Physics Games and Physics-Based Game Downloads

Apple announced details for its new 3G iPhone at their WWDC event, as well as pricing and details for some initial game slated to launch on the new iTunes App Store for iPhone and iPod Touch owners. Given that both devices feature a tilt sensor, and the hardware specs are pretty beefy, it’s likely that we’ll see some great physics games emerge.

My own company, Flashbang Studios–creator of Raptor Safari and Jetpack Brontosaurus–is a registered iPhone developer. The engine we use, Unity, has also announced intentions to bring their technology to the iPhone.

Games shown at WWDC today included an iPhone version of Sega’s Super Monkey Ball, as well as a mobile version of Pangea’s Mac OS physics-based puzzle game Enigmo (Mac footage shown here):

(Rate this game! 78 votes, average: 2.71 out of 5)

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Soup du Jour is a small physics game from Digital Eel, an independent developer best known for their Infinite Space games. It’s worth mentioning that, although it’s not a physics game, Weird Worlds: Return to Infinite Space is a fantastic experience. I highly recommend it. So how does their foray into physics-based gameplay fare? Unfortunately, not as well…

Goals and Controls

Let’s start with the basics: You play Soup du Jour by clicking and dragging on springy physics objects to make matches. This becomes difficult as pieces spawn more quickly, get in the way of each other, and become more chaotic. It’s difficult to make a game about fast/accurate mouse movement. It tends to be a frustrating experience, and Soup du Jour is no exception. I crave some kind of stylus input.

Harsh Pacing

Soup du Jour starts off well. You make a few matches, push some of the ingredients around, and get a sense than you’re interacting in a highly physical environment. But it soon becomes very, very difficult. It’s like all of the thought put into design was brainstorming how to make things more difficult. And they’ve certainly succeeded. A slew of challenges await you: Large pieces, bombs, missiles, and more colors. You’re punished when pieces fall over the edge; a single bomb could knock half of your ingredients out if you aren’t careful.

My personal preference would have been to focus on variation, but along other axes besides difficult. What variations would make the game easier? Or simply different? In the current play experience all of the variations add difficultly, and the variations come pretty quickly and don’t let up. Before too long your defeat is inevitable and it just doesn’t feel very fun. A pacing that oscillated up and down would be more enjoyable. There are very few times where you feel on the brink of reversible defeat. It’s relentless.

(Soup du Jour Game Screenshots)

Worth the $10?

Soup du Jour is priced at a modest $10, which isn’t a bad value for a short play experience. For me, though, it’s a play experience I don’t really want to repeat. It isn’t the kind of game I can enjoy in short bursts. Highly competitive players may enjoy maximizing their score, but personally I’d rather enjoy something a little longer and more forgiving. There’s a free demo, though, so you be the judge!

Download Soup du Jour Demo (5.2 MB)

Or visit the Soup du Jour website for more information. The full version costs $10 USD.

Matthew Wegner is the founder and editor of Fun-Motion, this very site.

Alex Austin has posted some details of the news physics for Gish 2 over at the Cryptic Sea development blog:

The new model is made up of 128 particles which move independently and have an attraction to each other. The trick has been wrangling the particles to move as one blob, it’s getting closer but still needs some work to feel like the original Gish.

Check out the video: