The creator of minimalist text game A Dark Room has just released an intriguing new title entitled Gridland. Although the game has yet to arrive in the App Store, it is playable on iOS devices using Safari.
Gridland is a match-3 game, which requires players to make matches in order to gather resources and build buildings during the day — and then to fight off creatures at night. In other words, it’s every bit as “out there” as A Dark Room — and quite possibly as immersive as well.
A simple glance at the stunning games perched atop the App Store game lists reveals we are experiencing a golden age for mobile gaming.
From the surreal, mind-bending Monument Valley to the Pixar movie brought to life that is Leo’s Fortune, 2014 has seen some of the most startlingly original gaming experiences in years arrive on iOS.
“I do feel like we are in a boom period,” says John Comes, design director at Uber Entertainment, the company behind games like the newly released Toy Rush.
Although Apple has been a hub of gaming going back to the glory days of the Apple II, today’s crop of hot titles are reshaping the landscape like never before. The present explosion of innovative iOS games results from several fortuitous factors coming together. Here’s why there’s never been a better time to be a gamer.
Great games don’t always need amazing graphics and sound, but they do need a strong premise and a lot of heart. A Dark Room, an outstanding text-based adventure game with minimal graphics, starts off as a simple survival story and eventually blossoms into a full-on Fallout-style role-playing game (RPG).
Much of the joy of playing A Dark Room is watching it unfold in surprising new ways. The game starts simply — you’re alone in the dark with a single button to press to start a fire. Eventually, new buttons appear so you can perform actions like collecting wood, and a character called the Builder shows up to help you form a shelter.
Two coders who’ve never met sat in their respective man caves 1,400 miles apart making a game that proves once and for all that whiz-bang graphics aren’t necessary when it comes to building a hit.
Called A Dark Room, their “minimalist text adventure” has stormed the App Store — averaging 10,000 downloads a day (at $0.99 a pop) and currently holding the No. 1 position for paid iPhone games (see our review here).
Here’s how Michael Townsend and Amir Rajan created an indie iOS game with no graphics that became the most unlikely success of the year.
Apple has been releasing its weekly top games charts as of late, and they make interesting reading.
The latest list — published Tuesday afternoon — shows the cumulative iOS game downloads for the week running April 7 to April 13.
