Skydiver HD is the second title to be ported by YoYo Games to the Android platform, a follow up to the free Simply Solitaire HD released last month.
The game sells for £1.19 (Sandy has provided an explanation for the higher Android price compared to iOS) and was my first purchase from the Android Marketplace.
I get the impression Android is very much taking a back seat over at YoYo due to the easier nature of producing games for iPhone. I must admit I am slightly worried that we will never see some of their titles make it over. So far we have seen 7 titles released on iPhone only 2 of which are currently available on Android and the number of Skydiver sales remains at less than 50.
You should know the basic premise of the game – you are parachuting down from a ridiculous height through a crowded sky containing birds who want to peck you to death, other parachutists, helicopters, military jets and supply crates.
Your time is split between parachuting around an increasingly busy airspace as fast as you can move your finger to navigate the skydiver, and hurtling towards the ground at or approaching terminal velocity with missing limbs whilst you bleed to death. Lovely.
I wouldn’t say it is family friendly given you can be “Capped” by colliding with a helicopter but the use of messages such as “you got pwned” leaves me wondering who the game is actually aimed at.
When you lose your parachute as a result of a collision you can steal parachutes (and limbs!?) from other parachutists to continue your descent as safely as possible through what is seemingly the most deregulated airspace in the world.
Some of the birds seem particularly vicious and out to get you, perhaps before you jumped out the plane your pockets were stuffed with bird seed?
There are 21 unlockable achievements some which seem incredibly hard such as “Box Destruction 2000” which requires you to smash 2,000 crates in a single game. That would take a long time.
After my first couple of games I wasn’t too impressed. The font used in the game is Comic Sans, or at least something that looks very similar, and I thought the whole game seemed very 1990sy.
Playing again this morning I did manage to have some longer games where things became more exciting, even so this doesn’t strike me as having the same level of replayability as Solitaire. Apart from “Robot mode”, whereby the human blood splurting skydiver is replaced by a robot leaking oil, there are no customisation options or difficulty settings – things do tend to become more maniac the longer you survive though.
Using the 15 minute refund available to me seemed a little harsh but if anything will encourage me to splash out on more apps knowing I can quickly cancel the purchase if it quickly becomes apparent that a purchase has not been worthwhile.
Skydiver HD on the Android Maketplace (£1.19/$1.91)
” So far we have seen 7 titles released on iPhone only 2 of which are currently available on Android and the number of Skydiver sales remains at less than 50.”
Is that 50 iPhone and Android sales combined, or just Android sales?
How did you get that number?
Thanks
Android App install numbers are listed in groups on the Marketplace. For example for Skydiver, https://market.android.com/details?id=com.yoyogames.droidskydiver it currently states “INSTALLS: 10 – 50” whilst Solitaire is in the range “5,000 – 10,000”
Also, we are porting all our back catalog to the Android so you will see everything out over the next month or so, it just takes time to QA each game.
We are also fighting a performance issue that is holding other games back at the moment, we will keep you posted.
The Android Licensing system requires a unique number for the handset this is provided for you, but you need to get the Phone State and Identity permission, we do not read the phone number and we only access the internet as part of the Android Licensing system.
Take the issue up with Google not YoYo
What’s up with app’s Permissions, I wonder.
…
This application has access to the following:
* Phone calls
read phone state and identity
Allows the application to access the phone features of the device. An application with this permission can determine the phone number and serial number of this phone, whether a call is active, the number that call is connected to and the like.
…
Guess that’s one of reasons why they won’t get good sales on this.