A BIG “Thank You” To 11 Awesome Devs

Posted on August 3rd, 2009. Written by Damon.

When you ask any iPhone gaming enthusiast what they enjoy most to play they will say something like, “Oh Real Racing and Zen Bound are lots of fun.” You never hear them say how they enjoy the games that PopCap or DSeffects make.

Here is a special shout out to whom I consider to be the 11
best developers or publishers, on the App Store.

While Illusion Labs have only created two titles for the iPhone, they have been revolutionary. Touchgrind was the first ever skating game and superbly used the touch screen to maximize its capabilities. This is one of the games that really showed what the iPhone was capable of. After a long time in the top games they moved on to a new project in Sway. This game has absolutely amazing graphics and again capatilizes on the touch screen with amazing controls. They have continued to add worthy updates to both games and I expect amazing things in the future.

Com2Us are most well known for their incredibly addictive and high selling Baseball Sluggers, but that is just the tip of the iceberg from this company. They had great success with the great RPG Chronicles of Inotia: Legend of Feanor before they were dethroned by the excellent Zenonia. Some of their games have gone unnoticed such as Trapped: Undead Infection and the time management game Crazy Hotdogs. Some of their recent releases include the 7-in-1 minigame of iGamepack and the American Idol like World of Tunes. All of their games are extremely well made and I hope to see some amazing games in the future.

IUGO are most famous for their piece of work called the Toy Bot Trilogy. This was the first game to show how both touch controls and the accelerometer could be utilized efficiently. In some ways Toy Bot Diaries is like a beta version of Rolando which uses the same concepts. They also released titles such as Zombie Attack and Shaky Summit which aren’t as well known. Recently IUGO has released a hilarious lite version of the controversial and not yet released A.D.D and have provided a Worms killer in the amazing Star Hogs. With Spy Bots, a sequel as such to the Toy Bot Trilogy, coming soon there is a lot to look forward to.

Glu have had games in the App Store for quite a while now, but it wasn’t until recent times when they have been recognised. They have had games like Bonsai Blast and Space Monkey. They had limited success with Space Monkey going free multiple times until they hit the jackpot, skyrocketing Glyder up the charts in no time. With the success brought from Glyder they got other great games like Build-a-lot, Cops & Robbers, Cooking Star and most recently Deer Hunter 3D in the charts. These great games would have gone unnoticed but now we can all enjoy them. As long as Glu keep bringing out the quality games I can’t wait to see what they have in store for us.

Tapulous is arguably one of the most successful developers on the App Store. It all started with the launch of Tap Tap Revenge to coincide with the App Store opening. It was one of the only decent free games and with regular song additions became one of the most downloaded apps of all time. Tapulous then got tricky with enhanced gameplay, graphics, the lot with Tap Tap Revenge 2. This boasts more tracks and has been downloaded on approximately 1/3 of all iDevices.

For those like myself wanting more of the Tapulous phenomenon, they have released many artist only editions with extra special graphics and more. These have sold well and feature large names like Lady Gaga and Coldplay. They also have a number of various apps out, but compared to the games they haven’t even made an imprint on App Store history. If what we have seen is anything to go by I can’t wait to get my hands on more of their fantastic games in the future.

And to include the best thing to come out of Australia since Andrew Bogut is Firemint, a spectacular company. While it may seem that they have only released two games to the App Store they have been working undercover for a while. Many will remember two great racing games pre-Need For Speed called Fast & The Furious: Pink Slip and Fast & Furious. These were some of the best racing games for their time and Fast & Furious incorporated their revolutionary leaderboard system called Cloudcell. This let you race, record and view times and racing from all over the world due to the help of Youtube.

Firemint then went independent with small time title Flight Control, reaching unexpected success and reaching No.1. Many variations of this world wide hit are now creeping into the App Store with the most notable being Harbor Master. Finally Firemint has put out an amazing racing game that matches and beats Need for Speed in some areas called Real Racing. This game has easily taken the sim racer crown and has shown what Firemint is really capable of. From what we have seen I can’t wait to see what amazing products they bring out next.

Freeverse aren’t known for creating big titles that bring in loads of cash, but this is because they focus on making $0.99 games, and good ones at that. Freeverse joined the App Store with the $9.99 Motochaser which then went down to the deserving price of $0.99 after the hype settled down. This price is where Freeverse has most of its success with games like Flick Fishing, Flick Bowling, Slotz Racer and Days of Thunder all experiencing lots of time on the charts.

They have a few games priced higher than $0.99 but they haven’t experienced the same amount of success. Recent games released have continued with the class we expect such as Flick NBA Basketball and Warpack Grunts. As long as they continue making these quality games at a price everyone can afford there is no reason why they can’t continue with their success.

Chillingo early on were known for having quantity of quality in the App Store, making many apps but very little being excellent. These ‘B’ grade games as such are now being produced in the sister company ClickGamer. Chillingo now focuses primarily on publishing ‘A grade’ games for varying prices. What attracts developers to Chillingo is now their name across the App Store and how well there games sell. Titles such as Orions, Bike or Die 2, Return to Mysterious Island, Toki Tori, Knights Onrush and Defender Chronicles have all done extremely well on the App Store.

These are all quality titles that may have gone missing if it wasn’t for being published by Chillingo. Of recent times they have put out successful games such as Touch KO and Minigore. Chillingo are also the proud publishers of the best game of 2008, Zen Bound. You know that all games chosen to be published by Chillingo are pure genius and worthy of a pick-up.

Gameloft are extremely well known on the App Store for creating amazing premium games priced between $4.99-$9.99. They have continuously had titles in the top games on the App Store and are always bringing out more to replace them. They came to our attention with titles like Asphalt 4, Brain Challenge and Real Soccer 2009 before bringing out some great action games such as Hero of Sparta, Assassin’s Creed, Brother’s In Arms and Terminator Salvation. Most of there games are of PSP quality with games like Let’s Golf, The Oregon Trail, Rise of Lost Empires, Real Tennis 2009, Guitar Rock Tour and Castle of Magic.

Of recent times they are experiencing success with older titles by taking them down to the $1.99 bracket. With amazing titles already announced to be coming soon like the GTA-like Gang$tar, we can expect nothing except the best from this great company.

When I hear the word NgMoco I automatically think of one word. Rolando. Amazingly though, Ngmoco have ALOT more than just that. My first experience with Ngmoco was with the classy free game Mazefinger, which got them noticed on the App Store. Soon after they received a heap of success with Topple, Dr. Awesome and Dropship. Then along came the much hyped Rolando, proving itself to be the Mario of the iPhone. It’s success was huge and is still selling well at a lower price to this day. With more successful releases like Topple 2, WordFu and Star Defense gracing our iDevices, they decided to pull out an almighty blow with a sequel to their trademark game. Rolando 2: Quest for the Golden Orchid took what made the original successful and improved it everywhere with new characters, storyline and graphics.

They have proved that they can deliver time and time again, and are easily the best new developers to come alongside the iPhone platform.

Neil Young, CEO of Ngmoco founded the company after leaving our No.1 developer, Electronic Arts. EA has the biggest advantage on the App Store with the ability to bring over massive console titles and boy did they do that. Electronic Arts first graced our platform with many of their world famous board games such as Monopoly, Scrabble, Yahtzee, Sudoku and Trivial Pursuit as well as famous titles like Spore Origins, Tetris and SimCity. This year Electronic Arts released an incredibly strong line-up featuring some amazing games to come as well as some huge ones already released. Before I get to them they released some smaller games this year such as Pandemonium, Anytime Pool, American Idol, Star Trek, Clue, Lemonade Tycoon and Mass Effect Galaxy.

They have also started a project with the 8lb Gorillas who set to put EA’s bid for the $0.99 price range. Electronic Arts three best games on the App Store are arguably some of the best three on the App Store. First they released the incredibly realistic Tiger Woods PGA Tour, ending all competition in that range. Just days later Need for Speed: Undercover was released showing the best graphics by far on the iPhone. Coinciding with the console release was the No.1 app The Sims 3, which is still getting a lot of success over 1 month later. These are insanely good titles and with Madden, FIFA, NBA, Need for Speed: Shift plus more coming later this year they will continue being the best developers on the App Store.