Sorry male gamers, but we don’t mean “hot” in the Jade Raymond sense. The programmers we pay homage to below come from companies large and small (some are completely independent), but they all have one thing in common. Each of the teams featured here have taken on the challenge of bringing exciting entertainment content to the iPhone/iPod Touch. Given the amount of buzz that was created by the public release of the Apple SDK last month, we decided to showcase some of the lesser-known developers who have shown their commitment to the iPhone by announcing games using these new software development tools. Anyone with an Apple PC, and iPhone (or iPod Touch) and $100 can sign up to develop and release applications and games on the iPhone Application Store, which will open its virtual doors in June. Some of these projects are still in the early beta or prototype phase, but what we have seen so far leaves us impatient for more. Make no mistake, these indie programmers are hot!

What? Off-road Velociraptor Safari / Unity Engine
Who? Flashbang Studios / Unity Technologies

In what might possibly be the most fun to be had online, the designers of Off-road Velociraptor Safari brag that their game gives players the chance to “Hit Raptors” and pull off “Sick Stunts” while driving around in a presumably dystopian dino-ridden landscape of death. Perhaps the nicest thing about the game is its vivid 3D graphical polish, provided by the use of the Unity 3D engine. The developers of this middleware have promised that they are bringing their powerful 3D authoring tools over to the iPhone, and there is no reason why Flashbang Studios won’t follow there with Raptor Safari and their upcoming game, Jetpack Brontosaurus, as well

What? Multi-player Quake 3
Who? A collaboration of awesome hackers

We have already reported on this working demo of Quake 3 multiplayer that HermitWorks bodged together using code from an earlier project by icculus, and you can follow this link to our earlier story to view a video of the ensuing one-handed deathmatch in action. Of course, there is little chance that Apple or whoever currently owns the rights to the Quake franchise will allow an official release, but the fact that these guys got multiplayer FPS working so flawlessly opens the door to all kinds of amazing possibilities in the FPS genre.

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