General Electric, yup, you read that right, that large U.S-based company who has led the field of invention and innovation, has partnered up with Noise to launch a brand new iOS game that lets players discover hidden worlds of knowledge throughout major U.S cities. The game, titled GE Wonderground, looks to combine Foursquare-like elements with quiz questions and is also available online as a web-based game.

Launching in NY, SF, LA, Boston and Chicago, and hosted by  “Wonder Junkie” Jason Silva, GE’s Wonderground is a game of self-expansion designed to reveal obscure, intriguing facts about technology, science and engineering. “We think we know the world around us, but there’s always something more to discover,” said Jason Silva. “Wonderground engages the fundamental parts of our human nature that fuel science-curiosity, inquiry. Players will see what others miss. They will know interesting things they didn’t know. They will in effect, see through walls.”

Players can experience Wonderground either on their desktop or mobile iOS device. There they will be brought into immersive 360-degree panorama fact-finding missions. On mobile iOS devices, players can go on actual missions in the cities, unlocking clues using patented object recognition technology. As players move through the game they will learn everything from GE’s involvement in the invention of Silly Putty, to a research initiative centered around the cloning of a woolly mammoth, to the story behind why portable ultrasonic detectors are being used to detect counterfeit gold.

In celebration of the launch of Wonderground, GE has commissioned the world-renowned tromp l’oiel works of artist John Pugh, who has brought the game to life in a series of visually arresting murals in the 5 launch cities. To play Wonderground, head over to www.gewonderground.com or download Wonderground for free at the App Store: http://goo.gl/RDujL

MMORPGs are a dime a dozen these days but it remains one of the most dynamic genres out there, catering for a wide spectrum of players. Hardcore players will always have their World of WarCraft or their Eve Online. Players who do not want a subscription model have their Guild Wars 2 and don’t get me started on the licensed stuff such as Star Wars and Lord of the Rings that have fans of the movies/books playing out their favourite roles in those respective universes.

But with so many MMORPGs out in the market, competition is stiff for players’ dollars, time and commitment. And the main thing that acts as a hook to players is the community. Having a nice and friendly community is always a good thing, and such an example would be the community at Soulsplit.com. Soulsplit is a RuneScape Private Server, established since 2008. For those who are not familiar with RuneScape, it’s a browser-based MMORPG and according to Wikipedia it is the world’s largest free MMORPG and the most updated game.

Soulsplit is a market leader in the RSPS arena, with 4,000 players simultaneously on peak time and still rising, and the management has just told us just what makes them the highest quality RSPS out there. The folks behind Soulsplit have worked hard in fixing up the in-game wilderness and at the same time gave players a great platform to form clans. For the player, Soulsplit has different game modes, namely an oldschool mode and enhanced graphics mode for newer players who prefer bells and whistles.

There are also different varieties of XP modes, that can vary from 5,000 XP per hit or 10 XP per hit, so if you are either a player out for a challenge or simply one that enjoys entering Soulsplit’s highly populated wilderness, this is the game for you. With maximum entertainment in mind, this is one MMORPG that deserves your attention. Check out the website right over here: Soulsplit.com

I think DisneyUTV just struck gold with their first ever multiplatform multiplayer cricket game, Cricket Fever Challenge for both Android and iOS devices. I’m not a fan of cricket myself, but the game has a massive following all over the world and the sight of migrant Bangladeshi workers playing the game on the field really defines the term “spectator sport”, it’s an intriguing and exciting game to watch.

Cricket Fever Challenge allows players to play and challenge their friends on the two platforms’ (iOS and Android) devices as well as on Facebook. The objective of the game is to hit maximum runs in one over (6 balls) to set a challenge for their opponent to beat. The aim is to win as many challenges as possible to stay at top of the leaderboard and to move to new skill levels.

The game features what the developers call as a real simulation of cricket; this is made possible using real-time physics and motion capture animation. The TV broadcast style camera angles bring about a cinematic experience to the whole proceedings.

To download the game, head over to Google Play (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.indiagames.cricketfeverchallenge) or the iTunes App Store (https://itunes.apple.com/in/app/cricket-fever-challenge/id524308293?mt=8)

PBS Digital Studios has come up with the latest installment of their “Off Book” web-documentary series and this time it takes a look at a subject matter that this blog holds dearly at its core, indie video games. Now while you have large studios coming up with triple-A titles, you also have small-scale developers working on unique and experimental video games as the lack of budget doesn’t mean the lack of innovation and creativity.

This goes back to the days when there weren’t any big studios, and the game developers back then were churning out titles from their bedrooms, garages and even basements (or clandestinely coding on company hardware…). And back then they were no short on creativity either, coming up with innovative stuff (parallax scrolling on a PC, anyone?) or some really cool storylines.

The new PBS Off Book installment is titled “The Creativity of Indie Video Games” and it features a whole bunch of indie folk and games, including Darren Korb, audio designer of Bastion, the games Limbo, Terraria, Super Meat Boy and many more. You can view the video right up there on Nineoverten.com

Frima Studio’s newest game A Space Shooter Blitz is doing a blitzkrieg on not one, not two but three different platforms, iOS, Android and Facebook, and the game is available for free on all three of them. The game is a bullet-hell shmup which places players in the role of Commander P. Jefferson in the mighty USS Eradicator.

The game features one-minute “Blitz” rounds, random epic boss fights, score multipliers and most interestingly, cross platform sharing of progress, scores and achievements. To download the game, check out the following links:

Apple App Store Download: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/space-shooter-blitz/id555749193?mt=8

Google Play Download: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.frimastudio.android.SpaceShooterBlitz

Facebook: https://apps.facebook.com/aspaceshooterblitz/

Interesting, NASA has an MMO in the works and the folks at Project Whitecard are working to deliver Starlite, formerly known as Astronaut: Moon, Mars and Beyond, by the end of 2012 in the form of a beta. Piqued? Read the following press release for more details:

Both of my favourite Mac games are being patched today, so with Diablo III AND StarCraft II out of commission for a while (take a look at the SCII patch, it’s weighing in at 1.1 gig), I’ve got some time to check out something I’ve not done in a while, a Facebook game! In this case, it’s Konami’s Blockolicious, which essentially is a port of the same game by Chillingo for mobile devices.

Now, you might groan, not another match-3/Bejeweled clone, but look at it this way, what do all (well almost) match-3 games have in common? They all have the ability to keep players transfixed. Blockolicious adds in several strategy-based elements that will make players even more hooked. Divided into two modes of gameplay, Sprint and Marathon, the basis still the same: Match like-coloured blocks in groups of 3 or more to form up Juicy Blocks. Match like-coloured Juicy Blocks together to create explosive Juicy Bombs which can be used to take out all like-coloured blocks on the block and power up Power Aids.

Power Aids are power-ups that will help players to destroy even more blocks or even provide multipliers to their scores. The difference between the two modes are in Sprint, the juicy blocks drain out and in Marathon, you’ll need to keep your number of moves high up or else it’s game over. Putting up that many strategic elements in a simple game of match-3 would be quite daunting to read on paper (or from the e-mail), but the proof is definitely in the playing.

Having said that, my favourite mode would be the Marathon, with the Sprint being a little too frantic for me. Doing well in the game rewards players with coins that can be used to unlock more Power Aids (or even quickly boost them in-game) and the players scores are reflected on cross platform leaderboards.

Nine Over Ten 9/10 rates Blockolicious at a 4.5 out of 5! The game is available on Facebook for free, so do check it out over here: https://apps.facebook.com/blockolicious/.

For this week’s interview segment, we’ve got Geoff Blair and Matt Hackett, together they form up Lost Decade Games, who are responsible for the HTML 5-based game Lunch Bug that we reviewed recently (check it out here). These guys are really passionate about HTML 5 and indie game development. Without further ado, here we go:

Nine Over Ten 9/10: Tell us more about yourselves and how you started developing mobile games?

Geoff Blair/Matt Hackett (Lost Decade Games): The two of us (Geoff and Matt) both have web development backgrounds, working for companies like Yahoo! and Raptr. We founded Lost Decade Games in 2010 because we wanted to work on JavaScript games together. Our first game Onslaught! Arena is an award-winning HTML5 arcade shoot ‘em up that we launched with the Chrome Web Store that December. In 2011, we worked with Game Closure as their very first hires, making fun game demos and helping with their SDK. In February of this year we started working on Lost Decade Games full time.

9/10: What was the idea behind Lunch Bug?

LDG: Lunch Bug was originally conceived as simple twist on the classic board game, Othello (also called Reversi). We wondered what might happen if we introduced more pieces than simply black and white. It’s evolved quite a bit from there, but you can see that the core mechanic of Lunch Bunch is still about “capturing” pieces by surrounding them with other piece types. In addition, we wanted to branch out a bit from the retro, hardcore feel of Onslaught! Arena and try our hand at a more accessible game.

9/10: How has the response been to Lunch Bug?

LDG: We’re pleased that it’s been overall very positive. Players have been saying that they like the graphics and the sound, and that once they get into the game, it offers fun and interesting problems to solve. Though, our biggest complaint has been the tutorial. It’s difficult to teach new game mechanics to players and we took a very hand-holding approach that turned off a lot of people.

This is all a learning experience for us though, and the great response to Lunch Bug has given us a lot of confidence for improving our future games.

9/10: Could you describe the process of marketing your games?

LDG: Honestly, marketing is the weakest piece of our stack. We try to get early attention on our games by tweeting and blogging about the process of making them, but it’s difficult to get many people’s attention. We do our due diligence by creating comprehensive and high-quality media kits, which we send to everyone we can in games press and journalism, but we get largely ignored.

Moving forward, we think that the issue is one of inherent interest. If a single sentence that describes a game doesn’t really grab people, it’ll probably be hard to sell marketing-wise. It can be very humbling to be composing an email to a games journalist and having difficulty coming up with a compelling reason they should spend their time writing about your game instead of hundreds of others. So in the future we’re trying to make games that people find inherently intriguing when you talk about it.

9/10: Could you share with us a little on what you’ll be working on next?

LDG: Absolutely! We recently secured funding for our next game, which we are calling Lava Blade. It’s a side-scrolling platformer built around procedural level generation and progression. It could be described as a combat-oriented Canabalt or Jetpack Joyride (or Moon Patrol for you retro gamers). It’s medieval fantasy, will be packed with content, and of course will be built in HTML5, except this time we’re tailoring the experience for desktop.

Lava Blade will be available on the open web later this year, and we’ll be making some exclusive content for Pokki, which is an HTML 5 desktop platform. Pokki also sponsors Lostcast, our HTML5 games podcast.

9/10: Any plans for releasing Lunch Bug as a native app and market it on the iTunes App Store?

LDG: Lunch Bug runs pretty well in Mobile Safari, so technically the game is playable on iOS devices. However, the game runs rather slowly and audio is just terrible in mobile browsers. We’d really like to get it on the iTunes App Store, but we’ll need to integrate with native wrapper technology like those from Ludei and Game Closure. It was actually Game Closure’s SDK that allowed us to get Onslaught! on iPad, but Ludei  has also integrated one of our portal games with their SDK, and it looks really promising too. The future is bright!

9/10: Any words for aspiring game developers out there?

LDG: We suggest starting by doing everything yourself. Find a way to be as productive as you can, as fast as you can. If you know Java, go with that. If you’re not a programmer, pick some GUI like Game Maker and run with it. Design the simplest game you can, make it a complete game with a title screen and menus and all that, and wrap a bow on it. Then spend as long as you can polishing your very simple game until there’s nothing left you’d make prettier or smoother.

Once you show this creation to people, the conversations you have with professionals in the industry changes. Before you have something really compelling like a full game to play, I think people have a tendency to not take you seriously. So prove yourself and make a game! Once you’ve demonstrated a broad, valuable skillset, you can begin to focus your efforts on your specific area of interest, like design or graphics.

We often talk about making it as an independent game developer on our blog and podcast, and Matt discussed it in depth on an episode of Laser Time podcast called How to Make a Video Game.

Here’s some industry news before we call it a night, Swiss-based online and mobile games company, Miniclip, has announced today that it has surpassed the 100-milion downloads mark (insert the obligatory “if I had a dollar for every download line here”) across the board for the company’s mobile titles. Considering that this highly successful company has been around since 2001, it was a long time coming.

With its new cross-platform initiative, Miniclip has become the first company to have simultaneously launched new games across online, iPhone and Android. Popular games in its expansive library include Extreme Skater, Hambo and Monster Island. Miniclip’s recently re-launched website now allows users to instantly play mobile games online, share it with their friends and download it to their iPhone, Android or Windows Phone. For those players that enjoy competing with big groups, Miniclip is implementing its new multiplayer server technology to run game tournaments in real time online and on mobile.

“This milestone clearly demonstrates that Miniclip’s online players want to extend their gaming experience to their mobile devices,” said Sergio Varanda, Director of Mobile for Miniclip. “By utilizing our proprietary X-Port Genie technology we’ve been able to substantially grow our mobile library by simultaneously launching new games across multiple mobile and online platforms allowing Miniclip players to play any time, anywhere.”

For more industry news, be sure to follow us at nineoverten.com.

It used to be that you needed Adobe Flash to play some really great web-based games on your browser. Nowadays, Flash is more like an unwanted stepson as HTML 5 has stepped into the limelight. With a modern browser such as Chrome or Firefox, you get to enjoy some really great web-based games. If you were to take a look at the Chrome Web Store, you’ll find some really cool stuff like Airmech, a colourful strategy game featuring robots and tanks.

If stuff like that isn’t your cup of tea, check out Lost Decade Games‘ latest HTML-5 game, Lunch Bug. It’s a unique turn-based puzzle game that is guaranteed to give you an entire Sunday-afternoon’s worth of fun. In Lunch Bug, the goal is to feed berries to a bunch of adorable creatures called lunch bugs. Each turn, the player will place a random piece (be it a berry or a bug) on the board, each piece has unique properties that when placed on the board which will affect other pieces in interesting ways.

Placing a bug on the board will cause him to eat his way (horizontally, diagonally and even vertically) to the next bug, netting you points which are necessary to unlock the subsequent levels for a total of 20 levels. Aside from the levels, there’s an unlockable endless mode. The soundtrack for the game is made by indie game composer Joshua Morse and I must say, its pretty awesome.

Nine Over Ten 9/10 rates Lunch Bug at a 4.5 out of 5. Lunch Bug can be played on any modern desktop browser AND mobile browsers such as Mobile Safari and the Android browser. It is also available on Pokki and the Google Chrome Web Store. Check out the game over here: http://www.lunchbug.com