Mac games: Magic Dice retiring, Jalada Skip Over debuts
updated 11:05 pm EST, Wed November 17, 2010
Inexpensive software timed for the holidays
Mike Yenco, the developer of Magic Dice, has updated the game to v1.6 and made it freeware, announcing its retirement at the end of the year. His company's other software, including Finance v6.0.2, Agenda v4.0.9, Archive v6.0.3 and iKeeper v3.0.2, are now on sale for the holidays at $10 off their normal price. Meanwhile, German game developer Jalada GmbH have released their latest game for Mac, Jalada Skip Over ($5), a hexagonal-tile puzzle adventure with a retro feel.
In Jalada Skip Over, players must strategically maneuver the heroine Emi across 100 levels, breaking all green tiles along the way and stepping on a safe tile at the end of each level. The game, designed for the whole family, allows infinite undos and has no time limit, allowing players to play at their own pace -- but they can try for an "efficiency" minimum that rewards proficient players. The game features various tile types, such as walls, trampolines, spinners, laser guns, ice tiles or tile builders. Jalada Skip Over runs on 1GHz or better PPC and Intel Macs running 10.4 or higher.
Magic Dice -- which had been a $10 shareware game designed originally to test the Yenco.com framework -- is now available for free, and will be discontinued after December 31st. According to Yenco, the framework has now moved beyond anything that can be tested by the game, and sales never achieved desired levels, so continued development could not be justified. The game is modelled after "Yahtzee" and built in SuperCard, like Yenco's other projects. The game requires OS X 10.4 or later.
