The popular casual franchises of Jewel Quest and Mah Jong Quest are heading to the DS. Subtitled Expeditions, they’ve been pencilled in for a September release date. It’s sure to please the 15 million people who have played Jewel Quest on the PC and if you pick up the DS version, you’ll have 180 levels to work through. Also included is a 7 player Wi-Fi competition mode while will surely go down a treat.
Mah Jong Quest Expeditions has a user base of 4 million to leech off and there are 8 mystical lands with 64 puzzle boards to keep those making the transition to DS entertained. Developed by iWin and due out 12th September at only £19.99, this’ll surely give casual gamers a treat.
We’ve been watching Blueberry Garden closely for some months now. When developer Erik Svedäng released some new screenshots, we jumped at the opportunity to ask some questions. We’d like to thank him for taking the time to quell our yearning. Please visit his website for more details about Blueberry Garden and his other projects.
We’re never to forget the humble mobile game, because if it wasn’t for Snake on the original Nokia, we’d be in a depraved of one of the best games to grace us. Greystripe have announced that they’ve partnered with the leading German MVNO, Simyo to provide 800+ high quality games, for free to their subscribers. Whenever you load a game, you’re linked back to Simyo’s mobile-accessible internet site. Julien Theys, an analyst at Screen Digest had this to say:
“Ad-Supported mobile game distribution is a growing trend in the industry. Free mobile content drives data usage overall, thus improving revenues. Screen Digest expects to see more operators launching services in the coming year.”
Anyone who is coding independent games should be happy to know that Slave Circus Entertainment, the Canadian management firm is opening its doors to independent game developers from around the world. They’ll offer their extensive skills in publishing and distribution to help get the smaller games onto the market. Anyone who’s interested should check out the website and get in contact with their team. In the mean time, if you just enjoy playing casual games, rather than creating them then be sure to check out Glupod: Online. It’ll be released on May 30th and is created by a small international team under the name of Something, Inc. It involves big, relevant issues like world hunger, endangered animals and poverty and pits you against them in the effort to solve them.
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