license to use a re-recording of Danger Zone, we played things touch-and-go while heading into the twilight of our project — until our producer Bruce got word that Paramount had secured the rights and commissioned a cover. It was a glorious day at Freeverse. Not only was the song added, we shoved it into overdrive by adding an easter egg by which, if your pilot’s name was ‘Danger Zone’, the game played nothing BUT Danger Zone.”

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Tags: Action, freeverse, Industry News, postmortem, shooter, top gun

Freeverse, publisher of popular iPhone titles like Flick Fishing and SlotZ Racer, announced today that it has partnered with ngmoco’s Plus+ social gaming network.

Freeverse plans to integrate Plus+ functionality into all of its upcoming App Store releases, starting with the 3D space trading title Warpgate. Flick Fishing will also receive a Plus+ update in the near future.

ngmoco’s Plus+ Network adds an Xbox Live-like social infrastructure to supported iPhone titles. Plus+ users are able to manage friends lists, issue challenges, and earn awards for in-game accomplishments.

Though similar iPhone social gaming platforms like Chillingo’s Crystal and AGON Online are competing for their share of the market, the combined support of prominent App Store publishers ngmoco and Freeverse gives the Plus+ Network significant exposure and a large install base. Flick Fishing boasts more than one million users worldwide, while ngmoco’s Rolando was honored by Apple as one of the best releases in the App Store’s first year of operation.

Tags: flick fishing, freeverse, ngmoco, plus+, warpgate

[Here, Leigh Alexander at FingerGaming sister site Gamasutra talks to iPhone developers Ngmoco and Freeverse to find out just what all of the upgrades part and parcel with Apple's new iPhone 3GS could mean for developers, tackling speculation that it could create a schism in the App Store.]

All in all, it looks like iPhone game developers have got a lot of new options and opportunities since the launch of Apple’s newest, the 3GS.

The “S” stands for “speed,” the company said, but beyond the celerity boost, the 3.0 software upgrade notably adds the ability to take microtransactions. The 3GS also supports the OpenGL ES 2.0 graphics API, which allows for richer visuals — leading to some speculation that OpenGL ES 2.0 could splinter the App Store’s library.

Faster processing, better graphics and different monetization models mean the iPhone game space will only continue to refine and diversify — but the upgrade certainly raises interesting questions about how the end user will continue experiencing the titles.

What will it mean if there are some games that only 3GS users can play and older-gen iPhone users can’t? Are we seeing the beginnings of a schism in the space?

“I don’t see it as a schism or a hard break — it’s an extension of the OS, and it adds some capability that that particular class of devices can use,” Ngmoco co-founder Joe Keene tells Gamasutra.

“It’s always very tempting when you see a new piece of hardware to imagine the ways you could build an entirely new experience around this feature or that feature — it stimulates new creative thinking, and that will emerge,” he adds. “And I think as that market goes, it may make sense to be releasing titles truly only optimized for [3GS].”

But Keene says thanks to the advantages Apple has already been offering with its rapidly-emerging platform, it makes sense for Ngmoco, known for successful titles like Dropship and Rolando, to continue developing games that address all its variants: The original iPhone, the 3G and the 3GS. “It’s conceivable some of our games will have features accessible only through the more advanced hardware, but we don’t see a schism coming,” he says. “We think it remains a fairly unitary platform.”

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Tags: app store, Apple, freeverse, Interviews, iphone 3gs, ngmoco