The Great Hudson Giveaway: 3 Freebies, 3 Days, 3 Cheers
by Eric March on October 9, 2008 at 10:09 am
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It’s Tokyo Game Show time in the land of the rising sun, and it’s making HudsonSoft giddier than a Japanese school girl. So giddy that, from now until midnight Sunday (Japan Standard Time — noon EST) they’re giving away three of their games to anyone who wants them. Free! How awesome is that? Check it out:
App Name: Aqua Forest
Developer: Hudson
Category: Games: Logic & Puzzle
Aqua Forest is essentially a physics playground based around the OctaveEngine 2D physics engine, but also featuring a game element with some preset physics puzzles set up for you to solve. The physics puzzles are quite easy — they’re just there to give AquaForest some contrived purpose beyond a fun physics toy, but the real fun is playing with the physics toys themselves and making your own fun. You’ve got numerous materials to play with, each with their own properties (density, elasticity, flame retardancy, etc.) and tools with which to draw and manipulate them.
If you like those falling sand webtoys, then this is a lot like that, so you’re bound to love it. Its only drawback is that the OctaveEngine, like any particle and soft-body physics engine, is CPU hungry, and the iPhone only has a limited amount of resources to give it, so it doesn’t take long in the playground before you start bogging the engine right the hell down. Still, it’s loads of fun to play with, and being free at the moment, it’s an absolute must!
App Name: Catch the Egg
Developer: Hudson
Category: Games: Casual
Quite possibly the oddest game in Hudson’s stable is Catch the Egg. At the most basic, the object of the game is exactly what it says on the tin: Catch the egg. It’s all in how you do it — the mechanism and method — that makes this game unusual.
The game is entirely in 3D, first-person perspective — and when I say first-person perspective, I mean your perspective, not just the screen. It goes like this: There’s an egg falling from the sky. You, who just happen to be at the right place at the right time, must catch it. To do this, you have to tilt your device directly above your head so when you look up, you’re staring at the screen, and thus the falling egg therein. You can move the device around to get a bead on the egg so that your outstretched hands can catch them. When the moment is right — which you can gauge either visually or by the height indicator on the top right — shake your device to catch the egg.
With a little practice that doesn’t sound so hard, right? Oh come on, you know I’m setting you up. No, it’s never that simple. First of all, the type of egg — duck, chicken, ostrich, platypus, or whatever the hell creatures are carelessly dumping their potential offspring from on high — matters. Larger eggs are heavier eggs. Heavier eggs fall quicker, an act which makes Sir Isaac Newton turn over and bang his skeletal head against the bottom of his coffin in frustration. Thus, the timing is different for larger eggs. Furthermore, the amount you shake your device when catching the eggs determines the strength with which you catch them. Too strong and you crush the egg. Too weak and it slips through your fingers and you’ve got a road omelet. This too is effected by the size of the egg.
After a catch, you must now tilt the device down towards the ground so you can see whether you’ve made a successful catch or whether you’ll need the spatula. If you’ve timed it right, and gotten the shake strength right, you win. Too strong a shake and the egg turns up cracked. Miss the timing and you might as well start making some toast.
It’s a strange little game to be sure, but having the device follow your movements as you gyre and gimbal it still strikes me a freakishly cool. (So I’m easily amused.) It’s an interesting game and has plenty of novelty value, but it doesn’t really hold the attention long after that aspect of it has worn off.
App Name: NeoSameGame
Developer: Hudson
Category: Games: Logic & Puzzle
I digs me some SameGame. If it’s done right it’s a lovely little casual logic game you can pick up and play for a minute or two at a stretch if you’re short on time.
Hudson seems to feel the same way, as they’ve not only done it up right, they’ve pimped it out. There are two modes of play: Normal, and Neo. Normal is, as you’d expect, the classic SameGame. NeoSameGame is SameGame, but with bonus squares and shake action to rain additional tiles from the sky to help you clear the level — but you can only shake so many times, so use wisely. Furthermore, blocks will fall in the direction of whichever way is down based on how you’re holding the device so you can rotate the device to move blocks into strategic positions.
Besides added gameplay elements, Hudson have spruced up the genre with some gorgeous graphics and effects that spice up the overall experience, especially when coupled with the kickin’ soundtrack. Definitely a required download while it’s a freebie.
So there you have it. Three great premium titles (or perhaps two great titles and one oddball) absolutely Scot-free for the next 72 hours and change at the time of this writing. Folks, it just doesn’t get much better than that.
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