Surely everyone remembers Draw Something [$2.99 / Free] and its weird lifecycle of appearing out of nowhere, getting red hot, being bought by Zynga, then almost immediately falling into obscurity. If you were spending your time on the moon with your eyes closed and fingers in your ears during those few weeks, you can check out our almost-a-review here that explains how it all works/worked. In a nutshell, you got a prompt, you had to draw something, and if your opponent guesses what it is correctly you win.
The weird thing about Draw Something was that seeing the cool things people were making was almost more interesting than actually playing the game- Especially as the game got Zynga-fied and previously easy prompts were replaced with obviously sponsored drawing subjects such as "doritos," "pepsi," and several other silly things. DrawQuest [Free (HD)] has a vaguely similar vibe to it, although it takes a definite turn away from the competitive aspect of Draw Something with a much greater focus on simple community collaboration.
Created by 4chan founder Chris "moot" Poole, the iPad-exclusive DrawQuest gives players daily drawing prompts (or, "quests") with a scene already set- Kind of like those coloring books where you need to fill in the blanks. For instance, as you can see in the above screenshot, the quest is to draw something to help the knight get to the princess. Tapping it brings you to a simple drawing canvas with the knight, princess, and tower already there. So, you can draw something like a ramp, a set of stairs, a rope, or a billion other things. Submitting it gets you a few coins, and you can see what other stuff everyone else made- Assigning stars to your favorites.
DrawQuest is totally free, and features a similar IAP mechanism to Draw Something in that you slowly earn coins (which you can also buy) in order to get more colors to use in your drawings. Overall the IAP feels significantly less abusive though, as the colors actually come in cohesive bundles instead of Draw Something forcing you to unlock a few colors you don't want in order to get another simple primary color. Definitely check this game out.
Alright, I'll come clean. When I saw OMGPOP's Draw Something [99¢ / Free] glued to the #1 positions on both the free and paid charts I assumed it was yet another flavor of the week flash in the pan freemium game. Then I tried it, and wow is this game good. I'm not quite sure how they did it, but Draw Something is a perfect witch's brew of Facebook integration, word scrambling, and asynchronous two-player Pictionary.
It works a little something like this- You start a game with someone (I've found games with people you actually know via Facebook seem to be the most fun.) and are given the choice of three words of varying difficulty. You choose one, do your best to draw it, and hit submit. Your friend gets a push alert, sees your drawing, and is given a array of scrambled letters to spell the word with. If they guess correctly you're awarded between one and three coins, they take their turn, and the process repeats.
The free to play mechanic is actually sort of neat, as you can play the free version for eternity with ads and a limited set of colors to draw with. Alternatively, you can spring for the 99¢ ad-free version. The coins you earn are used to either buy bombs which nuke some of the letter tiles which don't go to the word you're supposed to guess or buy more colors to paint with. Sure, you can just do your drawings in the few colors that everyone gets, but to really tweak out your illustrations you need at least a few more paint sets.
The rub of the coin system is that actually earning enough coins by playing to buy bombs and unlock paint sets takes forever, which means you basically have to buy them unless you're way more patient than I am. But, at the end of the day, I'm having a really hard time getting that worked up over the IAP as the game is worth every penny worth of the $4.99 bucket of coins I bought to unlock a bunch of paint (and the 99¢ I dropped to get the ad-free version).
Recently, the game was updated with additional words, and complete support for the Retina Display of the new iPad. In fact, my original intention of this post was just a quick news article on that fact, but I just can't help but gush all over this game. Everyone I know is playing it, and recently taking my turns in Draw Something is both among the last things I do before I go to bed and the first things I do when I wake up every day.
So, I'm tagging this as a review, giving Draw Something five stars, and telling you again: Download this game.
Ship management and pseudo line-drawing make an appearance in Kavcom Limited’s The Lighthouse HD [$4.99]. Offering a different take on the classic genre, The Lighthouse HD’s great visuals and variety offset some choice design decisions holding the game back from loftier heights.
In The Lighthouse HD, you take the role of an all-seeing lighthouse operator helping ships get across hazardous waters. Tap anywhere on the screen to shine a light on that area. If you shine the light near a ship, it’ll alter direction towards the direction of the light (and will then continue straight on its new path). The game plays somewhat similarly to line drawing games like Harbor Master [$1.99 / HD / Free], with the difference being that you can’t directly alter the course of your ships and instead must use the light to indirectly manage your shipping lanes (rather than drawing routes).
Now here's something I was never expecting. As part of the EA Daily Deals program this holiday season, Flight Control [Free] and Flight Control HD [Free] have had their prices slashed to zero dollars.
Flight Control is about as classic as games get for iOS. It not only has won a pile full of awards since it was released, it's single handedly responsible for popularizing the whole "line drawing" and "chaos management" family of games. Everyone needs to download it while it's free, which from the looks of it, is today only.
Fall 2011 is the unofficial season of anthropomorphized penguins. Don’t believe me? Between the penguin sweater craze and the release of Happy Feet 2, adorable penguins are everywhere. Now, a third entry into fall’s penguin lineup is here in the form of BulkyPix’s super-cute new game, Crazy Escape [99¢]. And this one answers the question on everybody’s mind: Can penguins drive tiny penguin cars, and if so, is it extra-adorable?
It’s a story as old as time itself: Two penguin buddies have to take to their Jeep (err, low-emission 4x4 of indeterminate branding, I should say) to save their sheep friends from being kidnapped and eaten by wolves. As these penguins race along the winding road, they must collect sheep, stars (ostensibly because penguins like shiny objects?), keys (to unchain locked-up sheep, of course!), and avoid stationary wolves, roaming wolves, chasing wolves – basically wolves of all kinds, all right?! You can run into fences (good) and trees (bad!), and the less road you cover to complete the level, the better.
Simply put, Rescue City [Free] is a worthy addition to the line-drawing genre that has long since been dominated by the prowess of Flight Control. Rather than directly mimicking the open-world environment of the flight-landing title, Rescue City succeeds at implementing a more structured approach to vehicle management that not only still requires strategy and management, but also manages to simplify the core gameplay experience. Â A tough difficulty curve and a lack of variety in environments are the only significant obstacles that hold Rescue City back.
Rescue City places you in charge of the police, firefighter, and ambulance services for a section of a city. As various incidents pop up, you must dispatch the appropriate emergency services by drawing a route to the location. Each incident has a countdown timer attached to it, and the game ends if you do not respond to the incident in time. In addition, the game also ends if any of your vehicles collide with each other while on the road. Â Obviously, the crux of the gameplay becomes effective route management as you will be trying to respond to each incident as fast as possible while preventing any vehicle crashes.
From the Wii, to the DS, to Kinect, to iOS, developers continue to leverage non-traditional input methods to create gesture based gameplay. So far, their efforts have been met with varying success. For every pile of flailing shovelware or visionary title in the genre that just didn’t pass muster, there’s an Okami or Max and the Magic Marker out there to restore balance to the Force. The concept works.
Art Penguin [.99] takes the concept of drawing objects on the screen that then materialize in the game, and merges it with the tried-and-true auto-runner gameplay that iOS gamers are only too familiar with. A surprisingly smooth experience, the game offers the tension of twitch gesture input and a surprising amount of depth. As is wont to happen in game design, the title’s strengths also are the source of its greatest shortcomings. That being said, there are more than enough reasons to give this game a spin.
The hardest thing about reviewing Pigs in Trees [99c / HD] is deciding which part to praise first, because there's just so many things I like about it. Launching the app leads into a delightful animated trailer which introduces the family of pigs who reside in a tree and the woodpeckers, who (obviously) like to peck on wood. Did you spot the tension there? (Hint: They both want the tree.) This game from PAN Vision and Tactile Entertainment represents a role reversal from Angry Birds [99c / Lite] as the pigs are the good guys and the aggressive birds are the nasty villains.
The line-drawing genre has long been dominated by Firemint's outstanding Flight Control [$0.99 / HD]. It is the standard by which all similar games are inevitably judged, and with good reason -- it's the granddaddy of the genre. But maybe there's room for new games in the market, and in our hearts. It's been over two years since Flight Control was released. Could it be time for a break, time to see other line-drawing games?
If so, you won't go wrong with Chillingo and Infinite Degree'sPollen Count [$0.99 / HD]. It's a game that didn't sell me with screenshots or trailers -- the art is a bit clumsy -- but it comes through where it counts.
By drawing a line on screen from bee A to point B, you direct your bees to collect pollen from flowers and deliver it to the hive. They need to reach both targets without running into anything en route. Though the obvious comparison is Flight Control, this is more in line with Harbour Master [$1.99] - you're moving cargo from place to place with a limited amount of space to deal with. In this case, there are only a few flowers to go around, and often bees are forced to wait in the wings. Managing the scarcity of the flowers adds a layer of strategy to a familiar formula.
Pollen Count distinguishes itself in progression. Rather than throwing down a set of maps for players to challenge themselves on, Infinite Degree has put together a series of unlockable levels that give the game a more traditional difficulty curve. To unlock them, you need to earn at least one star in the previous level. This usually isn't easy, and even the most experienced Flight Control fans will find earning a full three stars a challenge on most levels. Unlocking stages also gives less experienced players something to work toward, if the top of the leaderboard looks completely out of reach.
So how do you keep 24 levels fresh when you're dealing with a single-screen drawing game? Pollen Count handles that challenge by bringing in obstacles, powerups and other clever elements. Spiders, birds and zombees are all out to get your bees. While you're busy guiding them to avoiding those enemies and deliver pollen, you'll find environmental obstacles to deal with. And some bees are just plain picky about the flowers they'll harvest. It all contributes to keeping the game from getting stale.
If you want more, Pollen Count includes Crystal and Game Center achievements to earn and leaderboards to challenge. The iPad version also includes local multiplayer, both co-op and versus, with configurable levels. If you're really dedicated, you can unlock two special modes -- a zom-bee survival mode and an odd 3D racing mode called 999mph -- but neither offers leaderboards.
I wouldn't write Pollen Count off as nothing more than a clone. It makes great use of an established mechanic, and I'd have a hard time holding that against it. Running with an existing idea is an App Store tradition by now -- the important thing is that it's been done well and it's been done respectfully. Pollen Count is a little rough around the edges, but it has the vital element covered: fun, and lots of it. Check it out, and give our discussion thread a buzz.
I thought the original DrawRace [Free] was super cool when it was first released. It combined the familiar drawing mechanic that everyone at the time was going nuts over with a racing game. Playing the game amounted to drawing your path on the track, and the speed of your car was controlled by how fast you moved your finger on a particular segment of the racing line. It's a slick little setup, although it does seem to have a considerable learning curve since you need to draw your whole racing line at once.
Enter DrawRace 2: Racing Evolved, the sequel to DrawRace that just looks awesome. How awesome? Well, if I had to pick one thing to criticize about the original DrawRace it's that the game was a little basic. The sequel has a new career modes, leagues, leaderboards, 180 challenges, 16 cars, and 30 tracks.
Long-time TouchArcade favorite Harbor Master [$1.99 / Free] was recently updated to add complete Game Center support, transitioning away from Imangi Studio's own proprietary scoring system. Online scoring mostly remains the same, aside from being piped through Game Center now. What Harbor Master didn't have before is achievements, and now there are 38 in all for achievement fanatics to farm up. These achievements range from being simply score based to difficult challenges such as reaching a certain score on Pirate Passage without killing any pirates.
In addition, the controversial rewind feature from Harbor Master HD [Free] has made it over to the iPhone version of the game. Unlike the iPad game, these rewinds aren't IAP, and are simply earned by playing the game.
If you haven't had Harbor Master on your device in a while, this is the perfect opportunity to give the game a spin as shooting for the achievements gives a fantastically tangible goal to a previously endless game. Similarly, if you haven't yet given Harbor Master a try, it's really worth at least checking out a free version of the game especially if you haven't dabbled in the chaos management genre in a while.
Firemint has just temporarily dropped the price on the iPad version of their highly popular, feature-filled chaos management title Flight Control. For just 24 hours, Flight Control HD [App Store] will be available at an 80% discount for $0.99, down from its regular price of $4.99.
For those somehow unfamiliar, Flight Control turns you into an air traffic controller, routing helicopters and airplanes of various sizes and speeds into the proper (color coded) airports -- hopefully without incident. It's game that should handily dispel any aspirations you have to become a real-life air traffic controller.
Flight Control has been extremely well maintained since its release and now features leaderboards, achievements and online multiplayer via Game Center, local WiFi / Bluetooth multiplayer and, specific to the iPad version, shared (same device) multiplayer, both cooperative and competitive.
Flight Control brings a great balance of easy pick-up gameplay, ramping difficulty and that "just one more time" draw. If your iPad lacks Flight Control HD, now's the time to take care of that.
One of my real iPhone favorites -- a game that I actually play for fun (a rare thing, given the number of titles we move through to find the gems among the chaff out there) -- is Imangi's Harbor Master [link], which The Independentrecently dubbed the third best app in the App Store. And the iPad version, Harbor Master HD [link] is the best Harbor Master experience to be had, thanks to the device's large display. Happily, Imangi's v2.0Â Harbor Master update, which went live just a few hours ago, brings some of that big-screen detail to the iPhone 4's Retina display.
Imangi lists the enhancements in this update:
Completely remastered high resolution graphics for the iPhone 4.
New level! We adapted Cargo City, our most popular map from the iPad version, for the iPhone screen. It has 3 cargo types, so it takes "multitasking" to a whole new level.
iOS4 multitasking support.
Fixed twitter support so you can tweet your scores again.
Rotation support, so you can hold your device however you want!
A ton of bug fixes.
Imangi's current graphics guy, Kiril Tchangov, reworked all of the game's original art from scratch, putting his own, more "painterly" spin on the design, the studio tells us.
I think most people will be most excited about the new level, Cargo City. Cargo City is our most popular map from the iPad version, so we really wanted to bring a version of it over to the iPhone. It works really great on iPhone. With 3 cargo types, you have to turn on another part of your brain to control all those boats. You'll really like it. Here is the iPad version right next to the iPhone version, so you can see how we had to change it around to adapt it to the smaller screen.
The Harbor Master v2.0 update is a free download for current owners of the game.
There are few things I like more than an iPhone game with an absolutely ridiculous premise that wouldn't have a chance anywhere outside the App Store, except of course, when said game turns out to be a lot of fun. Such is the case with Cat Run [$1.99], a crazy conglomeration of classic line drawing control mechanics, Frogger-like traffic avoidance, and cats-- Lots and lots of cats. In the game, you have to route cats from one side of the street to the other, avoiding traffic in the process as well as several other obstacles once you get to higher levels.
Touching a cat and drawing a line controls the path they take across the street, and arrows indicate which lanes oncoming cars will be driving down next. If you run in to problems, such as an unexpected car or a cat not going quite as fast as you were expecting it to, you can tap a cat to stop it, then draw a new line either back to the side of the street it came from, or on to the other side. Four different types of cats are included in the game, with each having slightly different characteristics such as speed and temperament. Learning the properties of each of the cats is important as you obviously need to allow for more time for the slower cats to get around cars, and you need to prioritize getting the aggressive cats across the street to avoid cat fights (which you need to tap to stop).
Cat Run includes some awesome obstacles you need to deal with as well. Obviously you don't want your cats to get run over, but if a skunk appears, you get rid of it by drawing a path out in to traffic for it to get squished by a car. These skunks can also explode, which cause nearby cats to go crazy from the stench. That's not all though, like any normal street there are sewers with manhole covers, which apparently are home to giant monsters who extend tentacles to grab your cats whenever the manhole opens up and one is nearby.
You can route your cats in four different environments, ranging from a normal street to space, and there are achievements linked to each. Cat Run also comes packed with OpenFeint for all kinds of OpenFeinty goodness such as online leaderboards, achievement tracking, and everything else. Scores are tracked both locally and globally for each environment, and like most games, the online leaderboards are already filled with scores that far exceed my capabilities.
Cat Run is a silly game that is a lot of fun to play. Perhaps my affinity to cats has something to do with it, but having cats flying all over your screen avoiding cars, while managing skunks, putting out cat fights, and avoiding mysterious tentacles is something I never saw myself doing in an iPhone game... Yet somehow, I'm incredibly glad that I finally am.
If you're anything like us and have been around through multiple device generations, tidal waves of freebies, 99¢ sales out the wazoo, and all the other contributing factors that have lead to the apps section of your iTunes library to be the same completely unmanageable pile of so many games you can barely scroll through them, you know how much of a challenge it is to keep up with the constant stream of updates to the various pieces of your app collection. While slamming a pepperoni-greased finger down on the "update all" button a few weeks ago, I missed a Sketch Nation Shooter [99¢] update which addressed my two major beefs with the game: I dislike anything that requires Facebook to work, as my Facebook is a holy place reserved for friends, family, and incessant Frontierville spam. Secondly, while the custom game sharing was amazing, finding anything quickly became impossible as more and more people submitted their creations.
If this is the first time you've read about Sketch Nation Shooter, you're in for a treat as it's a fantastic idea for an iPhone game. Basically, Sketch Nation provides the building blocks to create simple shooters and avoidance games. You literally draw your ship and the various enemies that will appear in game, photograph them, then as if through some kind of magic the game is able to analyze these photos and import your individual drawings in to the game world. Even if you're terrible at drawing, this entire process is a ton of fun.
If you're not interested in creating your own game (or have an iPod touch and are obviously incapable of photographing your drawings) there is an absolutely massive database of games that other people have created, freely available. Because the designers of these Sketch Nation creations are limited by the tools offered by the sandbox of the game itself, a lot of them feel very similar, but the creativity that has gone in to many of them (particularly the higher rated ones) is often astounding.
For more information on Sketch Nation Shooter, check out our review. You can get a ridiculous amount of play time out of this game if you get sucked in to the creations of others as well as your own and this recent update added a few DLC art modules so you don't even need to be able to draw at all if you'd rather just use the pre-packaged art for your games. With Facebook dependence a thing of the past, and an enhanced interface for browsing user-created games, Sketch Nation Shooter is now even easier to recommend.
Surely everyone remembers Draw Something [$2.99 / Free] and its weird lifecycle of appearing out of nowhere, getting red hot, being bought by Zynga, then almost immediately falling into obscurity. If you were spending your time on the moon with your eyes closed and fingers in your ears during those few weeks, you can check out our almost-a-review here that explains how it all works/worked. In a nutshell, you got a prompt, you had to draw something, and if your opponent guesses what it is correctly you win.
