One of the games we spoke of in our recent WWDC games coverage was Kroll from Barcelona, Spain-based Digital Legends.  A side-scrolling, 3D fantasy adventure game, Kroll takes full advantage of the iPhone's unique control system; players jump with a jerk of the iPhone, thanks to its accelerometer, and use touchscreen controls to activate weapons and otherwise move about the game world.

While Digital Legends is an award winning development house with PC, console, and smartphone games under its belt, the iPhone was a new platfrom for the team.  Impressively, the demo shown during the WWDC keynote was put together in under two weeks.

With this first iPhone outing, the company is being particularly sensitive to its gaming audienc ... Read more »

The latest in 3D iPhone gaming comes from developer Marco Giorgini. He has released a pre-alpha version of Kingdom Lores, a 3D fantasy adventure game based on an OpenGL ES rendering engine of his own design.

The game presents an over-the-shoulder view of the player's avatar in the 3D game world.  On-screen controls are used to negotiate the terrain, do battle with enemies, collect treasure, etc.  Both portrait and landscape orientations are supported and on-screen indicators keep the player aware of current health levels, selected weapons, etc.

The author indicates that Kingom Lores is and will remain a free game but he is uncertain as to whether it will appear in the iTunes App Store due to the fact that he has no Mac and, as s ... Read more »

Adventure gamers of old will surely recall that some of the best adventures available were SCUMM titles.  No, not a slanderous term, SCUMM (or Script Creation Utility for Maniac Mansion) is a LucasArts scripting engine that was used for the creation of interactive graphical adventure games. And very good adventures, as it turned out.

Modern computers can play these games thanks to the ScummVM interpreter, and happily ScummVM has been ported to the jailbroken iPhone / iPod touch.  As Gizmodo points out, the arrival of ScummVM to Apple's new mobile platform is really a marraige made in hea ... Read more »

If squad-based first person shooters are your thing, StarByte's NEX [App Store] may just be the game you've been waiting for on the App Store– featuring a variety of different objectives, ammo types, and menacing aliens at every turn. But how does NEX stand up against the existing shooters for the iPhone?

Your movement in NEX is controlled either by using a on-screen D-Pad, the accelerometer, or a combination of the two. Without any way to adjust the sensitivity of the tilt controls, I found them to be far too touchy and bordering ... Read more »

Mobila Interactive posted a brief video on YouTube tonight showing a very early build of Rise of the Triad for the iPhone. Originally developed by Apogee Software (now known as 3D Realms), Rise of the Triad was meant to serve as the sequel to Wolfenstein 3D.

With simple shoot everything that moves gameplay, it was released in 1995 and saw several re-releases before the source code was eventually released under the GNU General Public License. Since then fans have ported the game to nearly ever platform imaginable, and as of tonight the iPhone joins that list.

Here is the development video, also the developer notes the control scheme is just fo ... Read more »

This evening we got tipped off on a strange video that appeared on YouTube showing a test build of a pretty convincing basic clone of Portal built in Unity running on an iPhone 3G:

It's unclear what the future of this project holds. Normally I would say producing something like this is the quickest way to get a cease and desist letter, but Valve has had rather unexpected reactions in the past to spin-off projects.

For instance, from the blog fan-made Portal prequel, Portal Prelude:

Yesterday, we got our first contact with the french community manager of Valve. Yes, Valve. The marvellous company that brought Portal and so much more to us for years ... Read more »

Escalation Studios and id Software has just released the first original Doom title to the iPhone and iPod Touch platform: Doom Resurrection [App Store].

The Doom name carries with it an enormous 16 year legacy that results in some massive expectations for any adaptation. This iPhone version of Doom has been in development for over 6 months and utilizes many of the assets originally created for Doom 3. As a result, the game will look quite familiar to those who have played Doom 3.

The best compliment I can ... Read more »

Chris, Clive, Joseph, and several other extremely helpful ngmofos spent quite a bit of time this evening at the ngmoco event answering my endless array of questions about their in-development FPS game tentatively named LiveFire.

In the demo I saw today, four players sat around a set of iPod Touches all playing online via the hotel's WiFi. Since all the games in LiveFire are played online through ngmoco's matchmaking servers, Chris was directing people when to start their game to guarantee everyone got matched. After a lively countdown the players were thrown in to a heavily modified Quake 3 engine to play one of the most impressive online multiplayer experiences I've seen f ... Read more »

Hands-On Mobile released their first person shooter Prey Invasion [App Store] tonight.

The world is under attack from an alien menace, but they've picked on the wrong man and his girlfriend. Tommy Hawk takes no prisoners as he plows through level after level of mutated aliens ... Read more »

Pick Up and Play has released their online multiplayer first person shooter iFPS Online [link] into the App Store this evening.

iFPS Online features a full 3D FPS experience. Challenge your friends to a death match with up to four players. The first and only iPhone online multiplayer FPS. Host a game through your wifi; Join a game through your wifi or 3G!

The game offers online deathmatch with up to 4 players over Wi-Fi or a 3G connection, making it the first App Store game to do so.

First impressions of th ... Read more »