Category Archives: Backflip Studios

NinJump Gets iPad Version and a Planned Content Expansion

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NinJump Gets iPad Version and a Planned Content Expansion is a post from: Best Iphone Apps Review Website

Backflip Studios are going all-out in unleashing their lineup of freemium games onto the App Store. After launching Buganoids on both the iPhone/iPod touch and iPad last week, Backflip Studios is now going through their back catalog of games released this summer, with NinJump now getting an iPad version, appropriately called NinJump HD.

NinJump HD is the same game as the iPhone/iPod touch version, just now with graphics and gameplay optimized for the iPad. The game really does look much more detailed and crisp than the original version did scaled up to 2X. As well, for players who may have been playing on their iPad and may occasionally have missed a jump due to tapping on the blank part of the screen in 2X scaling, you won’t have this problem any more. While it may have been coincidental, I set a new high score the first time I played the iPad version.

Speaking of high scores, the game is similar to Buganoids where high scores are synchronized between the two versions, so you can track your high scores on whatever device you play on, as long as you use the same OpenFeint login. All the OpenFeint leaderboards are the same as the iPhone version, as evidenced by the over one million entries present before the iPad version was publicly available.

NinJump HD is currently free (with the possibility of being a paid download in the future, according to Backflip Studios), with $0.99 in-app purchase to remove ads, similar to other Backflip Studios freemium games. However, the game may go to paid at some point according to CEO Julian Farrior, so downloading it now is recommended. The gameplay is the same great addictive ninja jumping action that the iPhone version presented, just now in iPad form.

Backflip were also kind enough to drop some details on the future of NinJump. First, Android will be getting a free version of NinJump later this year. As well, a new paid version of NinJump will be released, expanding on what the original free version presented, featuring “new levels, enemies and other content, with plans to add frequent updates on a regular basis” according to Backflip Studios CEO Julian Farrior. NinJump fans could have a lot to look forward to in the coming months for their ninja jumping game of choice.

FREE!

NinJump – HD

iPad Only App – Designed for the iPad
Released: 2010-09-21 :: Category: Games / Adventure

[ NinJump Gets iPad Version and a Planned Content Expansion is a post from 148Apps ]


Buganoids Review

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Buganoids Review is a post from: Best Iphone Apps Review Website

Developer: Backflip Studios
Price: Free, with $0.99 In-App Purchase to Remove Ads
Version Reviewed: 1.0
Device Reviewed On: iPhone 3G, iPad

Graphics / Sound Rating: 4.2 out of 5 stars
Game Controls Rating: 4.15 out of 5 stars
Gameplay Rating: 4.25 out of 5 stars
Replay Value Rating: 4.1 out of 5 stars

Overall Rating: 4.18 out of 5 stars

Backflip Studios have taken this summer to experiment with the freemium model for their games – offering them for free download with $0.99 in-app purchases to remove banner ads. Their final summer release in this series of freemium games is Buganoids. The game is inspired, visually and gameplay-wise, by 1980s arcade games, by having you running around a circular planet shooting at bug enemies that spawn from the center of the planet. This means that you have to get used to running around the planet to get to where you can get a proper shot off, and to try to keep enemies from getting to the planet’s surface where they can charge at you and take you down.

Buganoids is quite fun, and nails the retro arcade experience perfectly. Maybe the best thing that can be said about Buganoids is how authentic it feels – if this game was released 25-30 years ago, there would be games we’d be playing today that were influenced by this. It nails all of the other conventions – powerups, bonus enemies, the 8-bit graphics. While Buganoids is not a universal app, the game does come in iPhone and iPad flavors, and syncs up your high scores between both versions via OpenFeint.

Buganoids suffers from the same problem that most games in a circular playing field do: aiming is a pain. Angles are difficult to figure out, and it can be a pain to figure out the aiming line on a moving enemy. It’s part of why games with circular playing fields never really took off – it’s hard to escape that awkward feeling of firing on a circular playing field. It’s part of why Galaga is much beloved to this day, and a game like Gyruss is far less remembered. Circular playing fields just aren’t as natural, and that awkwardness does permeate through Buganoids at times. As well, due to the game being split into two separate versions, you have to pay to remove ads on both your iPad and iPhone/iPod touch separately.

Buganoids, much like the other freemium Backflip releases this summer, is well worth a download, and it isn’t a huge fee to remove the ads. Pick up Buganoids if you like 80’s arcade games, and want to play something that feels like it was recently dug out of a box somewhere and ported to iOS.

FREE!

Buganoids HD

iPad Only App – Designed for the iPad
Released: 2010-09-16 :: Category: Games / Arcade

[ Buganoids Review is a post from 148Apps ]


Tunnel Shoot Review

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Tunnel Shoot Review is a post from: Best Iphone Apps Review Website

Developer: Backflip Studios
Price: $0.99
Version Reviewed: 1.1

Graphics / Sound Rating: 3.75 out of 5 stars
Game Controls Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
Gameplay Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Re-use / Replay Value Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

Overall Rating: 3.94 out of 5 stars

Tunnel Shoot is a new tunnel shooter (surprise, surprise!) developed by Backflip Studios (Paper Toss, Ragdoll Blaster) and Team Phobic (Bounce On). It’s a simple game, but a fun one, and showcases the talent of both developers.

In Tunnel Shoot, you pilot a ship down an endless, colorful, vector-drawn tunnel filled with obstacles and enemies. You tap to fire and two-finger-tap to release your bombs. Initially, you fire three bolts at a time; if you hold down the fire button, however, the game will slowly decrease your weapon to two, and then one, bolt. Your ship always moves forward, but the tilt controls allow you to circle around the entire tunnel.

The tunnel is filled with colorful, swirling arrays of geometric shapes. Shoot ‘em down and earn points, as well as releasing green gems, which can be scooped up for even more points. Hit one, however, and you’ll likely loose a life. As you progress through the tunnel the combinations of shapes become more complex, and it becomes more difficult to evade / destroy them.

The graphics are bright and crisp, though obviously better on higher-res displays. (Tunnel Shoot is universal; yay!) The soundtrack isn’t bad, either; nice and futuristic without being obnoxious. Tunnel Shoot tracks your high scores in-app and also features Plus+ integration for achievements and global leaderboards.

Overall, Tunnel Shoot is a fun, simple game. It’s a great casual shooter that’s easy to figure out, but very difficult to master. For $0.99, casual fans should get more than their money’s worth.

[ Tunnel Shoot Review is a post from 148Apps ]


Review: Graffiti Ball

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Review: Graffiti Ball is a post from: Best Iphone Apps Review Website

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

If Crayon Physics Deluxe is the Swiss Family Robinson treehouse of physics-based drawing games, then Graffiti Ball is a marble machine.

It’s not the elaborate, whimsical marble machine you once saw at the science museum as a kid, either, but the crude replica you constructed out of scrap metal and bricks and other odd parts you found strewn about the yard after you got back home.

There’s nothing ingenious, flashy, or even comely about it, but building a slope out of junk — in this case, an outdated, imprecise painting tool — and shifting it around until the ball rolls down it exactly how you planned just never seems to get old.

The catch to Graffiti Ball is that the player interacts with the ball’s trajectory by painting the stages. Brush your finger across the game board to spray-paint the path the ball will roughly follow, guiding it around obstacles represented as bad interpretations of graffiti art.

Then, push the button and see where it goes. It’s a touch unpredictable, even though the ball will follow the same trajectory every time. It’s reminiscent of pachinko, or one of those cabinets that were precursors to the pinball table, or that game where you drop a coin in the top and hope it falls where it’ll knock every other sucker’s misplayed coins into your bucket.

The real charm of Graffiti Ball, however, comes from lackadaisically sketching swirls into the screen, and scribbling out you and yours’ initials in a little grid. The brush tool is both a way to interact with the game and a way to ignore it. So when you get bored of painting ledges for your ball to bounce off of, you can just paint.

It may sound frivolous, but the option to doodle at whim really helps balance the matter-of-fact nature of playing with physics. If you get stumped by a puzzle, take a moment to draw a portrait of your cat, and you might find the ball rolls right off its tail into the target.

Some of the levels just beg to be messed around with. Who could resist giving the lizards little cigarettes and martini glasses, or turning a stupid-looking smiley face into the sketch of John Lennon from the album cover of Imagine?

Graffiti Ball is tough to resist, partly because it’s free — kind of. The ads are placed in such a prominent location that it’s nearly impossible to play without accidentally clicking on them, and after a time or two of being kicked out to the App Store, you’ll either delete the game or go ahead and pay the damned 99 cents.

It’s hard to feel used by a game that lets you build a marble machine and draw Godzilla attacking the Eiffel Tower, though.


Backflip Studios Releases Free Physics Puzzler Graffiti Ball

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Backflip Studios Releases Free Physics Puzzler Graffiti Ball is a post from: Best Iphone Apps Review Website

Paper Toss and Strike Knight developer Backflip Studios is back in the App Store with Graffiti Ball, a free physics-based puzzler with over 100 levels on offer.

Graffiti Ball plays similarly to titles like Crayon Physics Deluxe. Players must draw their own lines and slopes in order to guide a ball to the exit in each single-screen level.

As seen in the video below, though, the game’s freehand drawing tool allows players to be more creative in their puzzle solutions than what is allowed in other similar games. It’s probably not necessary to guide the ball to each level’s exit using a series of crudely-drawn dinosaurs, of course, but it makes your solutions a lot more fun to watch.


First Look: Strike Knight from Backflip Studios

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First Look: Strike Knight from Backflip Studios is a post from: Best Iphone Apps Review Website

At GDC this year we got a chance to take a look at a new game from Backflip Studios, Strike Knight. The game is a recreation of shuffleboard-type bowling you used to find in bars in decades past. The device in the app has a blue knight that never fails to make fun of missed shots.

The game offers both single player and multiplayer (pass and play) bowling. Take a look at the video for an idea of what the game looks like and how it plays.

Strike Knight will be submitted to the App Store next week, we should see it shortly after that.The game will be released free (ad-supported) much like Backflip Studios very popular Paper Toss.

Take a look at some screen shots after the jump.

Paper Toss

Category: Games / Simulation
Released: 2009-06-06
Price: FREE


Semi Secret and Backflip Studios Talk App Store Success at GDC

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Semi Secret and Backflip Studios Talk App Store Success at GDC is a post from: Best Iphone Apps Review Website

a-million-dollars

As you probably already know, GDC or the Game Developers Conference in San Fransisco is an annual conference at which game developer get together to share development, tools, tips and technologies. This year, independent development companies Semi Secret and Backflip Studios were quick to share just how successful their dive into the App Store has been. Between the two of them, they have 8 paid applications on the store.

Yesterday, co-founder of Semi Secret, Eric Johnson revealed to Pocket Biz that the company had sold 115,000 copies of their popular side-scroller adventure Canabalt. Whats interesting though is these download statistics he said were based upon Canabalt selling at the $2.99 price point over 5 months. He was also quick to estimate the ball-park piracy rate of Canabalt, which he put at 20 percent over those 5 months.

Similarly, Backflip Studio revealed it had generated $2.5 Million in around nine and a half months of being on the store. The company stated these figure were based on enjoying a staggering 22 Million downloads overall, revealing 17 Million of those came from just one of their App Store titles – Paper Toss. On a side note Backflip also announced mobile advertising is making them a substantial $1 Million in just six months and $379,000 in December last year, alone.


GDC: Backflip’s Farrior On iPhone Ad Sales, Free Versions

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GDC: Backflip’s Farrior On iPhone Ad Sales, Free Versions is a post from: Best Iphone Apps Review Website

farriorJulian Farrior, CEO of Backflip Studios, shared some of the company’s ups and downs after one year on the app store. He pushed the idea that free apps are an excellent way to drive revenue, but you can also employ some interesting tactics if you can predict the market.

One of Backflip’s apps is Paper Toss, a very popular ad-supported free game with about 400,000 impressions per month. So in the pre-holiday period they put a lot more third party ads in the game, compared to house ads which compel users to pay for Backflip’s non-free apps.

Then, during the holiday period when everyone’s in a buying frenzy, they switched it up, placing more house ads. The results were quite interesting. In the pre-holiday period they wound up making over $400,000 in that month on ads, and just under $90,000 as a result of their house ads. In the holiday period, they made over $250,000 that month in sales of their other apps, and about $140,000 in ads.

Lite versions are also popular among iPhone apps, and Farrior felt two ways about it – one of their games was greatly supported by a free Lite version, while the other was totally cannibalized.

Ragdoll Blaster was the title for which the Lite version helped – they had the good fortune to get featured by Apple, which gave them a lift of about 2,000 units per day. Releasing a Lite version afterward gave them another 2,000/day unit lift on top of that.

The game Harbor Havoc 3D though, did not benefit from a Lite version. “We thought we were pretty good at this game at this point,” said Farrior, “and launched Harbor Havoc 3D, and it didn’t really do anything.”

They launched the game, a twist on Flight Control, into a saturated market. “We thought we were building a better Flight Control, because it was a deeper game,” he said, “but I’m not sure you need a deeper Flight Control, in retrospect.” Farrior had pushed for press coverage too soon, because the app was rejected multiple times, which delayed the launch making his press effort wasted.

When they released a Lite version, it furthered the disaster. “With this version, it literally cut out sales in half,” he lamented. The game had four levels, which they considered four individual games. “When we gave away one of those, there’s just no reason to buy the game. All of that said, we’re going to repackage it as a free app.”

[This news item was written by Brandon Sheffield and originally appeared at FingerGaming sister site Gamasutra.]


Ragdoll Blaster 2

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Ragdoll Blaster 2 is a post from: Best Iphone Apps Review Website

Developer: Backflip Studios
Price: $2.99
Version Reviewed: 1.0

Graphics / Sound Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
Game Controls Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
Gameplay Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
Re-use / Replay Value Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Overall Rating: 4.38 out of 5 stars

Ragdoll Blaster 2 hit the app store a few days ago, and wow, is it one heck of an upgrade. Backflip Studios really stepped up to the plate in bringing new life into their Ragdoll series. The visual upgrades of this physics based sequel are evident as soon as you turn the game on. The polish of this title is evident, from start to finish.

Ragdoll Blaster 2 is a refreshing upgrade over the games largely popular predecessor. Gone are the doodle style graphics, instead there is a clean machinist style environment complete with various traps, doors, buttons, and puzzles. This does take the graphical appeal in another direction, but I don’t imagine anyone is feeling a shortage of doodle games in the app store.

With the inclusion of Plus+, you’ll be looking for the quickest way to shoot the poor defenseless cute little ragdoll into the target, ensuring a lower score then your friends. If you’re anything like me, you’ll be enjoying every minute of it as well.

The outstanding tutorial brings you right back into the simplistic and overly addicting game style. If this is your first time playing the ragdoll series, the learning curve is easy to master. The game mechanics are simple… aim your cannon; shoot a ragdoll, hit the target, move on to the next level, rinse, repeat. You’ll be greeted throughout the game with increasingly challenging obstacles in your path, making it necessary to use multiple ragdolls to achieve victory.

The game is broken down into specific rooms. Each room has a certain number of levels, and achievements are gained each time an entire room is completed. Each level provides a unique set of challenges to overcome. The game is certainly not easy, but there is a real since of accomplishment as you make your way through one of the over 150 levels available in Ragdoll Blaster 2. Trust me, there is plenty of game to play for your small investment.

There is an element of repetitiveness that comes from a puzzle game such as this though. There are plenty of bells and whistles to keep even the casual puzzle enthusiast interested, but if you are lukewarm in your interest of puzzle games, there is a slight chance you won’t find hours of continued entertainment from Ragdoll Blaster 2. Fortunately, Ragdoll’s game mechanics lends itself nicely to quick spurts of gaming, so the repetition and longevity won’t wear you out all in one sitting.

While the game play is similar to its predecessor, the overall feel of Ragdoll Blaster 2 provides a somewhat different experience. If you failed to check out the first title, you can see our review of that game here. You won’t need it to fully enjoy Ragdoll Blaster 2, but you’ll be missing out on another great title from Backflip studios. If you have the slightest interest in physics based puzzle games, Ragdoll Blaster 2 is an extremely high quality option, and one that you’ll be coming back to time and again.