‘Godville’ A Month Later – Still The Best Game I Don’t Play

‘Godville’ A Month Later – Still The Best Game I Don’t Play is a post from: Best Iphone Apps Review Website

A little over a month ago I first posted my review of Godville [Free] and was entirely amused by the concept behind the game. In essence, Godville is barely a game at all, as your interaction with the world is limited to either encouraging or punishing your hero who otherwise just goes about his business. You play as your hero's god, and the "game" basically consists of you reading the events that transpire in your hero's life. Depending on how you treat your hero either through punishment or encouragement, your hero will either be a cold hearted bastard killing everything in its path or a happy go lucky lover of all things living… Or something in between.

Godville is a community driven game, and once your hero reaches level 10 you're able to participate in the idea box. You can submit ideas for items, equipment, quests, enemies, combat actions, and tons of other things. Users then vote on these entries, which are eventually implemented in the game. Initially, the adventures of your hero in Godville when the game first launched were fairly repetitive, but after a month of idea box submissions from users, the game has only grown more amazing.

Not only is Godville getting better from user submissions, but the developers have been hard at work releasing updates both to the Godville client itself, and the web-based backend that powers the whole game. Special artifacts are one of my new favorite inclusions. These are new items that your character will loot from monsters or win from duels that have special abilities. Of course your hero is entirely too stupid to operate said artifacts themselves, but you can spend your god power (otherwise used for punishing and encouraging) to have them operate the item. These items can teleport them back to town, put a gold brick in their inventory, strike a death from their records, and many other things.

The amusing part of all this is that if you don't catch that your hero has one of these special artifacts in their inventory, chances are they'll just give it away, sell it, or otherwise get swindled out of it before you even have a chance to use it. Even if you do use it and it has some marvelous effect, they'll usually just hawk it for beer money anyway. How little control you have over your hero is part of what makes Godville so much fun for me, as my hero almost never does what I want him to do, but seemingly has developed his own (fairly stupid but evil) personality of his own.

Previous to the recent update, your character would randomly find themselves in duels with the heroes of other players. Now, every few hours, you can send your hero off to an arena to immediately participate in these duels. Aside from potentially humiliating another god with defeat, winning a duel also awards you all the coins that the opponent is holding along with some other swag… This is often lost anyway as your hero's ego grows and he bites off more than he can chew in combat, then endlessly begs you to be resurrected.

I decided to post about this game again not only because it has had significant updates since our initial review, but also because I'm downright amazed that a game that isn't really even technically a game has held my attention for so long. Checking up on what my Godville dude is doing has somehow managed to slip in between checking my email and checking my Twitter feed on my phone. Admittedly, when I first tried the game I thought Godville had sky-high novelty value, but I didn't see it lasting for me as most novelty-heavy games are only amusing until said novelty runs out.

The buckets of creativity being dumped in to Godville seems to always make loading up the game amusing. Initially I only saw Godville as a clever jab at the grind of RPG's as instead of you spending your time grinding, your hero does it for you. After spending an immense amount of time with the game over the last month, Godville seems to be the most captivating virtual per experience I've had so far on the iPhone. If you haven't yet, you really need to give this game a try to see if it grows on you just as much as it has grown on me.

App Store Link: Godville, Free


‘Pocket Legends’ 1.2 Adds PvP and Other Fun Features

‘Pocket Legends’ 1.2 Adds PvP and Other Fun Features is a post from: Best Iphone Apps Review Website

The amount of post-launch support Spacetime Studios has given their free MMO [Free: iPhone Universal / iPad Only] got even more impressive lately with the release of Pocket Legends 1.2 which adds three main features to the game:

PvP – In team deathmatch arenas vaguely similar to World of Warcraft's arena system, players choose sides and battle the other team. The various arenas have different sizes, player limits, and even power-ups. Points are awarded for killing other players, and when the score limit is reached a scoreboard displays showing the match standing.

Secure Trade – Inspecting other players now give you a new option to securely trade items, gold, and potions. Just like any MMO, a trade window will appear for both players to confirm the trade before the transaction is complete.

Elixirs – Using gold or platinum players can purchase a number of different elixirs which do things like increase movement, experience gain, damage, and even armor. Elixirs last for five minutes and don't stack on top of each other. Also, they can only be used in the story mode so players don't have to worry about buying elixirs to be competitive in PvP.

Spacetime Studios released a new trailer that shows the new PvP arenas:

If you haven't tried Pocket Legends yet, there's really no reason to keep resisting at this point. The game is free to try, and is one of the more impressive realtime multiplayer experiences available on the App Store.


‘Pocket Legends’ Review — Proving that Big Things DO Come in Pocket-sizes.

‘Pocket Legends’ Review — Proving that Big Things DO Come in Pocket-sizes. is a post from: Best Iphone Apps Review Website

When Spacetime Studios first revealed their newest game earlier in the month I thought it was as ambitious a project as had been attempted on the platform. Not happy with putting out just any old Massively Multiplayer Online RPG, Spacetime Studios assumed the challenge of delivering it in 3D. And it is fortunate they did, as Pocket Legends [iPhone] and [iPad] has been a huge hit since its release a couple of weeks back.

Pocket Legends puts you in direct control of one of three classes; the warrior bear, the archer hawk or the elven enchantress/mage/healer. Diehard purists will maintain that Pocket Legends isn't technically an MMORPG, on account of its use of instances to tell the story instead of a massive, open world. In fact, there isn't much here that could be called a story either, merely a yarn spun to connect the action and game worlds together.

That may seem a criticism, but to its credit Pocket Legends does not take itself very seriously, telling its tale in a few short lines each chapter and darting comfortably between zombies, moronic knights, bling and beer. The models and animations are brought fluidly to life in 3D with a range of attack animation effects and clever emotes to boot. In fact, an array of great looking weapon and equipment models, from a spiked club to a claymore, often belies the fact that you are playing a handheld MMO.

The game's camera can be zoomed and rotated by on-screen swipes and gestures, and the characters are controlled via a virtual analogue stick. Enemies are targeted by either pressing the Attack button to target the nearest or physically tapping them on-screen. This system does take some getting used to, but it ultimately offers the best of both worlds and allowing easy target switching. Naturally, Pocket Legends features a complete loot and inventory system as well as a number of excellently thought out skills that are progressively unlocked. Curiously, the only area where the interface is lacking is active trading between players, a feature scheduled to arrive 'soon'.

Pocket Legends is free to download, but the game plays like a Lite with in-app purchase level packs. The free portion allows you to reach level 13 for free but then you need to buy additional level packs to continue earning experience points. The included Forest Haven Campaign is one of four currently available (with another on its way soon), and the only one able to be played freely. Each pack has a different objective, with the other 3 packs costing $1.99 each and offering a variety of increasingly challenging enemies to excel your character to the current maximum level of 25.

Other in-app items available for purchase through iTunes include:

  • An extra character slot beyond the default 2, available for $0.99;
  • A skill and attribute re-roll for $1.99;
  • 2 emote books, each with 4 whacky emotes with special effects for $0.99 each;
  • Gold Purchases in bundles of 500, 2500 and 5000, ranging from $0.99 to $4.99; and
  • An assortment of class-specific items and item packs, the first pack which has been released for the archer for $1.99, and a solitary bow costing $0.99.
  • A minor criticism I had of the purchasable campaigns at release is that they seemed to largely recycle the textures in the first campaign. Fortunately, future level packs seem more varied, with snow and swamp themed add-ons nearing completion.

    With regard to Pocket Legends' gameplay, it is wondrous that the iPhone can produce a comparable level of character progression and skill usage that traditionally only a PC game could evoke. From personal experience as a lowly Archer with only an auto-attack, I found myself only several hours later blasting at multiple targets with new friends, frantically stringing together sequences of buffs and debuffs in large-scaled boss-like encounters. In this respect, Pocket Legends is the type of game that can be rather monotonously if soloing, but as soon as other players are added, becomes a challenging, exciting, team-oriented affair that requires you to really look out for each other.

    The instanced gameplay actually assists this whole process, as players are constantly joining your games almost as soon as they are created. This is thanks to the easy-to-identify game list that is presented to players as soon as they enter the game (though I did have slight difficulty getting people to join a DLC game). Furthermore, a detailed friends list keeps track of those players you have befriended in the past and informs you when they are online, allowing you to rejoin them if room permits.

    For some, however, the demand of paid level packs every 5-10 levels may simply be too much. But for those willing, Pocket Legends is an extremely rewarding experience that has easily provided me with some of the best online gameplay on the iPhone to date. There are innumerable hours to pour into this game, with the current level cap of 25 requiring whole days of gameplay to reach. What's more, Spacetime Studios have already releasing two updates since launch which have added to both the existing free and paid content in the form of additional levels and items.

    Reader impressions that have collected in our forums over the past few weeks have been largely positive. Pocket Legends plays on 2nd generation devices and up, and has a separate, High Definition iPad version available.

    App Store Link: Pocket Legends (3D MMO), Pocket Legends for iPad (3D MMO), Free (With In-App Purchases).


‘Pocket Legends’ iPhone and iPad Client Comparison

‘Pocket Legends’ iPhone and iPad Client Comparison is a post from: Best Iphone Apps Review Website

Spacetime Studios' MMO Pocket Legends was released in the same massive batch of iPad games available at launch, and so far, people seem to really be enjoying it. We already posted about the iPad version and managed to dig up some details on the iPhone client, which they expect to be approved and appear on the App Store very soon now.

Somewhat unsurprisingly, considering the game was originally developed with the iPhone in mind, the differences between both clients are fairly minor. For instance, you have a larger chat window on the iPad, and can see the full spell and emote icon banks on screen at once. On the iPhone, you're limited to a a reduced range of camera motion that stops you from zooming in or out as far as the iPad is capable of.

Aside from that, everything else is nearly identical and the developers have assured me that players will have a great gameplay experience regardless of which device they're playing on. Here are some comparison shots to see the difference between the two clients. The iPad is on the left, iPhone is on the right.


Camera all the way out on both devices


Camera all the way in on both devices.

Emotes and skills able to be displayed on the iPad, while only one can be displayed at a time on the iPhone.

We're excited to see Pocket Legends make its way to the iPhone and iPod touch, and if the excitement in the thread for the iPad game is any indication, Pocket Legends is going to see an explosion of players from TouchArcade as soon as the second game client hits the App Store.

App Store Link: Pocket Legends for iPads, Free (iPhone client coming very soon.)


GDC 2010: ‘TibiaME’ MMO Coming to the iPhone

GDC 2010: ‘TibiaME’ MMO Coming to the iPhone is a post from: Best Iphone Apps Review Website

Here at GDC 2010 we had the chance to meet with Benjamin Zuckerer of CipSoft and have a look at the upcoming iPhone version of their popular TibiaME mobile MMO.

TibiaME is an exclusively mobile, top-down 2D MMO that made its debut on Nokia platform devices six years ago and has been growing its community ever since. At present there are approximately 50,000 active players in the game world, which consists of 67 islands, with 16 levels each. The islands exhibit a variety of different terrain types, such as forest, dungeons, ice, and "undead."

TibiaME places the player in the game world as either a warrior or a wizard. The islands of the world are peopled by other online players and a host of enemy characters that range from squirrels to demons — 56 types in all. There are magic-using boss monsters to contend with, as well. During the demonstration we were given of the pre-release iPhone client, there was no lack of activity in the world, as can be seen in our demo video.

While the iPhone version of the game client ties into the same game world that has been running these six years, it is a complete, ground-up rewrite that has been under development for a year and a half. The 20×20-pixel character graphics of previous versions of the game have been redrawn at a rather more detailed 50×50 pixels for the iPhone version, a new user interface has been implemented, and fight sequence animations have been added to the mix, as well.

The iPhone release will make its debut mid-year and follow the "freemium" price model. The base release can be downloaded free of charge and offers two (of the total 67) islands to explore. Characters playing in this mode are limited to a maximum of level 20 experience. Those wanting to experience the full game world can buy play time in blocks of one (5 euros) or 4 months (12 euros). Any character that has been built up in the pay model will retain all stats in the event an unrenewed block of time, but will be unable to level higher without the purchase of additional play time. The developer estimates that the base, free play experience delivers about one month of engaging play for the typical user.

To keep the game fresh, the developer has been in the practice of releasing a series of updates over the course of a year: 12 small that alter various game details, and 2 large, bringing new features and notable enhancements.

The only stand-out negative we saw about the title is its complete lack of any in-game music or sound effects. The iPhone version will allow the user to play tracks from their iTunes song library, however. And, of course, the main stand-out positive is the six years the game has been live and the sizable community that has grown within it, a most iPhone MMO's can't point to.

See our gameplay video for a look at the action in the pre-release client.

TibiaME for the iPhone is expected to debut mid-2010. Additional screenshots of the game can be seen at CipSoft's TibiaME Facebook page.


‘Anrufen Online’ – Cross-Platform MMO Released for iPhone

‘Anrufen Online’ – Cross-Platform MMO Released for iPhone is a post from: Best Iphone Apps Review Website

Screen shot 2010-01-25 at 10.57.30 PMWiSTONE's Symbian MMORPG has finally made it to the iPhone, Anrufen Online [App Store] is a free to try online game with two different classes, and realtime combat that pits players against monsters and even other players. The isometric viewpoint and graphical style reminds me a lot of Ultima Online, and reading WiSTONE's web site for Anrufen reveals a shocking level of depth that doesn't immediately seem apparent when aimlessly wandering around the game world on a free account inside of the few maps you're restricted to.

If you decide to subscribe, Anrufen Online will run you $12.99, paid quarterly. This gameplay video provided by the developers shows what you're capable of both while fighting monsters and other players as you progress in the game:

Reactions on our forums seem mixed so far, but in my time with the game there seems to be a lot of potential here if you can overcome the cumbersome menu systems which seem to be directly ported from the Symbian version of the game combined with an overly cluttered interface. Still, if you're looking to get your MMORPG fix on the go, Anrufen Online seems to be one of the more complete offerings available on the platform.

App Store Link: Anrufen Online, Free (Subscription: $12.99 quarterly.)