It’s like Red Rover, but with lasers.
We already talked about Anomaly Defenders this morning, 11-bit’s sci-fi tower defence game that casts you Ender Wiggin-style into the role of protecting the aliens you were once trying to exterminate. Edgy, but that’s not the most new interesting story on the App Store tonight. That crown belongs to Luca Redwood, the maker of the wonderfully original puzzle game 10000000.
Redwood has got a very unusual new game for us: Smarter Than You, which he’s calling a “social duelling game”. It’s a Game Center-driven asynchronous paper-rock-scissors game where the power of the attacks varies every round and you have the chance to deceive your opponent about your intentions. But that’s not the weird bit. I’ll tell you that (and show you the rest of tonight’s worthwhile releases) after the jump.
Full disclosure: I have a beer with Luca Redwood every once in a while. Over a couple of these beers recently, he told me the premise behind Smarter Than You. It’s a completely free game, and there’s only one way you can spend money on it. When a duel is over, you have the option of buying a one-dollar IAP “tip” that grants bonus experience points to your opponent, which she can use to unlock visual flair like new faces and flags for their avatar.
“I have no idea if this is going to make even one dollar,” Redwood told me. I don’t honestly know, either — I kind of doubt it. But it’s a great experiment. Will people spend money solely to congratulate a stranger?
One of the other things happening behind the scenes with Smarter Than You is that Redwood is building an AI that uses the total sum of every game of Smarter Than You ever played as its heuristic framework. M.E.T.I.S. (who challenged PT readers to solve a puzzle earlier this summer), Redwood claims, will be able to beat anyone in the world — you might just spot her in-game tonight.
Smarter Than You is a free iOS Universal app available on the App Store at midnight wherever you are, or 11pm Eastern.
I’ve played a bit of Anomaly Defenders already today. Tower defence isn’t my favourite game genre, but there’s no denying the lustrous sheen of this game’s polish. What’s really odd about it is how it passes without comment that you’re in charge of killing the humans now. “Commander, you’re a genius, come save my people,” purrs the Alien Boss Lady. And off you go, setting up towers to mow down your fellow homo sapiens. “Sorry Chuck and Larry,” you don’t say at any point, “but I’ve made an ethical decision to prevent genocide by killing you.”
Whatever its sins of narrative omission, Anomaly Defenders is — like all 11-bit games –beautiful to behold. It’s much less passive than other tower defence games, but it’s not going to convert you if you don’t already appreciate the form.
Anomaly Defenders is an iOS Universal app and it’s five dollars. Out later tonight.
Interstellar is a movie tie-in game done right, it appears. We’ve seen studios charge for tie-in games lately, which is definitely not the optimal way to raise awareness for your upcoming film. Interstellar beats the drum for Chris Nolan’s forthcoming sci-fi epic starring Rust Cohle.
I haven’t played this but it looks like a full-fat game where you plan the trajectory of the film’s spaceship through realistically modelled solar systems, proving once and for all that time is a flat circle.
Interstellar is free on iOS, and it’s on Android too for that same price.
The McConaissance goes digital.
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