iPhone games (also Ipod Tooch/iPad games too)

i'm playing on ipad btw

Don't understand it but bought it anyway.

Jon, do you have snes romz handy? i can explain

read about this kinda sketch way to install a bunch of emulators to ios without jailbreak: http://emu4ios.weebly.com/

haven't tried yet tho

Xpost tonight will be when
I try to figger it out. I may gchat you!

I'm at a fantasy draft, but try me. Should be self-evident. Playing Earthbound!

I'm playing EarthBound too!! Though I'm halfway through the game on my laptop and cannot figure out how to load a save state I've got on my computer :(

giant boulder death guys! adultswim so you know its good

868-HACK!

roguelike/puzzle game. very simple (almost elegantly so) design

http://www.pocketgamer.co.uk/r/iPad/868-Hack/review.asp?c=53545

looks amazing but $6?!

Just buy it. ZS approved.

No, don't!

I mean, it's a lot of fun but I think there's going to be an updated windows/Mac version soon! I think there may be a free version of it out there already. Of course I didn't learn this until after I had already bought the iOS version...

I bought it and I'm going to LOVE it. Once I play it.

giant boulder of death is somewhat obsessive

that f'ing soundtrack. why do you do this to me.

gbod is driving me nuts now. Can't make it past 48000 points, and can make it to the third invinciboulder maybe 25% of the time, but never to the fourth one. the difficulty ramps up really sharply.

on 42,000. just half a minute on the x10 wd be fine.

Has ilxor got a similar type of thread for Android games?

android games - are they all terrible

Cheers

Had one great/lucky GBOD run to 150,000+ points that puts me in the 500s overall in the leaderboards, and i still feel like i'm terrible at this game.

868-HACK is fucking great, worth ten times the price imo

i've been so addicted. my top score is 62 points for a single run. the balance between going for points and going for completion is so delicate!

you guys are really tempting me here

do it! at this point michael brough can charge me whatever the fuck he wants for his games

i'm curious about his other games. there's a link to them within the app, and it looks like there are 3-4 others, about $1 each. have you played any of them govyouacc?

yeah, zaga-33 is another awesome roguelike, corrypt is a cool sokoban variant, but my favorite of his is vesper 5, in which you can only move once per day

http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2013/02/michael-brough/all/

this wired profile goes into more detail about his ideas and aesthetic - he's absolutely the game designer i'm most excited about at this point

whoa, i didn't realize he was well known! i'll have to check out vesper 5, thanks!

Brough lists the card game Race for the Galaxy, designed by an economist named Thomas Lehmann, as a perfect example of a game that teaches a concept with a useful real-world application: opportunity cost, which refers to the idea that the cost of any action isn’t just the material cost you pay to do it, but also the value of the other actions that you could’ve chosen instead.

Race for the Galaxy, Brough explains, has an exaggerated sense of opportunity cost. In the game, players have a hand of cards, and there are planets which they can settle. The number of cards you can play in a phase is limited. The catch: To play one card, you have to sacrifice another without using it, potentially losing access to it forever.

i'm glad that this is mentioned in the article because it helps to explain the core appeal of 868-HACK. there's always tension because each program that you decide to acquire pushes you down a certain runthrough style while at the same time making other strategies more difficult to pursue. for example, one way to get a lot of points is to grab the Score and Exchange programs, and then using Score early on (the earlier you use Score, the more points it gives you). but going with that strategy makes it a lot harder to stockpile the resources to purchase the programs that help to fend off enemies and assist in navigation, so it becomes a lot more difficult to actually complete the game.

yeah, that's a good way of explaining it - i'm not very good at all (top score 30ish?), but honestly i haven't tried other strategies besides focusing on d_bomb/reset early, stockpiling data, and trying to survive and take easy points when they're offered

one of the things i like best about it is how survival comes with a price (yes, you unlock a new powerup and keep your score going - but you also lose all your data and accrued powers). the experience of starting over again without any abilities is weirdly humbling

Any alternatives to constantly crashing Simcity Deluxe? I just want to build a little world and do no one any harm...

xpost

if i'm playing for survival (which i usually am), i concentrate on getting the three weapons - D-bomb, Antivirus and Debug. it's tough to get them in the early game since they summon 4 enemies, but usually there's an opportunity to grab one that offers good cover. once i have those i grab a Reset and a Wait, and then start getting as many resources as possible. late in the game it's good to grab Step, because that one can really come in handy on the final level when you're just trying to book it!

if the opportunity presents itself early in the game, i go for points at the expense of survival. usually it's when i have the chance to grab 1-2 weapons on the first level, and then a Score pops up on level 2 and i have a decent chance of getting it without dying. if you can get Score early on (+ Exchange, if it's easy to grab and you have a lot of $$), then you can be a points machine for a few levels, because every time you use Score you'll get 5+ points. Exchange is useful at this point because you can later in the game, of course, Score becomes pointless. the big downfall of this strategy is that it's easy to die because you're spending all your resources on points rather than ramping up your mad skillz.

the best i've done in a single game while surviving is 41.

Exchange is useful at this point because you can later in the game, of course, Score becomes pointless.

sorry, this should be

Exchange is useful at this point because you can later in the game, of course, Score becomes pointless.

i find most of the unlockable programs to be pretty weak (warp is useful for saving your ass but it doesn't seem worth going out of the way to get it), but i just unlocked ATK+ and it seems pretty awesome! it ups your attack by one (or by two, if you use it twice in a row) for a single level. feels pretty good to be rambo after getting so used to being so weak!

his aesthetic kinda reminds me of david oreilly

tonight i've been playing around with trying to get score/exchange early and it really does make a difference in terms of pure point grinding - another thing is to kinda be judicious with your data siphon usage? if you have a couple in reserve and then get put in a level that has a decent amount of farmable data and has a safe place where you can pick off enemies, you can really generate a lot of points quickly without too much of a risk (obviously keeping a few blues in reserve in case you need to reset if all hell breaks loose)

that said the score/exchange strategy has also led to me getting cornered and eaten alive by three enemies more times than i'd like to admit

yeah, i still haven't mastered it for sure. every once in a while it works well, though, and you can just bust 30+ points out of nowhere

corrypt is really hard

i just bought all these games because of this thread THANKS GUYS.

i got a blue 5c iphone and celebrated by grabbing 868-hack. okay u were all right it is fantastic. my high score so far is 54 - i haven't actually completed a game yet.

goddammit mordy

leave some points for the rest of us

I haven't played in a while, but my top score in a single run was 61 (didn't survive)

woo - just got 51 and *alive*

so apparently the more successful runs you string together the harder the game gets. my icon can only take 2 hits now before dying, and the enemies are starting to become more powerful (daemons take 4 hits instead of 3, viruses move 3 spaces instead of 2, etc).

whoa, really? didn't know that. how many runs have you strung together? i've only made it to a 3rd-go-around, and then i get greedy and go for megapoints.

http://oldmanandhisgames.wordpress.com/2013/09/30/survival-horror-and-868-hack/

Perhaps the most devious ingredient to 868-HACK‘s difficulty, however, is the “programs” you get. These are the powers you can obtain and use over the course of the game. You start with a small set of potential programs; as you progress, that set gets larger. This should be a good thing. It feels like a good thing, as you unlock more and more of the programs.

It’s not a good thing.

After a while, you realize that the programs you started with are largely the most useful of the programs in the game; a few good ones open up eventually, but they’re expensive and risky. .STEP is maybe the most useful thing in the entire game, and you have it from the beginning. .DEBUG, .ANTI_V, and .D_BOMB, powers that destroy the enemies, are all available from the beginning. .RESET, which gives you up to two more hits to absorb, is available from the beginning. These are all extremely useful programs, available from the outset.

Eventually, these simple, useful programs are replaced by things like .WARP, which switches your location with one of the enemies on the board, and .POLY, which changes each enemy on the board into a different one. Where the powers that are available early allow the player to feel more control over what’s happening, many of the ones that show up later introduce even more randomness. That’s fine in a pinch, but not the type of power you need when trying to sustain a streak.

After a while, you start longing for the old powers. You start wishing they would pop up more often, that you could start with a few of them, instead of “.REDUCE”, which can be useful in the long game, but doesn’t help at all when you’re facing a wall of enemies. You resent the game for taking away the powers you want, for making you learn how to use the powers it forces you into.

^^^^^^^^^^