Who doesn’t like planting crops and a little cross-pollination? It’s the kind of relaxing fun that got thousands hooked on Farmville, until those Facebook alerts got unbearable. Bloom Box [$1.99 / Free] is the new plant-based puzzle game from Nexxstudio. If you plant your seeds in the right sequence, you can set off a chain reaction that brings your tiny garden to life. It’s an intricate setup for a game that isn’t as complex as it wants to be.
Each level in Bloom Box starts off with a small flower-less garden and handful of boxes. The flower button at the bottom of the screen is connected to the first “bloom box” in the chain. The bloom boxes have dots on the top, like a tabletop-game die. If you tap one of the boxes, you can see where the box will spread its seeds. There are five different types of boxes, each of which shoots out between four to eight seeds at varying distances.
When it comes to differentiating your game from the pack, a little eccentricity goes a long way. Butterscotch Shenanigans must take this to heart as each of its titles ooze with quirky characters and a unique sense of humor. Quadropus Rampage [Free], the latest from the developer, doesn't deviate from this standard. Luckily, it's also a great game as well, merging brawler gameplay in a rogue-like shell making the freemium title worth playing.
Tasked with dealing with the usurper King of the Sea as he attempts to invade the land above, Rampage has players guiding Tack the Quadropus through the depths of the sea to dispatch the aquatic army of the sea. If you've played Butterscotch's previous titles, you'll be greeted with the same colorful narrative and art style that graced the likes of Towelfight 2.
In case you didn't get a chance to check out our earlier preview, the best way to describe Quadropus is part-roguelike and part-brawler. Tack dives from level to level taking on the aquatic enemies of the deep. His arsenal consists of a simple attack with his weapon, a short-lived bubble shield which prevents damage, an ink move that allows fast movement past enemies (and over pitfalls) and a few special moves. When all the enemies are taken out, a teleport to the next level is opened, and the cycle begins anew. If players fall, they start again from the top and begin the journey again.
Despite the limited attack moves, I was pretty impressed with how strategic Rampage can play. Enemies come at you in a variety of different ways from projectiles to lasers to butt-stomps. While the first few depths are relatively easy, you'll find yourself needing to dodge, protect and strategically attack soon afterwards. It's also gratifying to gracefully maneuver Tack around hordes of enemies and dispatch them. Rampage's control scheme, while looking unseemly to the uninitiated, actually works quite well in allowing players to accomplish this.
Quadropus Rampage is rogue-like in the sense that each depth level is procedurally generated with different enemies, rewards and weapon drops. I particularly loved the weapon drops as the weapon names, while randomized, are hilarious on their own. Names aren't the only thing randomized, of course, as stats, attack range, and even attack speed all vary widely with weapons. While I wish there was a way to improve weapons so you can keep them a bit longer during runs (turnover is pretty high), at least another crazy weapon isn't too far away.
Tying the game together are a bevy of long-term Mastery objectives, stat-boosting items and the standard two-prong freemium currency system for stat increases. Masteries unlock after completing an objective (for example level up 25 times over all runs) and give players an opportunityt o pick one of two traits under that mastery. Traits are perpetual for all runs and can be changed at will between runs. I really enjoyed the Mastery system as it does a great job fusing long-term objective goals with actual rewards that make a difference during play. It makes achievements in Quadropus actually have meaning, increasing replaybility.
The dual-currency, meanwhile, is what you'd expect in a freemium environment. Orbs are the common currency, are earned (rather liberally) during standard play, and are used to purchase permanent stat upgrades and purchase weapons from a random shopkeep during runs. Doubloons are the premium currency and can be found sparingly during play, bought in-game with orbs (only if the shopkeep offers it) or purchased via IAP. Doubloons are restricted towards early unlocks of masteries (i.e. unlock traits without completing the requisite objectives) and resurrecting a run. Unlike most freemium games, doubloons aren't required to experience the whole game or to even enjoy the game to its fullest. This is freemium done well and I appreciate the way Quadropus Rampage implements its system.
There's very little to complain about with Quadropus Rampage. It's an excellent roguelike/brawler hybrid with a control system that matches the fast-paced action. In addition, the randomized aspects, long-term Masteries and upgrade systems do a great job keep you playing. Finally, the story, humor and overall tone are simply amusing and make each run a fun experience. If it was paid I'd recommend it whole-heartedly, as a free-to-play title, you have no excuse to quit reading and download it right now.
If you've heard of ustwo as a gamer it's probably thanks to Whale Trail [Free], a psychedelic flier starring the darling Willow the whale. Since that hit in 2011 the studio's been fairly quiet on the game front, focusing its attentions on apps that showcase interaction and user interface design. Now ustwo has returned to the gaming world with Blip Blup [$1.99 / Free], a game that might be even better suited to its specialities.
If you're looking to show off your interface design skills, after all, puzzle games are probably the way to go. A solid set of rules and a sensible interface can win the day. Blip Blup has a pretty simple ruleset: when you touch a tile (an act called a "blip"), a pulse of color spreads out from it. It passes like light from its source, travelling through connected corners and stopping against walls. Change the color of every tile before you run out of blips to win.
Simple, and spelled out clearly through the game's interface. The first couple level packs are kind, showing you where your blips will take you. Later, you'll simply need to know. Everything makes perfect visual sense, though. At a glance you can see which tiles you can tap, which ones will get in your way, which ones are special and what they do.
The special tiles are introduced as you work your way through Blip Blup's ten level packs. Each one adds one new rule to the game. An arrow sends your blip along a new path. A series of dots means you need to hit the tile enough times to fill each dot. You can probably imagine what a skull means, and whether or not it's a good idea to blip death tiles.
They all follow that simple, clear iconography, so you could easily put Blip Blup down for a few weeks and come back to it without missing a beat. You might find you need to: there's no way to skip levels, so if you can't complete something in the requisite number of blips, you just need to do better. By the same token, there's no IAP or funny business—aside from an absolute glut of ads in the free version, at least.
The first eighteen levels or so are a cakewalk. It's not easy to fail to get three stars. After that, the game stops holding your hand. Passing levels is still a breeze for quite some time, but earning three stars by using fewer than the maximum blips gets dicey. Once you start juggling a few different types of special tiles, you may find that just passing each level is enough of a challenge—never mind perfecting it. The ramp up isn't quick, but it's there.
If you've ever played (the delightful) Helsing's Fire [$0.99] you'll probably find the experience familiar. Blip Blup is a simpler game, both mechanically and visually, but hunting around for the perfect position to light up the map still works brilliantly.
And while it's simpler, Blip Blup manages to be just as complex as it needs to be. A handful of tiles that mark special rules may not seem like much, but when put together just right they create some very interesting puzzles. Blip Blup may make for an excellent exercise in interface design, but it's also quite a fun little puzzle game from the folks at ustwo.
There's something very enjoyable about anticipation followed by a pleasant surprise. Casinos, collectible card games, and a lot of video games all use this technique to make things more fun. Action RPGs have managed to create this feeling quite a bit in the past with random loot, but Battlestone [Free] comes at it from a slightly different angle, to middling results.
The random element in this particular action RPG is not loot. In fact, there is no loot. At all. Instead, it's the heroes who are randomly generated. Battlestone provides you with a couple of heroes initially, but after that, you are left to the mercy of summoning random characters. These summoned characters will be generated from a few different classes, a variety of elements, various perks, and special moves. You can manipulate your luck to an extent, by spending some premium currency, but that currency comes so slowly that unless you're buying IAPs, you'll have to settle for the non-zero chance of getting a powerful hero from the basic method.
Yes, there are multiple currencies in this game, and not just the usual two-currency method we see employed in many modern games. There are coins, which are probably the easiest currency to earn as you receive them for finishing stages. These can be spent on upgrading weapons and fusing your heroes together to make them stronger.
Living for glory kinda went out with dying by the sword: there just isn't much of it in the daily struggle to work a desk job, handle your homework or get your kids in bed on time. Sword & Glory [Free] is an outstanding game that imagines a time when life was all about the struggle to raise yourself and your family for nothing, earn a reputation for great deeds and pass that down through generations.
The life you live may always start the same—the same small homestead, the same brotherly advice— but you have a few key decisions to make before you begin. You can pick a clan, align yourself with the hardy Elk Clan, the noble Eagle Clan or the traditional Bear Clan. Or you can shove the whole clan system and go it alone. Similarly, you can dedicate yourself to a faith or go for a more worldly approach. Finally you define a personality trait for yourself. Those choices directly impact the life you'll lead—the kinds of quests you'll encounter, the opportunities that will arise and the ways you'll excel in combat.
From those humble beginnings you head off to build a life. At first you'll probably focus on helping your family and clan, driving off competition for resources, hunting down petty thieves, and otherwise protecting your homestead. Maybe you'll get married. Maybe you'll range far from home.
Many decisions come down to a binary choice: do violence, or don't. Violence isn't always the best option, but it is usually the fastest route to glory (score, more or less), Epic points and silver. With those things you can improve your lot in life, so while you may want to pick your battles, you'll have to do some fighting.
Fighting comes down to a fairly simple duel system. You face off against a foe with a sword and shield. You have buttons for the same. Combinations of tapping and holding give you shield bashes, blocks, and careful, fast or power attacks. There's a rock-paper-scissors calculation going on in the background, and with that and careful timing you can destroy your foes.
With a few successful bouts under your belt, life opens up. You can expand your home, improving your stats in the process. You can buy new gear that gets passed down to your future characters. You can use your Epic points to unlock truly impressive items. And you can range farther afield, encountering new adventures and new challenges.
Wounds are easily dealt with at the cost of some of your hard earned Epic points, but eventually you'll take too many hits in a single fight and die. Even if you're a flawless warrior, death gets us all in the end. When that happens, your character is given a title for his sacrifice and a place in the graveyard. Your glory is marked on the leaderboard, your silver is lost, your points and gear go onto the next generation, and you start again anew.
It's a fantastic arrangement, well thought out from almost every angle. The most confusing part is that Sword & Glory is currently completely free. It seems as though room was left in its design for in-app purchases of Epic points, but those haven't materialized. You have to earn every bit of future success for yourself, and there is no cost but the effort you're willing to put in.
Sure, the art style might be a touch divisive (stark whites as far as the eye can see) and the game sometimes suffers from clumsy writing, but there's really no reason not to try it out. Sword & Glory delivers what it promises: glory to be had, and life and death by the sword.
Evil's brewing, and it's up to the holy crusader and his pals to end it. Deep Dungeons of Doom [Free] celebrates a frequently trodden yet continuously enjoyable path with a suitably generic story and enough dry humor to keep it relevant. Wrapped in some gorgeous pixel art and animations, Bossa Studios has one satisfyingly bountiful iOS game on their hands.
Attacks, which are triggered with a tap on the right side of the screen, have a refractory period - you won't be able to mash your way to success. Attempt an attack while the ability is cooling and you'll prolong the cooldown. A tap on the left readies your guard, eliminating any damage the enemy might toss your way. Victory in each duel spurs the chest on the far side of the room to burst, spewing its contents of gold and, potentially, loot. A bottom up swipe of your finger will drag the screen up, sending your character deeper underground (and on to your next fight). Dungeon crawling without the crawling.
The silly and eccentric developers at Butterscotch Shenanigans are just about ready to unleash their latest iOS effort Quadropus Rampage, which we took an early hands-on look at last month and were quite pleased with, but unfortunately have hit a snag in the Apple approval process. As they spelled out on their blog, Quadropus Rampage was rejected on Monday for some minor issues, and while those were immediately fixed and a new build resubmitted, it's still hanging around in the approval queue.
They feel bad about this, because as they put it, "we know a horde of our iOS humans were wicked pumped to slap their greasy tentacles all over their devices" with the new game. In an effort to say they are sorry and to ease the pain of waiting just a little bit longer for Quadropus, they've made their previous release Towelfight 2: The Monocle of Destiny [$0.99] free until their new game finally hits the App Store with Apple's blessing.
If you aren't super sure what Towelfight 2 is, well we've got you covered. We took the game for a spin in a TA Plays video, and we pointed out all the reasons we enjoyed the title in our full review, though you should definitely consider the big post-release update that fixed many of the issues we and other gamers initially had with the game. In short, Towelfight 2 is awesome, and if you don't own it already then you should definitely grab it for free.
We'll keep our eyes and ears on the alert for Quadropus Rampage just as soon as it hits the App Store, and if you want an alert when it does hit then simply add it to your TouchArcade [Free] app Watch List, and be sure to pass the time until then with Towelfight 2 for free.
Based on the new movie Turbo from DreamWorks Animation, Turbo Racing League [Free] is, as it says on the label, a racing game, developed by the good folks at PikPok, who are known for developing very fun pick up and play games like Into the Dead and Super Monsters Ate My Condo. While Turbo Racing League isn't quite at the same level as those two, it's nevertheless a very fun, competent racer.
For those not familiar with the film, Turbo follows the story of a snail who dreams of becoming the fastest racer in the world. In the game, you control a snail racer, working your way up the ladder to reach the highest racing class. Suffice it to say, this is not a simulation racer. Instead, it takes a page from drift-heavy racers like the classic Outrun, along with track design littered with boost pads in the vein of F-Zero and other futuristic racers. There are one or two shortcuts set on each track that you'll want to hit as often as you can, but the meat of the game is drifting skillfully around the tracks, going from boost pad to boost pad.
The tracks all reflect the small size of your would-be speedster, built on tabletops with everyday objects like books and playing cards creating tunnels and ramps. The selection of tracks, nine in total at the moment, offers up a nice variety of hairpin turns, hills, loop-de-loops, and jumps. They're very fun, both to look at and play. You'll be completing a few different types of challenges on these tracks, including one-on-one races, time trials, slaloms, and fuel challenges. Fuel challenges are interesting because you need to pick up fuel around the track in order to keep going, but a taken can of fuel will not reappear on your next lap, so you need to plan carefully.
Progression in Turbo Racing League is a hybrid of typical racing games and three-star challenges. To move up to the next racing class, you need to earn a set amount of stars. Each challenge offers up to three stars, and you can have three of these challenges open at any given time. Once you three-star it, the challenge clears and another one appears. This gives you some options, in case a particular challenge is giving you grief, but only to certain point. You'll never make it to the next racing class if you can't three-star at least one of the challenges in front of you. You also have the option to run a time trial on any of that class's tracks, to practice, or to earn some tomatoes to upgrade your racer.
Initially, your snail is very plain, better suited to a dinner plate in an upscale restaurant than the Indy 500. As you complete races and challenges, you'll pick up tomatoes, some on the track, but most as prizes for performing well. You can use these tomatoes to trick out your snail in a huge variety of ways, from boosting your base stats to purchasing new shells and shell accessories. You can even purchase new snails, though that requires quite a few tomatoes. Unfortunately, as you move up to each new racing class, you'll need to buy your upgrades all over again, which is a bit disappointing.
The game is very free with the tomatoes in the early going, but from Class 2 on, things start to get a bit more expensive, so you might have to grind a bit if you want to really improve your stats. Naturally, if you don't feel like grinding, a bevy of tomatoes are just an IAP away, including the ever-useful doubler. Additionally, you can complete daily challenges to earn a few more tomatoes, though not terribly many. The game ups its challenge at a pretty fair rate, so even if you don't want to spend money on IAPs, you should be able to move forward without getting stalled for too long at any given point, given enough practice and skill.
You can choose from four different control layouts. The game defaults to tilt controls but will immediately give you the choice to change them to one of the other three layouts. If you like virtual controls, you have two flavors to choose from, or if you don't, you can pick a control option that relies on simple left-side/right-side touches. I found the tilt controls to be more than capable in most cases, but the slalom races were a little tricky initially. The options are certainly quite welcome, so good on PikPok for including them.
Overall, Turbo Racing League is a very fun game. Although it's probably not the kind of game you'll sit down with for hours at a time, there's a surprising amount of depth to the racing itself, as people on our forums have discovered. If you're looking for a quick bit of arcade racing fun with a nice dollop of visual charm on top, you should check this one out.
Well this is good news, Golf Star [Free] just got a decently sized new update, and amongst some cool features for good players, like increasing the level cap to 60, and the introduction of winning streaks for bonus prizes, you can finally suck at virtual golf with your closest friends.
For the uninformed, Golf Star is Com2Us's attempt at a quality free-to-play golfing simulation. With most of the market taken up by Tiger Woods 12 [$0.99] and the totally-not-trying-to-be-hot-shots Lets Golf 3 [Free], Golf Star faces an uphill climb for players and relevancy. A climb that, if you ask me, it has tackled splendidly well. As someone who digs the game of golf, but hates the bloviating nature of the Tiger Woods titles and the lets-throw-physics-out-the-window gameplay of Lets Golf 3, Golf Star hits a balance between quality simulation and accessibility.
Finally being able to invite friends to a match, however, is the icing on the proverbial cake. Previously, across both Golf Star and Lets Golf 3, it was surprisingly complicated to play a game against a carefully chosen opponent. You'd have to either join a multi-person tournament on the off chance you're tossed into a game with your friend in Golf Star, or create a tournament, play it, then wait for your friend to complete it so you could compare scores. Not, exactly, intuitive.
So it's with many kudos (wrapped in a "took you long enough") that I'm excited to play golf with my friends, on mobile, finally. All one of them. If you wanna hit the links, Golf Star is free, and despite being free-to-play, I've yet to run into a situation where I wasn't allowed to play anymore due to timer-related B.S, and I've been playing pretty solidly for a few weeks. Feel free to drop me a line - I'm ANTVGM64 on there.
CORRECTION: OK, so, it turns out you're not actively playing realtime multiplayer against your friends, but rather online AI battles against them and their golfer statistics. It works well enough that it fooled us though, and that counts for something. Definitely check out Golf Star if you haven't already.
Attribite seems to have an obsession with food. But they also seem to love mashing up familiar ideas and coming away with great iOS games. Their first release was Save My Bacon [Free], an endless runner that takes the Tiny Wings [$0.99 / $2.99 (HD)] tap-to-dive mechanic and tosses in some TNT and pigs with wings, and now they have the dairy-laden racing puzzle game 1968 [$0.99].
According to the Swedish studio Attribite, the United States sent a tiny little car up to the Moon in 1968—a year before the Apollo 11 mission—and found something unexpected: cheese. Like, the entire celestial body is cheese. (If their next two games aren’t about eggs and tortillas and they retroactively call this the Breakfast Taco series, I will burn something.) Now that little car has to traverse the strange, monochromatic landscape of the Moon to collect bright yellow cheese wedges.
The structure of the game is rather familiar in that you are presented with several worlds, each one containing multiple levels. In each level, you are given the chance to complete it to gain a rating between one and three stars. These stars unlock the worlds beyond “The Mooon” (with three Os) like K-Mars, Loopiter, and Uturn with more, presumably, on the way. If you don’t want to spend the time mastering each stage, though, there is a 99¢ in-app purchase available that unlocks everything.
The game itself plays like a strange amalgamation of RedLynx’s Trials HD and, well, any game that requires you to collect things. It comes across almost immediately as a puzzle game, but make no mistake: 1968 demands skill from you.
WazHack [Free] is an educational game. It teaches core success skills, like "eat your Orc while it's fresh," "don't take your pet skeleton to church," "just because you've found Mjolnir doesn't mean you're worthy to wield it," and "you will die."
Okay, so WazHack is a roguelike, and one that owes a lot to Nethack [Free / Free (HD)], including a turn-based mechanic, shopkeepers who will mess you up if you screw with them, and the permadeath.
The fundamentals are traditional, staples, but this game does a lot to make itself a very engaging and moble-friendly roguelike. First, there's the fact that it's side-scrolling. This makes each new level of the dungeon of Waz manageable in scope, makes creating choke points easier, and allows for a crystal-clear automap that takes most of the memory work out of moving back up the dungeon to visit merchants or collect cached supplies. As Jared noted in his First Impression, the game's pricing is generous: try all eight classes for free, and buy the ones you like in two-packs for 99¢ each. That's it for IAP.
Dig down deep enough and you'll notice that most matching games target the parts of us that want things tidy, want to clear a whole color right off the board or line up all the gems into nice little rows. The game messes things up, and we go about tidying after it. Go Round [Free]toys with this instinct, forcing players to clear out only the things that truly matter.
We start with three concentric rings. Each of those rings is scattered with colored balls, and each time you match three of those balls they combine and move inward. Assuming they can, at least. The goal is to get them to the middle, but you can only do that if there's a clear path to travel.
Were we to respond in the obvious manner, we'd clear paths to the center and then go to work methodically cleaning out each ring as we went. That would, however, be a quick way to lose.
It feels like every discussion with Gameloft inevitably devolves into a discussion about their tendency to make games that are greatly inspired by others. While originality is obviously an important element, I care less about that and more about whether the game is simply fun. Such is the case with Blitz Brigade [Free], a game that takes its cues heavily from a certain Valve game. While Blitz Brigade won't win any points for innovation, the team-based FPS gameplay works well enough to overcome its freemium shell be enjoyable on iOS.
Have you played Team Fortress 2? If so, then you'll know what to expect with Blitz Brigade. The cartoony visuals, player classes and team-oriented play are very reminiscent of Valve's long-standing F2P FPS. As you might expect, Blitz Brigade is multiplayer only, and players are matched up into games with a maximum of 6 v 6. A total of five character classes can eventually be unlocked, and a multitude of weapons can be purchased and used.
Seeing how this is an iOS freemium game, Blitz Brigade does have a few differences from its inspiration. For starters, the game features a standard duel-currency system which is used to upgrade weapons. Coins are earned during normal play and are used for purchasing weapons and single-use power-ups. Diamonds, meanwhile, are primarily earned through IAP and are used to purchase diamond-only equipment, fast-track weapon upgrades and special appearance items. As one might expect, diamond-bought weapons are a bit more powerful than their coin counterparts, so it's relatively easy for a newcomer to buy their way into powerful stat increases.
While this is can be a concern, especially for a multiplayer-based game, I didn't find it to be as big a deal as one might think. Due to the touch-based controls and the inclusion of auto-aim, Blitz Brigade does a decent job of giving players an opportunity to succeed, regardless of how much you've paid for powerful weapons. Hitting objectives, sneaking up on players, and sniping with a steady hand still go a long way. Competitive gamers looking for a purely equal footing will certainly not be happy with Blitz Brigade's underpinnings, but for most others it's satisfactory.
More importantly, I found matches and standard coin collection to be enjoyable. Sure, there aren't any treasure chests or collectibles as in TF2, but the coin rate during normal matches (assuming you make at least one IAP purchase and obtain 'VIP') is fair and there's enough long term goals and challenges to keep you playing.
The above enjoyment assumes you get into a match that's lag-free which, unfortunately, is harder to come by than it should be. It's a shame too, because matches with high latency are completely unpredictable and simply not fun and I encountered more than I'd like when getting assigned into games. Adding to the annoyance is the fact that even simple things like logging into the multiplayer infrastructure can take whole minutes if the server is under load.
Otherwise, my biggest complaints were with the lack of game modes (only Team Deathmatch and Domination currently exist) and the limited selection of stages. Weapon durability, which lessens the strength of your weapons the more you use them (until you pay coins to fix them up), is aspect of Blitz Brigade that I really feel is pointless. Is it a deal breaker? Not particularly, but it's annoying nonetheless.
While Blitz Brigade offers an enjoyable experience in team-based FPS gameplay, the overall experience is still clouded by freemium add-ons that add unnecessary annoyances. Unfortunately, this description is the norm rather than the exception in this day and age. If you're looking for a multiplayer oriented FPS that will have a player base and receive support (at least for the short term), by all means check out what Blitz Brigade has to offer. Just be forewarned that this isn't your PC's F2P shooter.
Paradox Interactive has just begun dipping their toes into the mobile space, but the iPad version of their mega-popular PC franchise Magicka has proven that they can simplify their typically complex formulas into something that's fun and easily digestible on mobile touchscreen devices. If you're an iPad owner who initially passed on Magicka: Wizards of the Square Tablet [$1.99 (HD)] when it launched in March, now is the time to finally give it a look as it has gone free for the time being.
I say for the time being because, well, I'm not sure if this will be a limited freebie promotion or if the game is just flat going free-to-play from this point onward. I mean, the way the in-game currency and IAP is built feels geared towards a f2p experience already, and we've all seen initially paid games to the ol' switcheroo shortly after release. Still, the IAP isn't gross in Magicka at all, so don't be scared that you'll be wasting your time trying it out. But if you bought the game initially and feel burned now… welcome to the App Store, I guess.
We took Magicka for a spin in our TA Plays video prior to release, and we ended up enjoying the game quite a bit in our review following its launch. Feelings seem to be somewhat split on the game, however, as some people have found the mixing and matching of elements to create spells, which is a hallmark of the series, really compelling while others have found it a bit button-mashy and repetitive.
Well, now you can make up your mind for yourself with Magicka being free, so don't hesitate to jump on it or stop by the discussion thread in our forums for more impressions.
Ace Attorney: Phoenix Wright started out life on the Gameboy Advance system in Japan in 2001 and since then has seen multiple sequels, re-releases and even a spin-off. The original game has also seen a straight port to iPhone from the Nintendo DS. So, what makes this version so special, I hear you ask in your Barry White tone (okay, Betty White, in my case)?
Well! Ace Attorney: Phoenix Wright Trilogy HD [Free], as well as being a mouthful, marks the spikey-haired lawyer's first encounter with the Retina display and what's more, every case and trial from the original three games are available via IAP. You can even play one-handed in portrait mode, according to the official blurb. Though, try doing this on an iPad and you'll either need a grotesquely giant hand or tentacles.
If you've been living under a rock for the last decade or so, the Ace Attorney games see you taking on the persona of a quirky, noob lawyer named Phoenix, who sports a hairstyle not unlike Sonic the Hedgehog's and sweats a lot in an odd, manga fashion.
Who doesn’t like planting crops and a little cross-pollination? It’s the kind of relaxing fun that got thousands hooked on Farmville, until those Facebook alerts got unbearable. Bloom Box [$1.99 / Free] is the new plant-based puzzle game from Nexxstudio. If you plant your seeds in the right sequence, you can set off a chain reaction that brings your tiny garden to life. It’s an intricate setup for a game that isn’t as complex as it wants to be. 
