Craneballs Studios is currently hard at work finishing up two big new releases, Blimp HD and Monorace.
Blimp HD
Blimp HD is a remake of Craneballs’ first iPhone game, Blimp – The Flying Adventures, but this time it’s for the iPad. The game’s menus and GUI are being reworked to take advantage of the iPad’s larger form factor. The levels themselves will actually be staying exactly the same, since the original source material was already in 1024×1024 resolution, but some minor tweaking of game elements will be necessary.
As you can see from the screenshots below, the graphics do look stunning, but then again I thought the original game already looked quite impressive on the iPhone. Ideally I would have liked to see some additional new content exclusive to the iPad, to help justify the $3 price difference, but ultimately you’ll have to decide if the improved graphics are reason enough to pay more for the iPad release. There will be a free LITE version as well as the full version for $4.99 when the game releases sometime in August.
Monorace
Monorace will be Craneballs’ 4th iPhone release. Monorace is 2D side-scrolling fast-paced racing game where you must avoid obstacles in ever accelerating game environment. Get on your Monobike and ride through 40 unlockable levels while beating your friends and other riders! The game’s release is being delayed by a couple of week’s while the developer adds the much requested (by beta testers) randomly generated endless mode. The game will feature OpenFeint integration, adding features like Leaderboards or Challenges with Ghost race.
I’ve had a chance to play an early build of the game is it is rather fun, but I have a feeling the endless mode is going to be the big seller on this, so I’m glad to see Craneballs is delaying the release to get this in there. Think Canabalt on a unicycle! Check out a humorous teaser trailer below:
New Development Blog
It’s also worth noting that Craneball’s has recently launched their new development blog, where you can follow their progress on any upcoming titles and game updates and get some interesting insights into the struggles of app development.
