Up 'n' Down by CheersBros looks like an entertaining arcade with neat graphics, funky music and simple fun idea. The added mutliplayer on single device is definitely a plus. So let's see how this one plays...

The game starts with an advertisement, which probably immediately deters some of the potential players and it's a shame, because the game is not bad. Unfortunately at least on my phone the ad takes some time to load. First it interrupts the music and shows a black screen for just about enough time that it almost looks like the game hangs at the beginning.

Pocket Fishing by PageNet throws you right into the middle of the action as soon as the game starts. No delays, just tap the screen and you are sitting in the middle of a lake with a fishing rod ready to cast.

Unless you are going for some special fish in the middle of Amazon rain forest or trying to get a huge sailfish from a speedboat in the middle of the sea, real fishing is a relaxing time where not much is actually happening. Unfortunately this doesn't work well with games in general, so let's see how Pocket Fishing deals with the lack of action.

Most of the fishing sim games are quite complex and offer a plethora of options and settings to compensate the fact that there's not much happening in the game itself. Pocket Fishing has to deal with another caveat and that is the small screen and limited resources of mobile phones.

In the Advanced AndEngine Examples - Render Texture and Fragment Shaders tutorial I've shown you how to use render texture and shaders to create some cool effects in AndEngine. At first nobody really wanted the source code but now I got a few requests, so here they are.

I should probably create a GitHub repository for all the examples I have created :)

You can get a free copy of the ebook! See the next article for more information.

When I was in the middle of writing a step by step tutorial to making games for Android in AndEngine, I was approached by Packt Publishing representative with an offer to write a book.

After an initial exchange of ideas about what the new AndEngine book should be about, we agreed on creating a really basic book that would require only a basic knowledge of Java and guide the readers through all steps starting from installing the required software all the way to publishing a game. This book is called Learning AndEngine and it has been published in September 2014.

My book was the reason why I stopped writing the long tutorial for this website. The game I was trying to make here was a bit too difficult and I was actually glad I can start again. Since I learned from my mistake I believe the example game in the book is very easy to understand and will be a great starting point for people who want to use AndEngine to make games. The writing style is similar to my tutorials, but it's more detailed.


If you have any questions about the book, you can contact me on Twitter, Facebook or Google+.

June round-up is coming a bit late, because I was on a long holiday. However nice games were submitted, so here are the top three as always!

Cow Dash by Retroid Interactive

I really liked this game for a while, but there were a bit too many ads. The graphics are nice though and the one-touch platformer concept is done in a cool and challenging way. There's also an in-app purchase that can turn off the ads. So if you like the game, you can get rid of them ;)