16. It’s Play Time: Gaming on the iPad
In this chapter, you learn that the iPad isn’t just for homework and music, email, and chatting (though I bet you knew that). It’s also an awesome device for playing video games! In addition to just playing games yourself, the iPad lets you challenge friends over the Internet and compare your high scores against people all over the world. In this chapter, you learn about the following topics:
• Being safe on Game Center
From its big, beautiful screen to its thousands of great games, from Internet features designed for gaming to the ability to control games by tilting and moving, the iPad was born to be a great gaming machine. By learning how to take advantage of its gaming features, you can make your friends who don’t have iPads jealous.
Getting Games
You can play two types of games on the iPad: apps and web-based games. Just like with any other app that works on the iPad, you get games through the App Store app that comes installed on your iPad. Web-based games can be played using the Safari app, although there are some limits on what games work on the iPad.
Downloading Games at the App Store
Getting games at the App Store works pretty much the same way you get any other kind of app. To download some great games, open the App Store from your home screen and follow these steps:
1. Tap More.
2. Tap Games, and then tap All Games.
3. On the main games page, you have a number of options. If you want to search for a specific game, enter its title into the search field.
4. Tap See All to browse a list of games in categories like New and Noteworthy, What’s Hot, and Top Apps.
5. If one of the featured games interests you, just tap it to go directly to its page. Every game’s info page contains screenshots of the game and reviews by other people who have played it.
6. To download the game, tap Free or the price, if you have to pay for it. Then tap Install App (if it’s free) or Buy App (if it’s paid). Just like when you buy anything at iTunes, if it costs money, either it will be charged to your iTunes Allowance or you should ask your parents’ permission before you buy.
You may be asked to enter your Apple ID. Log in and your new game begins downloading right away.
Watch Out for Surprise Purchases
In-app purchases are items you can buy inside apps that give you extra content, features, or tools to use in the app. iPad games are full of in-app purchases, sometimes when you don’t even realize that’s what they are. Usually, however, games tell you specifically if you are about to spend money with messages like the one shown here.
Some of the most common kinds of in-app purchases for games are extra gold or currency for your character to spend, new costumes or abilities for your character, or access to extra levels. These things are really attractive, and might even help you get past difficult parts of games where you’re stuck, but you have to be really careful not to buy a lot of things for your games unless you mean to.
Making in-app purchases isn’t so bad if you have an iTunes Allowance. In that case, you can make purchases until your allowance is used up for the month. The only real downside to that is that you might spend money you didn’t mean to and thus won’t have it to spend at iTunes for the rest of the month.
What’s worse, though, is when you use your parents’ iTunes account to buy things. In that case, you could accidentally spend $20, $50, or even $150 without realizing it and cost your parents a lot of money. That’s why you have to watch out for in-app purchases. Fortunately, many games warn you before you buy.
Using Game Center
Only one gaming app comes preinstalled on your iPad, but it’s a useful one: Game Center.
Game Center isn’t a game, and it doesn’t help you get better at any of your games. Instead, it’s a tool that helps you use the Internet to get the most out of the games you play on your iPad. Game Center lets you connect with your friends online, compare your high scores against all Game Center users worldwide, track the tasks and goals (called Achievements) you’ve completed in each game, and challenge other users to head-to-head matches of your favorite games.
Getting a Game Center account is probably the easiest thing you’ll have to do in this book. To get one, you don’t have to do anything at all. Your Apple ID is your Game Center account! Just tap the Game Center app on your iPad’s home screen to open it, sign in, and you’ll be ready to start playing.
Game Center Works with Macs, Too
Game Center originally only worked on iPads, iPhones, and iPod touches—not anymore. Thanks to Mac OS X 10.8 (aka Mountain Lion), Mac users now have the ability to use Game Center, too—though not all games that work on Mac work on the iPad and vice versa. So, if you or your friends have Macs running OS X 10.8, you can see all your achievements and high scores, and you can challenge friends to play your favorite games on both iOS and the Mac.
One of the best features of Game Center is that it lets you challenge other people over the Internet to play games. It’s a completely different experience from playing games by yourself.
For this to work, you have to have a game that supports this capability. Not all iPad games, not even all Game Center–compatible games, let you challenge other players head-to-head; only some do. Games that do support it talk about that feature in different ways. They might call it multiplayer, online, head-to-head, challenge, or versus mode. You’ll need to check your favorite Game Center games to see if they let you play against your friends.
Adding an Existing Photo to Your Game Center Account
You can add a photo to your Game Center account to make it easier for your friends to find, and challenge, you. If you want to do this, get your parents’ permission first. Your parents might not want you to post pictures of yourself online. If they say it’s OK, or if you want to post a picture of your pet or a graphic, you can add a photo by tapping Game Center to open it and make sure you’re signed in. Then follow these steps:
1. Tap the photo icon.
2. Tap OK in the window that pops up to continue.
3. If you have a photo or picture already on your iPad that you want to use, tap Choose Photo and then tap Camera Roll.
4. Tap the photo you want to use.
5. You can move the photo by tapping and dragging.
6. Zoom in on the photo by unpinching.
7. When the photo looks the way you want it, tap Use.
Connecting with Friends
Game Center lets you play games head-to-head over the Internet with your friends and family. In order to do that, though, you first have to connect to those friends on Game Center. (For those of you whose parents let you use Facebook, this is a lot like “friending” to connect with people on there.) To connect to your friends, tap the Game Center app to open it and then follow these steps:
1. Tap Friends.
2. Tap Add Friends.
3. Enter the email address used by the person you want to friend on Game Center or their Apple ID. You can also enter their Game Center username or tap the + icon to select someone from your Contacts app.
4. Use the included friend request message or write your own.
5. When you’re ready, tap Send. Your friend receives an email (if you choose their email in step 3) or a message through Game Center (if you choose their Game Center nickname) notifying them of your request. They can then decide to accept or reject your request.
When other people send you friend requests through Game Center, you get emails or Game Center notifications letting you know. To accept or reject the friend requests, open Game Center and tap Requests. On that screen, you see all the friend requests you’ve been sent but haven’t yet done anything with. Accept or ignore the requests as you want, and you can start playing against your friends right away.
Checking Your Scores and Achievements
Every time you’re connected to the Internet and play a Game Center–compatible game on your iPad, Game Center keeps track of your scores and achievements and posts them to your account. To check out your progress, tap the Game Center app to open it and then follow these steps:
1. Tap Games to see a list of all your compatible games.
2. Tap the game for which you want to see your scores and achievements.
3. On the main screen, you see where you rank compared to your friends and against all players. To see how your scores in particular sections or versions of the game stack up, tap the category menu next to the date.
4. Tap one of the options that appears. These options are always specific to the game you’ve selected.
5. To see all your achievements within the game, tap Achievements. Not all games have achievements, so you might not see this option every time.
Can Your Friends Beat Your Scores? Issue Challenges
Proud of your high scores and achievements in Game Center and want to see if your friends can do better? Then you need to issue Challenges. These are messages that you can send to your friends to challenge them to beat your score or achievement in Game Center–compatible games. You need iOS 6 to issue Challenges. If you’re running iOS 6, here’s what you do:
1. Open Game Center and tap the game you want to challenge your friend in.
2. To challenge a friend to beat your high score, tap Leaderboard.
3. Tap your friend’s name.
4. If your score is higher than your friend’s, tap Send Challenge. If Send Challenge isn’t active, your score is lower.
5. You see the person you’re challenging and the score you want them to beat. Add a message (“Think you can beat me? Good luck!”) and tap Send.
Issuing Achievement Challenges
You can also challenge your friends to top your achievements.
1. Open Game Center and tap the game you want to challenge your friend in.
2. Tap Achievements.
3. Find the achievement you want and tap it. If Challenge Friends is active, tap it. If it’s not, your friends have achieved this goal and you haven’t.
4. You see the person you’re challenging and the score you want them to beat. Add a message (“No way you’re getting this far!”) and tap Send.
Challenging People to Games
For the games that let you play against someone via the Internet, you don’t actually use Game Center directly to challenge someone else to a game. Instead, you do it from within the game you want to play. Although many games are similar in how they do this, the process varies from game to game. Here’s how to challenge a friend in the popular game Fruit Ninja:
1. Find the multiplayer, online, or head-to-head option in the game and tap it.
2. To play a friend, tap Invite Friends.
3. Select the friend you want to play.
4. Tap Next.
5. To invite your friend to play, either use Game Center’s prewritten message or write your own.
6. Tap Send. The game lets you know when your friend has accepted your invitation and you start your match.
Another multiplayer option is called the hotseat game. It’s called that because you and your friend play on the same iPad, passing it back and forth when you’re on the hotseat, aka when it’s your turn. To play a hotseat game, you don’t use Game Center. Instead, just look for the head-to-head or versus option in the game you want to play with your friend and select that.
Be Safe: On Game Center
Using Game Center to play games against other people is relatively safe. That’s because there’s really no way for people to contact you through Game Center except to play games. It’s only if they ask to do something other than play that you need to take precautions. Here are some rules of thumb:
• Never give your full name, address, phone number, or where you go to school to someone on Game Center.
• If someone on Game Center asks you to send them a picture of yourself, your family, or your friends, don’t do it.
• If someone you don’t know sends you a message through Game Center, tell a parent, teacher, or other adult you trust right away.
Check out the tips in “Be Safe: Texting, Chatting, Using Social Media, and Emailing” in Chapter 5, “Talk to Me: Texting, Chatting, and Email,” for other good rules to follow.
Awesome Apps
Tens of thousands of games are available in the App Store. Whether you like racing or flying, fighting or adventure, puzzles or board games, or any other type of game, the App Store has it. With so many to choose from, you’ll find lots of games you’ll love. There’s no way to list all the available games, of course, but here are some suggestions for games you might enjoy:
• Angry Birds HD—Perhaps the most famously addictive game on the iPad. The concept is simple: You put birds in a slingshot and shoot them at pigs hiding in buildings to try to knock them down. Sounds easy, but with complicated challenges and birds with different powers, it’s a challenge you’ll never want to stop playing. If you like this one, be sure to check out Angry Birds: Space as well! Free or full version $0.99
• Cut the Rope HD—This is another super popular, addictive game. In it, a box has been delivered to you that contains a monster named Om Nom. To take care of Om Nom, you have to feed him the only thing he eats: candy. In the game’s 250 levels, you swipe across the screen to drop candy into Om Nom’s mouth while also keeping it safe from other creatures that want to grab it. Free lite version or $1.99
• Fruit Ninja HD—This is one of my favorite games. In it, pieces of fruit are thrown into the air and you have to swipe across the screen to chop them into slices with your ninja sword. You earn extra points for combinations, special fruit, and multiple slices. You can play against the game, versus a friend on your iPad, or head-to-head using Game Center. Once you start chopping this fruit, you won’t want to stop. $2.99
• Minecraft – Pocket Edition—Want to be the master of your own world? Minecraft lets you build and maintain whatever structures and places you can think of. You can choose to just build and fly through the world you create, or you can play a version that requires you to collect resources to deal with hunger and health. For free, you get the first 18 levels, but you can’t save your game. To get the other 18 levels and the ability to save, buy the paid version. Free or $6.99
• Plants versus Zombies HD—Anyone who knows anything about zombies is aware that they just keep shuffling toward you unless you stop them. In this hit game, a horde of zombies is approaching your house and you have to stop them from reaching it by flinging plants at them. Lucky for you, each different plant has different powers to repel the undead. Battle 26 kinds of zombies over 50 levels and find out if you have a green thumb when it comes to zombie combat. $6.99
• Real Racing 2 HD—Like fast cars and racing? Then you’ll want to check out Real Racing 2. In it, you get to drive 30 different real-life sports cars through 15 real-life racing locations. You can race against the game or challenge up to 15 other players using Game Center. One of the coolest things is that you control your car by tilting your iPad—just like turning a steering wheel. $6.99
• Ticket to Ride—This is the iPad version of the popular and engrossing strategy board game about railroads. In it, you try to build a railroad network that links together various cities. The iPad version lets you play against the game, versus your friends on the same iPad, or use Game Center or other online tools to play against your friends on Macs, PCs, or other iOS devices. $6.99
• Touch Pets Dogs 2 and Touch Pets Cats—Do you love cats or dogs? Would you like a virtual pet to take care of and play with? Then these two games—one for dogs, the other for cats—are for you. In them, you adopt a puppy or kitten and then teach them tricks, play games with them, wash and dress them, and take them on missions. You can even have your pet play with your friends’ virtual pets from their iPads. Free
