The good folks over at Luma Arcade were hired a while back to work on a cool iPhone game for InstantAction, and the result is (nearly) here: a puzzle platformer called Flipt. It is, in my humble opinion, an awesome sophistication of the gameplay mechanics made famous by Shift and others, and I'm rather vicariously proud of it because — woop woop! — it's a bit of fresh South African produce.

The game is due for release in two weeks, but an awesome teaser trailer has just been released to whet iPhone users' appetites:

I may just be biased, but I really think that this is a shoe-in for anybody looking for some spatial fun on the iPhone. Luma have kept me in the development loop for a while now, and I even got a nice hands-on preview of the final product during rAge this year. Being a fan of Shift, I was absolutely delighted with the results. It also makes very effective use of the iPhones accelerometer to streamline the experience.

Luma haven't yet updated their site with the game's announcement, but there's a writeup on AppAddict for those interested in more details.

-Nandrew

The guys over at Mo'Minis, creators of mobile development platform Mo'Minis Studio, have recently announced the start of their new two-phase GameCast #2 competition. Like its first incarnation, GameCast #2's theme also revolves around exploiting common gimmicks – and they once again present a slew of suggestions – and offers a whole horde of prizes as motivation. The only twist is that you have to do it three times; three twists on the same gimmick, or three gimmicks linked by a common theme – it's up to you.

So, if you've got an idea of a gimmick you want to turn on its head or a plan for something you could play on your cellphone while you turn yourself on your head¹, you have until the 31^st of January next year to go and grab Mo'Minis Studio and submit your games. There's a wad of 4-thousand Ameri-monies waiting for you if you win, plus all that fame and glory stuff.

- Chippit

¹ This makes most mobile games better. Believe it.

Unreal modders have probably been paying attention to recent news concerning the oh-so-fresh and oh-so-free Unreal dev kit. Now would be a prudent time to promote some Unreal mods, yes? The Prometheus team definitely thought so, and have announced that version 4.0 of the game is available for download. It's a free product, and if you're one of those people taking a swing at the UDK ... well, you don't even need to own an original Unreal game to play it.

Prometheus earned second place overall in this year's Make Something Unreal competition, and is based on the "multiple instance time travel" trend which has already served as a successful basis for Flash games like Chronotron and Cursor*10. Work with past and future versions of yourself in a 3D "single player co-op" setting to overcome your challenges and claim glory!

Details and downloads are on the FilePlanet page. Try it out if you fancy, and leave a comment with your thoughts.

-Nandrew

A few days ago, I spotted a report on IndieGames.com explaining how Symantec decided to flag IGF entrant Lose/Lose as a Trojan Horse.

As The Internet would put it: "Ha ha ha, oh wow!"

To Symantec's credit, they have a good reason: Lose/Lose showed up on the news circuits a little while back as an art game with a rather, er, destructive premise. And by destructive, I mean that every game enemy you shoot down is tied to an actual file on your system. Blast a baddie, and it equates to blasting some of your computer's precious data to smithereens. No refunds, no takebacks.

I safely ignored it as a dangerous novelty when it first came out, but I was surprised to discover it amongst the 300-odd IGF entries this year, and I guess that's what caught Symantec's attention too. The company argues that the game code can easily be altered to, you know, deceive people and generate a few nasty surprises — which is fair enough. But this is probably going to create a headache for IGF judges who need to view it as an art game and not a virus, and I'm sure the game's author has a few thoughts running through his head too.

Hope this interesting little snippet adds some colour to your end-of-week. "Light-hearted Friday news" today was a toss-up between reporting this gossip and gushing about how I'm being paid to review Heroes of Might and Magic 3. I'm going to play it all weekend, guilt-free. This game rocks.

-Nandrew

It appears that we are all doomed to drown under a tsunami of zany offers this season, so grab your life jacket and brace yourself for the news that Rock, Paper, Shotgun and about a million other Websites have been spurting out recently: there now exists an Unreal dev kit which can be used for free. Non-commercially, mind you, but that's still free enough for me and probably free enough for the gazillions of hobbyists who want to just get in there and play around. And there's some interesting conditions bundled with this if you care to read on below.

Aside from meaning oodles for the modding community, the dev kit proposes an interesting idea for people who want to try monetising small-scale projects: you're charged US$99 up front for a royalty license (dirt cheap for something like this), followed by a 25% royalty charge for any money earned after your first US$5000. This can work out to be a pretty steep cut in the long run, but it's generally more accessible than standard, up-front cough-uppery. It's a viable option for teams with low starting capital, and presents some interesting opportunities. We'll see if it works out.

My head's spinning from all of these cool free things recently. Are there any other offers that readers are currently aware of? I'd hazard a guess and say that we've dropped something somewhere recently. Tell us some good news and we'll post about it!

-Nandrew