João Prado Maia’s Weblog

I don’t usually stop here to recommend applications or games for the iPhone, but I feel I need to take some time and do a review of Rolando, a game that had a lot of hype behind it for a few months, and it is now finally available on the App Store.

I have to give it to Simon Oliver, the guy behind this game. It’s an unbelievably well done game, starting with the beautiful (and playful) graphics and in-game story, all the way to the innovations in game control that allow for a great user interaction experience. The sound effects and music for the game are also top notch. I mean, I’m now at a point where I open the game and load a specific level of the game and just listen to the soundtrack.

This game is now the standard bearer for iPhone games, it’s just that good. The $9.99 price is completely deserved, and I recommend it to anyone.

Video trailers and screenshots are available from the Rolando website.

I have been going through this book for the past few weeks, and so far it’s the best book around for developers beginning with Objective-C and the iPhone SDK. The writing is natural (and that’s hard to find these days), detailed and sometimes funny in a quirky way. I appreciate the fact that they use lots of screenshots to explain the interactions with Interface Builder and Xcode.

They have Chapter 3 (Handling Basic Interaction) available for free online if you would like to read a sample of the book. Highly recommended.

You may also like to follow Jeff LaMarche’s blog, one of the co-authors of this book.