Run Roo Run ($0.99 iPhone, $1.99 iPad) is a simple to learn, yet hard to master side-scrolling game that rewards split-second accuracy. If you were one of those gamers that toiled over Mario to get the timing of jumping from pipe to pipe just right, then this is the game for you. Run Roo Run forgoes complex touch-based controls, yet still delivers that satisfying rush when you make the right moves.

Gameplay is very basic. The main character, Roo, begins running at an even pace across the screen. As Roo approaches an obstacle, you jump by tapping the screen. Jump too soon, and you land on the obstacle. Jump too late, and you run into the obstacle. Each level is timed: How long it takes to beat a level determines your reward, since the timer keeps going every time you run into an obstacle. Between jumping, double jumping, pausing and restarting, you end up driving yourself nuts trying to make it through a given level in record time. The game ends up being about mastering split-second timing and pattern recall.

Each level occupies just a single screen, which combined, add up to Roo’s journey across Australia. With over four hundred individual screen challenges to overcome, the game seems almost endless. Roo learns new skills along the way to conquer new types of obstacles in order to keep things fresh. The game also keeps its edge by resetting quickly after each failed attempt; Roo is back up and ready to try again almost instantly, with no tedious intermediary screens getting in the way.

You can buy power-ups to slow time down or skip a level entirely via in-app purchase, but it definitely takes some satisfaction out of the game. However, with developer 5th Cell (which also created the celebrated Scribblenauts) committed to adding 10 new levels per week, you may need to take advantage of the occasional cheat just to keep up.

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Trenches II ($1.99 iPhone, $2.99 iPad) is the latest in a lineup of World War I-themed games from Thunder Game Works. Falling somewhere between Plants vs. Zombies  and Flight Control, Trenches II offers slightly more advanced, compelling gameplay, so much so that it approaches the realm of real-time strategy gaming.

The game’s training mode leaves a lot to be desired, with constant, annoying pop-ups, but you can get the hang of things without the tutorial. The basics are as follows: As time passes, you earn money to buy more troops. Troops advance from left to right with the swipe of a finger or two.  You do need to be careful though, as your troops will need to be directed to bunkers and other objects on the battlefield to take cover.

You can lead British, French or German troops into battle. Game strategy comes in the form of which type of troops you buy when. There are sharpshooters, engineers, medics, spies, and flamethrower units to name a few. Along the way, you earn Perk points, which can be used to unlock new troop types and upgrade existing ones. For the impatient, there are in-app purchases to accelerate the earning of Perks.

The more rewarding part of the game, and what makes it a great game for a weekend, is definitely the Skirmish play mode.  In it, you need to scope out a battlefield with airships, and then decide how to deploy your troops. The challenge comes from knowing when to invest in an engineer, and when to invest in a rifleman. The resemblance to Flight Control comes in directing different groups of troops to different points on the battlefield.  This adds a lot to the overall feeling you get of being a real-time field commander.

The iPhone can seem a little tight in terms of available screen real estate with Trenches II, so if you have an iPad, that’s the way to play.

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As an old school D&D player, and a fan of Monty Python’s Holy Grail, I can’t help but be drawn to games that feature dragons, swords and sorcery.  For the last two weeks, the game that has captured my attention the most is Prativo Group’s Dragons Rage.  For just $0.99, you can submerge yourself into a world where dragons are feared and fought by peasants branding pitchforks.  Not only is the app universal, so it works on both iPhone and iPad, but there’s also a Mac version in the Mac App Store for the same price of $0.99.

Gameplay is pretty straightforward.  You’re the dragon and you defend yourself by breathing fire on your attackers. You pivot the dragon’s head from a central point to fight off attackers from all sides.  Red arrows appear on screen to tell you where attackers will be appearing next.  The tricky part is that you can run out of fire, so you have to be careful how long you keep the flame going.  To keep things interesting, you can pick up bonus items along the way to help boost your score, and you can compete online with your Game Center friends.

Difficulty comes in the form of the number of attackers, the number of attacks from opposite sides, and the amount of fire it takes to defeat each class of attacker.  You also learn early on that archers are your real enemy, as they can start doing damage from a distance.  While the game is not going to keep you engaged for weeks on end, it is a very easy to pick up, and definitely the sort of thing that’s perfect for sharing with family and friends at various holiday get-togethers.

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Games for the Weekend is a weekly feature aimed at helping you avoid doing something constructive with your downtime. Each Friday we’ll be recommending a game for Mac, iPhone or iPad that we think is awesome enough to keep you busy until Monday, at least.

I’m starting to think there’s a union rule: In every shooter, the helicopter, plane, train, or automobile you use to arrive will be destroyed. Modern Combat 3: Fallen Nation ($6.99, Universal) for iOS is no exception. Combined forces of Very Bad People doing Very Bad Things have taken over some cities in America. Even though the American Armed Forces number over a million soldiers, apparently it’s up to just you to solve this problem.

Well, not just you alone. As in most of the Modern Combat series, there are various NPCs that accompany you through the 13-mission campaign that spans Los Angeles to Pakistan. I’d say they help you, but most of their support so far seems to involve yelling encouraging things and laying down random covering fire.

Games like Modern Combat 3 are starting to make me question my decision to pass on the iPad 2. Not so much for the increased graphics performance — when I did a test restore of a friend’s iPad 2 a while back to check it out, I didn’t notice a huge difference in games — but for the AirPlay Mirroring. I’m rapidly coming around to the idea of sitting on my couch playing a shooter on my iPad and TV. MC3‘s graphics are quite good. I’m starting to get as much value from a $7 iPad app as I am from $60 Xbox games.

The only problem I had with this game was with controls. When I wrote about Shadowgun, I raved about how customizable the controls were. In MC3, I didn’t have that flexibility. As a result, I’d end up shooting when I wanted to look around. With Shadowgun, I could move individual controls around; in MC3 I could only choose between three presets I was never fully happy with.

Even so, with 13 single player missions and 6 multiplayer maps for the low cost of seven bucks, Modern Combat 3 is this week’s Game for the Weekend.

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Grey Area is the company behind Shadow Cities, an iPhone game that broke new ground in mobile location-based massively multiplayer online gaming. Vesterinen called ShadowCities “the first of a new category of games,” where the game world and the real world are merged. Shadow Cities pulls not only other players in your area into the experience, but also the surroundings themselves. The real world tie-in allows for “the most exciting game board you can have,” says Vesterinen.

Location-based gaming, according to Vesterinen, needed technology to catch up to gamer expectations before it could succeed. Gamers who play MMOs are looking for “immersive experience,” and that’s what Shadow Cities can provide, thanks to the improved graphical capabilities of current generation mobile platforms.

Finding the sweet spot where location-based games succeed is a process of experimentation; Vesterinen says Grey Area expected a mobile game like Shadow Cities to be more popular while users were in transit, with short, casual sessions. In reality, most users tend to game in places where they are most often, like at home, and stay for longer periods. In this way, mobile gaming is much more in direct competition with traditional console gaming.

That also means location-based gaming need not necessarily orient itself towards casual players. Hours long sessions are common, and it stands to reason that some in-game experiences can cater to that group of gamers.

Another interesting point that Vesterinen made is that there is lots more opportunity to bring the real world into games; location is just one data set, things like real estate prices, weather, traffic could all contribute to the future of mobile gaming by filling in the virtual world with data users can easily relate to. That’s an interesting future to consider when video gaming’s past seems to have been built up around an idea of escapism, where game worlds often didn’t resemble a user’s environment at all.

Vesterinen said they plan to extend Shadow Cities to more countries, but also has more, similar games in development, though he wouldn’t go into much detail about specific plans for Grey Area’s future releases.

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The game, a mobile massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) called Please Stay Calm, makes its debut today in the App Store, though only in Canada for now; Massive Damage is cutting its teeth in the Canadian market in preparation for an October U.S. launch. But the new game is worth a look no matter where you happen to live, because it uniquely combines location and personalization with tried and tested models of iPhone gaming success.

A unique twist on success

At its core, Please Stay Calm bears some strong similarities to games such as World War and Crime City. All the games use a store of energy that refreshes over time and can be spent to accomplish things or take action, like engage in combat, for example.

Please Stay Calm tweaks this, making it much more social through global in-game chat and a clever system whereby players (who take on the role of zombie apocalypse survivors) work together to fight off the undead threat. Also unique to Please Stay Calm is a strong focus on location; the game detects your real-life surroundings using the iPhone’s geolocation services, allowing you to set up a defensive bunker in your local Starbucks, for instance.

Massive Damage CEO and Co-Founder Ken Seto told me that the “core of [the] game is centered on providing a truly local social experience.” He says that “people have an affinity for their favorite spots like cafes, bars and even their offices.”

The major appeal of Please Stay Calm, according to Seto, is that “being able to upgrade a real-life location like your office as the biggest baddest safehouse in your city is quite the feeling.” In this way, the location-based elements of Please Stay Calm sound a bit like Foursquare’s mayor mechanism, except that you invest virtual resources, as well as time in a specific place in order to take control of it.

Location: more than just background

Location is about more than just where you do your zombie-fighting in Please Stay Calm. Seto also points out that “characters you run into in the game are local, and you’ll see them in-game time and time again.” City- and safehouse-specific chat will also soon be added, in addition to the global chat option that currently exists. Also, players near your location, and even “non-player Foursquare users automatically help you out if you’re fighting off the zombie hordes in the same location as them,” Seto says.

It’s exactly the kind of rich use of location mechanics that Ryan Kim recently suggested might be the way forward for mobile location services, but in this case, those added value features are extending, rather than replacing the gaming paradigm.

Blended revenue models to suit different tastes

Please Stay Calm is free to play, but uses in-app purchases to allow players to enhance their experience if they wish. The freemium model employed by Massive Damage for this game is designed to “allow people to spend as little or as much as they like,” according to Seto.

The game’s in-app purchases allow you to buy credits, which can then be used to upgrade items and locations. You can also earn credits in other ways, too, and the game does a good job of striking the right balance so that players don’t feel obligated to spend money. There’s also a clever secondary means of earning credits; players can opt to view 10-second videos (essentially advertisements) in exchange for free credits. Seto says they went with this approach because it keeps the app ad-free, while also providing a way for those unwilling to spend on in-app purchases to experience some of the advantages of the game’s freemium model.

For mobile gamers looking for something that takes advantage of the unique abilities of smartphone devices, instead of just making compromises regarding what iOS lacks, Please Stay Calm is an ideal title. Massive Damage also promises episodic content packages, with more cinematics, missions, zombies and weapons coming in at least 10 free chapter upgrades, so the action shouldn’t get stale. Also, the game features tons of great-looking original artwork that gives Please Stay Calm its own unique feel. If you’re Canadian, check it out now. If you’re not, mark your calendars for October and try to be patient.

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Now, New York City-based Exent is launching the first subscription mobile gaming service for Android called GameTanium Mobile, which allows users to gain Netflix-style all-you-can eat access to more than 75 games for $4.99 a month. The service builds off of Extent’s existing subscription service for online games, which powers on-demand gaming platforms for companies such as Verizon, T-Mobile and Qwest.

The hope is that GameTanium will prove useful for gamers, developers and ultimately, carriers as well. For consumers, GameTanium will bring a simple and familiar way to discover and play Android games, which is an increasing challenge as Android Market’s library outpaces its discovery tools. GameTanium’s editors will curate a list of games that it believes will prove popular with users.

For developers, the service will be another tool to market their apps, increase their revenue and build a longer-term relationship with users. Offering apps on the service may not result in the same immediate impact of a paid download, but it can provide ongoing revenue and a chance to build loyalty and engagement with a consumer. And it might prove easier to extract money from consumers because they won’t have to keep going through a check-out process for downloads; they can just pay once.

Exent will be adding to its stable of games and expects to have more than 200 by the end of the year. Launch titles include Farm Frenzy, Wave Blazer, Speedx 3D, Majesty Fantasy Kingdom Sim and others. Hopefully, it will be adding content from some of its existing partners such as PopCap, Ubisoft and others. Exent is also looking to tie its products together allowing gamers to eventually start a game on one device and continue playing on another devices.

In addition to its direct-to-consumer play, Exent is looking to also offer the service as a white label product for mobile operators, allowing them to have their own gaming service. The company said the product was built with carriers in mind and will give them flexibility to brand the user interface and customize pricing and packages.

It’s going to be interesting to see how successful a subscription service can be. Much will depend on the quality of the games and perceived value of the service. If GameTanium can line up enough appealing titles, it could prove to be a good alternative to downloads or game rentals. We’ve seen the success of Netflix and now Spotify, which prove users like subscription services as long as the libraries are big enough. A strong launch could also be a good sign for other subscription services like OnLive, which is bringing streaming on-demand games to Android tablets and the iPad this fall. And it will ultimately help spur on gaming on Android, which is still behind compared to iOS in terms of apps and revenue.

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YouTube introduced its annotation feature some three years ago, allowing producers to jump from one video to another. Producers have long utilized this to build interactive adventures and photo challenges, loading a new video every time the viewer chooses an option.

Interactive Tic Tac Toe takes this type of YouTube hack to the extreme by presenting a new video for every single possible move available in the game. All in all, Jared produced 131 videos, which he tagged with more than 1,000 annotations, he told us via email. The whole thing took him about a month of 14-hour workdays. Adding all those annotations on YouTube took more than three days alone, Jared said. However, the most tedious task was the video editing. “Some nights I would set my alarm and wake up every hour to re-edit videos,” he told us.

This Tic Tac Toe game is only one of a number of videos produced by Jared that make use of YouTube’s annotation feature. He started to produce videos for the site about a year ago, and has been able to make a living as a YouTube producer since November.

“YouTube is my first actual job, and I love it,” the 21-year-old told us. “It’s the greatest job in the world.” Jared is now working on growing his viewership and eventually wants to become as big as Mystery Guitar Man and other YouTube stars.

YouTube has been working on ramping up the monetization of its content on recent months with a number of initiatives that aim to help producers become more successful. The Google-owned site purchased Next New Networks in March, and recently sent a number of YouTubers to college to freshen up on video production and storytelling skills. Jared’s interactive adventures may not quite fit in with some of these more polished productions coming out of the Next New stable, but his inventiveness goes to show that YouTube producers who want to make a living with online video are going to push the boundaries of what’s possible on the site.

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MacHeist and developer tap tap tap Tuesday released The Heist

I talked to MacHeist Directorate Members and tap tap tap Principals Phill Ryu and John Casasanta to find out more about the idea behind The Heist, and what why it seems to have struck such a positive note with app buyers. Note that MacHeist and tap tap tap, while technically separate entities, share the same founders and most staff. MacHeist is a software bundle deals provider that also happens to develop apps in the process of designing its deals packages.

Beginning in 2006, MacHeist ran series of challenges that consumers could follow in order to gain access to a software bundle deal that offered multiple Mac applications for one low price. In 2009, with MacHeist 3, it brought coder Corwin Derkatch (who was also instrumental in the development of this iOS app) on board to create Flash minigames.

Casasanta came up with the idea of packaging minigames for the iPhone later that year, says Ryu. While the “games looked nice enough,” Ryu wanted to go bigger than simply repackaging what they already had, so he ended up suggesting “a much more involved take that featured a giant looming safe to crack, a prize at the end, and mysterious phone calls from Sophia, to try to port the spirit of MacHeist over [to the iPhone].” The MacHeist team had already invested considerable time and effort into a straightforward port of its flash games (six months worth, according to Ryu), but “everyone was on the same page about taking the time to make something truly cool.”

The result of their efforts is definitely cool, as well as addictive. And I’m not the only one to think so, either. Ryu reports that the app has seen more than 25,000 sales so far in just its first day on the App Store. It’s the single best launch tap tap tap has seen for any of its apps so far. Those players are eager to crack the safe, too. So far, 10 percent of buyers have already beaten the game, which is no small feat, speaking as someone who probably slept less than he should have last night in an effort to claim my prize from The Heist.

The addictive quality of the puzzles found in The Heist is due to a simple formula, according to Casasanta: “take a classic puzzle and throw an interesting twist into it.”

For example, Casasanta points out that the wires puzzles in The Heist “are basically traditional 15-puzzles (8-puzzles for the easy levels),” with the additional element of having to “figure out how the wire segments on the tiles need to be arranged to connect the various circuits.” Same with the stone/sand/glyph puzzles, which borrow elements from Sudoku, but use “sections [that] are much more irregular” than the traditional simple 3×3 grid within a 9×9 larger grid arrangement used in Sudoku puzzles. Also, the Sudoku-style puzzles in The Heist employ “color to add another dimension,” and “various abstract glyphs instead of numbers” to “breathe a bit of new life into a familiar puzzle,” says Casasanta.

Of course, the careful attention paid to the look, feel and sound of each puzzle experience is also a key factor. Casasanta notes the development team tried “very hard to make them look great and also have nice background soundtracks to set just the right mood for the player.”

I also talked to Ryu about the business model behind The Heist. MacHeist charges $0.99 for The Heist in Apple’s App Store, but upon completion of the game, users are rewarded with a code for a $9.99 game called Eets in the Steam marketplace, which sells games for Mac and Windows computers. Ryu and his team negotiated a promotional deal with Klei Entertainment, the studio behind Eets, in which MacHeist pays Klei a licensing fee in exchange for the rights to distribute Steam codes to The Heist players for one year. Klei is looking for a bump in sales thanks to the exposure promotional downloads will provide its game through Steam and other sources as a result of increased download volume.

Finally, I asked Ryu about his plans for the future of The Heist and the potential of the iOS platform. He admitted that there were potentially plans in the works for both the introduction of new content to the existing Heist app, and also plans to expand with additional apps and iPad support, but he wouldn’t make any guarantees about either. Judging by the response so far, I think it’s a safe bet that we’ll see something new and exciting from the MacHeist/tap tap tap team on iOS down the road.

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Infinity Blade

Definitely a Looker

Let me make something abundantly clear: This is a gorgeous game. It’s the best-looking game I’ve seen on my iPhone 4′s Retina Display, and the best on the iPad, too. I haven’t had the chance to see how it works on an iPhone 3GS or iPod touch, but it runs very smoothly on Apple’s latest phone and tablet hardware. You can see many pretty pictures of just how nice Infinity Blade looks in the gallery at the end of this post.

Gameplay

Gameplay initially held some disappointment for me. Unlike in Epic Citadel, you aren’t free to move about the game world in Infinity Blade. It’s an on-rails experience, with pulsing circles directing your attention to places you can travel to. Generally speaking, you have one choice. Sometimes, you have two. Along the way, you can tap gold, potions or chests to get items, and you can change the camera angle, but there is no exploration or open world environment.

When you start the game, you’re presented with an opponent barring your way. Tapping on that enemy puts you into combat, or you can tap a circular blue “i” icon to get more information about him. You can block, dodge or parry attacks in order to get opponents to drop their guard, and then attack with your weapon. If you attack without first breaking an enemy’s defence, you’ll only do minor damage. You can also use a special power attack when fully charged, which automatically breaks an enemy’s guard. Finally, you can also use magic to cast spells with gestures you draw on the screen, which can be either offensive or defensive.

Fighting opponents earns you (surprise!) experience, and money, which you can spend on equipment. You “master” equipment by using it in battle, which grants you skill point upgrades. Levelling up also nabs you new skill points which you can assign to your attributes as you like.

Story

You’ll probably be amazed at how fast you burn through the various battles with the castle’s guardians and wind up facing the God King, the game’s boss. I know I was. And you’ll probably be even more surprised when the God King kills you incredibly quickly. But death isn’t the end. When the God King kills you, you start again, with all your weapons, equipment, gold and experience intact. Because you’re the previous hero’s son. Enemies are tougher, but you earn more defeating them. The cycle repeats as you gain experience and better equipment, getting killed by the God King until you’re strong enough to take him down. It took me four runs (or generations) to get to that point.

Verdict

Infinity Blade is short, and repetitive. Even within the individual “lives” of the hero, the enemies you face have repetitive fighting styles and character model designs. Despite its brevity and repetition, though, Infinity Blade is a good game. Why? Because I still want to keep playing it, even after having seen both possible endings to the game.

When the credits first rolled, I admit I felt betrayed. The game does cost $6.99 after all, and I expected something completely different after playing Epic Citadel. But then I just started playing again, and didn’t stop for a long time after. Collecting and upgrading items feels so rewarding, as does refining your combat abilities and identifying enemy patterns. In fact, in that regard, it feels very much like old-school games where you have to know the boss patterns by heart to win. GigaOM colleague Kevin Tofel noted that Infinity Blade reminded him of gaming classic Dragon’s Lair, which is another pretty good comparison.

Infinity Blade is a great tech demo. It shows that Apple’s iOS devices can run games made with the Unreal Engine 3, and the level of detail put into armor, weapon and environment design is amazing. But more than that, it’s a really fun experience based around RPG fundamentals, yet light enough that it remains a great casual game: one you can pick up and put down at your leisure without feeling like you’re breaking the mood as you might with, say, a Final Fantasy title.

Here’s what you might want to think about before making a purchase:

• Highs: Gorgeous graphics, fun gameplay with solid controls. Addictive RPG elements.
• Lows: Short on story, repetitive.

It’s also good to keep in mind that Infinity Blade’s developers have promised more content to come, including a multiplayer mode. I can see player-vs-player combat being really fun using the mechanics already in place. The promise of future updates doesn’t affect my overall opinion of the game, though. I’d gladly recommend it either way.

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