MaxNick today is pleased to introduce Wild West Checkers 1.0.1, an innovative, new board game for iPhone and iPod touch devices. The game exploits the advanced motion simulation made possible by the iPhone OS. On a standard checker board 8 white checkers on the first rank face 8 black checkers on the eighth rank. Touching any piece creates onscreen a user-controlled vector, an amount of force with a direction. Releasing the touchscreen launches that checker onto a collision course, attempting to knock an opposing piece off the board. If the player succeeds without sending any of his checkers off the board, he gets another turn. Play continues till all of the checkers on a side are off the board.
Though it may sound like a thousand other computer games, Wild West Checkers is especially challenging to play because it follows the physical laws of the real world. This capability is most easily appreciated by watching someone the first time they scroll on an iPhone. Scrolling is truly interactive: it responds to touch, moves effortlessly up and down, and behaves as though it gathers momentum. This kind of responsiveness to touch is not easy to simulate in a digital device. In perfecting the advanced ergonomics of its GUI, Apple iPhone engineers certainly achieved a true breakthrough. And it is this remarkable capability, built in to the iPhone OS, that Wild West Checkers relies upon.
During game play each checker responds as if it were a puck on an air-hockey table — there is very little friction between each checker and the board. All 16 checkers have mass, and when they move they are constantly changing speed as they accelerate, decelerate and collide. The hyper-realistic, high-res graphics, plus the convincing sound effects, combine to create an always entertaining game-playing experience.
Feature Highlights:
- Gameplay similar to shuffleboard, using checkers on a checkerboard
- The winning player cannot be predicted – sudden overturns are frequent
- 3 Levels of play: easy, medium and hard
- Music, sound effects and vibration can all be toggled on/off
- Realistic game physics follow Newton’s Laws of action and reaction
- Single player mode – play against the computer
- Dual player mode – play against another person on the same iPhone
- Dual player mode – play against another person via Wi-Fi or Bluetooth
- Exploits the advanced motion simulation capabilities of the iPhone OS
The game offers 3 levels of difficulty, and 1 or 2 person play. It is particularly instructive to watch the computer during its turn. It is sometimes difficult to understand the criteria it uses to decide on its move. Fortunately, it is frequently surprised, giving the player another turn and a reasonable chance of winning.
"I was very impressed by the iPhone. All the sophisticated algorithms normally written by a game physics programmer were built-in," explained Nikolay Verevkin, co-founder of MaxNick. "As a result, we were able to finish everything, the graphics, AI, sound and gameplay, in just a few months."
Supported Languages:
- US English and Russian
System Requirements:
- iPhone or iPod Touch 3.0 or later
- 6.9 MB storage
Pricing and Availability:
Wild West Checkers 1.0.1 is $2.99 (USD) and available worldwide exclusively through the App Store in the Games category. Review copies are available upon request.
