Apple Arcade Discussions

Since my developer account expired I can’t find anything on Arcade in the dev docs. Various news sites are reporting all the same - mobile exclusivity rather than a full “Only on Apple” exclusivity.

I’m really liking Apple Arcade.
Actually it is frigging awesome and has exceeded my wildest expectations.
It’s even TOO MUCH…I already tried a ton of games and almost all are worth of my time…but there is SO MUCH it’s overwhelming…I’ll concentrate on few and look at the others in the coming months.

So far (keep in mind I didn’t even download many games) my standouts are, in no particular order:

Card of Darkness (the new Card Crawl)
Grindstone
Overland
Assemble with care
Where Cards Fall
Bleak Sword
Frogger
Shinsekai
Over the Apls (80 Days but with spies and Nazis)
Spaceland
Oceanhorn 2
What the Golf

I really don’t know when I’ll sleep again…probably never.
Sleep is overrated anyway.

6 Likes

I know Apple Arcade ads say you can download and play offline. I presume it does a check when you get back online.

To me, a potential strength of this is that it once again allows premium games to be front and center. Nothing on the service will have micro transactions. I just hope it pays out well to the developers,

@Pitta there are other good ones on the way too, like Cardpocalypse from Gambrinous. Oh and take a look at Down in Bermuda. The trailer looked neat.

I’m waiting for the 30th for ipados

4 Likes

I downloaded the beta because I’m impatient :rofl:

I’ve tried What The Golf, Mini Motorways, Card of Darkness, and Sayonara Wild Hearts so far.

All are fantastic and are hitting the spot for me. Card of Darkness has the double win for me of Zach Gage and Pendleton Ward.

How is the beta?

I’m also not in a hurry because I’m knee deep in Children of Morta (which is awesome) and Puzzle Quest landed yesterday.

Yes, I’m hoping that this new model really helps limit the overwhelming pile of garbage f2p and shovelware games.

I really like it! Biggest/nicest change for me is Safari no longer being a bigger mobile browser.

2 Likes

Yeah. With that change, you can move YouTube to full screen and then PiP it, which is not possible in the app. It’s so nice.

I wasn’t aware that it was releasing on a different day so I had all my family’s ipads as well as my work ipad all lined up ready to go…ah well. A 10 day wait won’t kill me.

1 Like

Tried the swipe keyboard yet?

@Mirefox it isn’t like the f2p stuff is going away, but the premium games have had trouble finding an audience. Now they may not have to. Of course, it makes you wonder what happens to stuff that doesn’t get into the program. It will be that much harder for them.

I really like the swipe keyboard on the phone. I still forget to use it every time I text, though.

I was showing it off to my wife last night and she was skeptical that it would work. She asked me to write Mississippi and I was able to swipe it in about half a second. It is neat technology and once I am trained to use it I think I will like it quite a bit.

1 Like

I don’t expect f2p to go away, and even if it gets diminished it will take quite a while. However, if f2p games slowly become less profitable, they may not exist to the extent they do; or at least some thought might go into making them something more than a re-skin of what’s been done a million times already.

1 Like

That’s what worries me for premium games on iOS. If they don’t make it into Apple Arcade, will they die on the vine, drowned in the terrible discoverability of the App Store?

1 Like

Yeah I was pretty disappointed too. FWIW, half the features of iOS13 aren’t out on iOS 13, they’ll be 13.1 next week. It was pushed up from the 30th though to the 24th apparently, so a shorter wait!

I did and I love it! I’ve never liked a swipe keyboard before. It’s ridiculously smooth and surprisingly accurate. I still have to figure out some things on it but I’m really liking it.

Further, to go down that Rabbit Hole, does Apple, who curates and controls their own store, have an interest in making it hard to find games that aren’t part of their service?

*cue X-Files theme music.

1 Like

Yeah. That one of the reasons why I’m concerned. Apple Arcade is a stupidly good deal right now - the game selection is really really good, and I’m really enjoying it. But…

  1. What does that mean for devs? How is this paying out for them?
  2. As @Falkenstein pointed out above, what is the exclusivity contract and timeframe? Will these apps ever be available outside of Arcade?
  3. How will premium apps that aren’t in the Arcade do with Apple so heavily promoting Arcade?

This is an interesting shift, so I’m hopeful that it’s more a positive thing than a negative one…but it’s still Apple.

Offline - I had no problem playing Mini Motorways on the Subway, underground. And just checked and can play it in Airplane Mode with no problem also. So download and play offline literally means that.

This thread - I started it primarily so that those who don’t like the idea of Apple Arcade would not have to deal with those of us with it talking about it, or starting 1000000000 threads about the games in it. It was supposed to be a courtesy to silo the conversations.

I tried Frogger, but did not like it, so deleted it. Which is fine, because I am obsessed with Mini Motorways for the moment. Although I just downloaded Card of Darkness and will try on subway home tonight.

5 Likes

From all I’ve heard from folks in the industry who are part of it, Apple are throwing people and money at this to do it right.

We’ll see how that pans out in the long run but hopefully it’s worthwhile for devs so we get more quality games.

3 Likes

Fair, and to clarify my position I have no problems with people being negative if it adds to the conversation. If it’s just non-constructive bitching, then I’m going to take issue with it.

2 Likes

Mini Metro was a weird one for me. I loved the aesthetics and in a way it scratched a real-time strategy itch for me, which the App Store doesn’t do well. But at the same time, I never got into it all that much. Sometimes I felt like the levels just went on forever, and sometimes I felt that I more laying random routes out of necessity and less strategically planning what I wanted to do. Form the screenshots, I really like the visuals in Mini Motorways.

2 Likes