Who doesn’t love a well put together 8-bit game? From the creator of the underground cult classic Minecraft, comes Minicraft. Created as a contest entry, Notch gives you life in a world of finite resources. After your resources have been depleted though, it is time to kill the Air Wizard. You explore the world, chop down trees, mine rocks, and of course, kill zombies. But unlike Minecraft, Minicraft has a single purpose:

The goal of the game is to kill the only other sentient being in the world, making sure you’ll be alone forever.

Kind of a sad theme, but let’s face it, Notch is a genius. Controls were a bit tough at first, but if you have the right amount of screen real estate, then getting the hang of it shouldn’t be too difficult. It was created for PC, but has been unofficially ported to Android by Folstad Consulting Inc. Cheers to them for allowing us to play this great game on our mobile devices. Down below is a YouTube video of the Yogscast performing a livestream of the game. It will most definitely give a helping sense of how the game works. 

Google announced this afternoon that they would combine the individual privacy policies from a variety of their products into one “main policy,” giving you a single sign-on of sorts. The idea is to treat you as “a single user across all” products to provide you with a “more intuitive Google experience.” Critics and conspiracy theorists are already screaming with privacy concerns, but as far as I can tell, the services Google provides should simply get better and things really aren’t changing all that much. 

Bloggers and tech enthusiasts alike are abuzz over a video of a developer showing off his latest creation. He has taken an Xbox Kinect and hooked it up to his PC which is then wired to his Galaxy Nexus. Thanks to Android’s openness, he has been able to rebuild a version of Android to give the needed software system access for the process to work. In short, the Kinect sees his hand movements, relays it to the PC, which then relays it to his phone. 

Last night, the latest Siri wannabe was introduced to Android under the name Evi. It’s voice-inspired, can answer almost any question you ask it, and even learns on the go after receiving feedback directly from you. This actually is a decent attempt at being Android’s Siri, except for one problem which you will quickly find in the market:  they have like 1 or 2 servers trying to power the service for thousands of new users and simply cannot keep up with traffic.

At this point, if you jump into the app and search for something, you will see this: “I’m waiting for a network connection before trying this one.” It’s frustrating, especially after using it last night and finding pretty favorable results for the most part. In fact, it’s built-in map feature works well, however, we would have liked to have seen some way to launch navigation out of it. It returns simple, yet detailed results pages, beautifully laid out business or location pages, and even answered many of our off-the-wall questions. Again, this service actually isn’t bad and is probably the best attempt yet. Now, let’s hope we see a legitimate server infrastructure in the next day or so or it may be a short life for ol’ Evi.  

Back at CES, Gameloft was able to show off a new feature that both serious and casual gamers will surely enjoy, in-game voice chatting. During gameplay over Verizon’s 4G LTE network, some of Gameloft’s game portofilio will enable users to trash-talk chat with up to 3 opponents. While the first game to allow for this new feature is Asphalt 6, you will likely see this come to a variety of games in the near future. Modern Combat 3 with team chat, anyone?

Gameloft’s VP of publishing had this to say:

“We are thrilled to be partnering with Verizon to illustrate the potential of in-game voice chat and multiplayer over the 4G LTE network,” said Baudouin Corman, vice president of Publishing for the Americas at Gameloft.  “Gameloft seeks to provide gamers with a complete mobile gaming experience and feels that these features are at the forefront of the platform’s future.”

Excited to have in-game voice chatting? How many serious mobile gamers do we have?

Via:  Android and Me, Gameloft

If you are still on the Angry Birds Seasons train you will be happy to hear that the world’s #1 mobile game has received another update. Rovio has found influence from the Chinese New Year and you will probably being seeing plenty of dragon themed goodies in this edition. Anyone here still loving some Angry Birds? Enjoy. 

During this year’s Super Bowl, Samsung is going to roll out of their latest ad spot which continues on with the theme of Galaxy SII vs. iDevice. Their widely popular scene of a Samsung owner showing up in front of a line of loyal Apple users is taken to the next level in this lead-in with the term “Samsunged” after an SGS2 owner 1-ups a line member. Is “Samsunging” going to catch on? Sick of these spots yet? Enjoy!