One of the latest games to hit Apple’s devices is Cowboys & Aliens – Silver City Defense developed by FreePlay Labs. The game has been created by Platinum Studios and is the official iOS game to be based on the Cowboys & Aliens.
The game is being touted as a ‘dual-stick shooter’ action game which comes with strategic gameplay usually seen in tower-defence genre. As a player, you would take on the role of Zeke who needs to defend Silver City from marauding aliens. The idea is to not only fight the pillaging aliens, but also protect key buildings from being blown up. There are 3 levels of difficulties and about 15 unique levels that would help you unlock weapons and other cool tools.
The game is already available on Apple’s iTunes in the App Store. It can be played on the iPad, iPhone and iPod touch devices that run on iOS 4.0 or greater. The story is set in the 19th century and is based on the graphic novel written by Platinum Studios Chairman and CEO Scott Mitchell Rosenberg. FreePlay Labs has announced that they have exclusively partnered with 7 Eleven TV to promote the game, and reach to a target audience of millions of shoppers.
In fact, 7-Eleven TV would expand from 3,000 convenience stores to almost 6,200 stores next year and would reach almost 200 million shoppers by June 2012. You might also have already watched Cowboys & Aliens movie which was released on the 29th of July this year. The movie stars Daniel Craig, Harrison Ford, and Olivia Wilde and has been a hit among video game lovers and science fiction Western film fans as well. Lately, the trend has been to write a graphic novel that usually uses a ‘formula’ which could be used for developing a video game and a 3D movie sometime later.
If this becomes a trend, we may see a number of graphic novel writers trying to use formulae in order to make it big in both video game industry and Hollywood. That might result in a lot of poor quality and redundant literature ultimately serving no real entertainment or cultural purpose. It would be interesting to observe how successful Cowboys & Aliens – Silver City Defense would turn out to be! This game has a great chance at becoming popular with gamers thanks to the gripping storyline, and a good marketing plan. However, using the same old strategy of using published graphic novels to make movies and video games may cause fatigue amongst hardcore gamers.
