Tiny Thief

Two 'Tiny Thief' stories July 2013 - December 2013

Apple’s 12 Days of Gifts app offering free download of Tiny Thief iOS app

On the second day of Apple’s “12 Days of Gifts” promotion, the app is now offering a free download of Rovio’s ‘Tiny Thief’ app. This morning the 12 Days of Gifts app was offering a free pilot episode of TV show Once Upon a Time, but Apple appears to have now switched the gift to the ‘Tiny Thief’ app. It’s unclear if Apple mistakenly offered the TV show download for a short period of time or if it plans to offer various gifts throughout the day as part of the promotion.Yesterday the 12 Days of Gifts app was offering a free download of Justin Timberlake performances from the recent iTunes Music Festival.

Rovio actually dropped the price of Tiny Thief from $2.99 to free a few days back, and the app remains available for free directly through the App Store as well. You can grab Apple’s 12 Days of Gifts app on the App Store in select countries.

iOS gaming news two-pack: Deus Ex disables shooting with jailbreak and Rovio Stars releases Tiny Thief

Today in iOS gaming news, Rovio’s publishing label, Rovio Stars, released their latest title on the App Store dubbed Tiny Thief. Following in the success of the publisher’s first title, Icebreaker: A Viking Voyage, which debuted on the App Store only a few weeks ago, Tiny Thief puts players in control of a cartoon-styled thief with the ability to sneak and steal in order to solve a variety of puzzles and defeat enemies. Based on the promotional video, it appears players can interact with the game’s background in order to solve unique, location-based missions throughout the side-scrolling adventure. We haven’t gotten our hands on it just yet, but you can download the universal title from the App Store for $2.99.

In other news, we reported earlier that Deus Ex: The Fall, a new story set in the world of Square Enix’s popular PC game Deus Ex: Human Revolution, would hit the iOS App Store today for $6.99.

It appears that after the game was released to the public this afternoon, many players are having trouble running the game on a jailbroken device. Kotaku reports that playing the game on either a jailbroken iPhone or iPad will block the ability for players to use the game’s trigger functionality, one of the most crucial controls of the game.

“Encountered by Redditor KipEnyan and verified by several user reviews in the app store, jailbroken players starting up the first mobile installment of the Deus Ex series are treated to a few cutscenes and a movement tutorial before running into the message above. It comes up during the game’s shooting tutorial, and while one would assume players could still stealth through the game, I’m not sure they can progress beyond that point without tranquilizing those guards.”

While the move may have been the developer’s only option to combat piracy on iOS devices, it probably would’ve been best to give mention of the restriction in the app’s description on the App Store so that players would be informed of the measure before purchase.

There is a way to get around the jailbreak detection, though. A free tweak available in Cydia called xCon is designed to cut off apps’ ability to determine if a phone has been jailbroken. Installing xCon will let you use the app that you paid for with no ridiculous restrictions while maintaining all of the customization options of a jailbroken device.