Amazon’s Fire phone comes out on Friday, and ahead of the release, the company is showing off some new games made exclusively for the device, taking advantage of its “Dynamic Perspective” technology.
Dynamic Perspective uses a set of front-facing cameras to track the motion of the user’s head, and alter the perspective of what’s happening on the screen accordingly. It’s one of a couple interesting and unique features Amazon’s device brings to the table.
Saber’s Edge and To-Fu Fury were co-developed with partners Hibernum and HotGen as part of Amazon Game Studios’ offerings.
“Amazon Game Studios is working with some of the best studios to co-develop games that leverage the amazing capabilities of our new devices,” said Mike Frazzini, Vice President of Amazon Games. “The new games we are releasing today deeply integrate Dynamic Perspective and offer players new ways to engage with games—using head movements to navigate gameplay and tilt gestures to strategize upcoming moves. Saber’s Edge and To-Fu Fury are just the beginning of what Amazon Game Studios and the entire game development community can do using the immersive new Dynamic Perspective technology built into Fire phone.”
Here’s the description for Saber’s Edge:
Set in a unique universe of steampunk scoundrels and cloud cities, Saber’s Edge is a strategic match-3 puzzle game where players match tiles across four sides of a rotating cube at the bottom of the screen to help pirates battle rival crews at the top of the screen. The more matches players make, the more firepower they give their pirates in battle. Using Dynamic Perspective, players peek around the corners of the cube to see opportunities to extend their matches, or tilt the device to spin the cube left or right to the next cube face. The victorious are rewarded with treasure used to build a pirate crew powerful enough to eventually reign supreme.
And for To-Fu Fury:
Cheat death, defeat enemies, and save the Fortune Kitty in To-Fu Fury, a humorous action game where the player becomes To-Fu, a stretchy, sticky, flingy, and combative cube of bean-curd. Set in a distant land of dojos, temples, and ninjas, players must navigate To-Fu through deadly spikes, devious traps, and powerful enemies to free Fortune Kitty. Each element of the game comes to life on Fire phone’s innovative interface with this new look of the popular To-Fu series. Players can use their head to peek around levels, see their obstacles and plot their strategy.
Early reviews of the Fire phone haven’t been incredibly positive, but it’s early days for the technology. Time will tell if Amazon has something significant on its hands.
Right now, the company seems to think the biggest selling point is the free year of Prime it’s offering with the device, and getting people signed up for that might be the overall goal anyway. It appears to be the point of other recent endeavors.
Image via Amazon