You may find it surprising that we play video games! Here’s a quick rundown of what’s distracting us from work this month.

Adam – Artist

Per usual, I do a lot more console gaming than iDevice play. Recently got through Alan Wake, which is a really engrossing single player experience that I couldn’t get enough of (and I have the DLC to prove it). Also played through Metroid: Other M, which I’d prefer to forget ever happened.

Highborn (or HD or Lite): I’m not usually a strat game kinda guy (unless you count Brutal Legend), but this one was charming enough to hold my interest from start to finish. Like a less-complicated Advance Wars, with dialogue that doesn’t physically hurt to read. Good variety in the boss designs and level scenarios, so I was compelled to see it through to the end… which never came. I’ll probably be picking up Chapter 2 when it’s released.

Alex – Developer

On top of the standard AAA fair of games (Black Ops, Starcraft 2…still) I’ve been burning through quite a few iPhone games. Not sure how I feel about getting an iOS game and being done with it after one play session. Probably stems from my tendency to never finish single player console games either, just magnified. In either case, I do keep coming back to…

Linkoidz: Maybe I have yet to come to terms with liking match-3 games, which may be why I feel surprised to mention this game. Yet, I tend to get more fun out of this one than most as of late. What’s amusing is I tend to play it BETWEEN games of Starcraft 2 while waiting on buddies to return or queuing up. When I stare at my iPhone and know I only have a few minutes to “zone out” while waiting on something (car at the shop, commercials, etc), I just tend to gravitate back to this game. The interaction of swooping linkoidz up into your gun and then shooting them out feels very fluid and satisfying. Hats off to Retro Dreamer for making a very well designed mobile game!

Check back next week for the de-codenaming of “Project Codename”, Tilt to Live‘s December expansion.

Today, only 7 months after Tilt to Live‘s original release,  we present Tilt to Live Lite!  Also presenting Temporary TtL (iPhone) Price Drop to 99¢, whose title is admittedly not as catchy. Now you can try before you buy, AND get a discount. This great deal is in honor of Tilt to Live’s next big  expansion, coming in December, which we have codenamed “Project Codename”. More on that at the end of this month.

The lite version is basically TtL HD‘s free demo, but for the iPhone. Now everybody gets a demo. Isn’t that nice!

In other news:

Tilt to Live was recently inducted into the App Hall of Fame, alongside such heavyweights as Harbor Master, Pocket God, and some game called Fruit Ninja. We’re truly honored to be included, especially since we’re a few million downloads behind the other inductees.

You can consider it in the mail if you used free, 5-8 day super-saver shipping. We submitted the release build to Apple yesterday, so we’ve penciled in September 30th the official release date. So on September 30th, barring some misfortune, expect to grab Tilt to Live HD for free. Free to play Classic with 4 weapons, $3.99 to own it all.

One thing you’ll notice immediately from this screenshot is the word “Score” where “Time” should be. While we were tweaking gameplay for the upcoming Tilt to Live HD, we invented a brand new Gauntlet mode; one that takes advantage of all this glorious space. It’s the same idea: survive weaponless in a barrage of dots, axes, and nasty surprises. But it’s no longer your time that counts. It’s how you use it.

What’s different?

• Everything.
• Dots, axes, and knives will be coming from all four edges of the screen, not just the right.
• No predictable formations, only chaos!
• No lives, you wimp.
• No depleting life bar at the bottom. Orbs give you points, instead.
• Orbs are more valuable if you collect them quickly.
• You won’t be graded on how long you last, but how many points you can gather.

Be on the lookout for TtL HD later this month. Classic mode is free to try, but this new Gauntlet is only playable in the full version.

One Man Left Studios will be releasing Tilt to Live’s iPad incarnation this September. More than a mere resolution bump, the HD edition will feature completely revamped weapon effects, four times the arena space of its iPhone counterpart, and optimized tilt controls for the iPad platform. It’s bigger, it’s prettier, and best of all: it will be free to try before you buy.

All four of the iPhone’s gametypes will be returning, now with super-sized play areas. That’s four times the space to flee in Code Red, and twice the ground to defend in Frostbite. The current nine-weapon arsenal will also be available to unlock, each sporting an impressive graphical facelift. And speaking of unlocks, the AGON platform will be reprising its role as TtL HD’s (rebalanced) awards and leaderboards provider.

But what’s all this “free to try” business about? Well, in the spirit of drug dealers and food court Chinese restaurants, we’re offering our users a sampling of TtL HD absolutely free of charge. In demo mode, you’ll fight for the highest score in a giant Classic gametype with its own demo leaderboard. There will be four freshly-beautified weapon pickups at your disposal: the nuke, blastwave, cluster missiles, and ice blast.

If you likey what we makey, you can access the full version for a $3.99 in-app purchase. That’s five unlockable weapons, rebalanced award challenges, all four giant-sized gametypes, and the iPad-exclusive leaderboards for each. Keep your eyes peeled for more details on this blog, as the September release of Tilt to Live HD approaches.

Click for actual size.

See more screenshots on our new TtL HD page.

The Frostbite update was, at last, submitted to Apple for approval today. Did we take our sweet time with this gametype? Yep. Did we break our first promise, and then push the boundaries of our second promise? Absolutely. If something sucked, we unsucked it. And the result? A unique, fourth Tilt to Live gametype that we’re confident will rock your socks off. We’ll post all the details as soon as the update hits the App Store, but you’ll probably be too busy playing it to care.

For now, you can check out the fabulous Frostbite theme, composed by the very talented Whitaker Blackall. You may recall Whitaker’s previous Tilt to Live track for the Code Red gametype. His creativity and attention to detail continue to impress us. As far as we’re concerned, he is the sound of Tilt to Live.

With one entire game under our belt, we’ve got reams of knowledge and experience to impart to aspiring designers everywhere. We did some new interviews recently, and they went a little something like this:

• Midlife Gamer Meets: One Man Left Studios
• Multi-touch Fans: Interview with OneManLeft Studios

After a month of teasing and delaying, it’s finally time to share the details of Tilt to Live’s upcoming Frostbite update. This is all still in development, so the specifics are being tweaked and balanced as I write this post, but here’s the big picture:

Frostbite Mode

This new gametype will transport you to a winter wonderland. One where all the dots rain pre-frozen from the heavens, gift-wrapped and ready to die. Because in Frostbite land every day is Christmas, or Hanukkah, or Muslim Christmas. But here’s the catch: Those frozen dots are falling towards that steamy hot spring at your feet. If my high school education serves me: frozen dot + steamy hot spring = thawed dot! And in an arena marred by an unfortunate weapon shortage, thawed dots spell big trouble. Looks like you’ve got some thorough shattering to do.

Luckily, a weapon shortage is not a weapon drought. And the pickup we’re tossing you every-so-often just happens to be the perfect safety net for a dot blizzard.

Meet the Burnicade

Intuitively enough, the new burnicade pickup will engulf your cursor in a burst of hellish flames, launching you across the arena in a blaze of glory. But the real payoff is the barricade of burning justice you’ll leave in your wake. This fire is deadly to dots, but not to you, because we think there are already quite enough things trying to kill you.

As you can imagine, the burnicade will be a rare sigh of relief in Frostbite mode. And because it’s built into the rules of that gametype, this weapon will be available in Frostbite from the moment you update/install the game. If you want to play with fire in Classic or Code Red, though, we suggest you work on your AGON PocketScore. The burnicade will be the next unlockable weapon beyond the Lightning shield.

And that’s the news, boys and girls. Frostbite and the burnicade will be giving your iDevice hot flashes in July.

I’d like to preface this post by pointing out that our banner did promise to shatter your expectations. So it’s totally inaccurate to call us liars.

The Frostbite update will be taking a backseat to some company reshuffling that’s going down this month, so its release has been pushed back to July. One Man Left (that’s us!) is experiencing some welcome growth, so we need a little me-time to reorganize. What this means in the long term is that we will be able to do our thing considerably more efficiently. In the short term it means that we are disappointing.

As a consolation prize, I will now reveal the name of our new weapon so as to engage your eager imaginations! Included with the Frostbite update in July, prepare to scorch the earth with a mighty BURNICADE. We’ll be posting screenshots and gameplay details for Frostbite and the burnicade later this month.

I was recently asked by an interviewer to describe my dream iPhone game, the game I would produce if unfettered by the confines of marketability and social norms. I answered earnestly, but was ultimately shut down by OML’s other half, Alex Okafor, the dream policeman. He called my dreams “creepy” and “probably illegal”. So I agreed to provide the interviewer with a watered-down answer, one that did not reflect my true passions as a game designer, as long as I was allowed pour my heart out to our true fans: the OML blog readers.

And now I am proud to present the uncensored schematics for my dream iPhone game:

“I have a couple of dream projects. My favorite is like a Tickle Me Elmo, but it’s better because you can take him around with you in your pocket, on your iPhone. You can tickle him all over and wear headphones, so that only you can hear how happy you are making Elmo. That way what happens between Elmo and me stays private, instead of everyone staring and possibly misinterpreting.

The best part is that you can use the phone’s camera to take pictures of strangers, and then you can tickle the strangers. That adds a social aspect to the game, and contributes to my premise of ‘touching the world’. You could even upload and share your favorite strangers with your friends, or with other strangers!”

In other news

Someone changed our banner to tease next month’s new update, but they forgot to show off the new weapon. They just put a question mark! I’ll get on that ASAP.