Robot 5 Studios News

We're a gaming studios focused exclusively on building games for the Apple Watch. Check out our games at robot5studios.com

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Top 3 Mobile Blackjack Games

There are countless fantastic blackjack games for the iPad, iPhone, and Apple Watch. Save time searching for the best and simply download these games, 1 for each device.

1. Blackjack by TapTapBoom for the iPad

You can’t go wrong with an blackjack game for the iPad that has a 4 star rating with over 14k reviews all time and a 4.5 star rating and over 5k reviews for the current version.

2. Blackjack 21 by Smash Atom Software

Not only is this a great looking blackjack iPhone game, but you can also play 3 hands simultaneously.

3. Blackjack Mini by Robot 5 Studios

This fantastic blackjack game for the Apple Watch has been finely tuned with amazing animations and an easy-to-understand interface. It’s currently ranked 3rd in the App Store and is gaining momentum every day. Find out more about Blackjack Mini on its website and trailer on YouTube.

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The Top 3 Football Video Games Of All Time

I remember growing up and spending countless hours playing some amazing football video games. Now that we’ve built our very own football game for the Apple Watch, we can’t help but reminisce about the most memorable football video games of past and present.

1. Tecmo Super Bowl

The best football video game of old on the big screen has no equal. From the amazing touchdown runs, to the deep ball down the sidelines, to the anticipation of the touchdown scene after scoring, Tecmo Super Bowl might just be the best football game of all time.

2. Madden NFL

Easily the best active football game. It’s so popular that just choosing which NFL player to put on the cover draws a ton of publicity.

3. Football Twos

Well, maybe it’s a little early to crown Football Twos the current champion of the best Apple Watch football game, but since it’s the only football game out, then by definition it’s the best, right?

But seriously, we built Football Twos to stand out from any competition. The complexity of animations and overlapping in this game is unlike anything else we've seen in other Apple Watch games. The quarterback holds the football, rotates his body, and throws it above the players and field. The football spirals in the air and shows a shadow on the field. Receivers run their routes, crossing each other and the defenders, catches the ball, and takes the blue active ring. We've taken care of all the small details in Football Twos.

And there you have it. Tecmo Super Bowl, Madden NFL, and now, Football Twos. To find out more, head on over to http://robot5studios.com/football.

[robot5studios]

We’re Featured and in the Top Charts in the App Store

What a whirlwind few days. We were optimistic that our Apple Watch games would have some level of success once we launched them on Friday along with the launch of the amazing Apple Watch. But we didn’t know for sure how they would do. Now we know.

Our 3 games are having a fantastic run in the App Store so far. Berry Quest is in the Top Charts:

Blackjack Mini is ranked 13th in the Top Charts and is also Featured:

And Football Twos is ranked 20th in the Top Charts and is another Featured game:

We can’t thank all our followers and fans enough for their support over these past few months while we’ve worked our tails off on these games. We hope you love playing our games as much as we do!

For more info about our games, go to our website. And signup for our weekly newsletter to get the latest updates.

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Your Battery Will Be Just Fine From Playing Apple Watch Games

We can expect that Apple Watch users will use their apps for about 15 seconds or less at a time. Holding up your arm and wrist for minutes at a time simply doesn't make sense. Usage for games will be no different. Since these sessions for both apps and games are so short, coupled with the processing happening on the iPhone, I expect playing games will effect the battery in a very similar way that using apps will effect the battery - they'll both sip the battery throughout the day.

[robot5studios]

The Apple Watch Is The Next Great Gaming Platform

The biggest advantage of playing an Apple Watch game over a smartphone game is convenience. There are countless instances throughout the day where a quick distraction would be fun but too inconvenient, like going home on a crowded subway or waiting for a meeting at work to start. We can imagine someone playing our Blackjack Mini game 10 times a day for 10 seconds at a time, and potentially playing a different more immersive iPhone game once at night on the couch for 10 minutes.

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Why Robot 5 Studios Is Focusing 100% On Apple Watch Games

Robot 5 Studios is a gaming studio that was formed specifically for the sole purpose of creating Apple Watch games. If we think back to the transition from gamers spending time on consoles and desktop games to spending more and more time playing games on a smartphone that's always nearby, we can imagine a future not too far away where gamers prefer the convenience of playing certain types of games on their Apple Watch instead of pulling out their smartphones. There's a time and place for games on a watch, smartphone, and huge screen - we think that an increasing amount of time will be spent on watch games.

We can also consider the Apple Watch specifically instead of smartwatches in general. The Apple Watch is an extraordinary device that is beautifully designed and more easily accessible than a smartphone or any other device in existence. Its games will be played by millions of gamers in April, then tens of millions by the end of the summer, and beyond. There's no better creative and technical challenge than developing games for an amazing new platform, and nothing more exciting than to make breakthroughs that tens of millions of gamers will get to enjoy. In short, building games for the Apple Watch is and has been a game developer's dream.

[robot5studios]

The Casual Gaming Boom On The Apple Watch

Apple Watch games have the potential to be one of the most downloaded category of apps on the device. People will always look for ways to relax and have a few moments of fun. This could mean playing an immersive console game for a few hours on the weekend, enjoying several minutes of a silly matching/jumping/crossing smartphone game at night on the couch, or playing a couple hands of Blackjack Mini while waiting for the meeting at work to start. With this kind of potential usage throughout the day and week, I wouldn't be surprised if people downloaded more games than any other app category.

[robot5studios]

Football Twos Is Finally Here.

Download Football Twos for your Apple Watch now! If you’re wondering why we think you’ll love this game, read one.

The complexity of animations and overlapping in this game is unlike anything else we've seen in other Apple Watch games. The quarterback holds the football, rotates his body, and throws it above the players and field. The football spirals in the air and shows a shadow on the field. Receivers run their routes, crossing each other and the defenders, catches the ball, and takes the blue active ring. We've taken care of all the small details in Football Twos.

For more info, please head over to the Football Twos site and check out the trailer.

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Why You’ll Love Playing Blackjack Mini

We’ve spent a bunch of time trying to get the animations just right in our Blackjack Mini Apple Watch game. If you watch closely, you’ll notice how the cards animate out of the top-right shoe deck and into their proper place in the dealer's hand and player's hand. Cards can overlap each other and flip over from back to front. Splitting cards show the active and inactive cards animating in and out. All these animations are expected in iPhone games, but are nearly impossible to build in Apple Watch games. We've experimented with countless prototypes and experiments to get our Blackjack Mini game to where it is today, and we think players will love it.

For more info, please head over to the Blackjack Mini site and check out the trailer.

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What Makes Our Berry Quest Game Special?

We’ve put our heart and soul into our Berry Quest Apple Watch game, and we think you’ll love playing it on your new Apple Watch. We’d like to highlight a few things that really make this game special:

The lightning bolt crashes down on the matched berries and makes them disappear, which shows a great example of our on-screen objects overlapping and interacting with each other.

The added-score and level-up indicators appear, float upwards, and fade away, all animated above the game like you would expect on an iPhone app, but won't see in other companies' Apple Watch games.

Every part of the game is fully animated like in an iPhone game.

No other Apple Watch game has this kind of on-screen object interaction. We hope you enjoy playing our first Apple Watch game!

For more info, please head over to the Berry Quest site and check out the trailer.

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Will Playing Apple Watch Games Be Enjoyable?

This sounds like a silly question for us to ask ourselves and for us to use as the headline for a blog post, but we think that it will be a very common question when users find one of our Apple Watch games in the App Store and decide whether or not to download it.

I’d love to sit down with our potential gamers for countless hours and talk about why our games are amazing, but I think it comes down to one simple idea - we have a philosophy of only releasing games that are exciting to play on the Apple Watch. Plain and simple. We believe in this so strongly that we're not afraid to throw away complete games that don't end up feeling right. We’ve already built and scrapped several complete games in the past because they didn’t feel right. Players that download our games can rest assured knowing that they're going to play games that are the best of the best.

[robot5studios]

What Makes Robot 5 Studios Unique?

Now that the Apple Watch has launched with over 3,000 apps in their new App Store including hundreds of games, watch owners will want to find the best apps and games to download. So why should they download games from Robot 5 Studios?

One of the biggest reasons to download our games is that we’re push the Apple Watch to its gaming limits, far beyond anything we've seen from other Apple Watch games. Games from other companies have no interaction or animations between objects and characters on screen. With some complex uses of Apple's WatchKit, our games have objects overlapping, colliding, and moving anywhere and everywhere on screen.

For example, our Football Twos Apple Watch game has the quarterback holding the football and throwing it above the players and field, shows the receiver catching the ball, and marks him as the active player with a blue ring. This is unlike anything else we've seen in other Apple Watch games.

Check out the Football Twos trailer to see what we mean. We think you’ll love playing our games and hope you’ll appreciate the attention to detail that we’ve put into our games. Enjoy!

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The Importance of App Icons

Users should be able to quickly scan the array of icons on their Apple Watch home screen and find the one they’re looking for. This makes it extra important to follow the Apple Watch Human Interface Guidelines when designing the home screen icon:

Use universal imagery that people will easily recognize

Embrace simplicity

Create an abstract interpretation of your app’s main idea

The above screenshot shows the final Apple Watch icon for our Berry Quest game. Notice how the cherries really stand out and almost take over the entire icon.

Our app icon managed to stand out enough to catch the attention of Cult of Mac. From http://www.cultofmac.com/320070/10-super-adorable-apple-watch-app-icons/:

No one will mistake this app icon for anything other than an adorable matching game based on fruit, am I right? What a fun little cherry icon, perfect for tapping on my wrist and launching a fun little tappy game on my Apple Watch. I can’t wait.

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Our First Short Film, Robot 5 Plays Blackjack Mini

We’re so excited about the Apple Watch launch tomorrow that we wanted to celebrate with a silly short film featuring our official company mascot, Robot 5. Check it out!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bToxSjGTA2A

The supporting actor is Dumpling, the one eyed shih tzu. He’s famous:

https://instagram.com/dailydumpling

Find out more about our Blackjack Mini Apple Watch game.

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ESPN2 will air a live e-sports match this Sunday for the first time ever

From http://venturebeat.com/2015/04/22/espn2-will-air-a-live-e-sports-match-this-sunday-for-the-first-time-ever/:

Blizzard has announced that the Grand Finals of its collegiate tournament for online multiplayer arena battler Heroes of the Storm will air live on ESPN2. This is an example of how e-sports games are establishing themselves as huge spectator events along the lines of traditional sports. Analysts predict that pro-gaming, with its advertising, ticket sales, and more, will make around $465 million by 2017.

Esports has really come a long way, first with the acquisition of the Twitch gameplay streaming site by Amazon, and now with this live esports match on ESPN, the most popular sports network. I wonder if we’ll ever get ESPN to broadcast a Football Twos match live? :)

[robot5studios]

Apple Watch strategy: Make it dead simple

From http://www.cnbc.com/id/102607463:

Critical to the app's success will be its simplicity in the eyes of consumers. The Apple Watch is such a new gadget, and every app will offer an unfamiliar experience that requires some education, so it's a good bet that any service that's difficult to use won't get much traction.

We completely agree. Not only do apps need to be dead simple, but games as well. For example, we experimented with allowing players to call offensive and defensive plays and formations in our Football Twos Apple Watch game. This turned out to be too slow and cumbersome on a watch and just didn’t feel right. We ultimately decided to let players tap to pass on offense and tap to move their defensive players. Simple and fun, exactly how it should be on the Apple Watch.

Check out the Football Twos trailer to see the game in action!

[robot5studios]

Berry Quest Is One Of The “Best Games for the Apple Watch”

http://watchaware.com/watch-apps/lists/best-games-for-apple-watch

Berry Quest was included as one of the Best Games for the Apple Watch along with Trivia Crack! High five!

Find out more on the Berry Quest site and the Berry Quest trailer on YouTube.