A few weeks back, we found out that Illusion Labs had a new iOS project in the works called Blast-A-Way [$4.99]. At first we weren’t really sure what it was all about, but a trailer released a couple of days later revealed it to be a physics puzzle game that used various types of explosives to blast apart a level and reach the end goal.
So, a physics puzzler. Is my excitement not showing? It's not that I haven’t enjoyed that genre immensely over the years, because I have. It’s just that the overabundance of them on the App Store has sapped my enthusiasm for more, even though great new ones are being released all the time. I mean, why don’t you just make a match-3 while you’re at it?
Then, about 10 minutes after diving into an advanced copy of Blast-A-Way, it hit me: this is Illusion Labs, you idiot. These folks made Touchgrind BMX [$4.99], Sway [$4.99 / Free], and Labyrinth 2 [$4.99 / Free]. Everything they do exudes quality, they don’t play silly App Store pricing games, and they only release new products when they’re fully ready. They’re like a little iOS Valve.
This past February, Omni Systems released an iPad version of their award-winning real-time strategy title Eufloria HD [$4.99]. We enjoyed it quite a bit in our review, with our chief complaint being that it could have long stretches of just watching what’s happening as opposed to interacting. That turned out to be not such a bad thing though, since the game was so visually interesting you really didn’t mind just taking in the scenery from time to time.
If you’re among those who really dug Eufloria HD, then this latest update should be quite pleasing. First off, the iPad version has been updated to be Universal so you can kill trees on the smaller screen of the iPhone. There’s also a new iPhone-only version called just Eufloria [$2.99] that’s a bit cheaper and cuts some of the ambient music tracks in order to save space. If you don’t own an iPad and efficiency is your middle name, that version is for you.
Other enhancements include the ability to save games in mid-progress, iCloud and Retina iPad support, and overall speed improvements. There are also some bug fixes and other balancing tweaks that you can check out in full in the App Store description. If you're a current happy owner of Eufloria then go check out this new update, and if you aren't then definitely give it a look if you dig unique strategy titles.
As we learned late last month, Telltale Games was pegging a release window of "2 to 3 weeks" for the second episode of their excellent digital take on The Walking Dead, and it turns out they weren't that far off. According to Telltale's blog, Episode 2 of Walking Dead: The Game [Free] is scheduled to hit sometime next week for $4.99.
No specific day is mentioned, but since additional episodes of Walking Dead are coming as in-app expansions to the original game, users should get a popup notification letting them know when it's out. Convenient! Also, if you opted for the $14.99 Multi-pack Pass that saved you a bit of cash by essentially pre-ordering all episodes up front, your notification will simply let you know the new episode is ready for download free of charge. Check out the Episode 2 trailer for the desktop versions below, though be mindful of some strong language:
We really enjoyed the first episode of Walking Deadin our review from July, noting its heavy tones and the difficult choices it forces you to face as a survivor in a zombie apocalypse. Also worth noting is that, unlike most Telltale iOS games, Walking Dead was technically sound and ran well on the iPad hardware. And since it is an episodic game, it allowed us to try something a little different with our review process. We covered the basics of the game and then committed a portion of the review to Episode 1 specifically, and we'll update that review with our thoughts on Episode 2 after it hits.
Walking Dead: The Game - Episode 2 is already out on desktop and consoles, and by all accounts it seems to be even more intense than the first episode. We're really looking forward to getting our hands on it sometime next week.
Back in the day, say like in the ‘80s, people use to gather at each other’s houses to hang out and enjoy each other’s company. Oftentimes a fun game to play would be Pictionary, the game where you draw pictures of something on a big white tablet of paper and other players try to guess what it is. It’s a fun game, an absolute classic, and it was one of my favorites as a kid when my parents had their social gatherings.
But nowadays, we’re living in the Internet Age. Hanging out together in real life? Please, I connect with people over a series of magical internet tubes. I can still get my Pictionary fix using mobile games like Draw Something [$2.99 / Free], as one example. But connecting with people through technology like that doesn’t capture the same magic as it did back in the day, where people gathered in real life to play games and socialize.
The aim of SketchParty TV [$4.99], an iPad app from Magnate Interactive that dropped last month, is to merge the digital age of gaming with the old-school real life hangout. It’s a Pictionary-esque drawing game that takes advantage of Apple’s AirPlay so you can gather with up to 8 of your friends like you used to, and use your HD TV as a modern tablet of paper by drawing right on your iPad.
It’s a pretty cool idea, though that’s assuming you have an HD TV, an Apple TV, an iPad and $5 to spend on the app. Last I checked a giant pad of drawing paper clocks in at much less than that setup, but still it’s neat when we can use our high tech devices to gather socially and have some good old fashioned fun. Plus, I heard it’s a good idea to log off and get out of the house once in a while. If you've got all the required devices just lying around, and like to socialize over fun drawing games, give SketchParty TV a look.
iOS gaming has come a long way since the humble beginnings in the homebrew community with the original iPhone and the official App Store launch following year. Mobile phone gaming has long since been considered a throwaway activity, with tiny games designed to eat up a spare few minutes of free time.
That hasn’t necessarily changed, but with the advent of smartphones and hardware that is getting more powerful with each new handset generation, those throwaway experiences are being flanked with deeper, more visually and mechanically advanced games that easily rival dedicated handheld gaming systems and even approaches some console and PC offerings.
In fact, “console-like”, a term that gets thrown around a lot, has really just come to mean “a deeper gaming experience than you’d normally expect from a phone game.” For mobile developers targeting this kind of experience, the more “console-like” they can make their games the better.
Recent updates to Ravenmark: Scourge of Estellion [$9.99] have brought some cool new features to this unique TBS, including a 2x Battle Speed option and Witching Hour Studios online accounts, but the star feature is the new Deepwood Dragoons Campaign.
Unlike the last Campaign expansion, Suneaters, Deepwood Dragoons is not free, but its a reasonable $1.99 for six missions that explore the mysteries of the Deepwood, including why the Lyri are so damn crazy, and just what's up with Cloe. Witching Hour is promoting this campaign as more small-scale and tactical than the massive battles of Suneaters, a style that suits the feel of sniper Thaddeus L'Eclin and his rife-armed Greyjackets.
Another, somewhat confusing IAP option is 3x battle speed. That's right, if you want to play the game at triple the normal speed, it will cost you 99c. Why? Well, it looks like Touch Arcade's own forum deserves some of the credit. The devs created 3x speed for testing, but decided that it was too fast for regular play (breaking the game's look and making it hard to follow what is happening). TA Forum members helped persuade them to put it in behind a paywall - for the impatient and the hardcore. That actually makes sense.
The addition of the online accounts teases players with the possibility that multiplayer is coming soon (multiplayer and skirmish play have been top requests by TA forum members since the game was released), and in the mean time, Witching Hour has added further to the highly-developed world of Estellion with a blog featuring the letters and sketches of Bard Makkre as he travels the land.
iPad users have had the pleasure of checking out Michael Jackson: The Experience [$2.99 / $4.99 (HD)] for a few months, but it wasn’t until last week that iPhone/touch users were finally able to jam with the King of Pop. Now that both versions are available, we thought we’d see how it plays out on iOS. Unfortunately, the excellent presentation and fan service that it offers aren’t enough to overcome a variety of issues concerning controls, song selection and visuals.
If you’ve never played one of the many iterations of Michael Jackson: The Experience, you’re in for a treat from a fan service perspective. Songs take place in environments from their music videos, with backup dancers and scene changes as appropriate. Cutscenes and familiar choreography set the stage and do a great job helping you remember the time of classic (and dare I say, better) music videos. You can also change Michael’s costumes between songs (for a price), adding to the nostalgia. There’s a lot here in terms of presentation and production values. Unfortunately, the game goes downhill from there.
Being based off the Vita version of Experience, you’d expect this iOS port to have decent visuals and to a certain extent you’d be correct. The game looks nice enough, but behind the mask you’ll find stunted (and repetitive) movement. In addition, I encountered slowdown spikes at random intervals during some song runs, which can be really dangerous and mess up timing (particularly in a rhythm game). Still, outside the slowdown the visuals work well enough for a rhythm game, until you get to the controls.
Experience’s gameplay centers on swipes and taps that must be done to the beat of the music. Prompts will appear on the screen indicating the direction and timing of the move, with two indicators slowly coming together until they merge (indicating the right time to swipe/tap). Harder difficulty levels add in curve and circle-swipes, as well as moves requiring both hands.
There are several issues with the rhythm controls in Experience. First, the timing mechanism just feels off. There are not enough visual cues to really differentiate between a ‘Perfect’ and a ‘Great,’ leaving you guessing a lot. In addition, there aren’t any auditory cues if you miss notes. Finally, while I understand hard difficulties are supposed to be, well, difficult, but Experience’s difficulty seems to stem more from a confusing mess of control prompts rather than actual difficulty. Other silly issues, such as the inability to see which difficulties you’ve beaten, and the lack of a song progress meter, keep the game behind the curve.
One area that is really disappointing in Experience is the song selection. For the price of the game you get four full songs to play, with 9 others available as IAP (separate purchases, no packs). Strangely enough, the IAP selection seems to vary between the iPhone version and the iPad version. For example, Thriller is available as IAP for iPad, while it’s not for iPhone (which makes no sense to me). I’m not sure of the reason for this fragmentation (besides monetary reasons), but I don’t like it. Adding insult to injury is the fact that all the IAP is pre-downloaded, with purchases simply “unlocking” the songs vice downloading. Maybe it doesn’t make much of a difference but it just feels wrong.
Unfortunately, offering a recommendation for Experience isn’t as black or white as one would hope. The imprecise controls, and surprisingly small song selection hold the game back. Of course, that’s not to say that the game is necessarily bad – it just isn’t as good as the better iOS rhythm titles. Regardless, if you’re a fan of Jackson songs and you’re willing to put up with the above issues, you can do a lot worse than Michael Jackson: The Experience. Just don’t expect much more than the fan service if you get it.
Don't know who Judge Dredd is? That'll be 6 months, creep, for lying to an officer.
Dredd is the UK's best-known comic book character, but if you're not into comics then you probably only know him from the utterly regrettable Stallone movie. With another movie in the works and fan hopes high, it's a good time for Tin Man Games' Judge Dredd: Countdown Sector 106 [$5.99].
Judge Dredd had been arresting perps -- and shooting them in cold blood -- since 1977, and reflects the cold war paranoia of the time through the satirical lens of British humor. You see, the comic book is British, but the character is American. Dredd is part of the dictatorial government of post-apocalyptic Mega-City One. He (and the other Judges) are literally judge, jury, and executioner, enforcing the impossibly strict law brutally in a society where possession of coffee or sugar is a crime and unemployment is over 90%.
I've always seen Dredd as a parody of the American obsession with gun-toting "antiheroes" with massive body counts, and while Tin Man Games' gamebook version of Judge Dredd captures the argot and atmosphere of Mega-City One, it wasn't the biting satire I'd hoped for.
The latest update to Offworld Games' Legion of the Damned [$2.99] adds a friends list and invite-only games to multiplayer, as incorporates a cut-scene viewer into the game's campaign mode.
These additions help fix two of the flaws in this otherwise outstanding game. Legion is a game that appeals to a relatively hard-core TBS audience, and also sits at a higher-than average price point, so getting the details right is crucial.
The new friends list and invite systems work well, but online play is not Game Center (or OpenFeint) integrated, so you'll have to add your wargaming buddies individually.
Legion also suffered from imperfect integration of story with gameplay. In the beginning of the Campaign, it's not always clear how the game's well-executed cut-scenes relate to the battle you just fought, or the one you'll be fighting next. The new cut-scene viewer make it easy to refresh your memory.
Legion of the Damned was already a great strategy title, but this latest update does add some welcome features. We look forward to promised future updates that will include easier sharing and ranking of user-created maps.
Way back in 1991, a little UK shareware studio called Team 17 released a top-down, space-themed shooter for the Amiga platform. Dark and highly atmospheric -- downright scary, actually -- Alien Breed and the enhanced Special Edition '92 version that followed, were soon hailed as bringing some of the best shooter action that Amiga gamers had ever seen. So popular were they that, to date, eight sequels have followed, half of those for modern consoles. And now, Alien Breed [$0.99] has come to the iOS platform.
Alien Breed drops you, the player, into a classic space marine type scenario. The year is 2191 and the galaxy is at the brink of war. You've just finished six months of dead-boring patrol duty around the Intex Network and were glad to be heading home. That is, before orders arrived to check out a remote Space Research Center which had gone silent on the Federation wavebands. As you approach ISRC-4 near the red giant Gianor, you notice an eerie silence surrounding the station. Something is obviously very wrong…
Well, this mystery is solved. The first episode of The Walking Dead is still coming to iPad and iPhone. In fact, it's hitting July 26, Telltale has just confirmed.
A blog post on the studio's site reveals that this, and the other episodes, are going to feature a "new interface design," which should make playing these games on mobile a much more intuitive experience. The images we have below specifically show off its contextual action gestures, as well as its new dialogue menu.
The first episode will run you $4.99. Later episodes will be released as IAP at the same price, but you'll also get the option to essentially pre-order the next four for $14.99. That'll save you some dough if you get sold on this one.
And yeah, you'll need newer hardware to run these games. The list of supported devices includes: iPad 2, the new iPad, iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, and 4th Generation iPods and above.
We've spent some time with the Macintosh version of the game a long time ago and shared our experience. In a nutshell, The Walking Dead is a really gruesome and smart adventure game that plays off the comic book's fiction almost perfectly. This thing seems to nail choice and has some of the more terrifying scenes ever in a video game, too. Buckle up.
As we teased about last month, Hemisphere Games has been hard at work on adding multiplayer functionality to their zen-like puzzle game Osmos [$2.99 / $4.99 (HD)], and that update has finally landed in the App Store. As you’re probably aware, Osmos is all about building up the mass of your player orb, called a mote, so that you can gobble up other, smaller orbs. This is exactly what the multiplayer is built around.
Either online or locally, two players can connect and pick from 6 different arenas to battle in. Then it becomes a race to see who can absorb more smaller orbs and thus become large enough to absorb the other player. It’s dead simple, but can be quite frantic and fun. Connections appear to work well whether locally or online against random players or friends.
There’s also support for playing iPad against iPhones or iPod touches as well as an optional handicap system if you’re giving your buddies too big of a beatdown and want to even things up a bit. 15 additional Game Center achievements, the ability to send out invites and boast your accomplishments over social media, and plenty of smaller tweaks and fixes round out this latest update.
Be sure to check out our original Osmos review and our thoughts on the iPhone version, and hit up our forums to find some opponents to square off against. If you’re an Osmos fan then definitely grab this latest multiplayer update that adds a great competitive edge to one of the nicest iOS puzzlers available.
The ideas behind most hidden object games are fairly cliche by now, with the majority either focusing on spooky mansions where apparitions talk to you, or in victorian era villages where steampunk and high society are the main themes. Criminal Investigation Agents: Petrodollar$ [$2.99 / $4.99] does things a bit differently, and isn't a great game, but is so fun to laugh at while playing it's worth checking out.
In Petrodollar$, you play as Frances Keegan, an agent for the Federal Tax Bureau that needs to investigate a conspiracy surrounding an oil company's finances. That'd usually be enough to set off the crazy alarm, yet there's more. Keegan's coworker has disappeared, and she believes that someone in big oil had something to do with it. It's basically every cheesy TV movie you've ever seen rolled into one.
You know what makes the world go round? Food. Especially in the town of Le Havre [$6.99]. You can have all the Francs you want but if you can't feed your workers, you're going to be in a world of pain. After all, hungry men don't make money, they make medical bills.
A fantastically down-to-earth sort of game, Le Havre is yet another nifty iOS port of a well-loved board game. The objective here is simple: you want to become the wealthiest man alive. Well, more or less, at any rate. You really just need to beat your opponents in the profitability department.
In order to accomplish this lofty goal, you're going to have to gather resources, manage buildings, finance construction, provide life-giving sustenance to your minions, build ships and make life as difficult as possible for your fellow capitalists.
In the future, those who are crippled, dying, or about to be executed can opt to be reborn as cyborgs. The catch is that such a resurrection comes at a price: permanent enlistment in the Legion of the Damned. Suicidal cyborgs, genocidal aliens and Byzantine politics are all a part of this game based on William Dietz' novels.
Here's the twist: Legion of the Damned [$2.99] isn't an adventure game or a FPS, it's a hex-map TBS reminiscent of classic wargames like QQP's The Perfect General and SSI's Panzer General. It also includes a feature rarely seen in iOS games: a map editor. Strategy games are often light on story, but this one is steeped in a rich setting and follows the plot of Dietz' first book. Perhaps the closest thing to Legion in the App Store is Battle for Wesnoth [$3.99], but the games are very different in feel.
A few weeks back, we found out that Illusion Labs had a new iOS project in the works called Blast-A-Way [$4.99]. At first we weren’t really sure what it was all about, but a trailer released a couple of days later revealed it to be a physics puzzle game that used various types of explosives to blast apart a level and reach the end goal.
This past February, Omni Systems released an iPad version of their award-winning real-time strategy title Eufloria HD [
