Five-O now has Online Multiplayer!

The most requested feature for Five-O over the last year, and the one I was most excited about adding, was the ability to play online. I wanted to make sure it was done right, and that there would be enough people playing to make it easy to find an opponent. Well, I’m happy to announce that, as of last Wednesday, online multiplayer for Five-O is here! It uses the brand new turn-based multiplayer capabilities in Game Center. This is one of the new features of iOS 5 that didn’t get a lot of publicity. Turn-based gaming has already been extremely popular in mobile games like Words with Friends and Carcassonne, because it’s such a convenient way to play board games and other games with asynchronous competitive gameplay. By adding support for it to Game Center, Apple made it easier than ever for developers to add this feature to their games. It’s easy for the players too, since all it requires is an internet connection and a Game Center account which most people already have.

The nice thing about turn-based multiplayer is that not all players need to be present in a game at the same time. That makes it ideal for multi-taskers. After finishing your turn, you can leave the game to do something else, and the match will go on without you. When it’s your turn again, you will receive a notification to come back and play your turn. This also allows you to play in lots of different matches at the same time.

To try out online multiplayer in Five-O, you’ll need to be running iOS 5 on your iPad. As some people have recently discovered, if you’re not running iOS 5, and you try to download this version of Five-O, you’ll get an error saying the app is incompatible with your device. If you see that, don’t worry. It just means you need to update your iPad through iTunes on your computer.

I am looking forward to many challenging matches against you guys. Watch for my username, “CodeVandal”. So far only two people have managed to beat me. 🙂