Adam the Artist

I recently retreated to a childhood favorite while I wait for Silent Hill Downpour & Batman. Anyone remember Psi-Ops for the X-Box? It was a really creative third-person shooter, with mind control powers and pyrokinesis, and the power to blow people’s heads up with your mind. Sure, the AI is dumb as bricks, and almost all the boss fights are completed by throwing boxes at people to death. But still, mind-jacking a sniper, making them shoot all their friends, then jumping them off a building was an experience worth reliving. You can download a free, ad-supported version somewhere (couldn’t find a good link), or buy it here.

On iOS I fell in love with Gesundheit! this month. It’s a stylish stealth game about monsters that eat boogers… Despite what that might sound like, it’s well worth your money.

Alex the Codesmith

My current playing habits on iOS, whenever I do have time to play, gravitates towards Touchgrind BMX lately. I’m a huge fan of the old Tony Hawk Pro Skater series back in the day, and illusion labs’ latest entry brings back that spark, and also executes it extremely well on a mobile platform.

It’s that genuine feeling of accomplishment that you actually got better at something rather than the game artificially boosting stats as you progress that I find appealing with these kind of games. Starting out in touchgrind BMX my scores were meager and it looked completely impossible to achieve the scores needed to advance to further levels. But after watching a tutorial or two, I immediately saw what I needed to work on, and through practice my scores starting rising and levels started unlocking! A pure game. Love it.

And on this, the 27th day of August in the year of our Lord, 2011, a champion arose from the rabble of common men*. A hero forged from concentrated greatness*, his perfect* tilting wrists chiseled of some unbreakable mineral not heretofore cataloged by science. Wielding the maddest skills on the face of planet Earth*, he accepted our Game Center friend request and rode into iOS history. Let us never forget his name:

cookienut
with 212,875,900
The Best Tilt to Live Player on Earth*

But what is a winner without 86 losers (68 of whom actually tried today)? Let’s not forget our runners up!

Not Quite the Best Tilt to Live Players on Earth*:
2nd: xBoReDoM
3rd: Fleshman92
4th: PresidentPistachio
5th: 2bol
Click here to see how you ranked among the 69.

We’ll be emailing the winners next week to collect shipping addresses and whatnot for your prizes. HUGE thanks to everyone who entered and competed, we had a lot of fun putting this together, and we hope you had fun playing.

*According to a small, but totally official sampling taken by One Man Left Studios on August 27th, 2011.

The Tournament Roster is officially full! Better luck next time.

Dust off your iPhones/Pads, boys & girls, because we’ll be holding our first-ever Tilt to Live Tournament on Saturday, August 27th! Entrants will compete in Code Red on the iPhone version of TtL (you could also play on an iPad if you dare), racking up the highest score possible by 10PM, Eastern Time in the US.

All entrants will receive a free digital copy of the TtL soundtrack, the best 5 players get the item of their choice from the TtL Store, & whoever comes out on top will receive this handsome, one of a kind “Best Player on Earth*” t-shirt (you can opt for a coffee mug or poster if you want). We’ll also officially declare the winner Best Tilt to Live Player on Earth* on this blog, permanently etching his/her accomplishment into the bowels of history. If you think you’ve got what it takes, just read the official rules below!

Adam the Artist

Ms. Splosion Man is pretty tough. It’s a hardcore platformer for X-Box Live Arcade, but I’ll admit it doesn’t have to be as painful as I’m making it. You see, they have optional levels on the world map that glow red, indicating heightened levels of danger & difficulty. Against my better judgment, I play those levels. They also have a pair of shoes hidden in each level, usually taunting me from some hard to reach death trap off the beaten path. Against my better judgment, I go for those too. The result: loud and constant profanity. Still, it scratches my Donkey Kong Country itch. Probably because they added mine cart and barrel sections.

On iOS I’m playing Highborn‘s Chapter 3 expansion. A two hour marathon of it last night, in fact. For whatever reason, I just find the game charming… Even when its sense of humor gets downright stupid.

Alex the Codesmith

Given my current gaming habits it would seem at a glance I don’t intend on playing anything else for the foreseeable future other than Starcraft 2. You’d be right, except that 2 new games are scheduled to be released this year that I’m sure I’ll be playing the crap out of. Those games would be Tribes: Ascend and Battlefield 3. But until then, every other game can wait patiently. Every now and then I explore other games (usually of the co-op variety) almost as  ‘snacks’ between SC2 sessions. One that stands out recently was Realm of the Mad God. A Co-op MMO RPG Shmup with perma-death as a central feature. Played in a browser.  And is fun. Win.

On the iOS front, the stand out game for me recently was one Matt Rix, of Trainyard fame, suggested over twitter a while ago. It’s called Async Corp. A puzzle/match-em game that I found hard to put down. Something about that genre scratches an itch for me. You’re presented with 2 ‘areas’:

You tap on a square in one area and tap on another square in the opposite area to ‘swap’ them. Make a group of 4 or more of the same color and they combine into larger squares. Tap the large squares to ‘ship’ them out (remove them). There’s a few game modes in there, but they generally revolve around “getting as many packets shipped out as possible’. Also the whole vibe of the game was charming. It had a very ‘happy but sinister’ feel to it I couldn’t help but notice. Maybe I’m looking for something that isn’t there. But it’s great a game like that can make you think about it in that way. Reminded me vaguely of Portal because of that.

Adam the Artist

I recently completed yet another playthrough of Oddworld: Stranger’s Wrath, one of my very favorite games of all time (available now on Steam, currently being revamped for PS3). It’s a first-person shooter with a sci-fi western theme, where the main character acts as his own horse. Plus it’s not set in the Middle East, which is incredibly novel by today’s standards.

On the iOS all I’ve been playing recently is Velocispider (Universal, 99¢), a nifty arcade game by our friends at Retro Dreamer. It’s kinda like Space Invaders or Galaga, if that’s your cup of tea. You can tap and hold to charge your shots in this game. I was ready to quit at like stage three until someone told me that, so now I pass the knowledge on to you.

Alex the Codesmith

Not much has changed on the non-iOS front for me. I’m still neck-deep into Starcraft 2. With a game this deep and with such a high skill cap, I don’t see myself getting ‘tired of it’ for an extremely long time. I have *intentions* on finishing up Uncharted 2 after seeing the E3 footage and I still want to check out L.A. Noire.

On the iOS front, the game I’m playing at the moment is Match Panic by Chaotic Box. I tend to have a soft spot for extremely simple game concepts executed well on the iOS, and this one’s no exception. The difficulty ramps up nicely for my tastes as well, but given what I know about *my* tastes it’s probably a bit on the hard side for the average player. The concept of the game is to tap the left or right side of the screen that has the matching symbol of the one that is in the middle of the screen. The faster you go, the more points you get, and there’s an actual time limit for getting through a ‘stack’ of symbols. Getting a match wrong penalizes you by slowing you down. The game’s responsiveness is definitely appreciated, as I don’t ever feel like I missed a symbol because the UI was lagging or delayed.

Tilt to Live‘s one year anniversary may have come and gone, but today marks the end of Alex’s first year as a full time indie developer. I don’t remember when I went full time, so I don’t get a post. I’m okay with that.

You can read about Alex’s experience on his secret developer blog.

Game II has a name now. It’s Outwitters, and I’ll have the Feedback team ready to show next week. Now for another edition of: What We’re Playing.

Adam (the Artist)

Out of curiosity and a love for exploration games, I picked up Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery (iOS) recently. Haven’t got a clue whether I recommend this game. On the one hand, it’s beautiful and creative and has great music. On the other, there have been a few instances where I sat pawing at the screen like a lonely kitten, hoping to god something would start glowing or tell me what to do. Or worse, something would glow, taunting me that I had the right idea but was tapping when I should be rubbing. Or drawing figure eights or spinning the iPad on my fingertip like a basketball. Needless to say, I’m stuck in such a place and bitter.

On the console front (my favorite front), I just finished Beyond Good & Evil HD (XBLA). The game is extremely easy, which makes it like the perfect snack food after Dead Space 2. It plays like Metal Gear meets that Star Fox game that Rare made. The one with the little triceratops. Stop me if I’ve lost you. Anyway, it had a really unique story, likable characters, and kickass latin music. I really hope the sequel makes it to store shelves.

Alex (the Codesmith)

Being the multiplayer and co-op feind that I am, I recently got my grubby hands on Super Stickman Golf. As usual, I’m late to the party. Admittedly, I picked up the game solely because I heard of the multiplayer for it and wanted to try it out, single player be damned! It’s always great to find a game with solid single player gameplay that keeps me coming back, and has a really fun multiplayer to jump into when I have a few buddies waiting around with me. Not to mention the catchy soundtrack was made by the talented Whitaker Blackall, who also did the Tilt to Live soundtrack.

On the PC front, it’s still Starcraft 2 for me. Although Portal 2 has complicated things. Thankfully, I finished the Portal 2 co-op last night with a friend so it won’t eat into my SC2 ladder climbing for that much longer…heh.

Have an app you think we should check out? Let us know in the comments section.

Maybe it’s just because we made the game, but Alex and I have been dorking out for a week or so about Tilt to Live merch. We auditioned Cafepress.com as a provider (primarily with Game II in mind), and what we’ve ordered has come back pretty cool. Plus, their return policy is more than reasonable if you don’t like your item.

So at long last, you can express your enthusiasm for Tilt to Live with an Overrun tee (pictured), or a super-high quality poster print. I think my favorites are the Caffeine Blast mug and the Pointillism print, which looks really nice in a frame in my office.

Fifteen lucky winners from the mailing list are getting free posters, so keep an eye out for that email today, and tell us where to send it!

I’ll have some cool stuff to show from Game II next week. Fun fact: we do have a name picked out already, we just can’t start using it until we’re finished tying up the rights. Don’t wanna jinx it.

We’ve been teasing our next project for a few weeks now, and it’s been AGONIZING for me to keep my big mouth shut. So without further ado, put on your Sunday best for Tilt to Live Easter!

As soon as we saw the announcement for Angry Birds Halloween, Alex and I were instantly brainstorming holiday editions of TtL. Wouldn’t it be cool if the dots were ghosts? Cranberry sauce? Snowballs? Realistically, it was too late for us to jump on the Halloween bandwagon. And November/December was already booked with Viva la Turret.

We want this Easter edition to stand alone as its own thing, and more importantly to capture the fun of the holiday in a really authentic way. For us Easter is about surprises, the thrill of finding hidden stuff, and the creativity of decorating your eggs. So obviously, we started by turning all of the enemies into easter eggs.

We’re still in the very early stages of establishing a scoring system, so I can’t go into a lot of detail. But we do know that along with points, you’ll be accumulating Easter Spirit via a meter at the bottom of the HUD. Here’s the cool part: if you die with enough Easter Spirit, there’s a Resurrection mechanic that prevents a Game Over, saves your progress, and respawns you after 72 hours.

Tilt to Live Easter will (obviously) be released April 24th, and will debut at 99¢. Stay tuned for screenshots and a trailer as E-Day approaches.

The Viva la Coop HD update is approved and ready for installation. If you have an iPad and a friend with another iPad, and both of you have Viva la Turret, then this is great news! If you don’t, then I guess it’s just Thursday. Our next project will have fewer requirements, we promise.

Other fixes:

• The scoring bug that gave people highscores in the billions has been fixed. There was only one way to restore the honor of the TtL HD leaderboards, and that was a Classic and Code Red leaderboard reboot. So go prove to the world that your old rank wasn’t a fluke!
• The vortex will no longer suck you out of the Perforator turret in Classic & CR.
• Some typos in our awards have been fxied.

The Tilt to Live Merch store is just about finished. My shirt got here & the print quality was great, but I screwed up the design and won’t be posting pics until a do-over arrives. This is why we test things. Should be ready to go next week. Also, our next project will be announced April 2nd.