Hero Hack
A passion project, but also an exercise in efficiency, Hero Hack was hacked together by a crack team of mobile old timers in well under a year, even though it featured complex client-server architecture, procedural content generation and some UI experimentation. The visual style was designed to match the small team (which was actually a great excuse to do pixel graphics).
All actions in the game were controlled by sliding with one thumb. UI elements were opened dynamically based on context. Appropriate menus opened automatically when you needed them.
The roguelike “time moves when you move” system was a perfect match for a mobile game. You can play at your own speed and always put the phone down when distracted.
I don’t know if anybody ever noticed this extremely important feature: You could slide the corpses of monsters you killed in the level around the results screen by tilting the phone :-)
Nothing beat the satisfaction of reviving after death and getting even with the monster that killed you.
Art by Jarkko Salminen, Antti Kemppainen and me. Music & effects by Arto Koivisto and Jari Pitkänen. Video by Joonas Mäntynen.