This week, we’re taking a look at See The Light, a puzzle game from a new developer by the name of The Animal Farm Creations.  In See The Light, the aim of the game is to direct different coloured lights to their respectively coloured goals.  This is achieved through strategically placing mirrors and other objects on the game grid to redirect the light beams.  Here’s the description from the official Android Market:-

A puzzle game set in deep space, See the Light challenges you to manipulate light using mirrors, lenses, energizers, absorbers, and other tools to solve 80 levels.  See if you can overcome increasingly tricky puzzles while unlocking every award!

As mentioned, gameplay in See The Light revolves around guiding beams of light towards goals by dropping objects which have differing effects on the light beams on to the game grid.  There are 9 different objects in all; mirrors, which reflect light at a 90 degree angle; lenses, which er, deflect light through them at a 90 degree angle; mirror balls, which send beams of light reflecting off in multiple directions at once, prisms, which can deflect light at different angles depending on their orientation and the colour of light that hits them; black holes which suck light in, preventing it from travelling any further; two destructive ‘energizers’ which destroy objects in the path of the beam of light and two rotaters which shift an object  clockwise or counter-clockwise by 90 degrees.  The game is controlled via the touchscreen, you just drag the object you want to place from the sidebar and it snaps to the invisible game grid.  You can then tap on the object to rotate it until you’re happy with it’s angle, where you can then tap a little green tick that appears next to the object to confirm it’s placement.  These controls were a little inaccurate at times, particularly in the bottom right hand corner of the touchscreen, but the developer has confirmed to us that this is to be fixed with an upcoming update.

Graphically, the game is pretty simple.  The objects are nothing startling to look at, but they don’t need to be for a puzzle game like this.   They are crisp, clear and easy to make out against the starry background though.  There is a mellow feeling soundtrack to the game, which, even after playing the game for a good while, I never found annoying – to my mind that’s about as close to a compliment as you can get.

Gameplay in See The Light is engaging and I caught myself on a few occasions simply staring at levels for a few minutes at a time, trying to plan out my next move.  Gameplay isn’t forgiving.  If you fail at any given level, you ahave to reset the level.  I’d like to see an “undo last” type button in there as there were a few times I placed an object only to realise I’d set it at the wrong angle – which is a little grating when you’re at the end of an elaborate set of object placements.  That’s a minor criticism though, and probably more indicative of my ham-fistedness at times than any failings in game design.  One thing that is glaringly missing from the game though, is the opportunity to skip a level and come back to it later: some of the 80 levels are fiendishly difficult to crack, taking a lot of experimentation before reaching that eureka moment.  Add to this the fact that even some of the earlier levels are real head-scratchers and I can see a lot of people being put off before they’ve even finished a quarter of the levels due to frustration.  It’s worth persevering with though, as those moments when you nail a level you’ve been staring at impotently for the past 15 minutes are their own reward.

Overall, I’m reasonably impressed with this as a first effort.  The progression of difficulty could possibly be tweaked a little as some levels which I felt were very difficult were often followed by levels that were completed on the first attempt, within seconds.  A level editor would also be a great addition to a game like this and would help keep interest up.  The inability to skip levels will undoubtedly see some frustrated folks reaching for the refund button within the first 24 hours, but die-hard puzzlers will find they’re kept busy and will certainly enjoy the challenge.  The game is currently available on the Android Market for $0.99, but this is apparently a limited time half price offer which ends on July 2nd, when the price reverts to it’s usual $2.00.

Following on from the last update regarding the elusive Enso ZenPad and it’s Chief Apologist, Alberto Armandi, we thought we’d update you with a little more information.  Firstly, we received a communication from Enso offering us the chance to receive a review unit of the ZenPad.  We haven’t taken them up on the offer for a couple of reasons- firstly, we didn’t feel it was right to deprive a genuine paying customer of a ZenPad just to help Enso prove that the tablets actually exist, especially given how few of the paying customers have actually received theirs.  Secondly, we think that Engadget’s review said it all,  and frankly, we could do without the stress that testing the ZenPad for review might bring.

We then received a message from another disgruntled Enso customer.  Please understand, you have to take what follows with a pinch of salt as we have no way of knowing how legitimate this communication is, but, at the end of the day, what does the sender have to gain by making this stuff up?

Here’s what our reader had to say:-

Many of us have been waiting since MARCH to get our Zenpad. The ship date has been changed more often than I can count and emails are no longer being responded to. OK, they shipped out maybe 10 devices. Until we all get the orders we placed months ago, I would call this the vaporpad, not zenpad. I’ve emailed them at least 20 times.

After my continued email campaign trying to get a zenpad or a refund, I got the email below from him on June 12th. (The toothbrush reference was because I said in a previous email that blogging tracking number like he’s been doing really means nothing since he could be sending toothbrushes for all we know. He didn’t like that .

After that email, I replied that I’m not willing to spend my own money to get my refund, but I did send a Western Union location that he could send my money to. I also advised that since my device was due to ship that day, per his email, he could just send it and avoid a refund. Of course he’s disappeared off the face of the earth again and isn’t answering emails. I even sent emails in Italian but to no avail.

I emailed him 3 days ago that I was going to contact various Websites with an update about my still missing zenpad. I don’t expect anyone to care about updating the story but I want people to know the latest in the Enso saga.

And here is what the reader claims to have received from Alberto Armandi:-

From: Zenpad Wanted [mailto:zenpad@enso-now.com]
Sent: Saturday, June 12, 2010 1:06 AM
To: xxxxxx
Subject: Re: Zenpad order # xxxxx

Hey,

Listen i will refund your order personally with my own fucking credit card if you send me just one more email.
I do not give a FUCK about what you think, toothbrushes and this bullshit.

Your one was planned out today, so now please tell me how can i refund money to you with my VISA card ( FROM CHINA ) without using paypal, because, you know, they fucking kicked me out.

I am ready to go refund you, just tell me how., western union should be ok. are you going to pay for the expenses ? it is quite expensive, like to send you 180 usd the expenses are 10 usd.

Alberto Armandi
Director

Charming.  Please folks, if, for some mis-guided and borderline masochistic reason, you’re considering buying a ZenPad.  Do yourself a favour, go buy another Android tablet instead.

Thanks to KMac for the heads up.

Gamevil yesterday announced that the sequel to their very successful Android baseball game Baseball Superstars is now available on the Android Market.  The original sold very well and featured in many folks’ top 10 games lists for the platform.  The sequel promises more of the same and, unlike many new titles these days, is Android 1.5 compatible, so all of you Hero users who are still awaiting an update will be able to play.  At $5.99 though, it’s not as cheap as a lot of the games on the market.  Here’s the press release:-

LOS ANGELES, CA — June 23rd, 2010 — GAMEVIL(R), a leading mobile game publisher and developer, today announced that its Baseball Superstars 2010 game is available on the Android Market. The game will support HVGA and WVGA screen resolutions and will be available for Android 1.5 and above.

Baseball Superstars 2010 for Android is a full-featured baseball game with six different modes: Exhibition, Season, My League, Homerun Race, Mission, and Match Play. In this new version, the user can now customize up to six players through My League mode and enjoy playing the game with more items, more hidden characters and even more hidden teams. The new Match Play mode enables the user to play against their friends asynchronously over the network, and the new leaderboard enables the user to compare their records with everyone around the world.

“Baseball Superstars has been the top selling sports franchise on the Android Market ever since its launch and we’re thrilled to release its sequel.”, said Kyu Lee, Head of GAMEVIL USA. “We’re confident that our users will enjoy the enhancements included within this year’s version as GAMEVIL continues multi-platform support with Android.”

Baseball Superstars 2010 is now available for $5.99 from the Android Market. For more details, please visit www.gamevil.com.

About GAMEVIL

GAMEVIL(R) is a premier mobile game publisher located in Seoul, Korea and Los Angeles, USA. Established in 2000, GAMEVIL has earned a reputation as one of the best companies in the mobile games sector by crafting award winners in a diverse portfolio of games. GAMEVIL is well known for revolutionizing the sector with its original and innovative mobile games, backed by unparalleled expertise in advanced mobile technology. As a world class leader in mobile games publishing, GAMEVIL continues to lead the sector with a commitment to establish mobile as the definitive mass market entertainment platform of the world. GAMEVIL is currently listed on the KOSDAQ Market (Ticker: 063080, Bloomberg: 063080:KS, Reuters: 063080.KQ)

We’ll have a review of the game for you over the next few days.

The WaveSecure team have gotten in touch to say that they will be releasing a few new features for WaveSecure over the next week or so.  The Action Centre in particular looks like it could be a pretty useful feature.  Here’s what they had to say:-
In a bid to make WaveSecure even more user-friendly, we will be introducing an improved Welcome Screen and also Action Center. We are hoping to roll these out by end next week.
Welcome Screen basically steps users through a quick introduction to what WaveSecure service offers. We introduced this as many users wanted a quick overview of WaveSecure post installation.
Action Center makes it easy for users to tweak their GPS, Auto-backup settings, load uninstall protection and more. The main idea behind Action Center is to give users a set of tasks which they can check off to improve the security and experience offered by WaveSecure.

On top of this announcement, we’ve also been told that, to celebrate the ongoing World Cup in South Africa, WaveSecure will be available with 25% off until the end of June.  To get your discount, go here and use promo code ‘GOAL’.

Another email has been received (21 times in total by us here at This Android Life) from Alberto Armandi, spokesperson and apologist-in-chief for Enso, the people offering up the Enso ZenPad, which is a re-badged version of the Smit MID 560.  Here’s what Alberto had to say this time (21 times):-

Dear Customers,

Sincere thanks for your support, we are having an incredibly high rate of people who still does want a zenpad.
That’s cool for us and it is a reason for us to go ahead with our idea, despite we have been slashed badly.

We are about to launch a new product, which will stay in the 5″ region, but with integrated 3G, WiFi and GPS.
Will follow in the next month a 7″ and 10″ version too.

We are publishing some tracking numbers here, given the attenction that has been put on this matter, some people might still
think that we are a scam. We do not know if all this will change their mind, but let’s try.
We want to go ahead, and i’ll tell you why.
Did you notice all the cheap “iPed” something coming from China recently ?
I did.
And the problem is that just that out of the box they seem nice, but let’s try them on the road for a week or more.
You will find out what i mean. They don’t work simply.
Now, given that our initial mission was to find good devices inside this whole mess of half baked stuffs and so, we admit that we made a mistake, but the zenpad is our initial product and we will get better.
At least WIFI and GPS are solid and market and apps works good. The cpu speed and display are just enough.
The new device is being tested thoroughly, on the road, and it works damn well. We will post a screencast or video here soon.
Stay tuned.

Here some tracking numbers we were allowed by our customers to publish :

EE356324535CN
EE356324558CN
EE356324408CN
EE356324544CN

Can track these on http://www.ems.com.cn/english-main.jsp, will probably work within hours.

Another one shipped with DHL :
http://www.dhl.com/content/g0/en/express/tracking.shtml?brand=DHL&AWB=6549784382%0D%0A

We sincerely hope this will give some peace of mind to those who think we are just criminals.

Thanks

So, there you go.  Prospective customers can rest easy, knowing that at least 4 lucky people will be receiving a shiny new ZenPad at some point over the next few days.  That doesn’t help the people who have been waiting since the tablet was announced, or the people who have tried contacting Enso for a refund multiple times without any response.

We’ve covered our doubts about the ZenPad right from the start (updates here and here), and came to the conclusion that Enso may actually be perfectly legitimate, but they are resellers rather than manufacturers and it seems they have over-stretched themselves, not anticipating the level of interest the ZenPad was going to generate.  It’s worth noting that Engadget, whilst they had in the past suggested the ZenPad tablets may be nothing more than vaporware, have since received a review unit of the ZenPad (reviewed by them here).  But, legitimate or not, there are far more disgruntled customers who haven’t received their units than there are satisfied ones.  We’d love for Enso to get this right and sort out their infrastructure such that they can serve the volume of requests they have been receiving.  We daresay they’d love to as well, as given the level of interest, it could prove a fairly lucrative business, but customers generally don’t like the thought of paying for an item that they then don’t see for months, if at all.

Another Android tablet has tipped up at Computex, this time it’s camcorder manufacturer, DigiLife’s offering, which has an unusual twist on the same-old same-old specs that have been cropping up so much lately.  The DigiLife iOne is a 10-inch tablet with a capactive touchscreen powered by a Samsung Cortex A8 CPU.  Nothing new there, but the iOne will also be packing a standard resolution projector.  A nice feature, and one that’s sure to make this piece of kit quite popular, but what’s also interesting about this particular tablet is the price: according to ARMDevices.net, the DigiLife iOne is going to cost less than $200 US.  We can’t help but wonder if maybe someone got their calculations wrong when converting from Chinese yuan to US dollars…

In the tidal wave of Android tablets that are coming out, it’s good to stand out a bit from the pack, and the VGA projector will go a long way to acheive that for the DigiLife iOne.
See below for a brief video of the current prototype.

{via ARMDevices}

Door-6, the developers of the play for cash prizes game, Vacuum, have announced the “Unofficial Winners” of their first round of prizes.  We’re not entirely sure what an unofficial winner is, but perhaps the listed winners should not get too carried away just in case…

Congratulations to the winners anyway, official or otherwise!

Vacuum Contest Period Ends, Unofficial Winners Announced

Madison, WI – June 2, 2010 – Today Door-6 is proud to announce the top scoring players of Vacuum: The Global Competition. The prizes which will be distributed after confirming the players’ eligibility are $500 (USD) for 1st, $250 for 2nd, and $100 for 3rd. For the purpose of privacy, only the in-game nicknames of the winners will be released today.

Coming in first place with a score of 2132 is “tim”. In second place, with a score of 2073, is “imran”. The third highest score was posted by “tim” as well with 1952, but the fourth highest score and therefore the winner of the third prize is “Stephen” with a score of 1921.

Congratulations to our winners and thanks to all our players who competed ferociously over the past 60 days. Keep an eye out for forthcoming updates to Vacuum and we hope you continue to enjoy the game!

Vacuum is the latest release from game development studio Door-6, Inc. Founded in 2009 and based in Madison, Wisconsin, Door-6 focuses on delivering premium software to smartphone users. Development began initially on Google’s Android mobile operating system, but has grown to include others. Look for the great mobile games of tomorrow to come from Door-6.

Security researchers Christian Papathanasiou and Nicholas Percoco, from tech security firm Trustwave, have announced that they plan on demonstrating an Android rootkit at the Defcon hackers conference in July.  The rootkit, which can be activated silently via an incoming SMS or phone call, is apparently a port of an existing Linux rootkit.

“You call the phone, the phone doesn’t ring, and when the phone realizes that it’s being called by an attacker’s phone number, it sends him back a shell”

According to Papathansiou, as the rootkit runs as a Linux kernel module, it can access everything; “Because we interface with the kernel, the opportunities to abuse this are limitless“.  The rootkit could be used to steal personal data, pinpoint the owner’s location via GPS or even redirect any phone calls (such as emergency calls, or calls to banks etc) to a fake number.  Of course, any rootkit like this would need to be installed first, but it wouldn’t be the first time that malware has been bundled with an app on the Android Market, although this is a rare occurance and Google are quick to remove any offending apps.

As some commenters have pointed out though; whilst it’s very impressive that a rootkit has been created that can infect Android devices, it does seem a little pointless thus far.  After all, a rootkit is designed to infect a system silently, covering it’s tracks and avoiding detection.  There’s little point in going to such lengths to infect an Android phone when the vast majority of phones don’t have any antivirus or malware protection.

{via ZDNet UK}

We recently had the chance to put a few questions to NitroDesk Inc., the development team responsible for the superb and hugely popular TouchDown, an Microsoft Exchange client for Android.  Here’s what they had to say:-

Can you tell us a little bit about NitroDesk and your development background?

NitroDesk was founded by Goutham in the summer of 2008, with nothing as investment but a $2000 laptop, developing Windows applications with a focus on integrating web based services such as online photo sites. When the TMobile G1 was released, NitroDesk was the first to offer a solution for corporate email on the platform. For the past year and half, we have been working solely on exchange integration for Android, and we have come a long way. Goutham has been a software engineer for about 20 years, and has built applications on a variety of platforms, right from assembly language on the x86 platforms, and has helped build high performance and high security solutions for healthcare networking.  Ron has extensive experience with mobile applications and information security from his previous jobs and is our platform-loving in-house geek.

What was the inspiration behind TouchDown? Was it borne out of frustration at the poor support for Exchange integration on early Android devices?

Yes, when the G1 was released, media had jumped all over it for not having an exchange integration solution. We jumped in at that time primarily because we saw an opportunity to bring our integration and development background to build a solution that would make a big difference to people’s lives.

TouchDown is a very popular and highly regarded app, you must be very satisfied with how it’s been received? Has it been more or less successful than you’d initially predicted?

It has been more successful than what we had ever imagined. When TouchDown was first released, we did not even have an Android device to test it with. Since this was a completely self funded venture, we resolved to never buy a device unless the application could prove its fate by paying for itself. Two years and over a hundred thousand users later, we are somewhat confident that it has some significant teeth. It has ups and downs, we screw up once in a while, but we have been blessed with a few thousand users who have stood by us and provided us with valuable feedback on the application and the scores of betas we released.

What were the biggest stumbling blocks you had in developing TouchDown, and, how long overall did the development cycle take?

There have been some stumbling blocks along the way, some of them causing us tremendous grief over the past months. We had issues with Android performing uncommanded deletes on our databases, issues with manufacturers throwing out new devices with newer versions of the Android much before we ever get to validate the application on them (Froyo is probably going to kill us one of these days). The biggest frustration for us is not the 325 character limitation on android market descriptions. It is the way our customers swamp us with support requests even before we are able to get the devices. This happened for the Droid, the incredible and is right now about to happen again with Froyo. All part of the game we are in. The development cycle has taken us over a year to get us where we are, with a steady stream of updates and improvements. And we aren’t done yet.

How have you found the experience of publishing apps to the official Android Market? Do you feel that there are some features that are missing or could be improved upon to make the Market better for publishers?

Everyone knows what’s wrong with the market. The biggest problem for us lies in the way the market simply loses purchased applications when a user moves from one device to another, or sometimes when upgrading the device. There is no way for a user to transfer licenses, and we get a fair amount of support calls by users who don’t even know what gmail id was used to purchase the application. This happens a lot when customers walk into a store and the retail employee creates bogus gmail accounts for the customers to make application purchases when the customer is waiting. We simply get overwhelmed with such requests these days and it gets worse every day. Another issue is the fact that the market maintains one version of the application only, with no way for customers to roll back or forward, and no way for us to publish an app for new users only, and to suppress updating existing customers or stage such updates.

Which Android devices do the folks at NitroDesk use?

Between us we have 2 G1s, a Cliq, a Nexus, an Incredible, a Galaxy, a Droid, a Sprint Hero. Those are the devices we are allowed to talk about J.

Which are your favourite Android apps?

PureWidgets by Francois, SMS popup, Google Maps and of course TouchDown, which helps us monitor our support alias while shopping for milk.

Are there any Android developers or development teams out there whose output has particularly impressed you, and why?

Our favorite is Francois DESLANDES (http://koxx3.wordpress.com/), who has produced an impressive array of widgets that everyone likes. We also like the guys at K9, and think they do a great job.

And, finally, what’s next for NitroDesk, further updates to TouchDown or something entirely different?

We still have a long way to go before we can say that TouchDown is done. There are still features that we want to add, things like more specific support for Notes and conversations and Free-Busy lookup with Exchange 2010, integration with Office Communicator, and so on. We like to stay building applications for the enterprise, or with an “integration” twist to it. Since our livelihoods depend on what we build, and since at any given time we have over a hundred outstanding requested features in TouchDown, we tend to never get any time for “fun” and free applications.

TouchDown is available on the Android Market now as a free 5 day trial and the full license key costs $19.99.

Brick Annoyed is classic arcade game.  You have to destroy all balloons on the screen to advance to the next level.

Gadgets will fall from some balloons and help you finishing the level or even get you an extra ball.

Global geoscore: http://www.party-ville.com/ba

Gameplay, like in all Breakout clones, revolves around trying to clear all of the bricks (or as is the case here, brick-shaped balloons) from each level using a bat and ball. The ball flies towards the bricks, damaging them and eventually bounces back towards the ground/space/thin air, you need to position the bat so as to prevent the ball landing/being lost/disappearing (if this format is completely alien to you, then you should probably avoid downloading any games for any device. Ever.). The game is controlled by one of two methods – you can either use your device’s accelerometer, or you can swipe across the touchscreen to change direction. The controls (both accelerometer and touchscreen) seemed just ever-so-slightly sluggish in the response to me, but otherwise worked fine.

There are two different game modes: Ball, in which you follow the standard Breakout format of smashing the balloons with your bat and ball, and Clock, in which you follow the standard Breakout format of smashing the balloons with your bat and ball…against the clock.  There’s little noticeable difference between the two game modes, except that the Clock mode gets much more difficult to progress in as you increment through the levels.  Graphically, whilst the game isn’t going to win any awards, it’s simple, bright, easy on the eye and has a polished, cartoony feel to it.

The gameplay is pretty much what you’d expect from a Breakout clone-  you’re not going to come across many surprises here, but it’s well put together and instantly playable, which I suppose is all you can ask of a free casual game.  I did find that, in addition to the slightly sluggish response I mentioned above, that the game occasionally lagged a little, but I tested it on a Hero, so it will presumably fare better on current generation Android devices.

Overall, I can’t think of too much that’s wrong with Brick Annoyed.  It’s a solid, straightforward Breakout clone that does exactly what it says on the tin.  But at the same time, that’s what holds games like Brick Annoyed back – in a Market that’s filled to bursting with clones of classic games, it would be nice to see a novel approach to an old format to make a title really stand out from the rest.  However, it would be unfair to use this criticism as a negative mark against Brick Annoyed.  It’s well put together, I noticed no bugs and it’s definitely an above average example of it’s genre.  Add to that the fact that Brick Annoyed is free and I’d say it’s well worth a look.

Some selected comments from users of Brick Annoyed:-

“Great! Totally worth downloading.” – (5 out of 5 stars)

“Yea this is an above average paddle game.  Good work the shifting background is a nice touch” – (4 out of 5 stars)

“The game has the ability to improve, however lag and lack of response for the Cliq is the reason for the uninstall” – (3 out of 5 stars)