Hacker Evolution: Untold - finally released…
With a slight delay (of 1 week) we have finally released the sequel to the original Hacker Evolution game.
I didn’t wanted to call it Hacker Evolution 2, because the respective numbering scheme is pretty much crappy, and the action of the game takes place before the time of the original game.
Those of you that have played the original game, will notice a lot of changes. We have added some new commands, the target maps are more real and interactive, and the game play itself has changed quite a bit. We have some new concepts as well. For instance, every server you hack, contributes to your global trace by a certain amount. But there is now the possibility to go back to the server and delete the logs.
Also, the way we have designed the levels, has changed a lot. There are levels which require a lot of thinking and balancing to get through (level 4 as an example) a maze of firewalls. You have to hack them in the right order to be able to bounce through the hacked ones and advance to the next ones. The depth of the levels has also changed a lot. You will explore office buildings, houses, entire locations or an abstract global level.
This will be pretty much the last hacker game engine I will develop. Over 6 years have passed since we have released our first hacker game, and it’s time to move ahead and come up with new game ideas. Don’t worry … we are not heading towards the billion polygon-blow-things-up games genre. There are 2 mains reasons to continue to stick around. One is that I will continue expanding the game with new levels, features (freelance infinite play, online multiplayer, etc). The second one is even better. Our next game, which will be the next chapter of exosyphen studios, will be entirely based on the current hacking simulation idea, except that we will take it to a whole different level. All the things you have enjoyed in our current games, will become a small part of a giant and immerse game.
Download and enjoy the game, if you haven’t done so, already…
Most popular iPhone web app
A while ago, a friend of mine (from HelipadHouse.com), showed me this cool little things called web apps, that are actually small web pages designed to run on Apple’s iPhone. The idea looked pretty nice and last week I decided to give it a go and play around with them. I made 3 webapps:
- WiFi Speed Meter (http://www.wifispeed.info) - measures the speed of your iPhone’s internet connection.
- Pocket Market (http://www.pocketmarket.info) - displays the latest prices for the commodities traded on NYMEX
- CeRetea (http://www.ceretea.com) - it’s a web app for the local romanian market, to help people find out to which fixed/mobile operator a phone number belongs.
And what turned out to be great after the next Apple site update … WiFi Speed Monitor became the no. 1 most popular web app of all categories.
See the screenshot:
Link: http://www.apple.com/webapps/index_top.html
Feel free to browse our collection on web apps, directly on your iPhone at: http://www.exowebapps.com
6th anniversary of our hacker games
Exactly 6 years ago, on November the 5th 2002, in a cold autumn morning, after a sleepless night, our first PC game, Blue Sky::Acceptable Casualties was released. It was our first game, and exosyphen studios was officially born.
We came a long way since then and continued coming out with better and better games, and other products.
I would like to thank to all our supporters throughout these years.
We will be here for many years to come, and promise to deliver the same great games.
I would like to thank Jeremy Stride from Terminal Zero, for all his help and support in helping us with our first game, and making it into the independent games industry.
A different kind of "game demo"
Recently, I have made a small game for the BlackBerry, called : Daughter In The Box. It’s an ancient chinese puzzle.
As many people know this (both developers and gamers), there are 2 versions of each game. A demo, that allows you to evaluate the game up to a certain point, and the full version, which if you decide to purchase, gives you access to all the features and content of the game.
It’s been like these since the first day computer games appeared.
I wanted to innovate and create a slightly different model of distributing commercial games. The scope of the game is to move the pieces of the puzzle, until the biggest piece of puzzle reaches the exit. The “demo” version will allow you to play the game for a maximum of 100 moves.
Here comes the catch. The game can be solved in less than 100 moves, if you are real good, meaning that you get to play the game completely free, if you are real good … as a nice reward for you.
iPhone software development
Some time ago, I have decided to go into iPhone development.
After some hassles, I finally received my Mac Mini. I also bought an aluminum keyboard to go with it.
Overall, I like the hardware design, and getting used to MacOS is fun. It’s different from Windows, but it’s not something difficult to learn.
I didn’t have much time to play with it, but I installed the iPhone SDK and decided to make a simple “Hello World” application for the iPhone. It went nice and easy. The development IDE and the language (Objective C) are something different from what I have done until now.
And yes, this means there will be Hacker Evolution for the iPhone 