Category: I-phone

The world is vast, laid out as a landscape filled with the hard, straight edges of digital grass, stones, sand and trees. I continue my climb to the nearest mountain peak. This will be a good place for it. The land spreads out far below — the ocean in the distance, the hills to the left and the white fog that shows the limits of my visibility. This will be a good place to build my castle.

I start with a single, narrow path that heads straight out from the mountain — a bridge to the sky. Next, I build out a wider platform on top of which I will create the foundation of stone and wood. Arched doorways, long halls, wide sitting rooms, flickering torches, hidden passageways, deep tunnels — a spectacular monument is formed.

It’s called Minecraft, and if you haven’t heard about it yet, you’re about to.

The Story

In May of 2009, Markus Persson, a Swedish game developer, began working on Minecraft. Almost two-and-a-half years later in November of 2011, the finished game was released to the fanfare of the first ever Minecon in Las Vegas.

In those few years, the simple sandboxing game of blocks and monsters grew a massive user base — over 3 million. The only thing it apparently lacked was a way for these dedicated (addicted?) fans to continue their world-creating on their mobile devices. The solution was Minecraft: Pocket Edition, which was released on various platforms in August 2011, and finally reached iOS in November during Minecon.

Starting Out

Minecraft: Pocket Edition (or simply Minecraft PE) is available in the app store as either a free “lite” version or a paid “full” version. The lite version will get you into the basic gameplay, but limits your palette to only 18 of the 36 blocks. Also, the paid version will allow you to save your maps, while the lite version does not.

When you open the game, you will see the title menu with three options: Join Game, Start Game or Options. Join Game will let you play with others over a local Wi-Fi network. Start Game will either build you your randomly generated world, or, if you purchased the full version, will give you a menu with your saved worlds and the option to create a new world. And I’ll talk more about the Settings page towards the end of this review.

Three options are available on the Main Menu screen.

The Gameplay

When you select Start Game, you’ll end up in a digital landscape that is yours for the shaping. With the paid version, you will have the option to create a new world, or to open an existing saved game. With the lite version, you will be taken straight to a random terrain (If you have never played Minecraft before, you can skip the next paragraph and just get into the gameplay principles below).

Create a new game, or open an existing saved game.

Name your new world.

For those already familiar with the desktop or online versions of Minecraft, you will be comfortable right away with the touch version of the game, but you may be disappointed to see a lack of the complete features that you are used to such as mobs, items and crafting. Do not fear however, as these are planned for future versions.

For those new to the game, the principles of gameplay are basically to form a world by either removing or placing stones, ladders, torches, flowers, vines, and more. Walk around to explore and shape the environment around you. At first, that may sound limited, but the possibilities are surprisingly great with the 36-block palette, the randomly generated terrain and an active imagination and the game quickly and surprisingly becomes very addicting.

A fresh, new world to build in.

The most basic action is to place new blocks. You have an immediate selection of three different block types available at the bottom of your screen from which you can choose a block and then just touch the surface of any existing block to add a new one.

The second action is to remove existing blocks. This is done by pressing and holding on the block that you want to remove. Denser elements such as stone require a longer press to delete, while torches or ladders take only a brief moment before they disappear.

Create structures by adding and deleting blocks.

Of course, you don’t just want to add and remove the blocks in your immediate surroundings, so there is a directional pad on the lower left-hand corner of the screen that you can use to move your character around and explore the world. You can also rotate the camera view by dragging and pulling your other hand around anywhere else on the screen.

To change the block types that are accessible in your action menu, choose the button with the “…” on it. This will bring up a screen with the palette of blocks. Choose one, and it will take the first position in your bottom bar. Then, tap Done in the upper right-hand corner and you will be taken back to the game.

The Palette Menu with the blocks available to build with.

Tips and Tricks

There are two different viewing modes in Minecraft: a first-person and a third-person view. Each mode comes in handy in different situations, and it’s simple to switch between them. During gameplay, choose the button with the “…” and above the palette of blocks, you can choose the Menu button from the left-hand corner. The main game menu is listed in the center of the page, and there are two small buttons in the upper left-hand corner. The first button will mute or activate the sound. The second button will toggle between first-person and third-person viewing modes.

Toggle sound and point-of-view settings.

The third person point-of-view can be useful for viewing your world from a different perspective.

It is possible to create “floating” structures that are not attached to any other surfaces and appear to be hanging in the sky. To do this, build out from some high location, create the floating structure and then remove all of the surrounding blocks. The structure will then stay in place and you’ll only be able to get back to it by building either a tower or a bridge.

Ladders can be used to make a quick ascent to the top of one of your structures. Be careful though, because if you go off the side of the ladder, you’ll fall back to where you started.

Torches can be helpful for illuminating dark spaces such as hallways or tunnels, but they are also useful for making certain areas of your structures stand out from the rest.

Options

From the main title menu, you can access the Options page. Here you can set up your multiplayer settings, adjust the quality of the graphics, and modify the sensitivity and dominant hand.

The Options screen can adjust multiplayer, graphics, and other settings.

Conclusion

From simple square huts to towering castles, Minecraft PE allows you to explore the possibilities of digital creation. Also, due to the nature of the gameplay, Minecraft is a great way to spend a few minutes of downtime, or an entire evening of gaming.

Also, if you enjoy Minecraft PE and haven’t tried it out on the desktop, head over to minecraft.com to buy it and expand your block-building possibilities!

It’s Game Week here at iPhone.AppStorm, and all this week we’re going to have tons of reviews, giveaways and other good stuff, all centered around the gaming world!

To kick off Game Week, let’s just hit this one right with the obvious: Are you a gamer? Do you find yourself furiously tapping the screen trying to get the next level, or just casually playing solitaire while you wait for your doctor’s appointment?

We want to know, so answer the question in the poll to the right!

Have you ever build something with your own hands? As a kid, have you build castles and houses out of sand, wood or lego pieces? And as an adult, have you aspired to take your craftsmanship to new heights?

Who says you can’t? With Tower Bloxx Deluxe 3D you can build towers into the sky and beyond, start against your friends and if you’re really ambitious, build your own city — if you have what it takes.

Build Up Up Up

The basic idea behind Tower Bloxx is building towers; building them perfectly and building them as high as it goes.

Each tower consists of separate building blocks which have to be dropped on top of each other. Your task is to make sure the blocks align perfectly and time the drop correctly as well.

Welcome to Tower Bloxx

What may sound easy will get more challenging quite fast. Every time a block is not aligned properly, the tower begins to sway. It may not matter when you have only ten levels, but once you breach 50 stories or more, dropping blocks will become an art.

Every ten stories you’ll get a building block with a balcony. Drop this one perfectly and the population within the tower will increase. You can also start combos with perfectly aligned drops, resulting in faster rising population.

Perfect drops increase the population which moves in via umbrellas

Quick Game

As the name implies, the goal of the game is to build a tower as high as possible in the shortest amount of time. You have one type of tower to build and you can miss three times; after the fourth miss the construction will stop and the game is over.

On the bottom left you can see how many levels your tower already has and how many misses you can still afford. If you started a combo, the remaining time will be displayed across the top of the screen.

Perfect drops and high towers unlock achievements

What’s really outstanding about Tower Bloxx Deluxe 3D is the level of detail which has gone into game. For example, when you drop blocks perfectly, you not only get a really encouraging sound but also beautifully rendered tiny clouds when the blocks hit each other. Also, while your tower rises the background changes. First you can see the cityscape, then the sky filled with moving planes and blinking satellites and eventually you even end up in space.

Pay attention to the background, it changes the higher you go

Build a City

Once you’ve mastered how to build towers, progress to create your own city. Of course, you’ll need the skills you’ve just acquired, but there’s more to it. The city consists of several districts which are unlocked one after the other. Each district has a population goal to fulfill — it’s displayed on the top of the screen.

Build your own city – perfect towers guarantee high population

In the first district there are three types of towers that can be built: blue residential towers, red commerce towers and green office towers.

Each tower has a specific height to be reached and as explained in the instructions, towers have to be placed according to certain rules (blue everywhere, red only next to blue and green next to both other colors).

Tapping a tower shows its population // Colored indicators show where you can place a tower

You’ll need to plan ahead to make sure you can fulfill the population goal and still leave your district with enough commerce and office space (which will also add to your population).

Once you progress to the other districts, a fourth kind of tower will be added to the selection, a yellow kind. That one is really hard to place, but it’s quite rewarding to get them.

Also, once you get better, you can unlock “trophy roofs.” Those are really eccentric roofs for your buildings which will increase your score.

Party Game

Challenge your friends! This is very cool if you’ve already had the chance to accustom yourself with the game and the others haven’t.

Before the game you can set the height which has to be reached, the maximum being fifty stories. In the game mode itself, the rotation changes to landscape mode and the screen is split.

Challenge your friends

It would have been better if the orientation for the second player would have been rotated by 180 degrees so the players could sit across each other and not squeeze next to each other, but it’s still a lot of fun.

Time Attack

You start with 44 seconds on the clock. As soon as you’ve dropped the first building block, the countdown starts.

The basic game principles are the same as in the Quick Play mode, only that you’re fighting the clock. There are checkpoints every ten levels where you get awarded extra seconds depending on how good you placed the blocks and how quick you ascend.

Race against the clock and build as far as up as you get – Just hurry!

The little indicator on the bottom tells you how many more levels to go until the next checkpoint. Another benefit of the time trial mode is that you can miss as many blocks as you like. That comes in very handy if the tower and the block are swinging into opposite directions and you have no time to waste. Simply drop the block and get into a better position with the next one.

Just don’t misjudge this game mode. It might be a good “Just a quick game before I go to bed” in the beginning, but once you get better, be prepared to actually survive 5 to 10 minutes there.

Verdict

Tower Bloxx Deluxe 3D might not look like the most exciting game next to blockbusters like Infinity Blade II or some racing game, but it doesn’t have to. And even though it hasn’t been updated in a year, it still runs without a glitch on an iPhone 4S with iOS 5 installed.

For those of us who just want to put their brains on standby and enjoy a thoroughly non-violent puzzle game with some relaxing background music and lovingly designed graphics, Tower Bloxx Deluxe 3D is a wonderful distraction and quite enjoyable.

A few months back, we took one week and celebrated everything in the productivity universe; all the apps for your iPhone that would help you get things done and be more productive. We called it, shockingly enough, Productivity Week, and it was a pretty big hit.

Today, we’re introducing a new week to the mix: Game Week. For the next 6 days, we’re going to talk about games and nothing else. We’ve got solid reviews of some of the hottest games out there, interviews with developers and even a few giveaways to help spice things up a bit.

So get ready to swipe your way into the next level — it’s Game Week here on iPhone.AppStorm.net!

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Inertia is a really amazing platformer for the iPhone that uses a mechanic I haven’t seen in any game in recent memory. It’s a platformer, so you control a little spaceman that can walk left and right and jump from platform to platform. But Intertia adds another button that essentially will keep you moving at whatever speed and direction you’re currently moving, sans gravity, when you press it. If that sounds confusing, it is, and fortunately, the game has quite a few levels of tutorials to really get you used to how the inertia button moves and plays. If you’re rocketing up and you press the button, you’ll keep rocketing up. If you’re falling down at an angle, you’ll keep falling, at exactly that angle.

Once you figure it out, it’s quite fun. And that very original movement also opens up all kinds of cool levels, where your little spaceman bounces around through 2D environments collecting various scrap pieces and running time trials. There are 35 levels to go through, and the game uses OpenFeint (not Game Center, though) for leaderboards and achievements.

The lite version is well worth the download to check out the mechanic if nothing else, and you can buy a universal HD version for $3.99. I’m really impressed with this one — the iPhone isn’t always the best device to play a platformer on (given that movement really needs to be precise sometimes), but this inertia mechanic really opens up some new elements of a very old, well-traveled genre.

Daily iPhone App: Inertia: Escape Velocity HD originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 13 Dec 2011 19:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sirius XM has pushed out a major update for its iOS apps to include features users have been wanting and that will give competitors like Pandora a bit of a jolt. This app really gives users control of their listening experience, something that satellite radio hasn’t had.

Features include:

• Start Now- starts shows from the beginning even if the program has been on for some minutes
• Tune Start- starts the currently playing song from the beginning
• Pause- just what it says. Pause live radio and then restart when it’s convenient.
• Fast Forward/Rewind- move quickly forward and back through any program
• Show Finder- sets alerts for your favorite programming

In my tests of the app it seemed to work as expected. One thing made me unhappy. The update trashed my user credentials so I had to log in again. It did preserve my favorite channels, however.

So far, this software is iOS only, but it’s expected to come to Android sometime next year. If you’re a Sirius/SM subscriber grab it, but have your user name and password handy.

Sirius XM app adds satellite radio 2.0 support originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 13 Dec 2011 18:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Offices or homes without AirPrint compatible printers currently need to have an AirPrint “server” app like Printopia (US$19.95) running on a machine on the network to act as a gateway to the printers. It can be a pain if you want to print something from your iPad or iPhone and find out that the gateway machine is turned off. Now Lantronix has released the xPrintServer (US$149.95), a hardware print server that provides iOS access to all printers on a network on which it is installed.

The xPrintServer supports a huge variety of printers — a 104-page PDF document lists all of the printers from Alps to Xerox that it works with. Strangely enough, even the Apple ImageWriter II is on the list!

Lantronix says that installing the xPrintServer is as simple as plugging an Ethernet cable into a router, switch, or hub on a network, after which the device identifies any and all printers on the network and sets up the proper drivers for each. Immediately, the printers appear on the iOS devices, available for printing. The xPrintServer is conveniently just about the same size as an iPhone, although a bit thicker.

We’ll be doing a full review of the xPrintServer in the near future, but in the meantime you can fill yourself with anticipation by watching this short video.

Lantronix xPrintServer makes almost any printer iOS-compatible originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 13 Dec 2011 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Microsoft is really getting busy on iOS today — first we saw Kinectimals released for the platform, then it was the new SkyDrive app, but last week we missed seeing a brand new Halo app built for the iPhone (and presumably Windows phone devices as well). This one is a little more useful than the Bungie Mobile app from a while back; Halo Waypoint will not only show you your stats out of game, but help you out while you play. You can see games in progress, and even use the included maps (which were originally in the official strategy guide) to see almost real-time positions for you and your friends while you play. That’s pretty cool — it’s a second screen for Halo.

You can also create custom challenges with the app, by setting up a list of criteria for a goal within a certain time limit, and then challenging your friends to meet that goal, doing things like trying to get a certain number of head shots in Team Deathmatch, or whatever else you choose to set up. As I’ve said before, we’ve seen a few of these “game plus” apps, that supplement a console or traditional video game as you play it. But this definitely seems the most built-out version of this kind of thing yet. If you’re a Halo player at all, you should definitely grab the Halo Waypoint app, free in the App Store right now.

Halo Waypoint app available now originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 13 Dec 2011 17:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Harmonix is, of course, the company behind the great Guitar Hero and Rock Band franchises for consoles, but its latest project is an iOS app, VidRhythm, that will let you create quick and funny music videos just by recording quick clips of you and your friends recording various musical parts. I enjoyed the app a lot when it first came out, and have since used it a few times to make videos with friends while hanging out or waiting around in a line. In fact, the app has even landed on Apple’s best of 2011 list.

And now it’s been updated — Harmonix has dropped the app down to the low price of free, and added in twelve new “songs” designed just for the holidays. There’s also a new pitch correction feature (for when you don’t quite sing the right note), and a new mode that will send out high quality 720p video from an iPhone 4 or 4S. Very slick.

VidRhythm is a great app that’s a ton of fun whenever you’re hanging around with a group of people. Definitely pick it up right now for the many holiday parties you’ll be going to, and be sure to post those videos online when you make them!

VidRhythm going free, updated originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 13 Dec 2011 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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For those looking to gift a suite of Mac apps to others, or to yourself, for Christmas, MacUpdate has its December bundle running through Dec. 21.

The included apps this time are TechTool Pro 6, TotalFinder, Postbox 3, FontPack Pro Master Collection + FontBoss Font Management Utility, Labels & Addresses, Mac DVDRipper Pro 3, Hear, Back In Focus, iClip 5, FoldersSynchronizer and Neverwinter Nights 2.

The first 15,000 buyers will also get IconBox.

The bundle is $49.99, a savings of 94 percent over buying the apps individually. Check out more on the current promotion here.

MacUpdate bundle offers a variety of Mac apps in time for Christmas originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 13 Dec 2011 16:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The iOS App Store and the Mac App Store have been getting a lot of press lately. Now it’s time to for the iTunes music store to share the spotlight. Starting this week, iTunes music and movies are available in Brazil and 15 other Latin American countries including Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru and Venezuela.

The store will launch with 20 million songs and over a thousand movies for purchase or rent. Brazil has the added honor of being the first country in Latin American to have iTunes Match. For US$25 per year, Apple’s iCloud-linked service scans your iTunes library, matches songs and makes them available in the cloud. You can then download the songs to your iOS device on demand.

[Via MacRumors]

iTunes Music, Movies stores arrive in Latin America originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 13 Dec 2011 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple threw a bunch of bogus references into iOS 5.1beta1, but that didn’t stop developers from uncovering references to real devices. In between the garbage, there’s a reference to the iPad 3. Each reference has a device id of 1, so we know it points to an actual device. Finding the iPad 3 isn’t all that surprising as we have seen similar references before. This discovery is just another piece of evidence that suggests Apple will start selling the tablet this spring.

What’s missing from this config file is a reference to the iPhone 5. This doesn’t mean there won’t be an iPhone next year. It only means the handset’s launch is farther off than the iPad 3 and references to it in the underlying iOS code are not yet necessary.

iPad 3 references spotted in the latest iOS 5 beta originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 13 Dec 2011 15:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple is reportedly altering the terms of its iAds mobile advertising service in an attempt to attract more customers. The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reports that the price of entry has dropped (again) as Apple is becoming more flexible with the pricing structure in general and even wooing potential advertisers onsite in Cupertino.

According to “a person familiar with the matter,” the WSJ reports that the price of entry has dropped to US$400,000. That’s down from the half-a-million price tag the company adopted in February and further still from the cool million that was required when the service launched.

The Journal also suggests that Apple is prepared to cap its per-tap charge to advertisers. Previously unlimited, the $2 per-tap fee (and $10 per thousand views) was quickly draining advertising budgets. There were no further details on how the cap would work or when it will take effect.

Finally, Apple has supposedly been providing high-profile marketing executives with information sessions and tours of the Cupertino campus. While this is common practice for many Silicon Valley corporations, the Journal notes that Apple hasn’t wooed advertising executives like this before. Shiv Singh, head of digital at PepsiCo Beverages, told the Journal “[Apple] are still learning the advertising world.”

The success of the iAds program has been debated by analysts on the outside. In August of 2010, just a month after the first iAds began to appear, the Wall Street Journal noted that advertisers were balking at Apple’s insistence on creative control, causing friction. A pricey trademark settlement reportedly costs Apple $1M in October of 2010. Then in February of this year, a study conducted by Medialets suggested that iOS ads were surging against Android.

Apple changes approach to iAds originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 13 Dec 2011 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It’s the TUAW Daily Update, your source for Apple news in a convenient audio format. You’ll get all the top Apple stories of the day in three to five minutes for a quick review of what’s happening in the Apple world.

You can listen to today’s Apple stories by clicking the inline player (requires Flash) or the non-Flash link below. To subscribe to the podcast for daily listening through iTunes, click here.

No Flash? Click here to listen.

Daily Update for December 13, 2011 originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 13 Dec 2011 14:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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