On October 22, 2009, near the beginning of the path- drawing iPhone gaming craze brought on by the massive success of original Flight Control, Craneballs (Studios) released a wonderful game called 33rd Division.
Set on the European battlefields of WWII, 33rd Division was a stealth line-drawing game where the player had to escort soldiers across the war zone without the enemy patrols noticing them. Aside from the cool stealth aspect of the game, 33rd Division offered up some new and interesting gameplay elements that had not yet been seen in this emerging genre yet. For instance, for (I believe ) the first time, players had the ability to pause their moving pieces (in this case soldiers) and they could lose a soldier and not instantly lose the game, giving a little bit of much desired wiggle room.
Despite the game doing seemingly well, even being selected as the first title on Blacksmith Game’s inaugural free Appvent Calendar promotion and earning an honorable mention in AppAddict’s own best path drawing game of the year in 2009 category.
However, at some point the game just quietly disappeared from the App Store and hasn’t been downloadable for a least a few years now.
Soon that will be changing, as Craneballs has just let us in on a little scoop. They are rallying the troops back together and 33rd Division is set to be re-deployed very soon as a new free-to-play title.
This brand-new release will have HD graphics as well as iPad support (which didn’t exist at the time of the original launch).
It will also include:
- Inventory with a bunch of support items! It’s sniping and hand grenading time. Too bad for the German patrols!
- Gamecenter and Facebook integration to race in the higher score battle among friends
- Multiplier system for higher score
- The craved x2 button to speed things up
As you can see in the attached screenshots, the visual enhancements for the game look rather impressive.
I’m super excited to play this game again…I just hope it lives up to my fond memories.
For a trip down memory lane, check out the original 33rd Division:
