One of the iPhone's greatest strengths is that it is a portable, mobile device that can fit neatly in your pocket. It plays music and video, surfs the web, makes calendar appointments, takes pictures, jots down notes, calculates sums, and it even can call people. The beauty of it is that practically everything you do on the device can be shut off at any moment to resume later on, without the need of a save button. Your music can be played no matter what you're doing on the device. And the status bar lets you know the time and battery life left - so you don't run out before you get home to charge.
We believe that developers should make the effort to respect these three elements when writing games for the platform. So from now on each of our reviews will be accompanied by an indication of how the game integrates into the iPhone. There are four tiers of compatibility.
There are perhaps other elements that may be important to some, but we feel that these three are the most common features that we would like to see in every game - we don't think it's a big ask to have any of these elements, and indeed there are games out there that integrate with the iPhone superbly. There may be cases where missing one of these elements isn't essential, and if that is the case it will be detailed in the game's review.
Freezing the game state is essential.
Save state is perhaps the most important feature for any game on a mobile platform. As it's highly likely that at any point you will get a call, or will have to exit for another reason, freezing the game state is essential. Rolando is a fantastic game as far as gameplay goes, but the iSave feature really sets it apart. By badging the app icon with the number of Rolandos active in the current game, it reminds you that you have a game in progress whilst on the home screen. TanZen saves state for each and every puzzle in it's library. You can have as many unfinished puzzles as you like - it's a true pick up and play game. And Sky Burger is worth a mention here - if you do get interrupted, coming back to the app will greet you with all of your burger ingredients reanimating back onto your bun. It serves no useful purpose, but it looks cool.
It's important to be able to listen to your music when you want to. Yes, there will be some games that will have great music and you won't want to play your own - but for the others, choosing your own soundtrack is a must. It should be intuitive too - if you're playing music already, the game should not fade it out. Bejeweled 2 is a game that will fade it out, but you can change this in the settings. This is the wrong way to do this! Bed Bugs is a great example of how to handle iPod audio, only playing it's own soundtrack when you are not playing anything.
Not many developers are utilising the status bar, and we think they should be doing. Whilst it's not necessary to have it all of the time, having it there allows the player to make sure they've not drained their battery playing the game - and allowing them to check the time too. Also, for online games it's a simple way of letting the gamer know what their WiFi strength is. There's three ways to do this:
We hope that future games on the platform will all carry these traits as standard - after all the iPhone has set an unprecedented benchmark for usability and innovation on a mobile device. If you're reading this as a developer, please take the time to include these features in your games.
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