Once upon a time, some friends and I designed a mmorpg, and we had a lot of fun doing it. But we lacked the abilities to program it. But I had so much fun designing that I bought Torque, a indie game engine born out of the ashes of the Tribes FPS game series. There, I met a programmer who was heavily modifying Torque to make a mmorpg. He started his own forum, I joined, and eventually I was part of a new team trying to make a mmorpg.

That attempt also failed. But we got a lot further. I worked on the back story of the game, and I created the world map and several zones.

Time passes, and I recently heard from Dave (the leader). He has released three games for the iPhone/Pod on his own using the ShiVa development tool (sorry Torque). They are all fun little fantasy adventure games, but more interestingly, they look like they could be combined to form a bigger, better fantasy game down the road. Hmmmm.

Anyhoo, I borrowed my father-in-law’s iPod touch, downloaded the games, and have been enjoying them:

• Arcana: Spell Duel — stand toe to toe with another caster and nuke the bejezzus out of each other. Actually, there is quite a lot of subtle strategy. And the spell effects seem good for a portable device (though I need Ab or someone with experience to let me know for sure). Oh, and I should mention that this can be played vs. the computer or vs. other players online. I haven’t tried that yet though.
• CastleGuard — whack whack whack! Then more whack whack whack with your sword. Free, and the precursor to…
• CastleGuard 2 — Finally one where you can make a character, run around getting quests and then kill things. You can explore outside and in dungeons.

I haven’t played many iPod games, so I don’t have a good basis for comparison, but they look good and play good to me. CG2 could be a bit more responsive, but in the end they are fun, and that is what it’s all about.

You can check out Dave’s stuff on iTunes or at his website: http://daveyounggames.com/

Explore dungeons and kill skeletons for fun and profit in CastleGuard2.

Drain life from your enemy for fun and profit in Arcana: spell duel