Author: apps

Japan is only around third the population of the United States but the island nation spends almost three times as much on mobile games. In fact, Japan spends more than number two (China) and number three (The United States) combined.

According to the report — which measures average revenue per user (ARPU) for iPhone games — Japan’s insatiable appetite for mobile games starts, and stops, with the role-playing game (RPG). Looking at the games that make up Japan’s top 30, 22 of them are RPGs. ‘Sengoku Enbu KINZA,’ ‘Fate/Grand Order’ and ‘The World of the Mystic Wiz’ made up the top three.

China, on the other hand, prefers the massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs), like ‘Westward Journey Online’ and ‘Fantasy Westward Journey,’ both MMORPG’s.

Mobile gamers from the US enjoy strategy games a great deal more than both Asian countries, but according to ARPU, RPGs are still where it’s at. The top average monthly ARPU in the US and UK is ‘Game of War — Fire Age’ a game that has attracted a great deal of attention due to its rather comprehensive monetization system. A player would have to spend over $100,000 to buy everything the game has to offer and the game features “highly engaging resource management mechanics” that keep them spending.

Microsoft offers big discounts on apps, games, music and movies. The list is below:

•Earth 3D, where you can explore political and physical maps, and weather for an upcoming destination. The app is 50% off during the promotion.
•KVADPhoto+ PRO will help retouch your trip photos, including filters, color and text tools, enhancement features and more. The app is now 50% off.
•Download Media Player Gold – available for only $5.99 (75% off) – to watch the latest music videos or listen to the newest music from festival headliners.

•Minecraft: Windows 10 Edition Beta (50% off) to help you get a jump start on building that shelter to protect you from the monsters.
•Play games and activities while learning about colors with Crayola Bubbles, available for $0.99.
•Discounts on in-app purchases in puzzle adventure Candy Crush Soda Saga or build your tropical island and discover seaport life in Paradise Bay.
•30% off of a starter pack for Kings of Thieves, to help you become the wealthiest thief in the world.

In 1971 Don Rawitsch, a senior at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota, taught a grade 8 history class as a student teacher. He used HP Time-Shared BASIC running on an HP 2100 minicomputer to write a computer program to help teach the subject. Rawitsch recruited two friends and fellow student teachers, Paul Dillenberger and Bill Heinemann, to help. The Oregon Trail debuted to Rawitsch’s class on December 3, 1971. Despite bugs, the game was immediately popular, and he made it available to others on Minneapolis Public Schools’ time-sharing service. When the next semester ended, however, Rawitsch deleted the program, although he printed out a copy of the source code.
An important aspect of the game was the ability to hunt. Using guns and bullets bought over the course of play, players select the hunt option and hunt wild animals to add to their food reserves. In the original version, there were no graphics and players were timed on how fast they could type “BANG,” “WHAM,” or “POW,” with misspelled words resulting in a failed hunt. In the first full-graphics version, players controlled a little man who could aim a rifle in one of eight directions and fire single shots at animals. In later versions, players hunted with a cross-hair controlled by the mouse. Bison were the slowest moving targets and yielded the most food, while rabbits and squirrels were fast and offered very small amounts of food. Deer (eastern section) and elk (western section) were in the middle in terms of speed, size, and food yield; bears were between bison and deer in all three properties. While the amount of wild game shot during a hunting excursion is limited by only the player’s supply of bullets, the maximum amount of meat that can be carried back to the wagon is 100 pounds in early versions of the game. In later versions, as long as there were at least two living members of the wagon party, 200 pounds could be carried back to the wagon. In the later version, players could hunt in different environments. For example, hunting during winter would result in graphics showing grass covered in snow. In later versions, the over-hunting of animals would result in “scarcity” and reduce the amount of animals which appeared later in the game.

In 2012, a parody called The Organ Trail was released by the Men Who Wear Many Hats for browsers, iOS, and Android, with the setting changed to human survivors fleeing a zombie apocalypse.

Crystal Defenders stages consist a top-down view of a maze showing the path that monsters will be traveling. Stages are played in 31 waves (or levels) of enemies that enter the maze and walk along the pathway towards the goal. The goal of the game is to protect the crystals from enemies by strategically placing troops of various jobs alongside the pathway to defeat the enemies and preventing them to leave the map. If the enemies manage to escape with 20 crystals, the game is over. Players can also summon Espers at the cost of some crystals to either cause damage to all enemies on screen or give status ailments to all characters. The game was originally known as Crystal Guardians and released into three separate chapters W1, W2, and W3. W1 chapter starts off with the Soldier, Time Mage, Archer, Thieves, Black Mage, and White Monk jobs. W2 introduces the Berserker and Dragoon jobs and adds “crystal power” element to increase the power and speed of the player’s characters. W3 introduces the Fencer, Flintlock, and Tinker jobs however removes the Soldier and Archer jobs previously introduced in W1.
The Wii version is divided into R1 and R2 chapters and offers a new ranking system via Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection, however R1 chapter offers less characters than the initial Crystal Defenders in order to be easier for first time players to learn the mechanics.[18] R1 contains the same jobs introduced in Crystal Guardians W1 including the dragoon job introduced in W2. R2 contains the same jobs in Crystal Guardians W3 and offers crystals feature previously introduced in Crystal Guardians W2.

Paper Toss: World Tour is a game for the iPhone/iPod Touch developed by Backflip Studios and sequel to Paper Toss. The game is set in different locations around the world, and players are challenged to flick a piece of paper into a bin. There is wind meaning wind direction and wind speed have to be accounted for making the game more challenging. Players are scored on how many times they manage to toss the paper into the bin until they miss. There are online leaderboards and 8 different levels ranging in difficulty. The places featured are Japan, Egypt, Germany, Brazil, Indonesia, India, Russia, and U.S.A. Two bonus levels have since been added: Antarctica and Volcano (off the coast of Chile).

Gravity Guy is one of the endless or infinite running games. The free version of Gravity Guy in iOS and Android released in 2011. The features in the free version of Gravity Guy iOS game app are only 10 levels, 1 theme, 2 slowmotions and 2 shields. In the free version of Gravity Guy Android app is like the full version but still with 2 slowmotions, 2 shields and Ads (to unlock Ads user must be buy the full version). Gravity Guy full version went free for the limited time for the iOS on the App Store in May 2013 prior to release of the sequel called Gravity Guy 2.

It is a fantasy role-playing game created by Hironobu Sakaguchi, developed and first published in Japan. The game begins with the appearance of the four youthful Light Warriors, the heroes of the story, who each carry one of the darkened Orbs. Initially, the Light Warriors have access to the Kingdom of Coneria and the ruined Temple of Fiends. After the Warriors rescue Princess Sara from the evil knight Garland, the King of Coneria builds a bridge that enables the Light Warriors’ passage east to the town of Pravoka. There the Light Warriors liberate the town from Bikke and his band of pirates, and acquire the pirates’ ship for their own use. The Warriors now embark on a chain of delivery quests on the shores of the Aldi Sea. First they retrieve a stolen crown from the Marsh Cave for a king in a ruined castle, who turns out to be the dark elf Astos. Defeating him gains them the Crystal, which they return to the blind witch Matoya in exchange for a herb needed to awaken the Elf Prince cursed by Astos. The Elf Prince gives the Light Warriors the Mystic Key, which is capable of unlocking any door. The key unlocks a storage room in Coneria Castle which holds TNT. Nerrick, one of the Dwarves of the Cave of Dwarf/Dwarf Village, destroys a small isthmus using the TNT, connecting the Aldi Sea to the outside world. After visiting the near-ruined town of Melmond, the Light Warriors go to the Earth Cave to defeat a vampire and retrieve the Star Ruby, which gains passage to Sage Sarda’s cave. With Sarda’s Rod, the Warriors venture deeper into the Earth Cave and destroy the Earth Fiend, Lich. The Light Warriors then obtain a canoe and enter Gurgu Volcano and defeat the Fire Fiend, Kary. The Floater from the nearby Ice Cave allows them to raise an airship to reach the northern continents. After they prove their courage by retrieving the Rat’s Tail from the Castle of Ordeal, the King of the Dragons, Bahamut, promotes each Light Warrior. A kind gesture is repaid by a fairy, receiving special liquid that produces oxygen, and the Warriors use it to help defeat the Water Fiend, Kraken, in the Sunken Shrine. They also recover a Slab, which allows a linguist named Dr. Unne to teach them the Lefeinish language. The Lefeinish give the Light Warriors access to the Floating Castle that Tiamat, the Wind Fiend, has taken over.[5] With the Four Fiends defeated and the Orbs restored, a portal opens in the Temple of Fiends which takes them 2000 years into the past. There the Warriors discover that the Four Fiends sent Garland (now the archdemon Chaos) back in time and he sent the Fiends to the future to do so, creating a time loop by which he could live forever. The Light Warriors defeat Chaos, thus ending the paradox, and return home. By ending the paradox, however, the Light Warriors have changed the future to one where their heroic deeds remain unknown outside of legend.

Midia Research survey published by The Guardian came up with findings that games make up 85 per cent of the top 50 grossing apps on Apple’s app store and Android’s Google Play shop. “The app economy is, for now at least, a games economy,” the report read. The report also showed that out of the 700 surveyed apps on the two mobile platforms, just 50 companies were responsible for 81 per cent; while 61 per cent were developed by US, Sweden and Japan-based companies.

King’s most popular game is Candy Crush Saga, which was launched on King’s website in March 2011. It launched on Facebook in April 2012 and quickly gained popularity. Following its success on Facebook, King launched Candy Crush Saga on mobile (iOS and Android) in November 2012. The game was downloaded over 10 million times in its first month. In January 2013, it became the number 1 game on Facebook. It had over 45 million monthly users by March.

King games offer synchronised play, enabling users to connect to their Facebook account whilst playing on their smartphone or tablet device. This means that the user’s progress is updated across all platforms, allowing the player to switch from mobile, to tablet, to Facebook without losing their progress in the game. They also offer two of their games to connect to KakaoTalk in Korea.

King is led by Riccardo Zacconi, who has served in that role since co-founding the company in 2003. Founding partner Melvyn Morris serves as chairman. The company has 665 employees and parcels development out to small, autonomous teams of designers working with a “startup” mentality. In 2013, it spent $110.5 million on research and development, roughly 6 percent of sales.

Prior to founding King, Zacconi, Morris, and Toby Rowland worked together on uDate.com, a site created by Morris. Morris sold the site for $150 million in 2003. The three joined forces with Sebastian Knutsson, Thomas Hartwig, Lars Markgren and Patrik Stymne to found King in 2003. Originally headquartered in Sweden, King nearly went bankrupt before a Christmas Eve cash infusion in 2003. The company raised $43 million in 2005 by selling a large stake to Apax and Index Ventures. The company finished the year with a profit for the first time and has been profitable each year since.[6] Rowland, who had served as co-CEO, departed the company in 2008 and sold his stake back to the company for $3 million in 2011. Angel investor and former board member Klaus Hommels sold his similar stake at the same time.

By the first quarter of 2012, King had 30 million active users. That number jumped to 408 million by the end of 2013. Sales increased from a little over $62 million in 2011 to $1.88 billion in 2013.

It is a first-person shooter video game developed by 3D Realms and published by GT Interactive Software. The full version was released for the PC (the shareware version was released on January 29, 1996). It is a sequel to the platform games Duke Nukem and Duke Nukem II published by Apogee. An expansion pack, known as the Plutonium Pak, was released in November 1996.
Duke Nukem 3D features the adventures of the titular macho Duke Nukem (voiced by Jon St. John), who fights against an alien invasion on Earth. Along with Wolfenstein 3D and Doom, Duke Nukem 3D is considered responsible for popularizing first-person shooters. It was released to major acclaim; reviewers praised the interactivity of the environment, level design, gameplay and unique risqué humor (a mix of pop-culture satire and lampooning of over-the-top Hollywood action heroes).
The game’s lasting appeal and impact on modern video games has led to it being considered one of the most important video games of all time. The game’s violent nature, erotic elements and portrayal of women incited controversy. After fifteen years in development hell, a direct sequel was released called Duke Nukem Forever.