Dunno whether to put this under Entertainment or Science, but I'm putting it here because of my motivation.
One of the cool things about the iPad is using it to navigate through spaces. With a multi-touch screen and ergonometers and accelerometers built in, you can do stuff like drive cars or fly planes merely by banking the screen as you hold it. I have tried a couple race car and airplane apps, they're pretty basic but the concept is cool.
That's why I was excited to find out they'd ported over Riven and Myst, two PC games which were about exploring unknown islands. The iPad versions are pretty cool, but Cyan isn't making any new ones.
So I went looking for other "exploration games" where the whole point is to navigate through a landscape. There are lots of games where you have to shoot your way through landscapes but those do not appeal to me.
I found two, one called Block Earth and the other called Exploration Lite. Both use huge blocks -- seemingly 4 foot x 4 foot -- to create landscapes. Some blocks are grass, some are earth, some are stone, some a funny-looking blocky trees. You can navigate through, you can create new blocks, you can delete existing blocks. Very primitive looking but could be interesting if the resolution was 100 times better (memory will come someday).
I wondered how large these block landscapes were. I took off running for the horizon.
In Block Earth the horizon constantly recedes. It seems you can never reach the edge.
In Exploration Lite, you can indeed reach the end of the Earth. Nothing but blue sky and blocky white clouds ahead of you. It you walk forward off the edge of the Earth you fall for a few moments, then land in another world. They all look to be similar worlds, but different from each other. Not sure how many there are.
It's kinda like reincarnation.
Home 