Applifier’s Everyplay Reaches 100k Replays And Announces Integration With Rovio’s ‘Bad Piggies’
According to many, Applifier is one of the hottest startups in Finland and with over 150 million active users in their gaming cross-promotion network - rightly so.
Last year, they announced Everyplay. Which in most basic terms allows in-game replay recording. However it also acts as a gaming video social network as you can share your game replays on Everyplay, Facebook, Twitter and Youtube. This, according to Applifier, will drive organic growth for game developers.
Cute Attack Launches Captain Clumsy On iOS, Talks About Next iPad Release
Helsinki-ish based game studio Cute Attack has launched a new title on iOS entitled Captain Clumsy. Its a pretty cool game. It stars a clumsy pirate (given by hooks on both hands) who drops his gold from the top of the mast. You have to navigate him him down the masts to collect the gold, and avoid the jerk seagulls.
The game is launching with 26 levels, and they say there's lots of replay value. The app is free to play, and is monetizing through power-ups like gull smashers and coin magnets.
TicBits Adds 'Cruel Jewels' To Growing Title List
Turku, Finland based TicBits has been growing steadily since we last covered the release if iAssociate 2, their popular word association game. Their team has grown to nine employees without any outside funding, and today announces the release of another title, Cruel Jewels.
The new game can be described as a match-three game with a twist. The evil villain Leonard St. Vile has challenged you to a game alternating between three different modes: regular, timed and versus. The versus mode is where it gets interesting with you taking turns in order to do damage to the opponent.
Rochard Is The New Space Hero Protecting Us From Aliens!
Gravity defying, men against alien pirates, set to save planet Earth from evil, sounds like a typical video game. But with all the hype surrounding Rochard, I am sure Sony Online Entertainment and Finnish Recoil Games have done a quite an impressive job. Even though the hero defies gravity, the gamers are sucked into the gaming experience.
Rochard is a tale of John Rochard who is given the voice of Jon St. John, the same person who’s voice is better associated to the legend we remember as Duke Nukem. The gameplay revolves around Jon, who is an astro-miner when he discovers an artifact deep within an asteroid. When you say artifact it should be known that it is of great value, and if this is found in space, don’t be surprised if aliens come with an objective to acquire it. Artifacts, aliens, invasions and in comes Rochard and alien annihilator; the G-Lifter that helps him play with gravity, solve puzzles and save the day.
Tuokio: Coin-Op Games Experience on iPad With Friends
A new gaming start-up has recently appeared on the Finnish start-up scene. Tuokio is based in Tampere and their core business are mobile games for everyday gatherings. To be more precise, they develop a portfolio of games for iOS devices. Founded in spring 2010, they released three games so far and are developing another game at the moment. Their games so far include King of Opera, Raiding Company and Blond vs Brunette Racing . We talked with one of the founders, Jouni Salonen, to learn more about what they do.
Applifier Goes Mobile
We've been speculating about Applifier going mobile for a few months and now it is official: Applifier is beta-testing their mobile game discovery tool. Since smartphones and tablets are gaining mass appeal, game developers are increasingly building products that work across all mobile platforms. But here, just like in browser-based or Facebook game, the number of available games hinders discovery. Applifier's new mobile tool helps cross-promoting games through a pop-up bar inside the game that recommends games based on user's history. A similar tool has worked wonderfully on Facebook, helping hundreds of publishers grow their userbase faster. The new tool is now available for the iPad, iPhone and iPod. Support for Android will be launched later this year.
Ditch The Plastic: WildChords Teach How To Play A Real Guitar
Everybody likes playing a music instrument, though a lot of us don't really know how to. That is partially why game consoles that make us feel like we know what we're doing are so popular. Learning to play a real instrument is much harder and is definitely more tedious: you have to practice a lot before you can play a Beatles song. That is why Ovelin, a Finnish start-up, decided to develop Wild Chords, a computer game that is played with a real guitar. We talked with Chris Thür, co-founder and CEO, to find out more about the game and the company behind it.
Angry Birds Hits 140 Million Downloads And There Is A Lot More In China!
There is so much good to write about Angry Birds that many people would think that Rovio has always been a record breaker from day 1. It has taken Rovio 7 years and over 50 titles to bring forth this insanely popular game for the masses. By mentioning 50 titles, I simply needed to mention that I myself wasn’t much aware of Rovio before I played Angry Birds (and so did almost all my friends).
Angry Birds Free With Magic Releasing At WIMA: NFC Tags Will Unlock Levels
Angry Birds is set to get another title to boast about in its collection as Rovio announces the launch of Angry Birds Magic. The game is set to launch on Nokia smartphones powered by the current Symbian Anna update.The game will be released at WIMA NGS conference next week.
Angry Birds Coming To Windows Phone And So Is Angry Birds 3D
Angry Birds has been on the iOS devices as well as the Android platform for quite long now and reports are that Rovio is in works to bring this to the Windows Phone 7 devices. A bit surprising to me why they haven’t given the Microsoft’s mobile platform a thought earlier? Maybe it was Microsoft alone that had kept the Angry Birds from coming any sooner. We won’t dwell into this side of conversation and will simply stick to the news.
Applause For Uplause Entertaining 1.5 Million People!
We talked about Uplause back in 2010 and already stated that it made traditional multiplayer gaming old school. It has indeed with its concept of Crowd Games or Massively Multiplayer Crowd Playing Game (MMCPG). It looked promising to us and its recent numbers stand as a solid proof to its success.
Angry Birds Rio Animated Movie Coming In April!
75 million downloads translates more than just success. I might label this start to a post as a mere dramatization of a blog post but Rovio’s Angry Birds deserves credit for this. Why? The game has caught attention on every platform; the iPhone, Android, expanding to PCs and Macs, board games and even planning up for an animated series.
Habbo Hotel's Triumphant 2010
Teenagers arond the world seem to be going crazy about Sulake's Habbo Hotel - the company announced today that 2010 was their best year ever with December being the busiest month. Habbo Hotel boasted 4.5M€ revenue from virtual goods in December alone. Unique monthly users also peaked the same month reaching 8.7 million, one-third of whom accessed the game through the Facebook application. Almost 200 million unique active characters have been registered to the site throughout its ten-year existance, 42.5 million out of them in 2010 alone. Habbo Hotel has also been making more money this year than last - annual user revenue grew by 25% compared to 2009.
One Night Stories
Finnish gaming industry is thriving with innovation. The latest newcomers are Tribe Studios with a game concept called Stagecraft, which will be specifically targeted for 30+ adults. The idea behind the game is that modern grown-ups like computer games but can no longer play them for hours on end every day. Thus, Tribe Studios are designing a game that can be learned and played within one evening. The action will be centered around a story-telling narrative and allow for simultanious multiplayers, which means that just like in boardgames using the same tools you'd create different games every time you play. Stagecraft creators also want gaming experience to reflect that of watching a movie but in a more interactive way. Thus, the graphics are promised to be staggerring and playing a game would cost you as much as renting a movie or watching one in the movie theaters - between 3-10€ at a time. The game is estimated to be launched around the summer 2011.
Click to fame with SongHi
Last spring we wrote about SongHi Entertainment and their launch of a closed beta product that helped easily create music with virtual instruments in a collaborative environment. Six months later, SongHi is a social music service that allows anyone to start playing and sharing their own music with a game-like interface in the browser. SongHi is live in the Nordics and Baltics, has partnership deals with Sony Music Finland and Universal. Also, it already started generating its first modest revenue this October. The point of the game is to create your own music and become famous among other users. SongHi's artificial intelligence is used to make sense of the amateur's music, making any mediocre player sound great. If you've been an active user, the game rewards you with stars to up your rankings, but you'd need to buy SongHi coins to purchase virtual items like intruments or fancy decorations for your virtual studio. You can't buy your way into fame but you can make it substantially easier by being a good consumer!
