Androidpimps – all about android games

The award winning indie game Machinarium from Amanita Design made a lot of buzz when it launched in 2009. Because of the high art quality this adventure game became a success and is often the prime example that the genre is still alive and kicking (which is kind of proven now thanks to the Doublefine Adventure Kickstarter).
In Machinarium you play a robot that can stretch itself or shrink and collect and use items to solve puzzles in the typical point and click style.
Since the game was developed for PC’s in the first place, you need a high resolution device to play it, it is optimized for tablets with 1024×600 or 1280×800 and higher screens. It runs on 720p phones, but the click areas will be very small and could be a problem.

Anyway, if you are looking for a really great adventure for your shiny new Android device, go get Machinarium for 2,99€ at the Play Store. In my opinion it is the best point-and-click adventure you can buy for your Android device at the moment.

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Spacetime Studios just released the long anticipated Dark Legends, a MMO that is playable on mobile phones and on the desktop.
After Pocket Legends (here’s our review) and Star Legends this is their third mmo game release and with every release they refined the formula to create exceptional mmo experiences on mobile phones. This time the game is set in a vampire environment and mixes elements of browser games into the realtime gameplay we know from their other games. With this method they create a deeper story and they can limit your daily progress through it, so it’ll last a while and they have a new revenue stream, should you get addicted to the game you can get more action points through in app purchases. It’s an interesting concept and suits the mobile plattform well, with this mission based approach it’s much easier to just drop in and out of the game, when you have time for a quick mission.
What I also really like is that the game asked me if I wanted push notifications. Since I can deactivate them, when I stop playing the game regularly, the game will stay longer on my device. Smart move.

You can download the game through the Google Play Store or you can download the desktop version through the Chrome Web Store.

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Every week I get dozens of review requests from all kinds of developers and often I don’t find the time to write about them.
So today I’m trying something new and will just do a roundup on great indie titles, that would fall through the cracks otherwise.

Beans Quest

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Nearly a year ago Square Enix released Imaginary Range for Android. It’s not just a game, it’s a manga with a beautiful soundtrack and minigames.
I wrote a review about the first part, so check that out if you want to know more.
Just like the first part, part 2 is also available for free, but it has ads now. Let’s just hope it gets popular enough this way so it finances itself. I really enjoy these “interactive mangas” and hope that we’ll get to see more in the future.

The new mini games are Chocobo Chaser and Sphere Bounce. Omega Blast, the popular game from Chapter 1, has been powered up and remade into Omega Burst.

Google Play Store

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The Evo 3D has become pretty popular in Germany over the last couple of months, mostly because some shops like Saturn sold it in some regions for as low as 199€ without a contract, which makes it the cheapest handset with the most power available. I bought one for 269€ and still think it’s a steal.
When it comes to 3D content, you are pretty limited with the Evo 3D. There are barely any games available, because they have to implement a plugin from HTC to support it. LG had the same problem in the beginning, but they updated the Optimus 3D and included a tool that can convert most 3D games into stereo 3D. HTC hasn’t done that and so you are limited to the three included games (Spiderman, Need for Speed Shift and The Sims, don’t update the Sims over the market or you loose the 3D slider) and the very few games that have implemented the plugin.
But when it comes to 3D movies, the Evo 3D is a hidden monster. With a little extra software we are going to build the ultimate mobile movie machine. In the end we will stream 720p 3d movies, that run in 2D when connected to a normal TV.
These settings will not work on a LG Optimus 3D without some tweaking, because it doesn’t accept any resolution, but even if you have a normal handset, you could build a similar streaming server just for 2D content with the resolution of your handset, so hopefully you get something out of it too.

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