The iPad launched with an impressive lineup of titles, including Geometry Wars, Warpgate HD and X-Plane, but Pocket Legends, an action-MMO from Spacetime Studios quickly established itself as my favorite. Here is a game that delivers the goods; great 3D graphics, intuitive touch-controls, fast-paced action, atmospheric audio, addictive gameplay, smooth-as-silk multiplayer and a bevy of new content added at a blistering pace. Perhaps best of all, Spacetime Studios has delivered a game that is free to play, so there is no barrier to entry, though if you want to progress past level 13, you will have to pay a small, one-time fee that unlocks new content and maps.
At its core, Pocket Legends is an action-MMO, more along the lines of Diablo than World of Warcraft. Think of games like Torchlight, Nox and Dungeon Runner and you’ll have a pretty good idea as to what you’ll find waiting for you in Pocket Legends. Three character classes are on offer, including a range-class, magic and tank with different styles of play for each. Randomized loot drops from mobs and, for the most part, has a paper-doll influence over the look of your character. Tons of skills can be unlocked as you progress through the game, allocating those skills to a handy toolbar, much like you do in a traditional MMO.
Multiplayer is seamless, allowing a player to create their own instanced world that others can freely join via a built-in server browser, or one can opt to make the room private so you can play either alone or with friends. With a full group of players running a dungeon, Pocket Legends has showed no signs of lag or slowdown, even when the action comes on hot and heavy, a real testament to the amazing job Spacetime Studios did in pulling off this small wonder.
Interested in knowing more about how Pocket Legends came to be and its plans for the future, I was able to pose some questions to Cinco Barnes, Creative Director at Spacetime Studios, which you will find below.
First of all, congratulations to you and the rest of the team for delivering a quality product right out of the gate for the Apple iPad. Not only a quality product, but a breakthrough for the platform as it proves the device is more than competent at pulling off a mobile MMO. I understand the team was originally working on the iPhone version but shifted gears at some point and delivered the iPad version first. What was this transition like and why the decision to go after iPad first?
Apple’s iPad just blew us away! As soon as we learned about it, even with “Pocket Legends” in its final stages of development for iPhone / iPod Touch, we knew we needed to take advantage of iPad immediately. Within hours of Apple’s announcement the team was talking about how to leverage the big touchscreen, the faster processor and how the game experience would improve due to the new device’s larger form-factor.
Transitioning to iPad allowed us to put out a broader, more immersive version of “Pocket Legends” first. And to be quite honest, we also wanted to be part of the excitement surrounding iPad’s debut. As longtime Apple fans, the Spacetime team was really buzzing about the device and we figured a lot of other gamers would be, too.
People are using the term MMO (Massively Multiplayer Online) to describe Pocket Legends, though I have found it has far more in common with a game like Diablo and Torchlight, neither of which I would define as an MMO in the traditional sense. How does Spacetime Studios define Pocket Legends? Has the term ‘MMO’ evolved to encompass a wider breadth of games?
Spacetime defines “Pocket Legends” as a ‘Real-time 3D Mobile MMO’ due to the thousands of persistent characters, deep avatar and play-style customization, the huge list of loot items, the rich role-playing combat system, and the obvious real-time 3D technology. Additionally, “Pocket Legends” is an ongoing service with regular content updates and gameplay improvements. We involve our growing community in the way that all good MMO games should. 
Once the team started down the path of making a ‘Mobile MMO’ we discovered that there are certain aspects of the traditional PC MMO that don’t carry-over into the mobile gaming platform very well. These things include features that players often use to define the MMO genre (like big open worlds, crafting systems, etc.). We designed a more streamlined experience to fit properly on the device and in the context of ‘gaming on the go.
You’ve released a free version of Pocket Legends, allowing players to progress to Level 13 with full access to the first zone. If players would like to progress further, they can pay $1.99 per zone pack. This is a unique model, generous in content for uncommitted players. How is this model working out for the company? Did the team explore other options for generating income, like a set monthly fee?
The model works great! We had a lot of spirited discussions related to the revenue model throughout the game’s development. These discussions ultimately led to one simple conclusion: we want everybody to be able to play “Pocket Legends” and we want everybody to be able to invite their friends without the hassle of an upfront cost.
Spacetime Studios also generates income from selling upgraded items from a virtual store within the game, something quite common on PC-based MMOs. This is always an interesting area of debate amongst gamers because some argue the items you buy with real money are usually better than anything a player could find in-game through grinding and/or boss battles. Is this true of Pocket Legends? I’m interested in knowing some of the internal debate about what to make available for sale when weighted against in-game items earned through play and reward.
The team at Spacetime Studios is comprised of serious gamers – so we’ve never been interested in making a game system where you can ‘pay your way’ to the top. There really wasn’t any debate at all. We just made it so the best stuff comes only from loot drops.
However, we do see the value of supplementing the play experience with purchases of ‘very good’ and ‘really cool-looking’ items! In this respect, we want people to enjoy the bling, the color variety, and the handful of special extras that come from buying items with real money – just not the top of the power-curve.
Did Spacetime have access to an iPad prior to release? If not (I assume not), then I am fascinated how one goes about designing a game for a device they have never held or used. It seems there is a lot of faith involved, especially in something as ambitious as Pocket Legends. How can the team be so sure the frame-rate will run at an acceptable speed?
Faith, yes. Lots of faith! At the point we started working on the iPad version of the game we already knew that the iPhone / iPod Touch version ran very well and was a lot of fun. We were quite certain that the iPad’s larger presentation and faster processor would make the experience much more immersive.One notable advantage we have in this regard is the Spacetime Studios technology.
Our engine and tools suite (which has been iterated and refined since 2005) is amazingly flexible, configurable and provides the kind of performance analysis we needed to ensure that the game would run beautifully on iPad.The Spacetime engine also allowed the team to play the iPhone or iPad version (in a simulator running on our desktop computers) with a simple configuration switch. This minimized the translation cost of development between the two device platforms and gave us tremendous confidence that the iPad version would rock.
What was it like when the team was finally able to play the game on a physical iPad?
It was an incredible rush for the team to play it on the iPad! We had all been playing “Pocket Legends” on our phones for months and we were very happy with its immediacy and portability. But then once we could play the game on a much larger screen with all the cool bells and whistles (bigger HUD, the larger skill pop-up window on all the time, emotes on all the time, and the more immersive 3D camera) we were floored! It was suddenly a more substantial, more immersive experience. We started talking about how we’d play on iPhone while we’re out and about and then play on the iPad when we were lounging at home.
In the few weeks that I have been playing Pocket Legends, I have seen a ton of content updates, including content for the free version, which is great. Along with new content, the team seems committed to squashing bugs and adding new features. What’s the philosophy at Spacetime at about this level support?
Our philosophy is pretty simple. We play the game for fun as much as we can. We read the forums carefully and we take their advice very seriously. We then decide on the priority of bug-fixes and new content based on a mixture of our personal experiences as gamers and the feelings expressed by our players in the forums… and it all seems to work quite well!
What were some of the biggest challenges in bringing Pocket Legends to the iPad?
The biggest challenge was actually making the 3D mobile MMO technology that runs on the iPhone and iPod Touch. But in terms of the iPad specifically – the biggest challenges involved how we’d take advantage of the larger touchscreen and the faster processor.We spent a lot of time re-designing and revising the in-game interface (the heads’ up display that shows skills, emotes, status, etc.). We also spent considerable time creating a new camera for the iPad that had an additional ‘pitch’ axis, allowing you to play the game in more of an ‘over the shoulder’ perspective. These were both pretty big changes from the iPhone version and big design challenges.
Any words of wisdom to other developers about working with the iPad?
If you are planning to release your game on both the iPad and on the iPhone you’ll be doing yourself a favor if you design for the smaller devices first. That way you’re not down-scaling your iPad game to fit on a phone or Touch… but upgrading your graphics and taking advantage of more screen space, faster processor, etc.It’s a lot more fun for us developers to up-scale our work!
I assume Spacetime has big plans for Pocket Legends as the game evolves. Any chance gamers may find some form of PvP added?
We love PVP in many varieties so – yes. No idea exactly when we’ll do this (or what exact form the PVP games will take) but we have plans for this and several other major systems to come online in future updates.
Can you offer fans any hints as to what they can expect from Pocket Legends in the near future?
We’ll have basic ‘banking’ and trading features coming online. We also have plans to integrate more storytelling (NPC conversations, etc.) in a future update. And further down the line we have a number of friend, group and guild-related features that we’re excited to include.
In the short-term we’ll be adding more dungeon maps (free ones, too) and more loot item drops – especially more epic and legendary high-end stuff!
Why do you think so few companies are delivering true multiplayer experiences like Spacetime? It seems most multiplayer games are either turn-based or stuck with local WiFi.
The team has a lot of experience shipping 3D games on multiple platforms and just as much experience in the world of MMO games. As a studio we just really love 3D and we’ve had fun in the past pushing the limits of real-time for large-scale MMO games (like “Star Wars: Galaxies”).
Has anyone on the team worked on other titles that gamers may be familiar with?
The team’s collective PC MMO resume includes games like “Ultima Online,” “Star Wars Galaxies,” “SWG: Jump to Lightspeed,” and a few other titles hard-core fans might be familiar with. We’re also the guys behind Clockrocket Games’ “Zombie Weatherman” and “Shotgun Granny” (and several other games) for iPhone and iPod Touch.
Instead of delivering a standard fantasy world that so many other companies are perfectly content with, the team at Spacetime obviously took the time to create some fresh character classes and races. How did this come about?
The earliest iteration of the game fiction was totally the ‘traditional’ medieval fantasy thing. But as we went along we really never fell in love with it. So we kept collaborating and brainstorming – pushing to find something fresh that resonated with all of us.
Somewhere along the line we started relating the game archetypes to ‘animals.’ We thought that maybe a ‘cartoon bear’ would be a good ‘tank’ archetype. It followed that a ‘bird’ with his quick reflexes and great eyesight would be an excellent ranged combat guy… and so forth.
Once we had these basic ideas in-mind we reached out to one of our favorite character concept artists (Brett Bean). As soon as we saw his first pencil sketches we knew that we had found what we were looking for!
What is Spacetime focusing on now? Further extending Pocket Legends and/or do you have a new project underway?
At the moment Spacetime is 100% focused on continued development of “Pocket Legends.” We have new content and application updates in the pipeline and it’s all really very exciting for us!
Thank you for your time, Mr. Barnes.
Pocket Legends is available for both the iPhone and iPad. It is free to play, so you have no excuses for not checking out one of the top games currently available for either platform.
Pocket Legends for iPhone (iTunes Link)
Pocket Legends for iPad (iTunes Link)
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I had been expecting to write an article myself on the NDSi XL once I had made my purchase, but here is an excerpt from an email I wrote to one of the Staff here, Mike Siciliano:
