FingerGaming

ngmoco brings news that HandCircus’ awaited puzzle-platformer Rolando ($9.99) is now available at the iTunes App Store. ngmoco’s most ambitious iPhone project to date, Rolando features interactive environments, physics-based puzzles, and a control setup that takes advantage of the hardware’s tilt and multi-touch functions.

Rolando includes 36 levels spread across four worlds. And it’s cute! Just look how cute it is, seriously. More screenshots and a handful of trailers can be found at Rolando’s official website.

Tags: handcircus, ngmoco, platformer, Puzzle, rolando

Delivering the news through ngmoco’s Twitter account, the studio’s CEO Neil Young revealed that surgery game Dr. Awesome, Microsurgeon M.D. will be available on the App Store next week.

Presented with Trauma Center-esque art and Qix-like gameplay, the title enables players to admit contacts from their address book as patients, and operate on them.

The studio plan to follow up Dr. Awesome’s debut with the release of Dropship and Rolando, the latter priced at $9.99, shortly afterwards.

If you didn’t catch if before, here’s a trailer for Dropship:

ngmoco currently has five iPhone and iPod Touch games planned for the holiday season, with 14 titles currently in development.

Tags: dr awesome microsurgeon md, dropship, ngmoco, rolando

With Rolando’s release only a month away, developer Hand Circus and publisher ngmoco posted a new trailer for Rolando, their upcoming platform/puzzle hybrid reminiscent of Sony’s LocoRoco. Unlike ngmoco’s “micro-priced” titles like Maze Finger (free) and Topple, Rolando will sell for $9.99, says VC news weblog VentureBeat.

The game’s feature list follows:

• Interactive Environments - Manipulate more than a dozen gizmos, including lifts, catapults and bomb dispensers
• Fun with Physics - Rolandos can bounce on trampolines, push blocks and nudge bombs and sleeping Rolandos
• Rich, Intuitive Controls - use Tilt and Multi-touch to guide the Rolandos and manipulate their world
• Signature Art Style- Visuals by pop-culture illustrator Mikko Walamies and music by renowned break-beat artist Mr. Scruff
• iSave and iTunes compatible - Progress is saved and restored automatically when play is stopped or interrupted
• Global Leader Boards - Compare scores and Achievements with other players online
• Epic Adventure - Four unique worlds and 36 engaging levels

Tags: hand circus, ngmoco, platformer, Puzzle, rolando

With the success of the iPhone (and the iPod Touch, which can also access the App Store), there has been a huge influx of games to the platform, which is currently the best-selling U.S. consumer mobile phone.

At a recent game-related briefing in San Francisco, Apple’s senior director of marketing for iPhone, Bob Borchers, showcased a range of upcoming iPhone game titles, and laid out his company’s vision of why the uptake has been so swift.

Though most people think of the iPhone as the single target platform, the iPod Touch also works with the vast majority of applications. Borcher noted: “If you’re a hardware developer you’ve got two great platforms to develop for.” On top of that, Apple has “worked very hard to develop [the SDK] in a very comprehensive way.”

While Sega’s Super Monkey Ball, one of the launch games for the App Store and a 500,000 unit seller, was an early indicator of what the platform is capable of — Borcher described it as “a posterchild of what’s possible” — he believes that “things have gone so much further than that.”

Of course, this is true in terms of choice as well, perhaps making it more difficult to sell that many in today’s iPhone game market. There are over 8,000 applications available on the store in 20 different categories; according to Borcher, over 200 million applications were downloaded in the first 100 days of availability, from July 10, 2008.

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Tags: ea mobile, ferrari gt evolution, gameloft, hand circus, ngmoco, rolando

There’s new content over at ngmoco that shows them publishing 3 new, upcoming iPhone games. There are new screenshots, videos, and information about all three games. One game, which you may have heard of, is Rolando. Hand Circus announced today their highly-anticipated platform/adventure game will be published by ngmoco today.

The second game is Maze Finger, which will contain 1000 fast-paced mazes that you explore with your finger. The third game is called Topple, which has you stacking various shapes of different colors and weights to see how high of a stack you can create without toppling it all over.

Both Maze Finger and Topple have been submitted to Apple for approval, so they should show up in the App Store soon. Rolando, on the other hand, is slated for “Holiday 2008″, even though the developer wanted to release the game during the summer.

Tags: adventure, hand circus, maze finger, ngmoco, platform, rolando, topple