A great shame, somethinelse games have been awesome and it's a pitty Apple's policy of a centralized store won't even let them have vintage or abandonware copies available.

Oh well, just another reason to make dam sure when I upgrade my iphone I get something worth while.

This happens because these developers wont update your apps for latest ios.
I have the first chapter of inquisitor on my iphone with the latest ios and this game crashes in some situations, and it isnt strange that apple is cleaning appstore from unsupported apps.
I dont understand why company somethink else has stopped updating his games.
Papasangre II is working well on Ios 10 but the night jar crashes after pressing start game, so it means that these developer dont think to update this game.

A good reason to keep an older iPhone with iOS that can play the games.
I think this is just like keeping an old Windows XP computer to play the older DOS games.

Another reason this might happen soon too is that Apple may soon drop support for 32bit apps. This is roomered to happen come IOS11. Of course it is diffacult to tell which apps are 32 and which apps are 64.

If you're currently on a 64-bit platform, running 32-bit binaries gives you a warning on startup about how the app needs to be updated by the developer. The app continues after you press OK.

It's not clear why apps are disappearing. Developers can choose to remove their apps, however unless there's a contract still active the apps do not disappear from peoples' purchase histories. So either this is part of the grand purge of obsolete, non-compliant or non-functional apps, or contracts have simply expired and not been renewed. As people on here are saying the SE games still work, I'm inclined toward the latter, although it's obviously well within Apple's ability to dump apps for other reasons, some of which may not be obvious.

I agree; it's really too bad. But it's also kind of inevitable, and when iOS 11 comes out, it'll be the end of 32-bit apps anyway, so I'm going to cut myself free of them now and grieve while I still can, rather than trying to hang on. It'll be worse this time than it was with Aurifi, which simply stopped working gradually over time in strange ways until it became unplayable because it simply failed to recognise certain gestures. The conveniences of new versions of iOS and (for a while, anyway) new phones has been too great, and so has the use of the App Store on my phone directly, for me to want to hang on, even if I miss some of those early years of stability (especially iOS 6).

And in any event, let us always never forget that we don't really own what we buy from an App Store that uses DRM; at best, we're renting it while both the author and Apple are willing to host it. This is all down to the largess of the people who sell it, who are, in the end, not really motivated to protect our interests once we've handed over the cash. Sad but true.

Well, in the case of Ticonblu et al I'm not sure the iOS App Store isn't actually an improvement; not only are the games natively a much nicer experience but I think I trust Apple to run a DRM server better than the authors of those games ...

It's DRM what's the problem. DRM is evil!

But of course you already know that ...

I'll update the db pages for somethinelse games similarly, but I confess this is the sort of high handed stupidity that pisses me off.
Some fat company giving a so called update to an oz that supports less than the previous update and then forcing developers to do the work of updating because they're too lazy to put in proper backwards compatibility, but too greedy to support the previous oz and anyone who chooses not to have said update (indeed mostly your slammed with nag messages to have said update so that said company can foyst their latest crap on you). Then again we've heard all this before haven't we.

Failing any sort of regulation of this sort of thing though, I am sorry Somethinelse stopped compatibility updates, since their games  really are soem of the best of that style I've played, though unfortunately my phone has already been updated so I guess I'm buggered as far as their games go). A shame, I never got past those dam brain eating birds in Pappasangre and I guess I now never will.

@Lord raven there are several points you raise here some of which I can answer.
First it is not that audio game releases "move to mobile devices" the likes of Gma games, Aprone Ian Humphries are still writing for pc and will continue to do so. The developers who have written for mobile platforms are usually developers who come to audiogames development specifically with the desire to write audiogames for those platforms, or at least, with the idea of cross platform games in mind. To my knolidge, only Vip gameszone and Lworks of developers of usual pc audiogames have changed to writing games for mobile devices.

Also, bare in mind that the inherent accessibility in Ios with Voiceover means that far more independent games are actually accessible, or can be made so with some tweaking. Games like A dark room, Adventure to fate, lost cities, king of dragon pass or Timecrest were not written exclusively with the idea of a visually impared audience in mind, it just so happened that they could be made accessible relatively easily on Ios given the way voiceover works (I'm less sure about Android).

I also don't think the distribution method, ie, the use of an ap store is really anything to do with a developer's choice to write for a specific platform, hence why people don't write games for the windows ap store. There are a lot of things that can be done on mobile platforms due to the motion sensative inputs and touch screen that simply would not work on a Pc, indeed while theoretically you could write a port of pappasangre 2 or audio defense zombie arena to work with the arrow keys,  it would lose a great deal of the experience you get through playing the game on a mobile device.

Even for a game like Adventure to fate, the way you navigate the game and get information via the touch screen is very different to what you'd do on a pc, indeed I suspect were the adventure to fate games written for pc, some extra work would have to go in to their access to make the game screens understandable with a screen reader, (even assuming they used screen reader friendly text in the first place, the Pc port of King of dragon pass certainly doesn't). To a lesser extent the same goes for timed notifications in a game like Timecrest.

This isn't to say I think everything! should move to the mobile platform, just that there are certain quite legitimate reasons involving game mechanics that make the mobile platform interesting in terms of it's development possibilities, indeed that was why I got an Iphone in the first place.

As to downloadable content.
I don't think lack of extra content is a reflection of a developer's lack of work, sometimes something is just finished because it's finished, indeed as I said I personally regard lack of compatibility for software in the os as the responsability of the developers of that os, it's only the likes of microsoft and other such idiotic corporations who have persuaded everyone that developers need to work to their tune not the other way around as it should be.
I agree that I'd love to see some games like Vg storm's expanded with extra content, but I don't think that's really related to whether a game is available on pc, ios or whatever else, since we've already seen several games with various types of extra content available on various platforms. Look at the choiceofgames and hosted games titles, many of which have extras to buy and all of which are available on Pc, Ios, Android, and a number of other platforms including steam.

Then there is smugglers 5 for Pc, with it's dlcs, zero site with it's extended operations expantion, and time of conflict 2.0 which came with massive expanded maps and was available to 1.0 customers, not to mention Castaways with it's extra mission releases.
There are also plenty of free games with a huge amount of extra available content, either user created or released over time, beatstar, rythm rage, lone wolf, adventure at C: Swamp, etc.

Also bare in mind that a lot of the "extra content" available for Ios titles is either like extra donation currency in an online browser game or mud (adventure to fate's fate gems for instance), or are simply free updates no different to the successive updates to something like Crazy party  or Castaways, indeed while the centralized distribution method gives massive amounts more power to Apple, what actually gets distributed via the ap store isn't on the face of it so different from what's been done in game terms back since the dos days and people were sent their version upgrades and extra content on floppy disks through the post .

Btw, on an unrelated note as regards Xp. apparently Vg storm don't have an xp machine to develop on so can't get their titles post paladin of the skies to work on Xp.
I still believe that microsoft should've given us an updated xp that runs everything xp runs instead of forcing everyone to get the so called upgrade.
Sadly though, that's not going to happen, and since there are many things these days xp simply won't do, it's time to move on.

At least these days most of the compatibility issues with Windows and the majority of previous  audiogame releases have workarounds, talking dosbox etc.

Sadly that can't happen on Apple due to the grabby ap store, which actually is another very good reason not! to use the Windows store .

Hmmm, lord raven, interesting points, though again you might be missunderstanding a few things if you've not played as many mobile games.

1: I believe you can download the choiceofgames to the pc if you buy the chrome versions, though I've not done that. However in the case of choiceofgames, unless you've got a really! dodgy internet connection playing on the website shouldn't matter at all. All of your saved games, purchices, extras bought etc are saved to an account on the website, no different to muds or browser games.
This would be a problem if you needed a mega good net connection or lots of external software, but anything with a web browser will do, and running a browser shouldn't be an issue for most people unless you are in a thunderstorm or something and keep losing the net.

I don't know about steam, though to be honest why you'd want to use a platform with cruddy access like steam when you can just play online in your favourite browser is beyond me.

2: I don't know enough about the windows mobile devices to say whether their inputs are good enough to work with games like pappasangre, however one thing I can say is that inherent access in Ios does make life easier. For example, were Pappasangre a windows game, the developer would need to either create a self voicing menu for things like accessing levels and the score board, or output to sapi or a screen reader directly, since most text used in windows games is not screen reader friendly. On Ios they can just create one set of controls for sighted or blind players and let blind players use vo. Indeed vo has a lot of very handy developer shortcuts not available to windows developers, for example the ability to write any label or extra information into a control to read with vo irrispective of the image on screen, ---- why for example in king of dragon pass you can swipe to the pictures of your members of the ring and get not only their names, but their stats and other information.

I also don't know what the screen reader situation on windows tablets is, especially in terms of the touch screen and the like.

3: Never compare audiogames to mainstream games ever at all. Unless you have a couple of hundred programmers working 12 hours a day every day for a good six months on a game, you cannot compare it to what mainstream games are doing, mobile or otherwise.
Comparing audiogames to independent games is slightly more reasonable (though even there there are inequities), and again there the situation on pc and Ios as regards updates is generally as you'd expect, eg, online rpg games and the like get updates of items and premium content, major single player offline audiogames get the odd update or new version occasionally with bug fixes and new features until the game is finished, look at the recent blind gladiator update as an example.

As regards cross platform releases, well bare in mind that also puts a massive extra resource load on developers, especially since most graphical cross platform releases use game engines such as unity that are not good for accessible games.
Obviously the likes of audio it prove it's doable, but it's not a commitment most people can make, not when it's far easier to write for just the one platform.

As to extra content for some titles we already have, eg, new map modes for psycho strike, yes I'd like to see that too, though again it depends upon the developers and their plans, and as I already said you can't compare what any indi developer does to what a mainstream company does since the resources involved are  so at odds, hell it's even unequal if you compare audiogames to independent mainstream games since there are so many tools and quick fixes available to developers of graphical games which audio game developers don't have, (imagine how many games we'd have if we had a thousand development tools like Bgt, ranging from full scripting languages to almost form filling game creation kits).

As to developers and Apple, well unfortunately a developer doesn't necessarily know that apple is going to bugger their game up in a few os versions, since it all depends upon how many changes Apple make to the os how much work is necessary to fix the games. Again, this is a problem with all the power on the side of the os developer and everybody being forced to go along with them and nobody really free to choose not to have the os upgrade (not without constant nagging and no access to anything newly developed).
No, it isn't a good situation, but sadly whatever I think of apple as a company, there are too many developers who have done exceptionally good work on the platform already who I do! want to support.

Lastly as regards xp, don't ask me. I was very disappointed when psychostrike didn't work on xp, or any of their other games, however that is one of the several reasons I've bought a new windows machine which I'll be starting on next week, that we have finally reached the stage where I'd be gaining stuff of interest rather than losing access to what I already have, and believe me I've used xp longer than most people and for me to say it's time to upgrade should indicate somethingg, hopefully it's not a decision I will regret .
Of course if things were properly regulated we'd not have to do this sort of thing, but it is what it is.

Well while not related to pullings its worth noting that we at sonnar are having issues right now getting things on the app store.
on the news https://sonnarnews.wordpress.com/2017/0 … t-delayed/
you will see why.
I know this should be its own topic but its a nice segway to be honest.
We were rejected and we have no idea exactly why the heck that is.
Apple seem to be hard customers.
If there is an easy way to handle apple I think I'd like to know, the game is an audio game, with a few sightling graphics but its not that major.
What is apples damn problem may I ask you.

@Dark:

I wanted to clarify what I said regarding Choiceofgames.
I did not say that I would want to use Steam.
I meant that when you buy the Android version, you can actually download their games onto your device, play and save your data locally on said device.
In steam you also can download  the games and probably have your save data offline.
I know that then your products are bound to steam and the client must be active to play.

I thought that on a PC you were forced to play their games online via the website.
I know that modern internet connections and browsers have no problem playing such games.
What I meant was that to my knowledge you could download and play completely offline only on Android or on Steam with its own DRM enforced compared to directly downloading the games as let's say a .zip or .exe file.

About audio VS independent or mainstream games:
I get your points, but what I am not sure about is the scale.
If a mainstream company has a huge team working six months on a title, how much of that time is for designing the game (creating the rules and mechanics on paper or digitally), before it is actually coded.
And how much money and time in game development for high rated mainstream games is solely spent on graphics?

Yes, we don't have many engines and tools, but what many of them do is dealing with lots of different graphic features which an audiogame engine would not necessarily need.

I am no game developer, so I can't know what would be required and how long it would take to actually code the thing.
Yes with engines and libraries, you can shorten that time considerably, but I am really unsure if you still can't compare feature sets when many hours of work in mainstream development is dedicated to graphical things.

On the other hand, let's look at what we have.

Example#1: Draconis Entertainment

It had been years since their last title before they made Change Reaction 2.0.
Since then they "only" made Silver Dollar.
Now I obviously can't know how much time it took to make Change Reaction 1 into version 2.
However, once the fundation was set, they could have converted all their titles by now, even if you allow for real life problems to show up and the hinted plans for more new releases being in the works also.

However, in all these years they did not make more Pinball addons.
I can't know how this game was developed, but somehow they could give it an extension in form of the Pinball Party Pack.
Back then they said they might make more table packs, but since then no one has seen anything new for this game even before their new engine came out.

Example #2: VGStorm
Psycho Strike was a nice game, don't get me wrong here, but it seemed a bit small story whise.
Only two major goals you could choose and not much regarding the main character's backstory.
You can't tell me that character design and story content would have cost more than the music and sound effects the game utiliced.
You have to make/write these before you code anything or use any kind of game engine.
And adding more locations would have been nice.
Seriously, if you make a game in which you are a criminal, then you expect to be able to do more things like blowing stuff up, burning down buildings, smuggle drugs, participate in gang wars and so on.
If there was free movement around the town this story was set in, it would have been even better than it is now.
None of these things requires you to know how big a mainstream game of this type might actually be, but it is your imagination and fantasy which decides how you create a game or a game world.
Look at the Manamon topic for example.
There were points raised about how unbalanced the different monster types and their move sets are, or how badly written some of the pre battle dialogue scenes were.
To fix these don't need more money for more expensive music or development tools which there are none to use than the ones already there.
And think of Paladin of the Sky.
Seriously no footstep sounds?
Even after the game was released and sold?
Ok, this is a small thing, but nearly everyone who made PC audio games had sounds for that regardless of their quality, since for some kind of realistic audio experience you should be able to hear on what surface you walk.

Example#3: BK series
The first one was made by a Japanese school boy around sixteen maybe earlier.
There you already could explore a large game world and the levels were not side scrollers, allthough you had no platforming elements and could not go up or down.
Look at the constant content updates BK3 with a now more experienced developer gets.
You have 100 levels and you have to play them in all 16 modes before you have unlocked everything.
If that game was commercial on release and a demo might have let you play let's say ten stages, I think it might have been a huge commercial success because it has a huge replay value, lots of hidden items and other unlockable things as well as a feature similar to what sighted people call "New Game +".

Is there anyone who actually knos what this feature is and how it works?
If not in short it means that you can play a game to its end, start a new game and can keep your character level, equipment and weapons.
You have to optain quest items again but you keep your level and when you fight, your enemies get higher levels also, so that you can do this multiple times while you level and your enemies level also.
This is essentially a kind of secondary difficulty setting.
In many games this is separate from the difficulty settings in their options.
You could play a game in easy mode, could level your character from 1 to 100, defeat the final boss around that level, choose the new game plus option start with your level 100 and your first monster might be level 101.
Selecting a separate difficulty mode might make enemies faster or the might dodge your attacks more often or something similar.
Often new locations, items, characters or enemies show up only during your second or third playthrough of a game.

I haven't seen this feature in non Japanese audio games for PC and it often would require only some additions to your code, since you go through the same game again with some other items and different stats compared to your first playthrough.

Regarding the development itself and regarding the IOS games, I really wonder what is going on there.
Yes, Apple might be not user friendly in not telling people before something is dropped from the store.
But someone in this topic mentioned that one of these IOS games got less usable with each IOS update before it stopped working.
At least in that case wouldn't the players have contacted the developer of the game and told them that problems were showing up due to updates?
If this was a gradual process and the developers simply did nothing, then this looks like their mistake that the games were pulled.
And they did not release all their products at the same day, so even if they did not initially know how bad IOS updates might mess their programs up, at some point they should have noticed and at least atempted to do something about it.

On the other hand, why are IOS updates so nasty to apps?

I think everyone praises these devices because nearly everyone who uses them has the same hardware thus development of any program is simplified because you don't need to test for many configurations, relese your product to find that a certain number of customers can't use your product because your sound or Graphic card driver is causing an unforeseen problem.
These things should not happen on mobile devices, so why are there so many compatibility problems and while we are at it, why is it seemingly impossible to feature backwards compatibility?
If you know exactly which hardware an IPhone 5 used, surely your software can be made so that it simulates IPhone 5 components on an IPhone 6 when you want to use IPhone 5 compatible apps.
And when you have IOS 10 on a device and IOS 11 comes out and your device is still supported, any compatibility issues should be only due to the software.
Which brings us back to why compatibility on the same device is a problem for major software updates and why there is no legacy compatibility mode of some kind.

And finally regarding post 22:
That is my problem, too.
I would like to be able to download, play and where possible modify my game or at least config files whenever I want on what machine I choose.
That is the reason why I did not like the fact that Papa Sangre for example was only IOS exclusive.
I did never play the game, but I could hear uncommented recordings of someone playing through it and its soundscape was one of the best in western audio games I had ever heard.
Same goes for levels and choices.
Many audio and not text games don't have branching storylines where the world changes if you save a certain person or let them die.
I obviously did not know how you actually play such a game regarding touch input.
But I found it restricting that such a seemingly good game was only available to such a restricted system.
If I had my own IPhone, I might have bought it.
But I still would have wondered what a gaming experience it might have been if there really was a PC version with keyboard, mouse or game controller Support.

And on Computers you can if you know how install older games and probably Play them (obviously with exceptions).
But I think using or making abandonware available on IOS is impossible due to the use of the app store.

So, there is probably no Chance of getting These games later as abandonware, if their development and Support is really stopped by their developer.