The Creative Assembly debuts first iOS game

The Creative Assembly has today released its first iOS game, marking the studio’s debut on the mobile space.

Famed for high-end PC games, and especially the Total War RTS series, The Creative Assembly created a special dedicated mobile team for the project, which re-appropriates the intricacy of the Shogun Total War titles for iPhone and iPad.

"It was a totally new team," confirmed the project lead and long-serving The Creative Assembly staffer Renaud Charpentier, speaking to Develop. "A couple of people internally came willingly from, for example the console team, but all the rest of the team were hired to do that game.

"So we were hiring people with an interest in working on iOs. But there is a change of attitude everywhere. What I have seen is that developers, including myself, now see things like the iPad as a console. It is a console in terms of working with the device. I have worked on high-end PC games and console games, and from a working perspective now the game is finished I can say it is a console.

"It is a fixed hardware so you know exactly what you have. In fact, unlike the PC’s Total War is of course famous for the iPad is more like a console, becuase you don’t have adapt it to fit so very many cheaper or less powerful models. This, for our team, is really console development."

Total War Battles: Shogun, which supports single-device simultaneous multiplayer and iPad 3 retina display, offers some 27 core missions, numerous side quests and a wealth of unit and building upgrade features.

In the forthcoming May issue of Develop, a fascinating in-depth Total War Battles: Shogun feature looks at the process of a triple-A adapting to iOS. Be sure to keep an eye out for the magazine in print and on digital.