Hi all, I'm the creative head behind Windmill Apps and I wanted to announce the upcoming release of our first big game production, Space Master. Since playing Flight Control, I wanted to bring the line-drawing and gravity genres together. And after a lot of experimenting I am happy to report that we found a pretty cool way to do that. Here is the promised Trailer & Gameplay Video: Screenshots: Moon Level Mars Level All Stages (unlocked) Here is an extract from the itunes description, giving you some more ideas about the gameplay. Space Master is taking the line drawing genre to a whole new level. You've guided planes and mastered boats. Yet in Space, you need more skills to claim success! Are you ready to engage in the challenging career of a Space Master? Land your space vessels on five different planets and secure Earth's resources.Consider distance, speed and angle of each ship, then draw a line to fire the thrusters. Catch a falling ship until it hovers, move it sideways, let it fall freely before giving it a final burst to land safely, all triggered with you drawing a single line. Before you know it, this natural and unique approach will get you conducting an elegant and beautiful ballet in space. Space Master V1.0 is submitted to Apple and if all goes well should arrive in the appstore sometime next week. Hope you all like what you see so far Markus (@Markusn on Twitter) * Didn't want to bore you with too much introduction, but for the record: Some of you might know Windmill Apps from our kids games or our infamous ispider free/Monster Pals prank app. We are an independent small dev studio based in SoCal, try to provide a lot of value with our apps and put a lot of focus on the execution.
I'm a sucker for path drawing games, looking forward to seeing the video to get an idea of what spin you guys have put on it.
I think I get it. Your line doesn't mark the path but the direction and power of the thrust. A quick little line straight up means a tiny blast whereas a long path up to the right means a big thrust to the upper right for a more prolonged period.
i love line drawing games, and this looks really cool. lots of new line drawers are coming soon, Monkeys in Space, Harbor Havoc and this, looks to be a good line drawing winter
you are right on (@lordgek, devilishly Good) and that concept came with an additional logical side-effect, which is that the lines have to move with the ships. Resulted in a very dynamic gameplay. Now I totally agree with everybody here, that is something you got to see before it makes any sense. Will try to get the gameplay video up today. Thanks for all the positive feedback on those first screenshots, very encouraging! Markus
The release of Space Master is hopefully getting closer. Here is some more information based on feedback I got: Openfeint: V1.0 will support Openfeint (incl. 100 point achievement) V1.1 will be submitted soon and it will support up to 500 OF points with a more granular achievement system. Leaderboards are fully enabled in this upcoming release. Strategic Elements: Some noted the bottom control bar of the video/screenshots: You can activate an auto-landing feature, crash several ships before one game is over and call in additional ships to land if you are an advanced player. I liked this more than the fast forward feature some other games have. There is an energy bar that fills up over time, you can use it to either refill health or to activate the auto-landing. Adds a nice strategic twist, esp. when playing for Highscores Price $0.99: This game has a lot of depth and an unusual control concept and I understand that it is not an easy sale. I also know when showing it at iPhone dev meetings I had a hard time getting my device back once people started playing. So I decided to make the release price $0.99 and count on word of mouth, like through this forum. And while I know there are a bunch of amazing games coming up, based on feedback I got so far, I dare to say Space Master will be among those giving you the highest replay value for your money. Let me know how you like the gameplay video that I added to the very first post! Not sure if it is appropriate to link the video into a follow-up post like this one, so I didn't. Let me know if I was really hiding it with this. It looks like almost all the views I get are coming from Twitter. Thx for all the feedback, much appreciated Markus
How does scoring work? Simply 1 point for each ship landed or are there ways to get combos and the like?
Each ship is one point, the yellow ship (which is the heaviest) is two points. Combo points are a nice idea! The game is already pretty challenging, performing landing combos might be hard for the average player, but I will look into that, great feedback. I realize the video looks quite nice and easy. See at 0:22 in the video for example, the rightmost blue ship? It will crash if not corrected, already had too much momentum for that move. The timing in Space Master is tricky and it takes a while to manage a good approach to the platform, not to mention a single-line landing. Moondrop is much faster paced and you essentially herd a bunch of ships with your taps. Great concept and plays completely different. Markus Btw as a look behind the scenes, we are located just a few miles away from Nimblebit and we compared early versions I think in July, relieved to find we take way different approaches. Must be something in San Diego about gravity
It looks interesting. I thought I’d purchase just one more line draw based game (Harbor Havoc 3D) but I guess I was wrong. I’ll buy this one too!
Totally different! I got to play this game back before Moon Drop was even out and I thought it was a blast.
It's out! http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewArtist?id=308219026 Anybody want to ToFTT?
