Fun and intriguing air combat title, programmed by Sid Meier himself, and available to download for free from the App Store. It’s in the same vein as the currently popular free-to-play game War Thunder, featuring historical WWI aircraft and dogfights in a turn-based strategy sim that’ll have you trying to outsmart enemy AI for air dominance. A demonstration of the game, as played by Touch Arcade, shows off the game’s mechanics and various IAP options for unlocking skins and additional pilots.

Polygon also has a short interview with Firaxis’ associate producer Pete Murray, who explains why the studio pursued the WWI theme amongst other titles like XCOM and Civilization.

As a child of the Nintendo generation, I remember the maps that were drawn for Kid Icarus, for each of the stage’s fourth levels suddenly placed players in sprawling fortresses with Eggplant Wizards and it was nice to immediately be aware of where the hospital was in case you fell victim to a potent spell. On the Genesis, I still have the giant taped-together maps for seaQuest DSV, which I remember were deemed necessary if you ever wanted to diffuse bombs in that one level with the special dolphin while avoiding turret fire within a certain amount of time. And while I don’t remember if we ever drew maps for Metroid or Castlevania, I’m sure they existed at some point.

If you played old games, drawing maps were a necessary part of the experience. You had no HUD or map rooms or objective beacon. As a kid, these necessities then transpired to our own fantasies, drawing our own game worlds on paper in an attempt to create the next best 2D adventure. Few of us ever made them come alive with an actual computer, but the worlds were there, waiting to be explored at some eventual point in time.

Pixel Press, the latest-coolest-thing to appear on Kickstarter, is a nostalgic blast to the past that explores the Nintendo generation’s child-like wonder of developing game levels. Not only does it merge current technology with the pleasure of drawing your own fantasy worlds from pencil and paper, but it has the potential to teach level design for budding game makers. With your iPad, you simply take a photograph of a map drawn on grid paper to apply textures and sounds, making it come alive where you jump, avoid moving obstacles, and navigate your way to victory. The demo is absolutely impressive — a time lapse takes you from creation to completion in just a few minutes with a playable result. Backing the game for $10 will net you the finished copy of the Pixel Press app for your iPad, while a $25 pledge will reward you with the app and necessary sketchpad. If funded at their current goal of $100K, Pixel Press is expected to ship Q4 2013.

In going through my podcast subscriptions, I realized I never recommended Core Intuition to MacStories readers.

Two of my favorite Internet people, Manton Reece and Daniel Jalkut, host Core Intuition. Episodes aren’t too long – exactly like I like them – and they cover development-related topics such as building apps for iOS and OS X, pricing them, with the occasional focus on weekly news but always with a unique perspective.

You can subscribe to Core Intution here. My recommendation is to catch up on old episodes with Instacast for Mac, which is coming along nicely.

I imagine this has to be one of the coolest jobs in the world. Apple’s product photos are both legendary and seen by millions of people world wide, either in advertisements in magazines, on Apple’s website, or sometimes even on sites like ours. Peter Belanger, a photographer whose clients include Apple, Nike, and Square, was interviewed by The Verge and asked how he recreates the kind of simplicity that Apple portrays in its marketing.

I need to have control over each and every surface so when the client asks for a highlight to be elongated, I can do that. It’s similar to working on a file in Photoshop: you don’t do all your work on one layer. I think of my lights as layers that I can adjust individually to get the desired results.

While Peter shoots with a Canon 5D Mark III, he’s also the same individual who shot the Macworld iPhone 4 cover with an iPhone 4 itself. His process and attention to detail are absolutely amazing.