Rocket Bunnies Review

Chillingo's new action game is a hilarious race through space that will have gamers coming back for more.

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Chillingo has a new title that should have fans of pick-up-and-play action games flying high and planet-hopping with glee.

Rocket Bunnies and Rocket Bunnies HD, developed by Android game devs Defiant Development, have both landed on the App Store, with an already established following, an excellent concept and a killer style. The game is simple and almost obnoxiously fun. Rocket Bunny’s job is to careen across the universe, saving baby rocket bunnies stranded on two galaxies in 60 different environments.

First, it’s a simple matter of timing your blasts from planet to planet with the brilliantly responsive single-touch control. Soon players are avoiding singing suns, blasting through webs, avoiding electric currents and other obstacles and collecting hats (yes, you read that right.)

The environments are quite varied for this type of “complete one level to unlock the next” game and the graphics are vibrant.

Gamers will be as compelled to laugh at Rocket Bunny’s antics as well as to play Rocket Bunnies over and over. The use of the word addictive is over-used, especially in reference to iOS games, but this one will have you saying “just one more time” for hours.

This is a polished offering. The devs had a chance to work out the kinks on early Android versions, and with Chillingo behind the iOS port, there is a promise of a third galaxy to come, Game Center and Crystal Gaming Network integration with leaderboards and achievements, and a GUI spit-shine.

Check out the gameplay trailer:

The learning curve is gradual – there is a tutorial world to teach the tricks to safe bunny space flight. The instructions are clear – though few are needed – and the animated scenes cracked me up. This game is not just cute: it’s cartoonish eye candy.

There is little to complain about. Several hours of testing revealed no bugs or crashes on either iDevice and gameplay is great on both iPhone and iPad. The responsiveness and simplicity of the one-tap control mechanism is superb.

A little more logic to the galaxy maps, and a bit more information on the hats thing would be nice, but otherwise this is an almost perfectly executed game. Served in small fun helpings, Rocket Bunnies is a must-have.

Posted in: Games, Reviews, iPad Apps and Games, iPad Games, iPhone Apps and Games

Tagged with: Action Game, Chillingo, defiant development, Rocket Bunnies, Rocket Bunnies HD

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Meet the Developers: Zootool Founder Bastian Allgeier

I was recently honored with the opportunity to have a discussion with the founder of one of my favorite web services: Zootool.

Today we’ll give you a look into our chat with Bastian Allgeier about why he created Zootool, what challenges he faced transitioning a web service into an iPhone app and whether or not we can expect to see an iPad version any time soon!

Zootool makes it easy to bookmark, organize and share, images, videos, documents and links from all over the web. It’s like your personal scrapbook for the things you like and get inspired by each day.

ZooTool

I’m currently living and working in Mannheim, Germany. I studied Communication Design at the University of Applied Sciences here in Mannheim and graduated with my Master’s degree in November 2009. I started working as a self-taught web designer and developer about 10 years ago, long before I went to Uni, but somehow had the feeling that I should make it more “official”.

The first version of Zootool actually happened to be my bachelor thesis project in 2007 and I built the best part of the current version for the Master degree, so it was definitely worth it to go that way.

At the moment I’m working about 50% as a freelancer on client projects and 50% on Zootool.

After having a chaotic schedule and weird working hours for years, I finally found it to be essential for me to have a mostly organized workday to maintain my sanity! I start working at about 9 AM, go out for lunch at 1 PM and finish working at 7:30 PM. I know it sounds awfully boring, but it really helps me to stay focused.

I’m working from home, so I’m sorry about not being able to show you pictures of a fancy 600 square meter Zootool office!

Bastian's Home Desk

The first thing I normally do in the morning, is to check all Zootool stats, Twitter and email. I used to read a lot of RSS feeds, but stopped a few months ago because it simply takes too long and the important stuff somehow always pops up on Twitter sooner or later.

I don’t really have a fixed schedule when to work on client projects or when to work on Zootool. I just try to balance both as well as possible. Switching between design and development and between Zootool and client projects has become the key for me to always stay motivated. I love working that way.

“Facebook has become a really important way for me to get in contact with Zootool users”

My most used third-party apps (beside the Zootool app *cough*) would be the official Twitter app, Wunderlist and the Facebook app. The Twitter app still feels like the snappiest, most native way of using Twitter on the iPhone to me.

Wunderlist kicked Things out about a few weeks ago, just because I can’t stand to still not have OTA sync in Things. And Facebook has become a really important way for me to get in contact with Zootool users, so I use it quite a lot.

I was always searching for a good way to collect all the inspiring things I find on the web each day. I had a huge pile of bookmarks in Safari, which became totally unusable and none of the web services out there had what I was looking for.

“I wanted to build a tool that I could also use for videos, documents and websites that gave me previews for all my various collected resources. ”

FFFFOUND had just become really popular and I loved the idea to be able to collect images from all over the web instead of bookmarking text links or saving those images on my hard drive. But I wanted to build a tool that I could also use for videos, documents and websites that gave me previews for all my various collected resources.

The special thing about Zootool is that it can automatically detect different types of content – images, videos, documents and links – by their URL. So when you bookmark a video from Youtube or Vimeo for example, it will know that it is a video, give you matching tag suggestions, a preview image and the embedded video right in your bookmark collection.

With Zootool you can collect images from any website, videos from more than 30 video sites, pdf documents, javascript, CSS and text files, slideshare presentations, scribd documents, tweets, rss-feeds or any other website content and you’ll always get the best possible preview for it.

ZooTool Public Feed

“The truth is that it was super hard. You have to consider and plan so much more.”

I must confess that I thought it’d be pretty easy to design the iPhone app. Everything is defined. You can rely on the size of the screen and that it will look the same on every device. But the truth is that it was super hard. You have to consider and plan so much more, when you try to squeeze a lot of functionality into such a small screen, every additional button and UI element becomes really, really painful.

The good thing was that I found an outstanding developer and a real good friend in Nicolas Cormier, who decided to help me with the app and spent hundreds of hours in the last year building it in his spare time with me. He helped me a lot to keep focused with the design and to build an app that feels native but has tons of custom UI styles and elements at the same time.

Our personal challenge was to find a productive way to work together even though he lives in Oslo and I live in Mannheim (we’ve still never met in person!). We found Basecamp and Dropbox to be extremely helpful in that situation and it’s sometimes still hard for me to believe how much work we got done that way.

“The main goal of the app is to provide a really cool way to browse your collection and the collections of other Zootool users.”

The main goal of the app is to provide a really cool way to browse your collection and the collections of other Zootool users on the go and to be able to add new content to your “Zoo” on MobileSafari or from your clipboard very easily. We always wanted it to feel like a standalone app, which works great with the web app, but also without it. So basically everybody who’s looking for a great, visual way to collect content from the web on the iPhone will enjoy it.

Definitely! The app had a good start so far and it’s really cool to see that people sign up for the app, who didn’t know about Zootool from the web before.

“I think that Zootool fits on the iPad really, really well.”

We just started working on Zootool for iPad and hope to be able to launch it soon. It will be another challenge to transfer a mixture of the iPhone app and the web app to the iPad, but I think that Zootool fits on the iPad really, really well, so I can’t wait until we got it ready.

I’m currently working on our upcoming pro accounts, which will bring lots of additional features like syncing your shared links from Facebook or Twitter or bookmarking via Email. My goal is to make Zootool a central hub for all stuff you like on the web and to make its content detection even smarter.

A huge thanks to Zootool founder Bastian Allgeier for taking the time to share a bit of his life and work with us. It was really great to get some insight into what goes into such a great service and the challenges that arose during iPhone app development.

Now comes your chance, leave a comment below with a question for Bastian and if he gets some time in that crazy work day he’ll try to throw out a few answers. In the mean time, be sure to check out both the Zootool web service and the accompanying iPhone app!

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Black Hawk Down

Ridley Scott's Black Hawk Down conveys the raw, chaotic urgency of ground-force battle in a worst-case scenario. With exacting detail, the film re-creates the American siege of the Somalian city of Mogadishu in October 1993, when a 45-minute mission turned into a 16-hour ordeal of bloody urban warfare. Helicopter-borne U.S. Rangers were assigned to capture key lieutenants of Somali warlord Muhammad Farrah Aidid, but when two Black Hawk choppers were felled by rocket-propelled grenades, the U.S. soldiers were forced to fend for themselves in the battle-torn streets of Mogadishu, attacked from all sides by armed Aidid supporters. Based on author Mark Bowden's bestselling account of the battle, Scott's riveting, action-packed film follows a sharp ensemble cast in some of the most authentic battle sequences ever filmed. The loss of 18 soldiers turned American opinion against further involvement in Somalia, but Black Hawk Down makes it clear that the men involved were undeniably heroic. --Jeff Shannon

Price: $14.94

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CaseCrown Apple iPad 2 Bold Standby case (Black) for the Apple iPad 2 Wifi / 3G Model 16GB, 32GB, 64GB

Protect your iPad 2 with this CaseCrown Bold Standby case at all times! This case sports a simple and classy design made from faux leather, and the interior is lined with non-scratch material so you don't need to worry about any damages. There is also a magnetic strip built inside for a secure closure. This magnet also makes your iPad 2 go to sleep once you close it after use, and instantly wakes it up when you open it ready for use. Because the cover is uniquely designed to flip back and transform the case into a comfortable viewing stand, this capability allows the viewer to use the iPad hands-free whatever your position may be without strain. All features of the iPad 2 are accessible even with the case on. It even includes a camera hole so you can take pictures and videos without removing it. Watch movies and listen to music clearly with speaker holes! The compact structure of the case offers convenient mobility so you can just grab your iPad 2 and be ready to go knowing it will be protected at all times!

Price: $36.99

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