On iPhone
Game: Frog Minutes
Price: $.99
Size: 134 MB
Get it now on iTunes: US / UK
On iPad
Game: Frog Minutes
Price: $.99
Size: 134 MB
Get it now on iTunes: US / UK
It almost sounds like an oxymoron, but here it is: Developer Grasshopper Manufacture's punk-rock leader Suda51 has made a casual game for the iPhone and iPad. He has noble intentions for dishing out Frog Minutes, though. It was released in the wee hours last night, to coincide with a Grasshopper benefit for tsunami- and earthquake-ravaged Japan. That's right: Because all proceeds from this game go to the Japanese Red Cross, your lazy double-clicking on the "$0.99 Buy App" button in iTunes can now be classified as altruistic and noble, and you can feel like a saint.
Even if your intentions aren't noble, Frog Minutes still makes for a thoroughly enjoyable experience - provided you're in the mood to hunt butterflies and snails, feed them to frogs, and then snatch up those hungry amphibians. The game is completely open-ended, with no plot to speak of, just a lush hand-painted forest scene with mountains in the background, a river up close, and lots and lots of grass. You need to flush out the critters used to feed the frogs from their various hiding spots - more of which are revealed as you snag more frogs - and then quickly drag them onto the frogs as they leap around the landscape. When the frog is full, you tap it to capture it. Seriously, there's nothing more to this game, save for the cheerily proper air stewardess who prompts you on from off-screen with comments like, "Nice job!" and “It looks like you failed.” Well, there's that, and you're given a perkily written educational screen instilling you with trivia on the frog you netted.
The concept couldn't be any simpler, nor could its appeal. "Convert the hectic hours of your day into relaxing Frog Minutes," the game's description reads. And even though Suda51’s involvement had us constantly expecting the frogs to burst into bloody shards that spelled out cryptic puzzles or something, these fears were never validated. This is meant as a simple, childlike diversion - the sort of game that might've been included as a Nintendo DS pack-in to showcase the novelty of touch screens. But it’s fun, it’s cheap, and it’s going to a worthy cause. Fortunately, Suda51 didn’t iPhone this one in.
Mar 30, 2011
All of you? Good. You never let me down, internet, you never let me down. Well maybe not quite "never". Last night was a complete write-off. But yeah, except in the case of overly-hyperbolous labelling on eastern European video torrents, you never let me down.
Baseball fans will be happy couch potatoes today with the opening day of Major League Baseball. But some fans might get fidgety in between the action.
In an online arena of 100 fans, users get 10,000 points to bet during a real-time (live) baseball broadcast. The fans could wager 100 points that the next pitch will be a strike or a ball. Or they could make a bet about whether a team will score a run in the inning. Or they could make a wager about who will win the game. As the game proceeds, they are awarded points for staying with the game. If they bet everything and lose it, they can still stay in the action by earning new points gradually.
According to Nintendo, the 3DS launch was quite a success. In fact, the new system apparently sold more units in its first day than any handheld in the company's history, although Nintendo didn't provide any numbers to support that statement.
Gamification
Kim worked on games such as The Sims and Ultima Online for Electronic Arts and she has helped design game-like experiences for eBay, Netflix, and Rock Band.
1. Know who?s playing ? design for their social style. There are a lot of different ways to entertainment people. What is their style of playing? Are they so competitive that they like to beat their opponents and brag about it?Is the audience into exploration? Is the gamer cooperative, or playing for the sake of self-expression? These considerations will affect the core actions in the game or service.
3. Game designers know how to design an experience for a user that changes over time. There are three key stages of a player’s life cycle: novice, regular, and enthusiast. They won’t experience a web site, game or other experience in a static way. They need different content to be satisfied. Foursquare uses points and badges for leveling up. Regulars need fresh content, activities and challenges. Enthusiasts need exclusive rewards, recognition, and impact.
6. As players progress, you want to increase the challenge and complexity. This is called “flow” in game play, where you try to keep the player interested in the experience, balancing between anxiety and boredom. You have to keep the gamer in the middle, or the flow channel. You can do this with progressive quests, which give you more tasks to do once you’ve leveled up in games like CityVille. You can make the user interface more complex after someone masters the game and give the users new tools when they are ready for them.
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Nintendo said that its U.S. launch of the new 3DS gaming handheld — which lets players see images in stereoscopic 3D without special glasses — was the best it ever had.
In the wake of game cancellations and delays in Japan following the natural disasters earlier this month, the future of the Tokyo Game Show seemed to be on uncertain ground... until today.
This month marks the five-year anniversary of GamesRadar, and to celebrate, we’re bringing back some of our favorite past features. This was one of our very first, originally posting way back in July 2006. Would you add 2007, 2008, 2009 or 2010 to the list? How will 2011 compare? Before you complain that we missed an earlier year, though, be sure to read our follow-up, in which we pick 
