The organizers of the Independent Games Festival Mobile have revealed a total of 107 entries for the second year of the event, more than doubling the amount of entries seen in the inaugural competition.

The entries were bolstered with a strong showing from the emergent iPhone and iPod Touch platform, but entries spanned platforms including mobile phones, DS, PSP and the Zune.

The event (organized by GameSetWatch parent Think Services) is a sister competition to the long-running Independent Games Festival, which announced record entries last week.

IGF Mobile itself, founded in 2007, has seen a host of notable independent projects enter the contest -- for which $30,000 in prizes are to be awarded at GDC 2009 next March. Nvidia is Platinum and Founding Sponsor for the event, and the prize pool includes a Best iPhone Game, presented by Gold Sponsor ngmoco.

A full list of IGF Mobile 2009 entries is now available, including screenshots and details on each of the entries. As always, many of the top IGF Mobile games will only come to the fore during the judging process -- and there are many high-quality titles not listed below.

However, a diverse set of entries have come from many different mobile formats and multiple continents, with the diversity of mobile platforms being reflected in some of the following entries:

Zen Bound [iPhone/iPod Touch] (Secret Exit)
"Zen Bound is a calm and meditative game of wrapping rope around wooden sculptures -- a simple task that can become surprisingly complex."

Soul Trapper [iPhone/iPod Touch] (Realtime Audio Adventures)
"Soul Trapper is a 3+ hour interactive audio adventure that follows the turbulent life of Kane Pryce, a 27 year-old drifter who possess a mysterious device known as the Soul Trap, a supernaturally charged object that allows him to hunt down, capture, and send ghosts from the earthly realm to the afterlife."

Picopoke [MMS] (Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab)
"Picopoke is an interpretive photo game which brings flexible play to a new level. The game revolves around weekly challenge rounds, involving fulfilling challenges by taking photos and voting to determine winners. Picopoke takes advantage of the social networking community. Picopoke can also be played with mobile phones via multimedia messaging service (MMS), capturing moments spontaneously with camera phones."

Rhythm of War [Playstation Portable] (SME Dynamic Systems)
"Rhythm of War is a rhythm action strategy game where the player must travel through different time epochs to fight aliens and saves the planet. The struggle takes place on the four tracks, where the player has to defend himself in accordance with musical rhythm of each track."

Ruben and Lullaby [iPhone/iPod Touch] (Song New Creative)
"Ruben & Lullaby is a story you play like a musical instrument. Two lovers are fighting. You can control what they're feeling, where they're looking, when they speak, and when they listen. Your actions conduct a moody jazz soundtrack that reflects the feelings of the characters as they change in real time."

UZA: The First Journey [Nintendo DS] (Multiple:Option)
"Arcade action meets abstract art in UZA: The First Journey, an arcade action game similar to Robotron/Geometry Wars. Watch as your gameplay performance creates a piece of real-time abstract art. With only one life, how long can you survive, how much can you score, and what will your actions look like?"

FastFoot_Challenge [J2ME] (urban team)
"FastFoot-Challenge is a multiplayer GPS action game. 4 to 5 players with mobile phones and GPS receivers play in an area of 1km radius. One player escapes, the others have 25 minutes to catch him. His advantage: continuous updates of the chasers' positions, while those only see his position every 6 minutes. "

Wardrive [Nintendo DS] (and-or)
"Wardive captures the wireless networks in the immediate area, like a wardrive tool, and creates a game. it reads the names of the hotspots in your immediate area and turns them into enemies which try to take your wardrive-crystal."

Laser [Flash Lite] (CreatePlayShare)
"Creation and customization, community and sharing, single and multiplayer; endless levels with a variety of gameplay. Laser."

Circuit Swap [Zune] (Teabag Games)
"Circuit Swap is an exciting new puzzle game targeting mobile devices. Players are given the task to power up the city as they move battery pieces and get them inserted to the socket 'goal' pieces."

Finalists in the IGF Mobile competition will be announced on January 26th, 2009, and more information is available on the official IGF Mobile website.

If you’ve beaten “Call of Duty: World at War“’s main campaign, then you’ve unlocked the the Nazi zombie mode.

The special mode allows four-player co-op and has gamers battling throngs of Nazi undead that become increasingly difficult with each wave.

Activision executive producer Daniel Suarez shared with Stephen Totilo what inspired the team to make the mode in the first place.

“It was one of the pet projects of one of the designers,” he said. “The seed of the idea came out of casual [tower] defense games online. It was something that they [developer Treyarch] had been working on for a while and went back to when they had time.”

And although the project was something to be saved for later, it became sort of an urban legend within the company. “Nazi Zombies was sort of this rumor, and everybody would be like, ‘Nazi zombies? What Nazi zombies?’” Suarez said. “The designers would sort of chuckle in the back corner and be like, ‘I don’t know what that is.’ And then one day it all of a sudden appeared in a build and it got so much traction internally.”

In fact, the mode became such a huge hit within the company, they decided to lavish some public attention on it. “All of the QA guys, the marketing guys, even the PR guys became big fans,” he said. “So we decided to save it and announce it [the week of Halloween on GameTrailers]. It was a project of love that a lot of guys had a hand in.”

When asked how long the mode lasts, he said, “I’ve been told that it’s infinite.” At the time of the announcement, the developers said they made it through 23 waves. Can you beat that?

Related Posts:
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Why The ‘Call of Duty’ Military Advisor Said He’d Punch Me

It was one of the pet projects of one of the designers. The seed of the idea came out of casual [tower] defense games online. It was something that they [Treyarch] had been working on for a while and went back to when they had time.

• Activision: World at War will have more DLC confirmed, described as non-traditional
  

It was one of the pet projects of one of the designers. The seed of the idea came out of casual [tower] defense games online. It was something that they [Treyarch] had been working on for a while and went back to when they had time.

• Activision: World at War will have more DLC confirmed, described as non-traditional
  

Urban Life Style Case (white) - $13

Pros

• Unique Brawler RPG:. This has all the dialog trees, story focus, character development, and side-quest structure of a traditional RPG, but the standard RPG stat-battles are replaced by melee-centric brawling.
• A LOT of game: I spent a full twenty-five hours before I beat the main story mode, and I’d estimate that I skipped 85% of the optional side-quest/mini-game content. This is a BIG game. This easily the most story and quest content of any title I’ve played in the past two years.
• Host/Hostess Bars: This is a mostly dialog-tree based dating sim. It’s surprisingly charming. Unfortunately, I missed the “massage parlor”.
• Atmosphere: I’ve never been to Japan, but this really nails the feel of roaming the streets of urban Japan, or at least what I imagine that would feel like. There is tons of detail in the city. One example of this, is the absurdly detailed food/drink system in the game. You can order various types of food and drink from the dozens of restaurants, bars, convenience stores, and lounges throughout the game and there is a side-goal of trying all the different food types.

Cons

• Story: The story-telling and dialog is on par with a serious 80’s action movie without any sarcasm or joking self-references. Sometimes, I could quiet my inner critic and enjoy the experience, but other times, the story was just too dated and corny and I had to skip over it. Most gamers already know whether they like or tolerate this kind of Japanese video game writing.
• Technology: By now, most of us are acclimated to PS3 tech, so going back to PS2 is a big drop. And this isn’t even one of the more technically polished PS2 titles like Jak 3 or God Of War. The graphics look very blocky and crude and highly aliased. And all the 2D interface screens feel very old and clunky compared to other 2008 titles. BTW, I still do all my gaming on an SDTV (about to upgrade), so it’s not the resolution itself at all.
• Mini-Games: This game has well over a dozen side-quest mini-games such as Shogi (a kind of Japanese chess), Mahjong, gambling, golf, batting cages, a weird 3D arcade fighter game, and a business sim game. I’m impressed that they built that much content, and many of these games are highly detailed, but only a few are really fun to play. If I want to play Shogi or Mahjong, I’d rather play a freeware version on my PC.
• Core Combat: The combat is fun, it has a ton of detail, and there are a bunch of cool slo-mo special attacks to pull off, and there’s a very detailed upgrade system, but it gets repetitive over the long length of this game.

Bottom Line

If you like detailed, epic Japanese RPGs, brawler combat, organized crime fiction, and can tolerate dated tech, then this game is definitely for you.

Yakuza Kenzan has already been released for the PS3 in Japan and the true sequel, Yakuza 3, is scheduled to be released in Japan in Spring ‘09. I’m really excited to see these come to the west. The tech improvements alone will fix one of my biggest gripes with this title.

Posted by rossignol. | 17 comments | Donate or subscribe to RPS | Post tags: Batman: Arkham Asylum, eidos, Rocksteady Studios
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