Check out Castlerama, another Unreal Engine showcase with great visuals

9to5 Staff | May 16 2011 - 5:08 am PT

Epic Citadel, a free tech demo, was an eye-opener that showcased what the Unreal Engine could pull on A4-enabled gadgets like iPad and iPhone 4. TouchArcade now uncovered Castlerama, another Unreal tech showcase that lets you explore lush environments with amazing detail. Developer Codenrama noted in the YouTube description that graphics could have been even better had they targeted the code for iPad 2 and iPhone 4 only. The reason? Those devices sport 512MB RAM, twice their predecessors:

While developing Castlerama, we had to face the fact that newer devices such as iPhone4s and iPad2s are very different from their predecessors, iPhone3GSs and iPads, in that the former have twice as much memory. In order to have the app run on all devices, we had to compromise quite a bit, pushing the old devices to their limits (risking crash if other applications are left running) while keeping the new devices well behind their capabilities. In the future we believe we will have to develop two versions for each application.

Castlerama can be downloaded for free from the App Store. The universal binary works on all iOS devices and weighs in at 244MB. If you ask me, it’s an exciting example of high-quality games powered by the Unreal Engine coming our way.

Chair Entertainment’s Infinity Blade is thus far the only triple-A release on the App Store based on the Unreal Engine. However, a couple of titles based on Epic’s engine are being developed as we speak. Dream:scape by an indie developer, for example, sets to delight with over 30 acres of explorable landscape, fully realized interior settings, the original score, over ten minutes of dramatized audible dialogue and more, per the official trailer included below.

We also know Gameloft has licensed the Unreal Engine for their upcoming games. N.O.V.A. 3, the latest installment in their sci-fi N.O.V.A. – Near Orbit Vanguard Alliance series, was recently outed as Gameloft’s first Unreal-driven release. All said, prospects for iOS gaming couldn’t have been better at this point.