Penumbra App

[Kedjane]

A Penumbra for iPhone would probably be awesome. Could be, at least.

The main problem would be that I don't think the team doesn't have the time or resources to develop it right now, but they probably could get right on it after the release of Lux Tenebras. Developing an iPhone game doesn't take that much effort (depends on how good you want it to be, naturally), on another forum I'm visiting frequently a guy has been developing his own iPhone game for about a month or two and it's coming along rather nicely. iPhone games have recently skyrocketed in popularity and quality, it began about december last year and since there has been tons of great fun titles with 50+ hours gameplay, further replayability beyond that and such while costing only 7-45 swedish kronor (1-5$ I think).
Releasing a Penumbra app could be a great way to advertise the rest of the series (perhaps through a "Visit Frictional Games" button on the main menu) and if the game itself is good it could become popular through recommendation and positive reviews by Penumbra fans not to mention I've heard the sales for the games that make it onto the top lists are quite amazing. I don't know how much profit there would be, but I'm sure it would be more than the cost of making the game.

However it would ofcourse not be able to be a direct port keeping the 3D environments and puzzles (the problems would probably be the controls physics rather than the graphics though). A live action game like Hysteria Project, but perhaps with limited time for the choices, clicking objects on the ingame screen instead of text bars appearing in a "choice screen", more puzzles or some other neat feature to keep it fresh. When I saw Hysteria Project pretty much the first thing I thought was Penumbra. Making a live action game only really requires a video camera (the quality doesn't even have to be that great considering the size of the iPhone screen), some post-processing program for making the image look less home-video and pretty basic programming skills.
Other than that they could make it a third person isometric view puzzle/action game like Imprisoned! or whatever (just an example, I haven't played it and each area looks very small) where you walk around in the Shelter or whereever Lux Tenebras might be set. Walking around, finding keys for locked doors, solving simple puzzles, perhaps hitting/shooting some sort of enemy every now and then. Tap to walk/use/pick up/attack, tap a menu button to bring up the inventory/menu), perhaps use the accelerometer in some puzzle.
There's lots of ways they could make it, don't know which one is the best but I know at least I'd buy a Penumbra app.