Illusion Labs has a reputation for quality iOS games, with Blast-A-Way [$4.99], Touchgrind [$4.99] and a few other classics under its proverbial belt. Let that be enough to convince you to try out the studio's newest, Mr. Crab [$1.99]. At a glance it looks visually busy and overly simple, a vertical platformer of no great account. A few moments in action, however, show that it's more appealing - and more interesting - than it first looks.
Since my taste in platformers tends toward the sadistic, I was skeptical of Mr. Crab's one-touch platforming. It isn't a cruel game, for the most part, but it's also far from mindless. Each trip around its pillars manages to bring out new challenges, ones that range from amateur to agonizing. It also has the whole cute thing going for it—I dearly wanted to save all of Mr. Crab's little baby crabs, and that's where things got interesting.
Foursaken Media's Block Fortress [$0.99] is one of those games that could last you forever. It plops you into a Minecraft-like block-based sandbox, tasks you with creating the most impenetrable fortress possible out of those blocks, and then sends wave after wave of enemies in to see if your creation will indeed stand up to the test. Oh, and while these enemies are attacking you're thrust face-first into the action by dropping into your created map in first-person mode, allowing you to help blast away at the baddies yourself. It's pretty great stuff.
The ability to create your own levels means that Block Fortress is really only limited by your imagination (and a device's technical limits), and today Foursaken extends the game's legs even further by updating it with the ability to upload and download user-created maps right into the game.
In Block Fortress's sandbox mode, you're given basically endless resources to create the craziest fortress possible. With today's update you can now upload your creations for the world to see, as well as download the maps that other people have made to test them out yourself. A simple "thumbs up/thumbs down" rating system helps ensure that the best maps are readily visible, and already there are tons of maps available to download.
Block Fortress is awesome, but it's also a pretty complicated and challenging game. Once you get warmed up to it, though, it's an amazing experience. To help you out, we commissioned some tips from the developers, and an avid player of the game submitted his own set of tips as well. Check those out for a closer look at the strategies behind Block Fortress.
Besides the level-sharing functionality in this new update, there's also a boatload of tweaks, fixes, new block types, and more that you can read about in full in the App Store's update description. To top it all off, Block Fortress is currently on sale for just a buck, so now is definitely a good time to give it a look if you have not done so yet.
Pretty much every iOS gamer is familiar with Illusion Labs, and along with that most people know they are known for releasing high-quality and technically impressive titles. They don't release games very often, but when they do, it's almost a sure bet that it will be a winner.
Their latest title, Mr. Crab [$1.99], pretty much came out of nowhere this week, and true to form it's a clever, beautiful, and challenging title that is worth your attention. Its titular main character is also stupidly adorable, as are the many enemies and environments you'll encounter. Seriously, Illusion Labs, fire up a Mr. Crab toy line and I'll be first in line.
Back to the game, Mr. Crab is essentially an auto-running platformer – but don't dismiss it just yet, even though that descriptor fits hundreds if not thousands of games in the App Store. Mr. Crab's approach is really well done.
Picture a normal platforming level, with all the typical slopes, pits, and obstacles that impede your character's progress. Now wrap that entire level vertically around a pole, and that's how levels play out in Mr. Crab. Your character scuttles along on his own, and you merely control when and how high he jumps in order to negotiate your way around.
If you've played something like Wind-up Knight [Free] there are similar mechanics at play in Mr. Crab. Since you can't change direction on your own, you'll need to find walls to bounce against in order to travel in the opposite direction. This is required in order to collect the various bonuses like coins and pearls, as well as your stranded crab children, if you want to get the coveted 3-star rating for each level. Mr. Crab's levels are so well-designed that getting every objective is almost like a puzzle, and will take trial-and-error and paying attention to details to be successful.
There's more to the Mr. Crab experience that we'll touch on in our upcoming review, but if you're itching for a new game to play then I feel pretty confident in recommending Mr. Crab already. I've been loving it since I picked it up on Wednesday, and our forum users have been really enjoying it too. It uses a simple one-touch control and can be played one-handed, two important factors for a mobile game. But it doesn't feel dumbed-down because of it, and there is a ton of content to play through. Also, if you don't like Mr. Crab's huge googly eyes and buck teeth, well, then your heart is made of stone.
To coin a phrase from a popular comedian, what is the deal with the characters in these running games? Why are they running? What's the rush? You know, you could've snagged that coin tucked away behind that pillar back there if you would've just eased on up to it. The terrified spaceman you play in Worm Run [$0.99] has a valid excuse. He's on the move, and needs to stay that way, because a giant worm is plunging after him, devouring everything in its path. Glance back and you'll see him, eating his way through stone and dirt and steel.
Worm Run throws a few wrenches into the endless runner formula. It's endless, but doesn't pump your legs for you. You do that by swiping. Swipe left and right to run, swipe up and to either direction to jump, and so on. The control scheme sounds simple enough, but it didn't gel with me at first. Holding my phone in my right hand, I used my left pointer finger to swipe. The tutorial didn't nudge me toward or away from any particular pose, so I went with that. It wasn't comfortable. My wrist cramped from holding the phone, and swiping with one finger didn't give me the precision I needed to hop up into narrow shafts.
In this day and age, it takes more than a fresh coat of paint to differentiate oneself in the endless runner genre. While Chillingo'sDream Chaser [$0.99]Â certainly succeeds in bringing its own visual flair, its the game's story mode (in addition to the secondary endless mode) that gives it a leg-up on a lot of the competition. However, a few annoying issues with the story mode and graphics keep Dream Chaser from loftier heights.
The first thing you'll probably notice about Dream Chaser is its nicely done presentation. For example, I enjoyed the game's celestial tunes, which were very befitting of the theme. In addition, Dream Chaser looks great and ran with a fast and stable FPS rate. Despite this, I noticed a good deal of graphical pop-up which ranged from being an annoyance to actually impacting the gameplay at faster speeds and later difficulties.
Gameplay-wise Dream Chaser plays like most other endless runners with a tilt-based control scheme, loads of currency (called orbs) to collect and a distance/multiplier secondary score mechanic. One feature that's somewhat unique is the game's 'Boost' mechanism, which speeds up your character and increases the currency collection multiplier at the cost of faster speed. It's a nice risk/reward feature that works well for an endless runner that relies on fast reflexes.
Unlike the majority of endless runners out on the field, Dream Chaser includes both the standard endless mode as well as a mission-based story mode. Endless mode is what you'd expect, with players racing against a perpetual clock avoiding obstacles, collecting orbs and trying to get to the next checkpoint which resets the timer. Story mode, meanwhile, is a mission-based mode centered around completing a variety of objectives that all center around running a gauntlet before a timer runs out.The story itself, which follows a night spirit named Nito has he works to repair the realm of the gods, is light-hearted but mostly standard.
While Dream Chaser does a decent job differentiating itself simply by including a story mode, I wasn't a big fan of how it was implemented. Unlike the game's endless mode, Chaser's story mode features a set life bar that depletes when players run into obstacles. If you run out of life, fall into a chasm or fail to complete the mission within the time limit, you lose a 'heart' and are given the opportunity to retry the level. Unfortunately, you can only store a certain amount of hearts, and if you run out you either have to wait an obnoxiously long period of time or spend your hard-earned orbs on hearts to instantly continue playing the story mode.
Considering that later levels ramp up the difficulty, making it entirely possible to go through many (even all) of your stored hearts in a single run Dream Chaser's story mode ends up being needlessly frustrating. True, endless mode is always available and its not too hard to earn enough orbs to buy hearts and continue, but those orbs could be better spent on the variety of power-up upgrades and optional items available in the endless mode itself vice the silly heart mechanic. In the end, it all feels like an artificial method of encouraging IAP.
It's really a shame because outside of this frustrating facet of the game's story mode (as well as the pop-up) Dream Chaser isn't that bad of an endless runner. As it stands, genre fans will probably still find it worth checking out, if anything for its style and story mode. For everyone else, it's probably worth a pass.
I don't know about you, but I think Disney's foray into mobile games might have yielded some of the most creative work of its recent years. Ignoring of course the companies they own, the Mouse House has been seen as lagging in both the movie and videogame departments for quite some time. As anyone not living in a sewer themselves knows, that all changed with the release of Where's My Water? [$0.99] For the first time in...well...ever, a new Disney icon had been created at the videogame level first, and the company seemed to be using mobile to kick off an upswing in the quality department. So naturally, with an alligator as their new face of gaming, they'd follow things up with...a fluffy kitten. Wait, what?
If Mittens [$0.99]Â - from its seemingly detached concept to its unexpected existence - has you skeptical, you're not alone. Heck, in our TA Plays for the game, Brad drew some early conclusions about the way that the experience seemed like it was playing things disappointingly safe both from a mechanical and creative standpoint. Having now cleared through all of the game's levels and its available bonus pack, it seems that like its in-game collectibles, this one might just be a gem after all. As with the title's titular feline, though, players may go through ups and downs along the way.
The thing is, where Swampy brought with him not only a novel concept but a slew of memorable levels - each of which felt like it had a distinct theme and purpose - Mittens meanders much more on its way to eventual greatness. As with any physics puzzler, the basics are covered in the first few levels of each zone, with the core concept revolving around the need to swipe and tap our brave kitty to safety on a quest to impress his true love. Unfortunately, this introductory mindset seems to bleed into a large portion of the game's first fifty levels, with many of them feeling like indistinct, unmemorable versions of one another.
You know that sense you get when a new level in a three-star puzzler feels vaguely like a rearranged version of the one you played just far enough back that the game thinks you forgot it? Yeah, it's that.  All the trademark elements are in place, including sliced ropes, last minute drops onto bouncy objects, and risky collectible snagging - painted with a Disney polish that ensures everything feels smooth and precise. Yet for all its emphatic not-badness, there's a lingering feeling of ho-hum in the first two zones that's hard to shake. A sense that Disney might be trading in slightly on its newly minted supremacy in the genre, doing far less than they could to justify a purchase.
The yin to this more reserved yang, however, comes in the form of the levels that appear towards the end of each zone, as well as almost the entirety of the game's third area. Reassuringly, Mittens does eventually step out of the genre's comfort zone to deliver a much fresher take on a well-trod play style. First appearing as five bonus levels that are unlocked as you collect gems, these more complicated stages feel like a wonderful mix between Amazing Alex [$0.99] and Cut the Rope [$0.99]. Each one  departs from the "tap here, swipe this" feeling, instead forcing you to navigate landscapes already full of motion, and piece together the perfect timing needed to play your role as the little furry cog in a miniature machine. Better still? They tie together wonderfully and make up for the feeling of detachment prevalent throughout earlier levels. My particular favorites are the five final circus big-tops of the second zone, that culminate in a brilliant level full of tightropes, cannons, and miniature cars.
And while the last zone and the game's much tougher (and more imaginative) harbor zone continue this trend, I can't help but wonder why it feels like it takes almost half the game to get there. Drawing further attention to the game's design foibles is a seeming lack of effort in  - of all areas - production values. Mittens' is completely without stage music save for a repetitive chime at the end of a level, and the cut scenes that exist to punctuate play pale in comparison to the subtle, endearing storytelling achieved in Where's My Water? Except for grating meows when you fall into blackness or foul up, the titular kitty lacks all semblance of a personality, and it proves nigh-impossible to invest in the game beyond the compulsive desire to beat its levels.
This, perhaps, is the predicament I'm having with Mittens. You'd be hard pressed to call it bad by any stretch, and about half way through, it manages to take off in ways not hinted at in our TA Plays video to become a pretty wonderful take on the physics puzzler. At a dollar, and with a future that will doubtless be filled with more content, fans of the genre would be hard pressed not to pick this one up. At the same time, however, it's more than a little disheartening that Disney seems to have followed up their return to form with a return to safety, and I don't think it's unreasonable to expect more than a competent time-killer from a studio of their pedigree.
Like a top notch student handing in a rush job, Mittens sags not under the weight of what it does wrong, but all that it could have done much better.
I'm a big fan of survival horror games, especially ones like Amnesia: The Dark Descent and Slender, which provide no means of defending yourself from their boogeymen. You run and hide, or you die. While scoping out upcoming App Store releases late Wednesday evening, I learned about Eyes - The Horror Game [$0.99], a port of the indie PC title of the same name that promised a similar flight-no-fight experience. On an iPhone.
It was to laugh--to guffaw, I tell you!--at the idea that any game on a five-inch screen could make me shriek like Jamie Lee Curtis in a Halloween flick. But I am comfortable enough in my rugged masculinity (I haven't shaved in six weeks) to admit that's exactly what happened. I downloaded the game, plugged in my ear buds, turned off the lights, and turned up the volume. And within two minutes--give or take 60 seconds--I bounded out of bed mumbling "Nope nope nope nope" and switched the bedroom lights back on and started in on the much more cheerful Sonic Dash.
The goal of Eyes, like the controls you'll use to accomplish that goal, is deceptively simple. Ransack an old house to retrieve bags of money. A virtual stick moves you forward and back, sliding your thumb over the right half of the screen rotates your view, and you pick up objects by tapping them. Drawers also open with a quick tap. Simple, just like I said.
The hard part is mustering the courage to pillage and plunder. Eyes immerses you in incredible atmosphere, and as any survival horror savant will tell you, the right atmosphere makes or breaks the experience. Every chamber is dark and dusty. Wind howls and batters against the walls, your footsteps thump along, clocks tick and tock, and doors creak when you open them.
Those ambient noises set the mood, but they also serve as an early warning system. When your teeth begin to chatter and the furniture begins to rattle, make for the nearest room and cower in the corner. A ghost roams the manse, and she's not keen on the idea of letting you abscond with her earthly possessions. Catch more than a glimpse of the lady of the house and it's game over, much like bumping into the Slender Man in his backwoods domain.
The inherent sloppiness of the virtual stick inadvertently added to my experience. Doors are supposed to open when you push against them, but unless you hit them dead on, you'll just slide back and forth against them like a drunkard who's forgotten how knobs works. Every time the ghost got the jump on me, I ended up turning heel and throwing myself at the nearest door and fumbling against it due to the virtual stick's slipperiness. That heightened my sense of panic; I felt like I was a character in a horror movie who was too overcome with fear to properly grasp and turn a knob.
To finish Eyes, you need only collect a specified number of bags determined by your difficulty level and escape through the front door before the ghost nabs you. The house both helps and hinders your quest. Bags and other items such as keys are randomly strewn about each time you play. Your map fills in as you explore, but does not show your position, so you'll need to keep track of every twist and turn you take, especially in the basement. Eye symbols, also randomly placed, let you look through the ghost's eyes for a few moments--a handy if disorienting tool that can help you plan routes.
My only complaints are the ease of finding money bags and the short length of the game. The bags sparkle, standing out even in pitch blackness. Some are stashed away, but you can spot most by standing in one spot and turning around. Once you collect your bags and hit the front door, that's it. You're done. Once you learn your way around the house, completing the adventure won't take long even considering the random placement of items. I understand why randomizing the architecture isn't possible, but I'd love a longer experience--maybe an extra stage or two as IAP, or perhaps a sequel or remake along the lines of Slender: Arrival.
Those are minor gripes, though. Take my advice: don't be like me. Wait until after dark, shut (lock) yourself in a quiet room, and pop in your ear buds. Eyes is as immersive, as unsettling, and as chilling a horror experience as you'll find on any platform, if not as lengthy as horror fans would like.
Hello everyone. My name is Eli, and...I can't say no to the retro aesthetic. Wow! It feels good to get that one off my chest. In all seriousness, though, the resurgence of 8 and 16-bit era visuals on iOS has done a number on my wallet over the past few years, and that's been somewhat of a double-edged sword.
On one hand, I've discovered some fantastic experiences steeped in nostalgia: everything from Velocispider [$1.99 / Free] to Mikey Shorts [$0.99 / Free]. Yet for every gem that's still on my device, there's at least three lame ducks that have suckered me in with the power of childhood fan service.
So when I discovered Pixel Licker Games' Slayin [$0.99]Â as the result of a friend's tweet - complete with an icon that looked like a cartridge and an in-game controller skin - I knew I was powerless. The only question that remained was: would it be a wonderful walk down memory lane, or end up collecting virtual dust with all the other deleted duds?
Considering the large amount of physics-based puzzlers that get continually released on the App Store, it takes a special kind of title to differentiate itself from the pack. Little Bit Games' The Seed [$1.99]Â does so in a variety of ways. Its emphasis on minimalist (but beautiful) presentation combined with approachable gameplay is a great mix and is executed well. In addition, its subtle narrative and reflective visuals lead to a game that's only sullied by its shortness.
As you might imagine, The Seed tasks players with guiding a magical seed through a variety of barren locales on a quest to regrow the land. This is accomplished by guiding the seed through a variety of stages with the goal of each to land the seed on a flat of fertile ground which allows it to grow a plant and move on. Sounds relatively simple, but the simple act of guiding and moving the seed (which is done via water droplets) is an adventure in itself.
It's time to take a bite of the reality sandwich. At the end of the day, office worker bees can only put out so many fires and circle back to so many tasks before they need to table their workload and develop a more synergistic flow. What I mean to say, I think, is that you need to loosen your white collar, grab a foreign object, and smash your office to smithereens or risk becoming a lifer who goes postal or, worse, stares mindlessly while muttering about a stapler.
The prototypical office drone you play in Smash the Office [$0.99] has done just that. Reduced to a gibbering mess by unrealistic time tables, micromanagement, office jargon, and conversations that no doubt began with "Workin' hard or hardly workin'?", your character takes up the nearest blunt instrument and sets out to raze his workplace to the ground.
Each level drops you in a standard nine-to-five office setting replete with cube farms, servers, computer, and other office gear. With a club in hand, you have exactly one minute to earn a high score by smashing and bashing everything in sight. Once you've, uh, taken the meeting offline in one room, break down the door to move on to the next room of breakables.
I've been golfing before. The first time I tagged along with my dad. He hit a ball just off a slope. We hopped in the buggy to retrieve it, he told me to lean out and grab it as we rumbled by, I fell out and tumbled down the slope. The second time, I actually played! Just one hole, though. Why? Because golf is boring when you have to, you know, fish your ball out of sand traps and actually walk around. Yep, that's golf: boring at best, painful at worst. Thanks, Dad.
Super Stickman Golf, however, is neither boring nor painful. It is awesome. If you enjoyed developer Noodlecake's golf-slash-physics-puzzler, you'll be happy to hear that Super Stickman Golf 2 [$0.99] is loads better, and available at the same impulse-buy price point.
Super Stickman Golf 2 challenges you to complete courses at or under par. Sounds a lot like golf, right? Well, instead of straight shots from tee-off to the green, each hole in Super Stickman Golf 2 plays out like an obstacle course. There are pits, sand traps, water traps, moving platforms, lasers that vaporize your perfectly-aimed shots, and portals inspired by Valve's popular spatial puzzler: smack a ball through one portal and it pops out the other.
We're still playing a bit of catch up from GDC, but one of the more substantial under-the-radar releases of last week definitely needs some more attention than it's getting. It's called Fester Mudd: Curse of the Gold [$0.99] and the (currently available) first episode seems like a fantastic tribute to adventure games from ages ago. Set in the old west, you play as Fester Mudd and you need to complete all sorts of classic adventure-y style puzzles to progress in your hunt for endless riches.
It's published by Replay Games, which may ring a bell as they're the same guys responsible for that awesome Leisure Suit Larry remake we saw at GDC. Fester Mudd even captures the graphical style of Lucas Arts and Sierra adventure games:
People are loving the game in our forums, and it's definitely going on the list of things we need to review... So, keep an eye out for that in the not too distant future as we dig out from the pile of GDC games and emails we missed. But, in the meantime, if you even have the vaguest of fond memories of classic adventure games, and you have a dollar to your name, you need to spend some time with Fester.
Rovio's latest Angry Birds release took the epic struggle of Birds versus Pigs and mashed it together with the epic struggle of Rebel versus Empire in the Star Wars universe. And it worked, as Angry Birds Star Wars provided a ton of twists on the usual bird-flinging formula while simultaneously doing a great job of implementing the Star Wars universe without feeling forced or tacked on. We thought Angry Birds Star Wars was really great in our review.
More is on the way, too, and GameTrailers has landed the first brief glimpse of an upcoming Angry Birds Star Wars update which will add levels set in Cloud City, the setting of Lando's dirty backstabbing and poor Han getting frozen in a block of carbonite. Good times!
GameTrailers will have more on the Cloud City update on Monday, so keep your eyes peeled for that and it sounds like the update is basically done and should be hitting in the very near future.
Late last month a crazy new game called Towelfight 2: The Monocle of Destiny [$0.99] hit the ol' App Store from a developer called Butterscotch Shenanigans. You could tell by the title of the game and the name of the studio that this isn't a game that takes itself too seriously, and that's one of the big reasons we were drawn to Towelfight 2 – it's jam packed with wackiness. You can read all about the crazy antics in store for you in our review of Towelfight 2 or see it in action in our TA Plays video.
While there was a ton to enjoy about Towelfight 2 and we loved its humor, what we didn't love as much were the controls, and that seemed the consensus among other players as well. Something about them just felt "off" compared to other dual-stick shooters, and there was a lack of options for customizing them – something that's important for a touchscreen game.
Today the Butterscotch folks look to address this with a new update to Towelfight 2, and I think they nailed it. You can now position the controls in the lower corners of the screen, which feels a lot more natural to me. The visual d-pads have also been made slightly larger and you can toggle whether you want them to be "floating" or "fixed."
Besides the tweaked controls, there's a lot of other new stuff in this latest Towelfight 2 update. The Arena has seen adjustments to enemies and challenges, and there's two brand new modes: the Endless Arena and the Insane Arena. There are also three new 'Jectiles which cannot be bought in the in-game store, but rather must be earned by defeating the boss in each of the Marsh, Forest and Nightmare zones. Finally, a new NPC named The Bagician can offer you powerful 5-minute enchantments when you need a little extra something something.
There are lots of other little tweaks and fixes in this update, but the bottom line is that if you tried Towelfight 2 before and thought it controlled kinda weird, give it another shot after this update. It's made a big difference for me, and the folks in our forums seem to be quite pleased with it as well. More is in the pipeline for Towelfight 2 too, including Game Center integration, so definitely give this unique and funny game a look.
Update: The developers have dropped the price to 99¢, go go go!
In my fourth year of university, I took a class called Canadian Experimental Shorts. I wasn't optimistic going in (I mean, that title alone puts you to sleep, right?). On my first day, however, instead of handing out notes or instructions, the professor dimmed the lights and showed us something I had never seen before: a film without cameras. Barely longer than two minutes, it was animated entirely onto physical film strip, and packed with color that danced, twinkled, and exploded to the sound of classic jazz. Its name was Cameras Take Five, and it sold me on Canadian Experimental Shorts. Good news if you're looking for something completely original: Melodive [Free] is basically Cameras Take Five: The Game.
Fair warning: like experimental film, this one isn't the most approachable at first blush. Before embracing the game's persistent feeling of being lost, I felt...well...completely lost. Unable to understand the controls, not quite sure what shapes I was looking at, and disturbingly confused as to which way was up. Fascinated by the ambient noises and sea of floating jewels, I decided to re-read the instructions section and give it another go. And another. And then another. And while I can't say I ever fully came to terms with which way was up, it ultimately didn't matter soon enough.
Illusion Labs has a reputation for quality iOS games, with Blast-A-Way [$4.99], Touchgrind [$4.99] and a few other classics under its proverbial belt. Let that be enough to convince you to try out the studio's newest, Mr. Crab [$1.99]. At a glance it looks visually busy and overly simple, a vertical platformer of no great account. A few moments in action, however, show that it's more appealing - and more interesting - than it first looks.
