H.Grenade Games has announced its premiere title for the iPod Touch and iPhone: a synesthetic shooter called Circuit Strike.One. Developer Shay Casey describes the project as a team-up of Geometry Wars and Asteroids, only with faster gameplay, a bigger playfield, and a Rez-like aesthetic.
It’s the last part that makes the game sound especially appealing — a music visualizer is displayed in the background during gameplay, and in-game actions will change the soundtrack’s tempo, add fills, and trigger appropriate background visuals. Other gameplay features include:
Bullet-time Slow-Motion Game Mechanic
Time + Skill Based Difficulty
Chained Explosions, Near Misses + Time based Bonuses
Touchscreen Auto-Targeting for Beginners + Free Look for Advanced Players
Accelerometer or On-Screen Analog Stick for Movement
Sounds good so far! The gallery below contains the first batch of officially released screenshots. A gameplay video will be released in the next few days.
Give the world’s developers a new platform to develop for, and within hours, someone’s going to produce a clone of Pong. Perhaps it will be Pong with upgraded graphics, or Pong with bonus blood and gore. Eventually, one programmer may get particularly ambitious and develop an adaptation of Snake.
When it comes to new-generation clone applications of 1960s and 70s-era video games, however, few developers are willing to take on the task of duplicating Spacewar! Originally developed for the PDP-1 computer system, SpaceWar! predated the initial release of Pong, making it the very first computer game to ever be released.
Though Pong, Snake, and other classics have seen iPhone adaptations in the months since the App Store’s debut, the platform lacked a proper SpaceWar! port up until this week’s release of Space War Classic ($0.99). Players use a touchscreen-based control scheme to thrust, turn, and fire missles at a computer-controlled opponent (or a second player, in linked network play) while orbiting a star. Classic stuff!
More information and a gameplay video can be found on the developer’s website.
Studio Radiolaris’ first iPhone release, Radio Flare ($4.99), has hit the iTunes App Store. Radio Flare offers up horizontally scrolling shooter gameplay with an interactive soundtrack that melds with the on-screen action.
Radio Flare’s takes the lock-on shooting mechanic found in console games like Rez and Panzer Dragoon and adapts it to fit the context of a touch-based shooter — one finger moves your ship, while another can be used to target multiple enemies in a single swipe. Hit enemies who are desynchronized with the background music and you’ll earn extra points and radio flares, which must be collected to advance to the next level.
1UP.com’s retro gaming guru Jeremy Parish brings news that Compile’s classic vertically scrolling shooter Aleste ($6.99) has recently been released for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Aleste was the first in a series of shooters to be released across several consoles in the late ’80s and early ’90s. Gamers from the 16-bit era may recall the franchise from famously excellent releases like M.U.S.H.A. on the Sega Genesis and Space Megaforce for the Super NES.
The release is significant, as this new version of Aleste appears to be running via emulation software. All original aspects of the game are preserved — including the original MSX BIOS bootup screen — with an iPod/iPhone-specific control overlay added to the bottom of the gameplay screen.
However, as Parish notes in his blog post, Aleste on the iPhone forces players to adapt to a tilt-based control scheme. Considering that Aleste is a twitch-based shooter that requires precise input, this is unfortunate at best. With any luck, the iPhone will continue to enjoy emulated classics in the future, but hopefully Aleste’s control issues will be addressed in subsequent releases.
ngmoco has lowered the price of all of its currently available App Store titles, in promotion of the upcoming release of the puzzle-platformer Rolando. Discounted titles include ngmoco’s most recent releases, Dropship and Dr. Awesome, along with the company’s previously released puzzler Topple. New prices are as follows:
ngmoco follows up last week’s release of Dr. Awesome with Dropship ($1.99), an arcade shooter that features vector-styled 3D environments and dual-analog touch controls.
Gameplay in Dropship appears to be somewhat akin to the arcade classic Defender in concept, as players are charged with destroying waves of enemies and rescuing crew members stranded in alien territory. Dropship features 18 missions in its Campaign mode, with more to become available in the future as downloadable content. Three additional levels are available for download at the time of the game’s release.
In an interesting twist similar to Dr. Awesome’s personalized patient feature, Dropship includes the ability to import names from a player’s Contacts list. Friends and family members will appear in-game as distressed humanoids in need of rescue.
While developer PomPom Games already has Astro Tripper — a remake of its own PC/Mac game Space Tripper — coming to Europe’s PlayStation Network service next week, the studio also plans to bring the original Space Tripper to iPhone next year, too.
Though PomPom hasn’t revealed any details on what it will include or change with the Uridium-style 3D shoot’em-up, mobile gaming site Pocket Gamer dug up the above silent video indicating tilt controls and the ability to flip your craft with a tap on the touchscreen.
The original game, released in 2001, included 14 levels broken into four different areas, with dozens of enemy types scattered throughout the stages and a giant boss waiting at the end of each world.
After revealing the game just two weeks ago, Gameloft has released Brothers in Arms: Hour of Heroes ($9.99), a 3D, third-person shooter placing players in the role of a WWII soldier in the 101st Airborne Division.
Players use a virtual directional pad to move around their character, swiping the touchscreen to look around and aim (alternate controls are provided). Elements like ducking for cover and jumping over obstacles are handled automatically by the game.
Gameloft’s store description for Hour of Heroes provides the following details:
14 missions and 3 campaigns: Normandy, Ardennes, and Tunisia
Drive a 4×4 vehicle or a Sherman tank and use a wide range of weapons (bazooka, sniper rifle, machine guns, etc.)
Use the accelerometer function to launch grenades and the touch screen to shoot at enemies.
The game looks a lot like the Brothers in Arms title released for the N-Gage and later the Nintendo DS, so a lot of the content might seem familiar if you’ve played those versions. The iPhone-specific additions, like the accelerometer/grenade feature, are nice, though!
Fernlightning’s first-person shooter Cube (free) is finally on the App store, over six weeks after the company submitted the iPhone/iPod Touch game to Apple for review.
Billed as a technology demo, the opensource title is available for free and includes multiplayer support, in-game editing, cooperative editing, demo recording, and more.
Some technical details on the Cube engine:
Cube is a landscape-style engine that pretends to be an indoor FPS engine, which combines very high precision dynamic occlusion culling with a form of geometric mipmapping on the whole world for dynamic LOD for configurable fps and graphic detail.
Most of the engine design is targeted at reaching feature richness through simplicity of structure and brute force, rather than finely turned complexity.
Cube’s sequel, Sauerbraten, can be downloaded for free on the PC.
Normally $5.99, Rocking Pocket Games top-down helicopter shooter, Blue Skies Air Force Academy ($0.99 - Free Demo) has dropped to 99 cents. Blue Skies features 30 levels, powerups to aid your fight against blimps, helicopters, jets, and tanks, 10 different weapons, and a story.
In our review of Blue Skies, we gave the game 4 out of 5 stars, finding it a fun shooter that looks great and controls great using the accelerometer.
A gameplay video of Blue Skies can be watched below:
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1UP.com’s retro gaming guru Jeremy Parish 
ngmoco has lowered the price of all of its currently available App Store titles, in promotion of the upcoming release of the puzzle-platformer 
