Hardcore Droid’s News and Bulletin Board

10/31/13 Happy Halloween!

The staff at Hardcore Droid says Happy Halloween and have your mom check out those apples for you before you eat them, and don’t worship Satan.

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10/30/13 – So You Want to Work in Video Games Part II Goes Live

The first two articles in part II of our ongoing So You Want to Work in Video Games Series were released today, featuring an article on review writing by our own games journalist par excellence, Joe Matar as well as an article written by indie RPG developer, Charles Cross, telling the story of how he broke into the video game industry and offering advice on how game industry hopefuls might best wedge their foot in the door.

10/28/13 – Two Zombie Powerhouses Hit the Play Store

Plants Versus Zombies 2 quietly lumbered onto the Play Store this past Thursday. According to all sources, it’s as much of a blast as the first. Look for the upcoming Hardcore review. To make matters better the mobile zombie shooter that needs no introduction shambled its way onto the Play Store.  Our man Travis Fahs claims that despite some freemium pitfalls, it’s a worthy successor. You can read the whole brain-eating review of Dead Trigger 2 by going here  >>>

10/26/13 – Who Says Snails Aren’t Hardcore? 

In honor of the game’s latest update, our friends over at Aldo Games sent us a copy of their excellent, logic puzzler, Save the Snail for us to consider. After spending some time with the title we pronounce it a hidden gem of a logic game. The logic puzzles hit just the right balance between fun and challenging, and perhaps best of all you get to save bunches of small and sad, mumbling snails. If you’re looking for a fun logic puzzle to take with you, at a total cost of nothing it’s a steal. You can download a copy here >>>

10/25/13 – Ouya to Be Sold at Every Target Store in America

More proof that God loves the USA, or despises us, it’s all in the perspective that one. Anyways, the Kickstarter sensation and the world’s first bona fide Android gaming console will  be finding its way into over 1,800 Target stores across the United States this month. Ouya will also be introducing demo Kiosks in 2014, and the game machine will be introduced to our friends across the pond at the tail end of of this month. France, Germany, Spain and the Middle East will all get a taste of Ouya just around All Hallows Eve. Very scary.

10/24/13 – Konbo Monsters Sees Big Update with New Levels and Other Cool Stuff

Our friends over at digitalMutant contacted us recently to lay out the skinny concerning  their recent update of Konbo Monsters. We download and play most of what’s sent our way and those of who’ve partaken of Konbo have really taken a shine to it. Inspired by the series of puzzle gane sof the same name, rather popular in Japan, Konbo plays a lot like Tetris with a few extra hooks thrown in that make it mre nuanced and challenging game. We also like the cute monsters. Anyhoo,  they’ve updated this cool puzzler with a 10 new levels and according to the game’s developer, Bruno Correia, this will be par for the course as  he plans to continue the updates every couple of months. We did the game a great and recommend you give it a try. If you’re a puzzler fan you can download it here  >>>

10/23/13 – TechRadar Lists Best Android Tablets

Venerable tech news website, TechRadar released today their picks for the finest Android tablets in existence. Few surprises here, says I, but  a venerable list nonetheless. A must read for ‘Droid gamers in the market for a new slab. Android fan/technophiles can indulge in the whole enchilada here  >>>

10/21/13 – betaMax Gets a Patch – WatchOUT!

Our friends over at Supercookie Games wrote to us today to tell us about an update to their whacky and very playable platformer betaMAX. A homage to the 16bit platformers of yore, beta boasts a slew of levels, whacked out graphics, a bunch of achievements as well a Facebook integration. Perpetual game testers, a few of us here at HD have been traipsing around in betaMAX this past week and the retro platformers among us are fairly smitten. If you fit that profile you should by all means check it out. You can get the latest version here  >>>

10/14/13 – Android Police Release Exhaustive Rundown of the Best 38 ‘Droid Games for October 13

Reminding us again the difference between independent publishers and huge corporate enities with mountains of cash (we are just jealous and bitter), the good folks at Android police released to day an exhaustive rundown of the best games, apps and Live Wallpapers released over the first two weeks of October 2013. A respectable list, we say. You can check it out here  >>>

10/7/13 – Xbox Live Acheivements Find their Way onto Android Devices

They’ve done it. The folks at Redmond have finally managed to sneak their stuff onto Android devices. Microsoft’s popular Windows phone game (sounds like a misnomer, I know), Wordament, appeared on the Play Store today. It’s “free”, ad supported, and allows players to play as a guest, with Facebook friends or with their Xbox gamertag. While there have been other MS games on the Play Store before, the addition of Wordament to the Play Store Library represents a milestone as this will be the first time that Xbox Live Acheivements will be employed in an Android game. There is somethijg seemingly off about earning Xbox Live achievement on Google’s platform considering the markets and ways in which the two companies are competing in. Will this be a potential conflict if the Company That Will Built decides to start producing mobile apps in earnest. I imagine they probably should produce some hardware first. Like a phone perhaps. Now, that’ a concept with legs. A Windows phone. Imagine the possibilities. You can read the finer print here  >>>

10/7/13 – Humble Bundle 7 for PC and Android Released

For the uninitiated, Humble Bundle is Donationware, which means you pay what you want and get a bunch of cool games. The money you pay goes to charity and you can decide how much of what you pay goes to charity and how much goes to the game developers. Right now the list of games is as follows:

Ticket to Ride, Greed Corp, Incredipede, Anodyne, Child’s Play

You’ll find it all on Humble Bundle’s website. You can get there by clicking here  >>>

10/4/2013 – Most Hardcore is Live – Read the Sample for a Special Offer from Hardcore Droid’s Editor-in-Chief

Becuase we were at 100,ooo UVs per month and climbing, it became clear to us that we had a big enough audience to warrant a digital magazine. Several months in the making, our first iteration of Most Hardcore is 6 articles and 66 mini-reviews outlining the cream of Android gaming’s cream; that is, the most hardcore RPGs, strategy titles, indie games, FPSs and action games. The next issue due out in a month or so will expound upon the best of Android’s hardware, and we’ll throw in a bunch of reviews to boot. From Bluetooth to phones to obscure Android devices, our HardcoreWare Issue will be a must for technophiles and anyone looking to accessorize or buy a new Android device.

Also, The Magazine went live last month-The Magazine is the premium section of our site and as of 9/20 of this year includes reviews of some of Android’s most important games, as well as exclusive interviews with Android developers, our perpetually ongoing So You Want to Work in Video Games series as well as all of our archives.

The whole package above can be gotten for $9.99 a year (although see the special offer). To sign on or learn more go here  >>>

Or check out a little sample of Most Hardcore Magazine   >>>

For Developers and other pros we can also give you access to our app store free of charge, the ability to post content as well as access to or business contacts (forthcoming). For more information on becoming a hardcore subscriber, go here  >> 

10/1/2013—Deus Ex The Fall “Well Under Way”

As reported recently on Pocket Gamer, despite some undisclosed setback Square Enix’s port of their critically acclaimed FPS, Deus Ex, The Fall will soon find its way onto the Play Store and thus onto the devices of countless Android gamers. Amidst a lengthy interview on Pocket Gamer’s sister site pocketgamer.biz,  Square Enix’s James Wright said that the Android version was “Well under way and it will be available shortly,” just not as soon as they had originally planned. Though there are apparently some issues with the mobile version’s watered down AI, an issue Wright explained Square is invested in improving, a quick scan of Google suggests that there are a lot of Android gamers pining for a copy. With the game being lauded as the best-looking game on mobile and the iOS version of the port winning nearly universal acclaim, we here at Hardcore Droid are certainly itching to get our hands on it.

10/1/2013—Hardcore Droid 1  Mountain of Disks 0

We moved Hardcore Droid’s office from South Philly to Northern Liberties, Philadelphia. The Greenwich Village of Philly supposedly, though more and more the neighborhood is looking like the Upper West Side of NYC. The move largely went off without a hitch.

Except for the disks. As part of the cleanup and reorganization that comes hand-in-hand with such a move, we found ourselves engaged in a massive cleanup and reorganization job. One of the most daunting tasks was contending with the massive collection of disks that we’d either acquired or brought into the shop over the last year. You’d think being a mobile app magazine we’d avoid that sort of thing, but there is a strong old school contingency among us and we take our down time pretty seriously.

And so we found ourselves faced with the daunting task of throwing out, picking, choosing and reorganizing an absolutely massive collection of movies, music CDs (see old school contingency) PC, 360 and PS3 games. So after carefully skimming off our desert island disks, we found ourselves at odds with a huge pile of disks and had to pick out the second level keepers. After which, we were then left with a smaller yet still venerable mound of plastic silt. Looking over this little hillock of plastic it occurred to me that the task we were engaged in was a ubiquitous phenomenon of our time and that everybody from the current generation, through Gen Xers like me, to our grand daddy and grand mammy Baby Boomers will find themselves at some point over the next couple of years in exactly this same situation. Luckily some highly functional services have cropped up to make this task of our time a little easier and a little more lucrative. Which brings us to the end of this story as we sold off our excess movies, albums and games to a decent CD buying service, enjoyed the accompanying pay out, moved our shop across town and like a lot of you expect to be bit more digital as we move into the next calendar year.