{"id":1230,"date":"2010-08-16T23:27:53","date_gmt":"2010-08-17T03:27:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fullstopinteractive.com\/blog\/?p=1230"},"modified":"2010-08-17T10:42:22","modified_gmt":"2010-08-17T14:42:22","slug":"notes-on-playing-and-beating-the-incident","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fullstopinteractive.com\/blog\/2010\/08\/notes-on-playing-and-beating-the-incident\/","title":{"rendered":"Notes on Playing (and Beating) The Incident."},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span class=\"first-letter\">M<\/span>ad props to <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/nevenmrgan\">Neven<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/mattcomi\">Matt<\/a> (and <a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/CABEL\">Cabel<\/a>) for pulling off a fun, good-looking game. While The Incident lacks the replayability of games like Canabalt, Flight Control, Words With Friends, etc., it&#8217;s hard to find fault at $1.99. Two bucks is the perfect price point for something that must have taken insane amounts of time to design but ultimately adds up to only a few hours of entertainment per player. If you have an iPhone (or iPad), go get <a href=\"http:\/\/itunes.apple.com\/app\/the-incident\/id385533456?mt=8\">The Incident<\/a>. It&#8217;s the kind of application that makes these platforms worth owning.<\/p>\n<h3>Tips &amp; Tricks.<\/h3>\n<p>I&#8217;m the type of person who avoids reading reviews about movies and games lest they spoil my experience. But that&#8217;s me. Maybe you need a little help. Here&#8217;s what to do if you&#8217;re having trouble:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Get stuck on purpose.<\/strong> As long as you&#8217;re stuck, you can&#8217;t get hit from above. Wait until a black balloon arrives, then shake to free yourself. You&#8217;ll make up all the ground that you were losing while you were stuck. Jump lightly a few times to convince the game you can&#8217;t get out.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Keep stuff above you.<\/strong> A corollary to getting stuck on purpose, find a crack and duck underneath. Stuff falling from above you is, naturally, the most dangerous part of the game.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Options are key.<\/strong> If you are out and about, don&#8217;t get trapped in a canyon. Try to stay on top of things so you can always move quickly left or right.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Snag those power-ups.<\/strong> There are a crazy amount of extra lives and power-ups in this game. Make things easy on yourself and grab as many as you can. Those extra lives will come in handy.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Get the helmet, but don&#8217;t use it.<\/strong> The helmet keeps you safe, but it destroys anything that falls on your head. You&#8217;ll need that stuff to get to the top, so try to avoid getting hit.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3>Modest Proposals.<\/h3>\n<p>A few minor tweaks that would make the game more challenging and user-friendly.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Multiple simultaneous games.<\/strong> We&#8217;ve got at least two regular iPad users and several more guest users. The ability to have more than one game saved would be a boon.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Saving progress mid-level.<\/strong> It seems odd that exiting to the main menu would reset your level progress, but that&#8217;s the way it is. Maybe just needs clarification.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Difficulty meter.<\/strong> As is, The Incident is essentially a casual game for casual players. An easy way to amp up the difficulty would be removing or thinning the available power-ups. Another would be to increase the penalty for getting trapped. Make it tougher to use that protective bubble or impossible to avoid balloons while in it. Bottom line: The Incident is currently stuck on easy. Let&#8217;s see options for difficult and hard-core. It wouldn&#8217;t be difficult to add that setting to the menu and dial a few game properties up or down.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Last, kudos to these guys for creating a game that takes advantage of the iPhone&#8217;s native functionality rather than attempting to port a traditional style of gameplay. Shaking, tilting, and indiscriminate tapping are winning moves. <a href=\"http:\/\/itunes.apple.com\/app\/the-incident\/id385533456?mt=8\">The Incident<\/a> might not have perfected iOS gaming, but it&#8217;s a shining example of how to do it right.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Mad props to Neven and Matt (and Cabel) for pulling off a fun, good-looking game. While The Incident lacks the replayability of games like Canabalt, Flight Control, Words With Friends, etc., it&#8217;s hard to find fault at $1.99. Two bucks is the perfect price point for something that must have taken insane amounts of time [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[15],"tags":[56,48],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fullstopinteractive.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1230"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fullstopinteractive.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fullstopinteractive.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fullstopinteractive.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fullstopinteractive.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1230"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/fullstopinteractive.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1230\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1233,"href":"https:\/\/fullstopinteractive.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1230\/revisions\/1233"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fullstopinteractive.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fullstopinteractive.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fullstopinteractive.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}