iPhone games (also Ipod Tooch/iPad games too)

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.

^^^^^^^^^^

out of all the new powers you get (i haven't unlocked all of them yet - i quit playing a week or two ago but may pick it up again), i thought .WARP is actually sometimes useful as a last resort. if you're trapped, you messed up somewhere along the way and you're about to die, you can use it to warp yourself to one of the enemies that's surrounding you. that not only gives you a new escape route, but it also kills the enemy you landed on.

but yeah, sometimes i find myself longing for the first time or two you play it, when pretty much every single program you come across is useful and you can load up by the end of the second round. once you've unlocked a lot of things, you can go through an entire game without seeing a .DEBUG and it makes things much more difficult.

xp -

there's a lot that's great in that post, but i'm highlighting one thing in particular i've thought about and had a hard time articulating: that after a certain number of playthroughs, the randomness and unpredictability of the extra available programs make this game not only harder than it was out of the box, but also tempt you that much more into risk-taking behavior (trying for .SCORE and .ATK+ for instance) instead of what got you through that many runs in the first place

which, if you think about it from the perspective of the game conditioning player behavior, is an incredible trick

yeah, i think the new programs add to the game and keep it fresh

oh totally! part of the allure of it is unlocking new programs and figuring out what they do - it just comes at the unadvertised expense of making the game more and more difficult

yeah this is what's dawning on me - everything's getting harder, good programs turning up less often, more risk is required, can see new strategies using different progs glimmering in the distance but can't quite reach them because I can't think clearly enough.

God it's a lovely game, just so elegant.

ya warp is great—you don't just trade places, you kill the enemy, and it can get you out of a tight spot. warp ftw

but yes during a streak it can give you a "bonus power" which is always something bad, like firing backwards

.ROW has to be my least favorite

*makes "rowww" sound and cat-paw gesture*

corrypt gets totally deranged once you get past the early puzzles - effectively find the rewind function becoming a necessary part of the landscape and glitches destroying the fabric of the game. how you control the deterioration of the game's logic determines how well you do. Michael Brough=hero at the moment.

woo - just scored a 66 single run alive in 868-hack. i parlayed an antivirus into an early game score - used score judiciously until around sector 5 when i was able to grab a debug (plus a reset) and then started popping the big score boxes + left score alone. grabbed a step before the final sector, siphoned a 8-pt box on sector 8, and then stepped all the way over to the exit.

i love the push / debug combo. push all the enemies onto a square or two and mass decimation. (i accidentally debugged myself to death once tho.) i also love delay / one-shotting daemons before they spawn

oh good idea

i love grabbing some big boxes on level 8 and peacing

what's a good newish game?

just set a personal best in HACK today (87 over 2 runs) and now i'm ready to try something new

i'm embarrassed to admit i've been playing pocket mine recently

honestly it looks pretty fun but a few weeks ago i got really into terraria and although it was addicting, i ended up getting really sad irl. it looks too much like that!

i loved terraria - but i played it around when it first came out and it looks like they've added a lot since and now i've been contemplating playing it again

this is more arcadey than terraria fwiw

i know, but the first thing i read on the description page was "DIG TO..." and i didn't get past it. it's not you, pocket mine, it's me. i have had an incident

puzzle quest marvel universe is match 3 addiction
pocket mine is a great time waster
Paint it Back is Picross
Quest Rush is OdinSphere style achievement quest
Fiete Match is Memory cards with nice design
Fist of Awesome is boingboing snark Final Fight with fun 8bit visuals
Kingturn Underworld is surprisingly deep SRPG with new wrinkles and lots of depth

http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/EdwardBrown/20131013/202251/Watch_Me_Squirm_as_I_Wrestle_with_Freetoplay.php

thoughtful post by the developer of paint it back (which is really fun btw) about deciding whether to make his game free-to-play

personally i'd pay three bucks for an ios picross game in a heartbeat, but that's just me, aka the dude who carries three separate picross ds games with him to work every day