Goodbye casual. Hello… hardcorsual?
Glu Mobile switched over to the “freemium” business model last summer, and boy are they sticking to it! Gun Bros helped prove that freemium titles could be fun to the “hardcore” gaming crowd, and the three titles we saw here at GDC look to further satisfied those people who like to game for free… or, you know… not for free. 
A couple quick notes before diving into the games themselves:
- All of this games are universal binaries; aka, one download for all devices.
- All of these games are “free-to-play”, as in, you can download and play them for free, and only need to spend money if you want to purchase extra in-game currency and items.
- Glu is working to ensure all of these games support a cloud-based save system. This way you can play your saved game from any device. There isn’t a guarantee that these games will support cloud saves at launch, but it’s the direction Glu is trying to go with their games.
- Finally, these games should be released late march/early April.
Bug Village
Glu . The Bug’s Life movie came to my mind throughout our demo of Bug Village, but not because the movie was copied in any way. Rather, Bug Village’s visual style captures the charm and themes of the popular Disney movie very well.
The gameplay in Bug VIllage is fairly par for the course with management/farming games. You have to assign workers (ants and bees) to various tasks to collect resources, which you then use to build up your village of bugs. There little pseudo games here and there, such as tapping a stink bug to stop him from bother your workers. I was impressed by the large amount of bugs working on the screen at once, all with their own job and path to follow. We were able to follow a bee from a flower all the way to it’s hive, while other workers were completing tasks in the background.
As you play, you workers will get hungry. One of the most entertaining parts of our demo was when a cookie was placed in the world. All the bugs stopped what they were doing and swarmed the cookie, then went back to their normal tasks. It’s a game that’s much better seen in action, so hopefully we’ll have screens and/or video for you soon.
Big Time Gangsta
On paper, Big Time Gangsta sounds like another Mafia Wars clone, but in action, it’s quite impressive. Like Bug Village, Glu is aiming high for the visual style of the game, and it really shows. The visuals really pop on the iPad, particularly the gang battles, which are rendered in real time using an impressive 3D engine. At any point during a gang war, you can take control of one of your 3 members and manually assign targets and fire their weapons, which adds an nice level of interactivity not found in most social management titles.
Many of the features of Big Time Gangsta will be very familiar to those who currently play gangster/mafia management titles, but the biggest different I found was that BTG feels like much more an actual game. Like all free-to-play games, you have the ability to purchase in-game “hard” currency, but there’s also in game cash gained by taking over buildings in your city. There’s also a third currency called “white”, that is made in labs (take a guess what that represents).
The biggest surprise came when Glu said this game would not be online or social at launch. However, as with all of their new games, Glu has big plans for monthly updates, and bringing in the social aspect of the game is on the horizon after the initial launch. At the moment, Big Time Gangster looks like an impressive title that will keep players entertained even in single player mode.
Contract Killer
With the success of Glu’s Deer Hunter franchise, it seems only natural that a human hunting game come along. Wait… what? Ah, not hunting, sniping. Glu has taken what made their other hunting games so popular and built up a game that places you in the shoes of a paid sniper assassin. There are many similarities in the interface, but that’s not a bad thing, as the Deer Hunter series has controlled well for the most part.
What we saw looked graphically impressive, as with the previous two titles. There are varied urban environments, each with their own vantage points, so different missions will require different approaches to the same area. Prior to going into a mission, you can outfit yourself with two weapons and stock up on ammo and items. You can only use what you take with you into a mission. Some contracts require you to use tranquilizer hardware to sedate and capture enemies, and others require the kill.
As you progress, you will start facing tougher enemies. Some may be wearing body armor, helmets, etc. You’ll have to consider these factors before you head out for each job, which should add some nice variety to the gameplay. The action itself plays very closely to the Hunter series, with the addition of taking cover and, of course, taking damage.
All three of these Glu titles looked to be of top-notch quality, which has become a benchmark of their freemium lineup. When they come out in a month or so, you’ll be able to try them out for yourself without spending a dime!
