Epic Citadel hands-on

It’s incredibly hard to believe that the following screenshots are coming from a mobile device, let alone one that’s basal function is to play music files and browse the odd web page. But at yesterday’s Apple September Event, there was a showcase of the new Games Center feature that’s being included in the upcoming iOS 4.1 update for iPhone and iPod touch.

To show off some of the capabilities of the service, Epic Games (creators of Unreal Tournament and Gears of War) demonstrated their port of the Unreal engine onto the iPhone 4, running a new game called Project Sword. The watching audience were stunned into silence, “is that really running on a mobile phone?!”. After the quick tech demo it was announced that an app called Epic Citadel was to feature on the App Store as a free download for all iOS devices. I downloaded it last night, and gave it a bash.

I was simply as stunned as the audience were during the show: in my hands, on a 3.5″ touch screen, were graphics capable of rivalling games that pushed the PS2 and Xbox to their limits. I was amazed at how crisp the textures were, and I only noticed frame rate stutters when I first stepped out of the walled citadel and out into a field complete with cliff faces and a waterfall. Keep in mind that I was running this on an iPod touch that had the same chipset at the iPhone 3GS, and you can’t help but be impressed with what they’ve achieved. I doubt that the finished game will run as smoothly on my device – this has been built from the ground up to take full advantage of that A4 chip in Apple’s iPhone 4 and iPad.

The control system isn’t as frustrating as I thought it would be, either, although in this tech demo we’re limited to simply walking around the environment. You can tap ahead of your location to automatically walk there, or use the small on-screen ‘joysticks’ to enjoy full 360-degree movement. The navigation pads seem to move relative to where your thumb is resting, too, so you don’t have to give much thought to where you’re swiping to get the desired action.

One thing I must say is that, whilst only running the demo for about 20 minutes or so, my iPod was starting to get uncomfortably and unusually hot – this thing was really pushing its processor to the limit, and sadly I don’t have an A4-equipped device to try it out on. Still, I was very impressed with what they’ve achieved, and you should definitely download it to show off to friends and family what these tiny little devices are really capable of. [iTunes link].

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