Microsoft recently reported that Windows Phone and Windows 8 games and apps generate 2.5 times more revenue during the holiday season. In that report, the big MS spoke to game makers Game Insight ( Cloud Raiders) and JoyBits (tons of crappy Doodle God games) about their experiences with the platform.
Game Insight in particular reported some impressive results, such as the fact that three of the company's titles: Cloud Raiders, Airport City, and Big Business Deluxe are in the top 10 best-selling games on the Windows Store. Game Insight titles have been installed more than ten million times across Windows Phone and Windows 8.
What's next for Game Insight? Windows Central is proud to exclusively announce that Game Insight will soon be releasing Transport Empire and Flower House (both free and with 512 MB RAM support) on mobile Windows platforms. Read on for more details!
Transport Empire
Game Insight's latest free to play city builder takes place in the best setting yet, the steampunk era. Players will build a commercial empire spanning across a Victorian land, shipping goods back and forth via a variety of vehicles. Watching your trains zoom from city to city proves quite enjoyable, and high quality artwork brings it all to life.
Transport Empire unfolds a little more story than we typically see in city building games. Players take on the role of Lynn Skytell, a young woman who is determined to carve out a business empire of her own in a new land. Along the way she'll interact with her brother, uncle, a rival businessman/suitor, and many more characters.
Lynn starts out with access to a small portion of land, but she'll unlock new areas as the player levels up. Each location has several places for players to build things, such as mines, lodges, and other buildings. After building or renovating these locations, they'll start producing resources like coal, wood, and iron. You'll harvest and ship these resources by trains, boats, and eventually even airships.
If you enjoy trains or steampunk in general, this is one city builder you won't want to miss.
Flower House
Whereas Transport Empire is aimed at people who like trains (which tend to be dudes), Flower House has a more traditionally feminine appeal. As you might guess from the name, this one is a casual simulation game about raising and selling flowers. I don't think it lets you eat the flowers, which you also probably could have guessed.
Although Flower House is not technically a city builder, it shares most of the same mechanics. You start out by buying a flower pot and seeds. After watering the seeds, the plant will take a certain amount of real time to grow. Then you get to cut the flowers and sell them.
As the game progresses, you'll not only buy new plants, you'll also get to create plant hybrids. For instance, mixing a lily and a calla will produce a lily calla. It's nothing too complex, but if you enjoy flowers and plants, you'll get to play around and collect a variety of them in Flower House.
Naturally the game has social elements too, so flower eaters, I mean lovers, will get to visit their friends' flower houses and see what's a-growing. Who will create the loveliest floral arrangements?
Trains and flowers inbound
Transport Empire and Flower House will be coming to Windows Phone and Windows 8 and RT. We can expect them early next year. Stay tuned for more news from Game Insight soon!