“El Hijo” was named as the Apple TV Game of the Year. — HandyGames/TNS
For better or worse, The Game Awards will generate most of the attention this month, but they’re not the only accolades going out. Apple has its own celebration of developers. Last week, it announced the winners of the 2022 App Store Awards that honored games and apps that had some of the biggest impact on the company’s devices.
On the games side, they include “Apex Legends Mobile” for iPhone Game of the Year, “El Hijo” as the Apple TV game of the Year and “Dot’s Home,” which won in the Cultural Impact Category.
Each title brought a distinct perspective to Apple’s products. When it came to “Apex Legends Mobile,” Respawn Entertainment built the battle royale experience from the ground up for smartphones. With “El Hijo,” HandyGames wanted to create a family-friendly stealth action game. Meanwhile, “Dot’s Home” by the Rise-Home Stories Project took a more serious approach with a story-driven adventure title that focuses on systemic housing injustices and their impact on communities of color.
“Apex Legends Mobile” won the iPhone Game of the Year from Apple. — Electronic Arts/TNS
A console franchise made for mobile
With “Apex Legends Mobile,” Respawn had to think about a much different audience from the console and PC efforts. Smartphone players don’t normally sit down for hours playing. The developers said they had to overhaul the progression systems, shorten the game length, create characters and modify controls that worked on a much smaller touchscreen.
Some of the solutions focused on making the game faster-paced, more accessible and equitable across different systems. The team had to optimize “Apex Legends Mobile” so that players using the touch screen can have just as much success as competitors on a Bluetooth controller.
That led to a plethora of UI customizations and fine-tuning (including a first- and third-person view) that allows the project to work with different control styles and grips and streamline the game with context-sensitive actions.
What’s notable is the trajectory of “Apex Legends Mobile” from its initial launch in May to its current state. The developers said in the beginning they saw an overlap between the original title and the mobile one, but as months have gone on, they noticed that players gravitated toward their platform of choice.
Throughout the project, the team said it listened to feedback from the community and from each other. The team that works on the mobile game had conversations about what works and what doesn’t with the console and PC teams, and there’s plenty of back and forth between the two.
A family-friendly stealth game
While some gamers like to run and gun in “Apex Legends Mobile,” HandyGames takes a more peaceful approach to entertaining players with “El Hijo.” It’s a stealth game featuring a precocious boy who has to save his mother after bandits have attacked. That forces his mother to leave him at a monastery.
From there, the boy has to escape the grounds and venture across deserts and a Wild West town in order to meet with his mother. Armed with a slingshot, the boy doesn’t have any deadly weapons. Instead, he uses the tool to distract adults and other ne’er-do-wells who will end his adventure.
The team at HandyGames compares “El Hijo” to a nonviolent “Metal Gear Solid,” and with the top-down perspective, and the sneaking-focused gameplay, it does echo that classic along with plenty of inspiration from spaghetti westerns. With 20 levels and 8 to 10 hours of gameplay, the adventure on Apple TV is well worth checking out.
“Dot’s Home” by Rise-Home Stories Project won a Cultural Impact award. — Rise-Home Stories Project/TNS
A game with a serious message
“Dot’s Home” is a game with a meaningful message and a team dedicated to delivering it. This mission-driven project details how racist laws and city ordinances of the past impacts the present. Set in Detroit, it follows the title character Dorothea Hawkins, who discovers a magic key that lets her travel through time.
The trip through her family’s own personal history reveals how redlining and other forms of discrimination affect life in her own time. The goal of the adventure is to interact with and influence her family in the past in order to make better decisions that improve the future.
The narrative structure is intriguing and it shows how past policies ripple out to the present and even the future. Because Dot’s mysterious keys let her time travel backward and forward from her present, players can see the cause and effect of housing ordinances and racism.
Aside from the content, the creators are also notable. Luisa Dantas, project director at Rise Home Stories, said the team wanted to make stories about people of color, for people of color by people of color. To that end, the team included writer Evan Narcisse and co-developer Neil Jones.
Working together, they tell a story that many don’t see portrayed in gaming. – Bay Area News Group/Tribune News Service
