Simlife - Simple your life!

8 Winning Mobile Games announced at the 5th International Mobile Gaming Awards (IMGA) at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona[ Top ]

BARCELONA, 18 February. FastFoot-Challenge of Urban Team from Germany was named Best Real World Game, Mobigame from France received the Excellence in Gameplay Award with EDGE, Real Racing of Firemint from Australia won the Excellence in Connectivity Award, Secret Exit from Finland walked away with the Excellence in 3D Award for their title Zen Bound Tropical Towers of Real Arcade from Finland was awarded Best Casual Game.

The People’s Choice Award, chosen via on-line voting on www.imgawards.com went to Digital Legends from Spain with the title KROLL and a panel of Mobile Operators, representing Orange, Vodafone and T-Mobile, selected EDGE of Mobigame from France who therefore received the Operators’ Choice Award.
The Jury decided that all this year's winning Category entries were of such a high standard that they all merited a Grand Prix. In addition, the exceptional innovation displayed in Kodo Evolved deserved an Innovation Award. As a result, this year the Jury has decided that the Grand Prix will be divided equally between the five Category winners and the winner of the Innovation Award.
Mark Ollila, Head of Games Publishing at Nokia commented: « This year there has seen many exciting nominees for the IMG Awards in each category, offering groundbreaking ideas and cutting edge concepts to mobile gaming. The high standard of entries demonstrates the quality of innovation in the industry at the moment, and is indicative that 2009 will be a great year for mobile game developers and players alike. »
“ARM is proud to support the IMGA in the drive for ever more advanced, innovative and creative content for handsets, maximizing the end-user experience and making the most of technologies such as the market leading, scalable ARM® Mali™ GPU architecture,” said Borgar Ljosland, director of advanced product marketing, ARM Media Processing Division. “Game developers are really raising the bar to bring truly visually compelling content to mobile phones and the award entries show the kind of quality that is emerging.”

Marc Naddell, Vice President, Partner & Developer Programs, NAVTEQ said: « NAVTEQ Network for Developers is committed to working with developers to drive innovation in the LBS space and is following the evolution of location-enabled games with especially keen interest. It amazes me how game developers are able to fuse technology and creativity to produce fun games. This year’s IMGA has proven that location-aware games are clearly making the map to the future of mobile gaming more interactive and more fun. »
Guy Teissier Chairman of Marseille Euroméditerranée said : 'Thanks to the concentration of international leaders in chip manufacturing, world-class R&D centres and fast-growing and innovative technology and content companies, Marseille is rapidly becoming the 'European Mobile Valley'. No wonder it's home to the world's number one competition for mobile games! The IMGA has become the world showcase for the talent and innovation which are such an integral part of the mobile games industry.'
Each of the five category winners receives US$ 5,000. Later this year, the IMGA will bring out a book tracing the development of mobile games from 1997 to today. « Over the past five years we have reviewed over 1,000 new mobile games and handed out more than US$ 140,000 in cash prizes. This is therefore a really good time to celebrate the success of both mobile games and of the IMGA with a book » commented Maarten Noyons, founder of the IMGA.

ABOUT THE IMGA
The International Mobile Gaming Awards was launched in 2004 by Maarten Noyons of NCC Partners to recognize and award the most talented mobile game developers in the world.
In 5 years the IMGA has reviewed over 1,000 games originating from over 50 countries including the USA, Ukraine, Israel, Italy, the Netherlands, New Zealand, China, the Czech Republic, Brazil and Belgium. Participants include PhD students, researchers, artists, individual developers and the top 10 leading mobile games publishers and developers in the world. Over the last five years the IMGA has handed out over US$ 140,000 in cash prizes.
Sponsors of the IMGA include Nokia, NVIDIA, Qualcomm, Adobe, ARM, AMD, Euroméditerranée, Auchan Télécom, Orange Partner, Vivendi Universal Games, Movida, Texas Instruments and Buongiorno.
As well as offering a highly respected award for mobile games, the IMGA is also a worldwide talent scout in mobile games development through a network of developers, publishers, operators, handset manufacturers and technology providers.

About ARM
ARM designs the technology that lies at the heart of advanced digital products, from wireless, networking and consumer entertainment solutions to imaging, automotive, security and storage devices. ARM’s comprehensive product offering includes 32-bit RISC microprocessors, graphics processors, video engines, enabling software, cell libraries, embedded memories, high-speed connectivity products, peripherals and development tools. Combined with comprehensive design services, training, support and maintenance, and the company’s broad Partner community, they provide a total system solution that offers a fast, reliable path to market for leading electronics companies. More information on ARM is available at http://www.arm.com.

X DANCERY NAMED WINNER IN NOKIA's GLOBAL CALLING ALL INNOVATORS COMPETITION [ Top ]

Simlife Ltd's X Dancery Wins USD 25,000 Prize in Contest for Mobile Applications to Help Improve Life on the Planet

XIAMEN, CHINA, February 17, 2009 - Simlife Ltd's X Dancery application has been selected by Nokia as a Grand Prize winner in the Technology Showcase category in the global Calling All Innovators contest for mobile applications and solutions to help improve the quality of life on the planet.

Simlife Ltd joined 10 other developers worldwide who were honored in Barcelona, Spain, in the Forum Nokia Calling All Innovators Award Ceremony during the annual GSMA Mobile World Congress. The winners were selected from among nearly 1,000 developers who competed in three categories with mobile applications designed to contribute toward building a better world.

Simlife Ltd's X Dancery , fully optimized for the S60 5th Edition's touchscreen UI and motion sensor technology, and with advanced 3D-graphics rendering capabilities, analyzes any MP3 file to automatically generate a unique tempo-based game for each selected musical track.

As the Grand Prize winner in the Technology Showcase, Simlife Ltd received a cash award from Nokia of USD 25,000 and will receive help in distributing their mobile applications to consumers worldwide.

"Nokia is pleased to recognize Simlife Ltd as a real innovator in mobile development, having answered our global challenge for truly outstanding applications designed to help make the world a better place to live," said Rob Taylor, Director of Forum Nokia. "We're excited to be able to help put these remarkable mobile applications and services in front of consumer and business users through our Calling All Innovators competition."

X Dancery not only shows the stunning 3D graphics, but also offers quite innovative game play - players can touch on screen, or shake the phone, or shake their body to hit the music tempo notes! It is a game integrates music, fun, health and relaxation.

During the first round of the contest, the Calling All Innovators website received more than 250,000 unique visitors and more than 12,000 developers from around the world registered with Forum Nokia, the world's largest mobile developer community.

More information about Forum Nokia's Calling All Innovators competition can be found online at: www.callingallinnovators.com.

About Forum Nokia
Nokia's global developer program, Forum Nokia connects developers to tools, technical information, support, and distribution channels they can use to build and market applications around the globe. From offices in the U.S., Europe, India, Japan, China, and Singapore, Forum Nokia provides technical and business development support to developers and operators to assist them in achieving their goal of successfully launching applications and services to consumers and enterprises. More information is available at www.forum.nokia.com.

About Simlife Ltd
Simlife was founded in 2002, is one of the best providers of the mobile interactive mobile game contents and intellectual terminal embedded software in China. During the development, Simlife forms a potent team on R&D, game development and porting, which has pioneered thinking on game development and scientific and efficient work flow, possesses rich R&D experience and professional content design. Depending on the world-class product quality, Simlife establishes stable partnership with many famous operators and mobile value-added service providers and provides self-branded mobile games to both the domestic and international markets. Simlife, always on the way!

THE MOST INNOVATIVE GAMES IN THE WORLD: WINNERS OF THE INTERNATONAL MOBILE GAMING AWARDS ANNOUNCED

400 developers from 42 countries compete for $40,000 in prizes over five categories

Barcelona – WEDNESDAY, 13 FEBRUARY 2008 – The International Mobile Gaming Awards, the largest competition for mobile games in the world,announced on Monday night this year’s winners at a crowded awards ceremony at GSMA’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.. A jury of specialists from Japan, US and Europe selected the winners out of the 25 nominees from the US, China, Japan, Korea, Philippines, Thailand, India, UK, Netherlands, France, Denmark, Spain, Poland, Sweden and Australia.

The ‘Best Casual Game Award’ went to ‘Treasure Arm’, produced and published by Tequila Mobile from Poland, and ‘Furby Island’, produced and published by LemonQuest from Spain, won the ‘Best Licensed IP-Based Game Award’. The ‘Excellence in 3D’ award went to Digital Legends in Spain for ‘ONE’ published by Nokia, Jadestone from Sweden received the ‘Excellence in Gameplay’ award for ‘Dirk Dagger and the Fallen Idol’, published by Nokia, and the IMGA Jury decided not to hand out the ‘Excellence in Connectivity’ award this year.

The US$ 15,000 ‘Grand Prix’ went to Ideaworks3D from the UK with ‘Metal Gear Solid Mobile’, published by Konami.

The IMGA launched two new awards this year: the ‘Operator’s Choice Award’ and the ‘People’s Choice Award’.

The ‘Operators Choice Award’, selected by a jury of mobile operators from the 25 nominated games, went to the ‘Grand Prix’ winner, Ideaworks3D with ‘Metal Gear Solid Mobile’, published by Konami.

The ‘People’s Choice Award’ was handed over to Firemint from Australia with the game ‘WRC’ (‘World Rally Championship’) published by I-play. This was the result of a ‘Web and Wap’ public vote.

“This year’s standard of entries has demonstrated just how far mobile games have developed over the past few years,” said Dr Mark Ollila, Director of Technology and Strategy and Head of Games Publishing, Nokia. “We are naturally thrilled to have won both the ‘Excellence in Gameplay’ award for ‘Dirk Dagger and the Fallen Idol’ and the ‘Excellence in 3D’ award for ‘ONE’. N-Gage is committed to providing its customers with the best possible mobile games so it’s great to be recognized so early on for this. We are looking forward to delivering even better and more exciting games over the next year.”

“We have been involved with the IMGA since 2006 and were pleasantly surprised to see an overall improvement in the quality of entries as well as an increasing use of Flash Lite in extremely innovative games,” stated Mark Doherty Manager of Developer Relations at Adobe Mobile and Devices (EMEA).

“The fourth IMGA was a big step forward for us,” said Maarten Noyons, CEO and founder of the IMGA. “We’ve had the largest, most widespread and richest participation since 2004, with two new awards to encourage a new level of entry. Moreover, a partnership with the GSM Association gives us a front row seat at the Mobile World Congress. Equally, the partnership with Buongiorno fuelled the ‘People’s Choice Award’ efficiently through Wap voting and game delivery to journalists worldwide.”

“Our delivery platform, one of the multi-faceted end-to-end storefront solutions Buongiorno offers to support the future of the games industry, has proven to be a reliable tool in promoting the Awards and innovation in mobile games,” said Fernando González Mesones, Head of Global Marketing, Product & Supply, Buongiorno. “We are very happy with this partnership and will definitely leverage on our 100+ global carriers agreements to get distribution for some of the winners.”

“Texas Instruments are delighted to be involved in this IMGA initiative that fosters creativity and innovation,” said Bryce Johnstone, Wireless Ecosystem Manager. “We have been hugely impressed with the improvement in quality and experience of the IMGA entries this year and we look forward to seeing many deployed on TI based phones in the future.”

Mark Smith, Media Communications Director of the GSMA added, “We are delighted with the success of this first event in collaboration with the IMGA and we look forward to continuing this collaboration in order to establish a real focus on mobile games at this key mobile industry event. Our congratulations go out to all the winners.”

For more information and full details of the Award prizes, please visit the International Mobile Gaming Awards website at: www.imgawards.com. For images or to get into contact with any of the winners or sponsors, please phone Maarten Noyons on + 33 491315217 or +33 67776 24 16

About the iMGA
The International Mobile Gaming Awards (IMGA), launched in 2004, is the leading worldwide platform for innovation in Mobile Entertainment. The Awards recognize and award the most innovative and creative games for mobile phones.
Each year mobile gaming studios, individual developers, students and researchers are challenged to come up with new ideas for tomorrow’s mobile games. Each year around 400 developers from over 42 countries participate in the IMGA.

GSMA and IMGA Collaborate to Drive Mobile Gaming Innovation at the Mobile World Congress

GSMA’s Global Mobile Awards and International Mobile Gaming Awards Align to Promote Mobile Gaming Sector

15th January 2008 – London: The GSM Association (GSMA) and the International Mobile Gaming Awards (IMGA) today announced an agreement to join forces at this year’s Mobile World Congress (Barcelona, 11-14 February 2008) to promote the development of the mobile gaming sector.

The GSMA will endorse and promote the established International Mobile Gaming Awards, the largest mobile gaming awards programme which is aimed at professional and non-professional developers of unpublished mobile games. The GSMA will also facilitate the IMGA in hosting their annual Awards ceremony, held on Monday February 11 in the Mobile Entertainment & Content Zone (Hall 7) within the Congress. In turn, the IMGA will support and promote the GSMA’s Global Mobile Award’s Best Mobile Game category - for best published and commercially available mobile games.

The GSMA acknowledges that mobile gaming helps drive creativity and innovation and adds value to the industry and to customers. And the IMGA’s annual Awards ceremony at the Mobile World Congress will provide an invaluable platform for both small and large developers, hoping to publish new games, with the opportunity to get the level of exposure they need in front of senior executives from both handset manufacturers and mobile operators attending the event.

The GSMA and IMGA will also work on future projects together that will help drive innovation, creativity and the growth of the mobile gaming industry.

“We are delighted to partner with the IMGA to align these two Awards programmes and to showcase some of the most innovative, published and unpublished mobile games at the world’s biggest mobile event,” said Bill Gajda, Chief Commercial Officer at the GSMA. “The IMGA brings an unrivalled track record and credibility to the Congress along with a significant community of games developers to showcase mobile games to the broader industry. We’re also excited at the prospect of working on future projects and events that will help drive innovation in this very fast moving sector.”

“I am very proud of this agreement with the GSMA”, said Maarten Noyons,” CEO and founder of the IMGA. “The GSMA represents the mobile industry worldwide and the Mobile World Congress is known throughout the world as the most successful mobile industry event. This endorsement and partnership is critical if we are to fulfil our goal of continuing to drive innovation and creativity amongst developers, publishers and bring the excitement and potential of this sector to the attention of the wider industry.”

The GSMA’s Global Mobile Awards will take place on Tuesday 12th February and the IMGA Awards will take place on Monday 11th February at the Mobile World Congress 2008 in Barcelona.

The GSM Association (GSMA) is the global trade association representing more than 700 GSM mobile phone operators across 218 countries and territories of the world. In addition, more than 200 manufacturers and suppliers support the Association's initiatives as key partners.

The primary goals of the GSMA are to ensure mobile phones and wireless services work globally and are easily accessible, enhancing their value to individual customers and national economies, while creating new business opportunities for operators and their suppliers. The Association's members serve more than 2.5 billion customers - 82% of the world's mobile phone users.

The International Mobile Gaming Awards (IMGA), launched in 2004 is the leading platform for Innovation in Mobile Entertainment worldwide. Each year mobile gaming studios, individual developers, students and researchers are challenged to come up with the most innovative concepts for tomorrow's mobile games. The IMGA brings together Industry leaders and top talent in Mobile Entertainment and displays the most innovative Mobile Entertainment Games and Applications to a broad worldwide audience.

It's an extremely finely crafted phone game with some truly beautiful graphics and music, interesting and logical puzzles!

To put it in a nutshell, if you want console-like games on your smartphone, Lament Island may well be for you. This is one of the most beautiful and technically accomplished phone games ever released, and apparently it's exclusive to Symbian S60.

Perhaps because of its audio-visual richness, the game's installation procedure is a little more complicated than usual: you have to transfer several directories of files over to your phone's memory card and then install the SIS file that comes with them. This is a bit annoying, but it's not a terrible pain as the game ZIP file includes complete instructions. This is well worth installing, so don't give up at the first hurdle.

We're reviewing the S60 3rd Edition version, but it's also available for S60 2nd Edition.

Gameplay

Lament Island herb garden Lament Island is a fully 3D action-adventure game along the lines of Tomb Raider, but with a Chinese setting and made by Chinese developers. You explore a deserted mansion on an island using a detailed set of controls which rely on the direction pad, keypad and soft keys.

Those who remember the N-Gage version of Tomb Raider will find something very interesting in Lament Island: an OPTIONAL version of the infamous auto-run feature. Autorun in TR for N-Gage was notorious for making Lara run off cliffs, but in LI it actually works quite well, and this reviewer used it very often. It's easy to activate (click forward twice) and deactivate (click back once), and is especially suited to a phone keypad. Indeed, it works so well on a phone keypad that one wonders if the N-Gage port of Tomb Raider was originally intended for a conventional phone.

The first part of the game is taken up by a TR-style tutorial which introduces all the controls one at a time, blending seamlessly into the actual game itself, and you learn some additional skills later in the game. You can walk and run, turn, jump, crouch, use objects, examine things, fire pellets and swing a pickaxe. Each action has its own dedicated key, and they're laid out in a fairly memorable way, though it's perhaps a bit overwhelming at first. Objects in your inventory can be combined with other objects, and the inventory usefully categorises objects into tools, medicines and storage media (yes, it's odd, but so is this game).

Lament Island origami swan Lament Island is atmospheric. Its world is filled with detail, including text descriptions for most of your surroundings when you examine them, and there's even a small "hidden" cut scene where you look up at the house's fountain near the door, which can only be accessed if you depart from the game's expected path up the stairs in the first room.

Some objects have to be broken to find other objects inside, and this is definitely a game where you should explore and examine everything. To explain the plot, as you progress you find various origami animals that have the story of a sea voyage written on them, with the story unfolding as you find more animals. To make the game even more immersive, some of the puzzles make use of the phone's microphone and camera, for example you have to blow into the microphone to remove dust covering a carved symbol.

It's not all exploration though, there is a combat element which requires you to use the pickaxe and catapult, and the pickaxe can also prove useful when trying to uncover secret doors (the map, when you find it, will show the location of hidden exits in a room). You have a health meter which goes down when you're attacked by creatures, and you can also be poisoned which makes the meter turn blue and slowly run down. Poisoning can only be cured by finding an antidote herb, but general health can be restored by finding medicinal herbs.

Some special puzzles require you to do certain special tasks, for example turning the handle of a battery charger to the rhythm indicated by on-screen arrows in order to fully charge a battery.

Lament Island intro painting Lament Island fountain

Lament Island catapult Lament Island pickaxe

Lament Island trapdoor Lament Island stairs

Graphics & Sound

Lament Island doorway The intro is a quiet and understated series of paintings depicting fragments of a story, accompanied by a beautiful but sad song sung in Chinese. It makes you feel this game is going to be something a bit special, and indeed it is.

To put it simply, Lament Island is possibly the best-looking and best-sounding S60 game so far. While the graphics aren't exactly PSP-quality (there are pixellated textures on many of the walls for example), for a phone game this is absolutely superb. It looks and sounds like an N64 or PlayStation game, complete with video and scripted 3D cut scenes, and no frame rate problems either. Even the title screen looks great with its neverending water effect.

LI has an absolutely wonderful soundtrack, professionally done and suited to the world it depicts graphically. The music in the background changes from one location to another and is very nice indeed, never getting annoying.

We were told Lament Island only worked in vertical/portrait mode, but as you can see from the screenshots in this review it works fine in horizontal/landscape mode too on our Nokia N93. We couldn't switch between modes during the game, but you can easily change modes by saving, exiting, and then re-launching the game in the new mode.

One important warning about the graphics: if you have an unofficial S60 theme installed on your phone, this may cause occasional flickering within the game. If this happens, switch to one of the official themes that came with the phone, and the flickering should stop.

TV and keyboard Test

If you have a Nokia N82, N93, N93i, N95 or N95 8GB you can use any of their functions, including gaming, through a television set thanks to their TV Out feature. This feature works on any set with a composite or SCART connection (SCART-only sets will require a very cheap composite adaptor however).

You can also use a wireless Bluetooth keyboard to control any S60 device. Keyboards that support the HID profile are compatible with S60 devices.

Lament Island works fine on a TV. Unfortunately the wall textures look more pixellated on a big screen, but hearing the lovely music through proper TV speakers is brilliant. The gameplay is just as good on a TV as it is on a phone.

Our Bluetooth keyboard worked very well for directional control, pressing arrow keys is more comfortable than using a small phone direction pad. However, our keyboard doesn't have a keypad, just a row of numbers at the top, so things like jumping or crouching are difficult to do because it's difficult to remember which number does what. Lament Island's controls make sense on a 3x4 button keypad layout, but they're completely unmemorable on a 1x10 row of numbers. If your keyboard does have a keypad though, this shouldn't be a problem.

Overall

Lament Island isn't perfect, it can be annoying dealing with the bats that attack you, and there are some baffling bits of Engrish here and there. Also, like all adventure games, it can get very frustrating when you can't work out what to do next. On top of that, this is not going to suit people who want short bursts of simple instant gaming.

However, it's an extremely finely crafted phone game with some truly beautiful graphics and music, interesting and logical puzzles, a tantalising plot with multiple possible endings, and even attempts to push phone gaming beyond just the keypad. Lament Island is the kind of thing that makes people use words like "art" when discussing computer games.

Some people may prefer exploding aliens and fast cars, but sad stories written on small folded paper animals can be far more evocative.

AAS Score: 90%

PS: You can see a gameplay video of Lament Island in action over on the Unofficial Nokia Gaming Blog.

TOMORROW’S GAMES: THE INTERNATIONAL JURY ANNOUNCES THE TOP 25 MOST INNOVATIVE MOBILE GAMES

The International Mobile Gaming Awards, the largest competition for talented mobile game developers worldwide, sees improvements in mobile games development worldwide.

The 2007 “International Mobile Gaming Awards” Edition is now open for entries! Enter the challenge by submitting your most innovative ideas!

The International Mobile Gaming Awards (IMGA) is a yearly contest for the most innovative and creative mobile games in the world. The first IMGA was launched in 2004 and winners and nominees of previous editions can be found at www.imgawards.com. In 2006, 400 companies from 42 countries participated in the IMGA.

What’s new for the IMGA 2007 edition?
The opening of the 2007 competition sees the IMGA enter its 4th year. Updated rules and regulations for submission of games are now outlined on the IMGA website. A new online entry procedure will guide applicants through the necessary steps which will help them send information and visuals for their work.

For more information about how to participate and to read the rules and regulations, click here.

Studios and developers from all around the world will compete in 5 categories:
* Excellence in 3D $5,000 US
* Excellence in Connectivity ‐ $5,000 US
* Excellence in Gameplay Award ‐ $5,000 US
* Best Licensed IP‐based Game Award ‐ $5,000 US
* Gaming Best Casual Game Award (developed in Flash, Java, etc.) ‐ $5,000 US
…and of course The 2007 International Mobile Gaming Grand Prix ‐ $15,000 US
All winners will receive a mobile phone and more extras from our sponsors. More information will become available on www.imgawards.com

Deadline for entries
All entries must be received before Monday, 24 September 2007 at 6pm CET (Central European Time).

Announcement of nominations
The nominated projects will be announced before 10 October 2007. The entrants of the nominated games, demos and projects will need to submit a playable version before 28 January 2008, 6pm CET (Central European Time). IMGA's technical partners and sponsors will provide software and hardware tools, mobile phones, SDKs and services to the nominees if requested.

Awards Ceremony
The jury will meet for a second time on 9 and 10 February 2008 to select the 6 winners. The winners will be announced on 13 February 2008 during the IMGA Awards Ceremony.
For more information about the IMGA 2007 key dates and other Mobile Entertainment Events click here.