After the successful release of Pop on the iPhone and iPod Touch, Nnnoo are announcing the launch of Pop Lite – a free version for download on the iTunes store.
Pop Lite contains two modes ‘Training’ to learn the basics and a brand new mode ‘Pop Lite’ in which users have 90 seconds to score as many points as they can before the timer runs out.
I have been playing Mirrors Edge now for a couple of weeks (off and on while I level my Paladin in World of Warcraft up to 80…).
I purchased Mirrors Edge based on the demo, which for me is quite rare as normally demos put me off games. The demo really made you feel able to go anywhere and do anything, or at least left me with those impressions. The retail game has moments of making you feel awesome and really fired up with all the great moves you can do.
Just a short note to say we are hard at work on a lite version of Pop which we will be free and we hope on the App Store before Christmas!
We are pleased to announce the launch of Pop on the iTunes App Store today. You can download it here:
We hope you all enjoy the game and would welcome reviews on the App Store and comments in our community forums.
-Nic
We are glad to announce that Pop for the iPhone and iPod touch has now reached beta stage. We have selected forum members and journalists from some of the best iPhone, Apple and gaming blogs, sites and forums to participate. Feedback so far has been really favourable and we look forward to announcing a release date and submission in the near future!
We have recently streamlined Nnooo.com and uploaded a new design. The main changes are:
I was in the Westfield Bondi Junction (a mall in Sydney) at the weekend waiting for the other half. So I took my phone out and took a look at what I could do to kill the time.
I have Monkey Ball, Crash Bandicoot Racing, de Blob and Trism on their atm but I decided I couldn’t play any of them. Why? Because of the way they save or don’t save when you press the home button.
Out of all of the games above only Trism saves its state when you press the home button. This makes short burst play hugely frustrating on the other games. Most mobile phone users will likely look to their iPhone to fill the gap in between meetings, or when they wait for people to turn up, or at lunch, or maybe on the bus/train/tube/ferry. All of these are short burst activities and the user needs to know that time has not been wasted.
If you look at both the PSP and the Nintendo DS they have a sleep function. So if you have to end your gaming quickly just put it to sleep and resume later. Now the iPhone allows software makers to save the application state when you press the home button the main reason for not using this is bug testing.
Saving the state and loading it on the next boot up has lots of testing implications. What happens if it is in this state or that state they press home? There are a lot of potential sticking points. However as a software maker our focus must be the user.
If the user is put off your game because of the above it could hurt their impressions of gaming on the iPhone full stop. So we hope, with Pop, we can get a good solution to state saving integrated so you can keep playing even if you have to interrupt it with real world stuff!
I bought Braid last week and have now put enough time in to be able to air my views.
Price
The first thing which struck me about Braid was the price, I also know from other sites that it is causing a lot of discussion. At 1200 points it is one of the more expensive xbla games put there. Now a lot of people are complaining about it being more expensive than other xbla games saying it is a short experience and not worth the price. What I find interesting is this idea of a ‘correct’ price point or one that reflects value and so forth.
Just a quick note to say I can now post from my iPhone! So hopefully that means more frequent updates!
Nic
Now that Pop is on sale what exactly are Nnooo up to?
With the great sales of Pop on WiiWare we are taking time to build our team starting with finding great coders. We recently hooked up with a great iPhone coder who will be working on bringing Pop to the iPhone. As we are still a small company we want to focus our bests efforts on making sure each game is as good as it can be. To this end we will first be focusing on the iPhone version of Pop before moving onto our next, new title.
We have several plans for new games in the pipeline which would suit both iPhone and Wii and once Pop is out on the iPhone we will be in a better place to decide how we should proceed.
However we are still looking for talented and passionate programmers so if you would like to work on Wii or iPhone and can work in Australia please get in contact!
