Jetpack Joyride Controls

Jetpack Joyride is a game that I've played a fair amount on my iPhone. It's a fun game of the single-button style where you move up by pressing the button and down by letting go in order to dodge obstacles that travel from right to left on the screen. The bad part about the iPhone version of this game is that the only place they could put the button was on the screen. That means that part of the screen must be covered by your finger in order to control the game, meaning that part of the screen is not visible when you need to interact with the game. That is a problem since the only way of knowing if there is something to dodge is by looking at the screen, some of which is now covered by the controls.

This week, I was pleasantly surprised to find Jetpack Joyride as a free download for my Playstation Vita. I thought, "Perfect! Now I can play this game by pressing a button." It turns out that I was wrong in my thought. The only way to press the button in the PS Vita version of Jetpack Joyride is to touch the rear touch pad. While the rear touchpad is a huge improvement over using the screen to cover up your vision, there exists yet another problem. The problem with the PS Vita controls is that it is nearly impossible to hold the device without accidentally touching the rear touchpad. There is no way to configure the controls to be anything else, and so I am left wondering why they didn't just use the 'x' button, or better yet, allow the player to use any of the buttons they want. It couldn't have been that difficult to allow any of the controller buttons to indicate a desire to move in the game.

Please game developers, don't use touch controls when a button will work better. Let me repeat, do not use touch controls when button inputs will work better. Thank you.

GameDev Story

So last night I was originally planning on doing some streaming of Recettear or something, but before that I decided to play a little GameDev Story (links in the next paragraph). After a couple hours I decided I was just going to play all the way to the end of year 20 where the scores stop being reported to Game Center. I ended up taking quite a few hours and getting about 4 games of the year before the end of year 20, but the entire thing took quite a few hours. My iPod Touch's battery ran out during the time, so I had to plug it in to charge so that I could keep playing. This game is ridiculously addicting, and I'm afraid I need to keep myself from ever playing it again so that I don't get sucked into not following through with my plans.

For those that aren't familiar with what GameDev Story is, it's a game for iOS (and Android too I think) where you run a game development studio. You hire employees, keep them motivated, give them different jobs within the studio, and develop a bunch of games with an array of genres and game types. One of my best games from last night was an Action Ninja game. I also had an Online Sim History game that did quite well too for some reason. As the game progresses, different consoles come out, and developing for a console always results in better returns than developing for the PC, but they have higher licensing and development costs. Once you move in to a large office and develop a game that makes it into the "hall of fame" you can develop sequels. I would never have imagined that I would develop upwards of 10 sequels to my Checkers Board game, but they always sold well and would score very high in graphics if you can believe it. The game is pretty fun, especially for people who have a desire to some day work in the video game industry. You can develop all sorts of strange combinations, like Robot Trivia games.

If you do decide to pick up the game, please try to keep track of your life so that you don't lose it. This game is way more addicting than World of Warcraft.

What the Birds?

I was looking at the iOS app store today and I noticed that of the top 5 paid games, 2 of them are Angry Birds and 2 of them are games with icons that look very similar to Angry Birds. I think if you want to get a top selling iOS app these days, the best way is probably to create an icon for your app that has a cute chubby bird on it. That gives me a good idea for yet another project to work on when I can find some time...