Game Insight Announces Rule The Kingdom for Android

Game Insight, a global leader in publishing mobile and social games, announces its newest game Rule The Kingdom for Android devices. To mark this momentous occasion, Game Insight has released an announcement trailer to give players a glimpse at the city-building and role-playing action to come!

Rule The Kingdom is an immersive role-playing game that combines the strategy and achievement of a traditional city-building game with the questing, crafting, and battles of today's top role-playing games. Players take the mantle of a deposed lord or lady to defend and rebuild their humble domain. Android users will be tasked with building a bustling village for their loyal subjects, who create a burgeoning economy by harvesting crops and other raw materials, and by using multiple recipes, can create foodstuffs, weapons, armor, and other useful items to help bolster their community.

Building a city is only the beginning of Rule The Kingdom's story. Players will also have an in-game avatar who can explore a vast land filled with treasures, monsters, and other nations that seek alliances. Players will use their character to recruit one of six different troop types to accompany them as they tackle more than 1,000 quests across 12 campaigns that will require them to explore, fight powerful bosses, learn three different schools of devastating magical spells, and collect precious gems to upgrade slots in their weapons and armor.

Rule The Kingdom will offer hours of varied gameplay that combines city-building and resource management with true role-playing game-style questing and battles. This unique RPG experience will be free-to-play and will be available on Android devices in April 2012.

Men In Black III game coming to Android from Sony and Gameloft

Recently mobile games have really been taking off, but to partner with a game developer and release it on the same day as a major movie just seems like a good idea. The popular and highly anticipated Men in Black III is coming to theaters on May 25th. Along with the release will be a game designed and released by Gameloft for Android.

Gameloft and Sony haven’t released too many details, but as launch date edges closer we’ll be hearing more. For now we know the MIB III game will be released on smartphones and tablets, and be available the same day as the movie hits the streets. Not two months later. I wish everyone did the same thing, and released things at the same time but sadly that just doesn’t happen. Take Mass Effect 3 for example. They released a lousy live wallpaper for Android along with the game, and that was all.

The Men In Black game for Android will be a freemium title. Meaning it will be free to download and play but users can also make in-game purchases to go farther, unlock levels, or buy guns and such. The actual type of gameplay hasn’t yet been revealed but most likely will be some sort of side or top down shooter with aliens, but we have nothing to confirm that speculation.

With a movie this big, and the game launching on consoles, iOS, and Android we have a feeling it will be better than just some tossed together game — or we hope so at least. Gameloft and Sony will be giving players the “keys” to the Men in Black universe starting on May 25th, same day the movie launches. Are you excited about this movie, or the game for that matter?

[via DroidGamers]

Angry Birds Space released for iOS, Android, PC and Mac

Google Play download

Angry Birds fans craving a fresh fix of Rovio's game franchise can breathe a sigh of relief: the latest instalment, Angry Birds Space, has now been launched on several devices.

The new game is available for iPhone and in a separate HD version for iPad, costing S$0.99 and S$2.99 respectively.

An Android version is also now live as a free download and in-game advertisements, while Rovio is selling a PC version from its own online shop, and a Mac version in Apple's Mac Store. Ad-free versions of the Android game will follow.

While the core formula of catapulting birds at pigs remains intact, Angry Birds Space adds new gameplay elements including gravitational fields, and new birds with their own destructive capabilities.

There is also a new power-up - Space Eagles - which can be earned by playing or bought as an in-app purchase. 60 levels are included in the initial game, but more will be added as free updates and in-app purchases.

"This launch marks a huge step for us as a company, and our whole team and partners have really pulled together to bring out a fantastic array of exciting products and experiences," says chief executive Mikael Hed in a statement. "We hope that our fans will find all things Angry Birds Space as delightful as the Rovio family does."

Rovio has previously promised an official companion book published by National Geographic as well as animation and retail elements for the Angry Birds Space launch.

Device-maker Samsung is also a key partner for the Angry Birds Space launch, with an exclusive level for owners of its Galaxy Note device who get the new game.

Rovio will be hoping the new game continues the startling growth for Angry Birds, which had passed 700 million downloads on all platforms last time the company released public figures.

With the three previous games in the series still riding high in app stores, the franchise is likely now closer to one billion - a milestone that Angry Birds Space may well help it surpass sooner rather than later.

"It's the first time we have everything available on launch day: animation, toys, books, candy, everything. It's massive: most Hollywood movies don't have this. And this is just the first phase of our space programme. There is more to come," Rovio's Peter Vesterbacka told The Guardian in February this year, while preparing for the launch. THE GUARDIAN

Kainy remote desktop app brings PC games to Android (video)

 Watching Skyrim run smooth and sweet on a Tegra 3 slate did a lot to re-kindle our excitement for remote gaming on mobile devices. Hoping to cash in on that buzz, a $5 app called "Kainy" has appeared on Google Play that promises to bring PC games to Android handsets at up to 60fps with customizable control interfaces, 100 preset templates and accelerometer control.

The demo video after the break is full of fast cuts that make it hard to judge performance, and user reviews suggest Kainy may prioritize lag-reduction over resolution with some ugly results, but then these are still early days. One thing is for sure: picking an Android device for its processor grunt will make a lot of sense in 2012. Via Endgaget

Final Fantasy III realeased for Japanese Android devices

It’s been available on iOS for quite some time, and now Square Enix has decided to spread its wings and release Final Fantasy III for the Android ecosystem.
The only (and major) issue is that it’s not available for everyone just yet. In fact the Final Fantasy classic can only be played by Japanese Android device owners. You may have played the old school Nintendo version, like me. This game will not resemble the classic game very much. It has been enhanced with better graphics and 3D effects.

It will look very different from what you remember. But it is fun, and the faces are more recognizable. It seems we’ll have to continue using emulators to play this game. At least for a while. But it sure would be nice to have a native version available. And as of now, we have no idea when (or if) this game will be hitting other countries. But we sure hope Square Enix can give us the treat. If you’re a Squaresoft fan, you may also like to know that Final Fantasy (1) and Chrono Trigger classics are also available. Once again, only for the Japanese market. We’ll just have to wait our turn. Check out the iOS trailer and let us know what you think. How many of you want to see these games coming to the US (or any other country)? I’m still waiting for a native Android version of Final Fantasy VII!

Amazon Celebrates Appstore Birthday With A Week Of Deals

Amazon Appstore for Android is celebrating its first birthday with a week of deals on some of its customers’ favorite apps and games, including iconic titles such as Fruit Ninja, Wolfram Alpha, Splashtop Remote Desktop, Dr. Seuss’s The Shape of Me and Other Stuff, TuneIn Radio Pro, TETRIS, PAC-MAN, The Lost City, MONOPOLY, AccuWeather Platinum and Jamie Oliver’s 20 Minute Meals. Birthday deals start today with one of the top paid apps, Plants vs. Zombies, at 67 percent off.

Amazon will announce two more app deals. On day three, three more new app deals will be revealed and so on for the remainder of the week-long celebration. Also starting today, the Amazon Appstore kicks off its Amazon Appstore for Android Birthday Giveaway and will award a Kindle Fire to eight lucky winners who enter the sweepstakes by March 31.*

For more information and for all birthday deals visit www.amazon.com/appstorebirthday.

 “Customers have used the Amazon Appstore to test drive and buy millions of apps and games for their Kindle Fire and other Android devices in the first year alone,” said Aaron Rubenson, director of Amazon Appstore for Android. “To thank customers for shopping with us, we worked closely with our developers to offer special discounts on some of the most popular apps all week long.”

Customers can use Amazon’s Test Drive feature to test out apps before buying. Once they download an app they can use it across multiple devices, including Kindle Fire, giving developers a new platform for reaching customers. “We know how important discovery and monetization are for app developers,” said Rubenson. “Our investment in personalization technology helps customers find the best apps for their needs. And, our 1-Click technology makes it trivially easy to purchase apps with one click.” “It’s been an exciting first year in the Amazon Appstore and we look forward to many more,” said Andrew Stein, director of Global Mobile Business and Products at PopCap Games, Inc.

“All of our games, including the megahit Plants vs. Zombies, have done extremely well in the Amazon Appstore, for both Kindle Fire and other Android devices; it’s a testament to the great Amazon Appstore shopping experience resulting from its user-friendly design and comprehensive catalog.” “We expected that the Amazon Appstore would be a success and it’s been evidenced in the growth of the revenues since the launch,” said Adam Flanders, senior vice president of Sales & Marketing at Glu Mobile, Inc. “We have seen revenues from Amazon grow by over 1,000 percent in the four months since the Kindle Fire launched alone, and Blood and Glory recently reached the #2 spot in Top Selling Games.

Glu is thrilled with the momentum behind Kindle Fire and the Amazon Appstore’s strong platform, global customer base, and exceptional merchandising capabilities.” “We were grateful that we were able to bring Dr. Seuss, The Berenstain Bears and Mercer Mayer’s Little Critter apps to the Amazon Appstore from the very beginning,” said Michel Kripalani, president of Oceanhouse Media. “Amazon provides visibility to a huge customer base. We’ve seen increased engagement with the apps over the last year, especially since the launch of Kindle Fire.”

 “As Pandora continues our mission to provide people with personalized music they love, being a featured app on Kindle Fire has given us an exciting new platform to connect with our listeners, both existing and new, and we’ve been impressed with the high engagement rate we’ve seen on Kindle Fire,” said Simon Fleming-Wood, chief marketing officer of Pandora Media. “At Quickoffice, we’ve experienced a massive lift in our Android app sales since the launch of Kindle Fire. The Amazon Appstore has been a great showcase for our app, and we’ve seen significant gains in conversion rates compared to other app stores based on the integrated Amazon buying experience,” said Alan Masarek, CEO of Quickoffice, Inc.

 Amazon Appstore has grown its selection nearly eight-fold since launch, from 4,000 apps to over 31,000. In its first year, the most downloaded paid app in the Amazon Appstore was Cut the Rope, followed by Angry Birds (Ad-Free) and Where’s My Water?; the most downloaded free app was Angry Birds Free, followed by Netflix and Solitaire by MobilityWare. Amazon Appstore offers a paid app for free every day. If a customer had downloaded every Free App of the Day since launch, they would have saved nearly $1,000.

 The paid app with the most 5-star reviews in the first year of the Amazon Appstore was Where’s My Water?, with over 3,000; the free app with the most 5-star reviews was Blood & Glory, with over 4,000. In the Amazon Appstore’s first year, customers spent more than 7,700,000 minutes test driving apps; Bubble Buster was the most test-driven app, followed by Amazon MP3 for Android with Cloud Player and Memory Trainer.

Over the past year, the most popular app category for customers is games, followed by entertainment and productivity. Some of the most popular apps include Angry Birds, Fruit Ninja, Netflix, Hulu, Pandora, QuickOffice Pro, CalenGoo and Exchange by TouchDown. Top Paid Apps (over the last 12 months)
 1. Cut the Rope
 2. Angry Birds (Ad-Free)
 3. Where’s My Water?
 4. Angry Birds Rio (Ad-Free)
 5. Angry Birds Seasons (Ad-Free)
 6. Plants vs. Zombies (Kindle Fire Edition)
 7. Fruit Ninja 8. SCRABBLE (Kindle Fire Edition)
 9. UNO (Kindle Fire Edition)
 10. TETRIS

 Top Free Apps (over the last 12 months)
 1. Angry Birds Free
 2. Netflix
 3. Solitaire
 . Fruit Ninja Free
 5. Angry Birds Seasons Free
 6. Bubble Buster
 7. Little Piano Free
 8. Roller Lite
 9. Jewels
 10. Hangman Free

Via Hot Hardware

Another World 20th Anniversary edition out now on Android‎

From Dust developer Eric Chahi's Amiga classic Another World is now available to download on Android devices.
The fresh 20th Anniversary edition comes with a number of new features, but also options for those wishing to recreate the original's 1991 flavour.
You can switch from the game's classic graphical style to the 20th Anniversary edition's HD update by sliding two fingers across the screen at any time.
There are new touch screen controls, or, optionally, a classic D-pad scheme.
The 20th Anniversary edition also has three difficulty modes: Normal (for newbies, easier than the original), Hard (similar to the original, proving that games used to be more difficult) and Hardcore (harder than the original, should you really want a challenge).
Remastered audio and OpenFeint Achievements are also included.

Qualcomm adds 4 new games: the Reem, Reign of Amira, The Ball and Virtual Tennis

Qualcomm announced the addition of four new popular games to the Snapdragon GamePack. Launched before CES, QSG contains more than 100 featured games for Snapdragon-enabled Android smartphones and tablets.

These new games can now be downloaded via Snapdragon Gamecommand. GameCommand is currently available in North America, with launch plans for other global markets in the coming months.

New additions to Qualcomm Gamepack:

The Reem – a mixed martial arts (MMA) game from Khaeon Gamestudio

Reign of Amira – a game designed and developed by Qualcomm’s in-house gaming studio, where Princess Amira battles her enemies to retain the lost glory of the Desert Kingdom.

The Ball – a game from Tripwire Interactive, which will be released in March 2012.

Virtua Tennis Challenge – the first mobile version of this popular console game from gaming pioneer SEGA.

Temple Run officially hits Android March 27, will be free

The team at Imangi Studios has finally announced an official release date of the hugely popular game Temple Run for Android. We’ve mentioned it more than a few times before, and with huge responses and anger when it wasn’t released in February like promised. Sadly we’ll have to wait a few more weeks but it’ll be here soon enough.

For some unknown reason this game has achieved a huge level of success being the top free and grossing app for iOS in January and passing over 40 million downloads. The wait for this game to hit Android has been a long one but I can happy say that Android will be running from Monkeys and enjoying Temple Run come March 27th and it will be completely free.

Here is what Co-founder Keith Sheperd had to say:

"We are excited to finally share the Android release date with our fans who have been so enthusiastic and supportive of Temple Run. By expanding to more mobile devices, we hope to provide the same addictive and fast-paced gameplay to an entirely new group of players."

No more rumors or suggestions of a February 9th launch or whatever the rumor was that had everyone up in arms. This comes from Imangi Studios themselves and remember, if you see Temple Run in the Android Market before March 27th most likely it’s a fake as we’ve seen a few of those the past couple of weeks.

Sega Unveils Mobile Total War Series

Total War Battles is the name the mobile incarnation of the beloved real time strategy franchise will be released under.  The  new game will be handled by a new Creative Assembly team, Total War Digital.”This isn’t the traditional Total War you might expect,” according to lead designer Renaud Charpentier.

“We are working on a title that is specifically tailored to the play styles and control methods of mobile platforms. We want to deliver a game that plays to the strengths of handheld RTS mechanics, and perfectly adapts to a host of different platforms,” he added. The team has been hard at work prototyping the thing for the past year, using the Unity engine. No firm platform announcement has been made yet, but the only uncertainty at this point is whether the Vita and 3DS will be joining iOS and Android devices.

HandyGames giving Townsmen a re-vamping, coming soon to Android

More Mobile World Congress 2012 Android gaming news coming your way today and this time it is about HandyGames' running Townsmen series. This series is a city building and time management mash-up that has done fairly well in the past but HandyGames plans on making it do better by re-vamping the entire thing.

The new game, simply called Townsmen, will be a bit more friendly with the user experience but HandyGames is also making sure that the deep gameplay remains intact. It will also come with re-vamp graphics which will apparently make the game look a hell of a lot better. Don't mistaken the new visuals and friendly user experience as the game being easier though.

Townsmen will feature a bit more deeper gameplay with production chains and building management with the overall goal of establishing a flourishing town. You will have to harvest resources like food as well as manufacture finished goods. Unlike its previous predecessors though, there won't be an evil monarch or some big bad guy you have to contend with in this new smartphone optimized version of the game.

While this will be released on Android for free with optional in-game payments available for those of you who want to use them, fast-forwarding of building times isn't actually set on buying into the game. It is always available for you to use by spending the cash you earn in-game instead which is a rather nice feature to have. This means producing cash in-game is now much more important if you want to build faster.

No word just yet on when this will land on Android, only that it will be coming in Q2 2012.

Via DroidGamers

Cryptic Caverns - Classic Adventure Game Android Released

3D Methods  is proud to announce the release of their second adventure title, Cryptic Caverns, for iOS and Android devices. Cryptic Caverns is a point and click style adventure game where players explore various environments located on a forgotten island.

In this story driven adventure, players will interact and trade with the remaining citizens of a destroyed city. These characters will provide some of the necessary items and hints that will allow the player to progress further into the caverns.

Cryptic Caverns features a vast number of detail rich environments that the player can explore such as a lighthouse, a shipwreck, a cathedral, and the caverns of the island.

Throughout these environments, players will collect items and piece together information that will ultimately help them to solve the cryptic puzzles in the game. Players can use the in-game hint system if they become stuck at any point in the game.

Features Include:
* Point and click style gameplay
* In depth story driven adventure
* Memorable and interesting characters
* Fun and engaging puzzles
* Beautiful detail rich environments
* Over 30 items to discover and use
* In game hint system
* Auto save position
* Solve the mystery that surrounds the island!

Device Requirements:
* Compatible with iOS, Android
* Requires iOS 4.0 or later
* 16.4 MB

Tata DoCoMo offers India's Android users mobile game subscription services

Gamers rejoice! Or rather, Tata Docomo customers have a reason to rejoice as unlimited premium Android games are on offer for a monthly charge. This service is brought to users by Exent’s GameTanium mobile service, and is called 'Let's Play' .

Tata Docomo's Let's Play catalog houses more than 75 game titles including Zenonia, Farm Frenzy, SpeedX 3D, Hotel Mogul, Wave Blazer and Edge and new games are expected to be added to the service every week. The games cater to a variety of genres including action, adventure, arcade, puzzle and board games. Apart from the basic information of the game, Let's Play will also offer ratings and reviews of the game to the users.

Tata Docomo customers using Android smartphones can simply SMS “Play” to 53333. The service will be available for a free trial period of three days after which the user will be required to pay a monthly fee. The fee amount has not yet been disclosed.

Sharad Arora, Head of Mobility – Wireless Solutions at Tata Teleservices Limited, spoke about the new Let's Play gaming subscription service:

“The emergence of sophisticated mobile devices at affordable prices and wider range of smartphones along with greater wireless mobile broadband penetration has led our customers to expect much more from their service beyond calling and texting. Android is believed to have a rich user interface that adds functionality to the device and increases the overall mobile experience, especially gaming.”