‘Mailmen’ iPad Review – A Stealthy Take on the Postal Service
Hot off the recently released Dungeon Crawlers [$3.99], the folks over at Ayopa Games are back with Mailmen [$1.99], an enjoyable stealth-based tale showcasing the eternal battle between mail carriers and the canines that chase them. Featuring a crazy story, good team-based gameplay, and well done level design, Mailmen is well worth checking out.
Mailmen follows the tale of three postal employees as they try to deliver letters and packages to the public while thwarting the plans of the nefarious Newman, a former member of the team that turned to evil. Standing in their way are packs and packs of dogs eager to catch, chase and bite our heroes. The story is off-beat, ridiculous, and completely appropriate for the style of game Mailmen offers. This is also echoed in the development of the team itself, which does a great job imparting personality into each of the characters in every little thing they do.
Gameplay is divided into objective-based levels. While the primary goals typically involve delivering a package or item from one part of the map to the other, each mission always has optional objectives, such as delivering letters to special mailboxes and collecting stamps. Sure, you can skip these side quests, but they’re essential if you want to get the highest score (and thus, the highest rating for the map). While some levels focus on only one of the mailmen, most of them will have all three working in some sort of tandem.
Your team members aren’t just there for show, either. A big portion of Mailmen is its team-based stealth gameplay. Each mailman has unique abilities that must be utilized if you’re going to avoid the dogs (and score the most points). For example, Johnny is the only one with that can tie up dogs with a rope, while Charlie can hide in trees and throw a reclaimable ball to distract dogs. While the gameplay elements aren’t necessarily the deepest I’ve seen (you really only have a handful of abilities), I’d rather play a game that is well-executed and slightly simpler than a complex one that’s a mess to learn and control.
Dogs, meanwhile, serve as the primary nemesis and deserve some attention in their own right. Each dog has its own cone of vision, and you’ll spend the vast majority of your time figuring out ways to move across maps while avoiding the dogs spotting you. Most dogs basically operate in one of three different modes: patrol, stationary searching, and simply stationary. Later levels introduce deviations such as a dog on top of a watchtower that can see over most items that would normally block their view.
If you happen to get caught by a dog, they do what any canine naturally does to a mailman: try to bite them. Mailmen features a few breeds, ranging from the small Chihuahua (which mainly just barks and alerts other dogs), to the German Shepherd (usually asleep, but can do damage if it gets woken up) to the Rottweiler (can actually free other dogs that get tied up). If you happen to successfully hide, dogs do eventually go back to the patrols. As imagined, endure enough dog bites and the game is over.
Having good team mechanics are all well and good, but they don’t mean much if the level design doesn’t take advantage of it. Thankfully, Mailmen does a great job with that aspect of its game. Introductory levels do a good job of presenting the mechanics of each of your teammates, with later levels evolving into somewhat elaborate labyrinths that hit the right balance between difficulty and approachability. Obviously with stealth being the main ingredient, Mailmen is a bit slow-going, but that really is expected for the genre. With that said, I was never really frustrated with any of the levels, although getting three stars on later missions requires a lot of patience and planning. Still, more levels would have been nice, as the game is a little on the short side.
Control-wise, Mailmen does a decent job utilizing tap-to-move mechanics for controlling your characters. However, there are some other decisions that just feel clunky. For example, I loved the top-down isometric perspective, which just works for the gameplay. However, a pinch-to-zoom scheme really would have been a nice addition for viewing the map, as the ‘satellite’ view (which lets you see most of the map on the same screen) zooms out way too far, while the normal camera angle doesn’t suffice for the bigger maps. The same goes for changing camera angles, as a multi-touch gesture would have been a lot more precise and intuitive than a ‘Change Camera Angle’ button.
UI annoyances aside, Mailmen is an entertaining game and a great addition to the iPad stealth library. The team-based gameplay and silly story simply makes for a title that’s an enjoyable experience. If you’re a fan of stealth game that requires planning and patience, you won’t be disappointed with Mailmen.
TouchArcade Rating: 
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Newly Formed Studio Ninth Ninja Bringing ‘Mutant Storm’ and a Mystery Game to the App Store
Some former developers from True Axis and Firemint have banded together to form a new studio called Ninth Ninja and are readying a release of the classic dual-stick shooter Mutant Storm for iPad. Mutant Storm was originally released by PomPom Games for the PC, Mac, and Xbox, and was amongst the first to spark off a rebirth of retro-style arcade games in the past 10 years or so. It was also remastered and re-released as Mutant Storm Reloaded on Xbox Live Arcade in 2005.
You may remember that another PomPom Games release called Space Tripper [$3.99] made its way to iOS last year thanks to the porting efforts of True Axis. It also shouldn’t be forgotten that the Space Tripper iOS project was filled with trials and tribulations before it finally ended up on the App Store after more than 3 years of development. The wait seemed to be worth it though, as Space Tripper’s gameplay held up strong on iOS and the performance was rock solid.
Andy Coates, the former one half of developer True Axis, was responsible for a majority of the Space Tripper iOS port. He’s putting all that previous hard work to good use by using the same engine for the Mutant Storm port, and again the game is running at a solid 60fps on the iPad 2 and is running respectably smooth on the original iPad as well. Check out the developer’s hands on video of Mutant Storm running on the iPad.
Development on Mutant Storm is said to be going a whole lot smoother than it did with Space Tripper, so chances are we won’t be waiting 3 years to get our hands on the game (hopefully I didn’t just jinx it). In fact, Andy says that the game is basically finished, and that all that remains is some work to do on the menus and online integration. Ninth Ninja is hoping to have Mutant Storm out in April or May of this year.
Ninth Ninja has also announced that they are currently working on a brand new iOS project in addition to Mutant Storm. Adrian Moore, who had previously worked on Firemint’s Spy Mouse, will be handling the design. Artwork will be Paul Mitchell’s job, and he most recently has worked on the Real Racing series, also from Firemint. And of course, Andy Coates will be handling the programming of this mystery title.
We expect to have lots more on Mutant Storm and the mystery game from Ninth Ninja, especially with GDC just a couple of weeks away, so keep your eyes on this space.
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‘Squids’ Receives New Missions, New Squid In Update
Thought we’d squirt this information to you real fast-like: The Game Bakers‘ Squids [$1.99], a real-time strategy RPG with some of the best art we’ve seen on iPad and iPhone, has been updated with four new missions, four additional helmets, more pearls, and a new recruit named Jammer. Jammer, as described by The Game Bakers, is “fast, very fast.”
New content is cool and all, but we’re guessing fans will dig some of the technical and game-side tweaks. Starting with this update, users can download the game’s music from an in-game menu option. Also, now if players use an item and fail a mission, Squids no longer steals that item from you. Making war fair, these guys.
[Thanks, Oats!]
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‘Incoboto’ Hands-On Preview
Inco is alone. His parents are dead, and so is his universe. He’s the last living human, and a survivor of a horrible, no-good, very bad event that turned his universe’s suns to char. He doesn’t brood, which is a good thing since no-one likes a crybaby, but I really feel for the guy: he lives among broken toys and dwells in total darkness. When Incoboto opens, you’ll see him peering into an especially black space with his telescope, perhaps searching for answers.
He finds one in a curiously sentient, but obviously mad sun named Helios. Helios is babyish and overexcitable. He giggles like an infant and devours like one, too. But he is also odd and knowing in the way that he floats about pointing to the things he can fix if, and just if, Inco can find more fuel for him.
They’re as perfect of a fit as Inco is going to find considering everyone is dead and all, so the two strike up a friendship set off across the universe. Helios wants stars, while Inco just wants to find someone. Conveniently, when Helios gobbles a star, he gains enough power to turn on the world’s contraptions.
This is the premise of Dene Carter’s imaginative 2D side-scroller Incoboto, a game that we’ve had our hands all over for the last week or so. Carter is an ex-Lionhead Studios veteran, and you can see that studio’s creative spirit all over it. It’s the end result of hundreds of different ideas that have been mashed together into an imaginative romp that has things to say about death, living, corporate control, adventure game design, exploration, and many other things.
Breaking it down mechanically into a snappy phrase isn’t easy. In our audio interview this week, Dene said he gave up trying to pitch the game. Incoboto is too odd, too much its own game.
“I kind of gave up doing all of that,” Dene told us. “While you’re developing a game, of course, what you’re trying to do the whole time is try to emphasize the fundamental thing that makes your game, your game, and not a game. It’s so easy to describe your game as other games, with bits of this and bits of that or whatever else, as soon as you start doing that it’s very easy to get distracted.”
“After literally a year doing that and just kind of going ‘god, this is ridiculous, this is turning to Nethack, this is turning to god-knows-what-else. How the hell did we get here?’ And my wife literally beating on my ass for about three weeks, I just said you know what, this is a strange, strange game and I will just make sure everything that I do with this game from now on reflects that.”
The core components of the game’s overall structure and design seemingly owes a lot to the small creative team at Nintendo behind the original Super Mario Galaxy. Incoboto is the end result of what would happen if that team squashed that experience into 2D, and in the process of torturing, manipulating, and cleansing it, injected new features and the bent, almost dreamlike signature whimsy of a Lionhead production.
I don’t want to sell this short; Incoboto clearly is its own title. But its core action revolves around loosely adapted concepts and mechanics popularized by Galaxy. It plays around with physics a lot, and you’ll find yourself pulling a ton of levers and scaling a lot of oddities in a quest to collect stars across a series of interconnected globes that you can travel to and from freely.
If you’re still lost, take a gander at this trailer. This should put you in the right head space. Note the almost total lack of UI:
The game’s camera acts as a rod, slowly spinning the world as you move around it. One of the coolest elements of Incoboto is its one-touch controls. To run, press a finger in a direction. To jump, press that finger down again. It’s really simple, and it works. One of its other cool elements? The Corporation. In the game, you’ll discover that everything in Inco’s world has been created by an overly-observent mega-company that seemed to exist simply to create the most inane things ever invented, and then post PR-friendly signs about them everywhere.
At its heart, Incoboto is a puzzle game. Collecting stars allows Helios to open brand new passageways to other worlds. However, most of these stars are tucked out of reach, or require some fanciful solutions to get to.
You’ll run across puzzles that will have you lining up rods to complete an electrical circuit. In one specific case, we rotated a physics-based puzzle box with a ball on the opposite end of where it needed to be. Sometimes, you’ll be smacking switches with rocks or explosives. Other times, you’ll be scaling a world in a precise way to reach a star.
The puzzle design is lightly schizophrenic; there’s a lot of ideas floating around in the game, and you’ll see a lot of different puzzles as a result. The kickback is that you’ll hit a lot video game logic walls. New puzzles just don’t jive with the old. I got stuck within the first hour, and then again in the second, and then big-time during the third.
Seriously, Dene says this is basically the point: he wants you to get stuck or feel funny, and then to have to probe your friends for answers. He views this as a mechanic in an age where everyone wants to hold your hand. How indie.
As you progress, you’ll find tools and other objects that expand what you can do while digging for stars. Early, you find a glove that allows you to throw rocks at springy targets. The first item gives you the power to find hidden buttons and switches with a gentle pinch and zoom motion.
My time with Incoboto has been short, and I got stuck a lot. It’s a discouraging kind of feeling, so I’m not quite sure what that says about me or how I’m clicking with some of the fundamental design. It’s nice to have an actual challenge, I guess, but I don’t want the difficulty to keep me from seeing everything Dene has created. This is a beautiful, beautiful world with music that blends into the atmosphere as smoothly as a smooth thing.
I’m eager to see more in the final version, which by the way, should appear at some point this March on iPad. If you’d like to hear Dene talk about his game, consider checking out our most recent podcast. If you’d like to see more of the game, there is a really, really thriving discussion in our message board right now.
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‘The Simpsons’ Free-To-Play Title Hitting Soon
EA is continuing down its dark path with The Simpsons: Tapped Out, a free-to-play game that puts you in the shoes of Springfield’s re-designer after Homer blows up the iconic place inadvertently. In an exclusive interview with CNET, EA laid out the premise and it shed a bit of light on the re-building effort, which is set to require the usage of the game’s purchasable in-game currency, doughnuts. Awesomely, the title will use both voice and text provided via the TV series’ actors and writers. Expect some commentary on the genre, as well as the usual goofy stuff.
Sound great, but it’s best keep your expectations in check: EA treats its free-to-play users just about as well as Zynga does. Games like Theme Park, and now the re-designed Tetris, are specifically designed to exploit the people who love the idea of the IP the most. It’s a weird and sudden turn of philosophy for a publisher that, just about a year ago, seemed much more interested in doing meaningful things like pushing the quality bar with games like Dead Space and challenging others to make titles with as much depth as a Madden or FIFA.
That said, here’s what EA’s Bernard Kim told CNET:
“People that don’t want to pay can still enjoy the title. People who are more impatient can throw a little bit of money at it.”
We’ll have to see about that. Tapped Out is expected to hit iPad and iPhone “in the coming works,” and it’ll just be one of many free-to-play titles from EA to come. In another article, CNET estimates that we’ll see a dozen or so by this March.
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