You might recall that in early May we got word of a new game coming down the pipe from Pro Zombie Soccer [$0.99 / Free] developer Super Awesome Hyper Dimensional Mega Team (amazing name). The game is called Supermagical [Free], and it’s a bubble matching game similar to Bust-A-Move but turned on its side. It also comes with a host of over-the-top special moves which you can see demonstrated in the trailer below.
Supermagical actually launched in Spain's App Store back in June, with a planned cooperative multiplayer mode planned to coincide with the worldwide launch a few weeks later. It looks like that mode still isn’t quite ready, but will be coming in a future update along with a Versus multiplayer mode. So instead of waiting any longer, the Super Mega Team has launched Supermagical worldwide as of today.
Impressions in our forums going all the way back to the Spanish release have been overwhelmingly positive, and we’re stoked to finally give Supermagical a go ourselves. You can check it out now for 99¢.
Those with a fondness for canines and matching gameplay can finally get in on what us cat lovers have been enjoying since March with Kitten Sanctuary [$1.99 / Free], as the dog-centric Puppy Sanctuary [Free] is now available in the App Store.
Gameplay is of a similar matching style as Kitten Sanctuary that has you completing a series of levels to rescue a poor little pup who’s caught up in a cage. Once rescued you can plop your dog down in an assortment of environments and interact with them via various items and toys.
Puppy Sanctuary is free to download and try with a limited selection of levels, and the whole game can be unlocked for the launch sale price of 99¢ from within the app itself. There are no other in-app purchases beyond that, everything is earned through playing. Also, to celebrate the launch, Kitten Sanctuary sees a price drop down to 99¢ and there’s also a lite version of that to try.
Matching games have become a hard sell in the over saturated market of the App Store, but Kitten Sanctuary was like a breath of fresh air when it launched and Puppy Sanctuary appears to continue that tradition. Definitely check it out for free.
An excellent premise is more than enough to carry a game.
Two years removed from the launch of Solipskier on iPad and iPhone, Mikengreg has crafted another sport-inspired game into something that barely resembles its source material. Gasketball [Free (HD)] is basketball meets puzzler, a funky Frankenstein cobbled together with these genre's constituent parts, each glued to the other by the will of Gasketball's creative vision and interesting visual oddities. It's so good, you guys.
Gasketball's creativity and execution don't always extend to its puzzle design, but you forgive its larger missteps because it gives you something new -- a cohesive, quirky shot-for-shot matching game that plays it loose in the best sense possible.
So last week we checked out a trailer for an upcoming modern-military third-person shooter called Trigger Fist [Free] from Lake Effect Applications. It didn't look markedly different from every other military shooter out there, with a mixture of indoor and outdoor maps and plenty of weapons to unload into your opponent.
The big thing that made Trigger Fist stand out to me, strangely, was that in the trailer you could clearly see that it was possible to carry a goat on your back like a backpack. A live goat. The animal kind. I couldn’t quite put my finger on what its purpose was, but was assured by the developer that it had to do with one of the game types.
If you were among the many people who were super excited about earlier this week about Wizorb [$2.99] hitting the App Store, here's some even better news: It's available now. If you're unfamiliar with Wizorb, I think the best way to describe it as it does for brick breaking what 10000000 [$1.99] and Dungeon Raid [$1.99] did for the match three.
What I mean by that is it takes the ultra-familiar brick-breaking formula, but layers tons of different RPG elements to heighten the whole experience to really crazy levels. It might help to just check out the trailer:
We'll have a full review up in the not too distant future, but in the meantime, you can swing by the thread in our forums to get some early impressions from forum members.
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…
iOS has always been a fantastic fit for pinball games, what with its elongated screens and tilt functionality, and plenty of fantastic pinball games have graced the platform in the last several years. In 2009, Cowboy Rodeo delivered fantastic iOS renditions of the Amiga classics Pinball Dreams [$1.99 / Free] and its sequel Pinball Fantasies [$2.99]. They were decidedly retro, but the gameplay definitely stood the test of time and each game still holds a place amongst my very favorites on the App Store.
One bummer though was that when the iPad finally came along in 2010 there was no elegant way to bring either of the games to the larger screen without drastically tweaking the original artwork, which the developers verified looked totally ugly. However, in July of last year Cowboy Rodeo found the solution to this by retaining the exact same gameplay but recreating all of the visuals in 3D, resulting in the Universal Pinball Dreams HD [$3.99].
If you can't tell by now, we've been really excited for Subatomic Studios'Fieldrunners 2 [$2.99] for quite a long time now. This morning, Brad and I took a quick look at it, but we've been following it for a long time, even talking to the developers about the game.
It's finally out now for the iPhone and iPod touch, an iPad version is scheduled for a future release. People in our forums are having a great time with the game, but if you want to hold on for our full review, that's cool. It'll be coming very soon.
Oh hey, here’s a game that slipped under our radar during this week’s batch of new releases. That’s because it jumped the gun and actually popped up in the App Store last night. I love when that happens! It’s Rubicon Development’s Great Big War Game [$2.99], the follow-up to last year’s excellent turn-based strategy title Great Little War Game.
As you might have guessed, Great Big War Game takes everything great about the first game and makes it bigger and better, including things like improved visuals, a true fog of war, and cross-platform online multiplayer.
We’ll be giving the new game a thorough look and will be sure to tell you what we think, but chances are if you liked the first game then you’ll want to just mash away at the link below. Also, our forums are abuzz with discussion of Great Big War Game, and there's a thread right here where you can add your username for some online competition. And don’t forget you can still get the first game for free if you want to get an idea of the gameplay.
Have you ever wished you had Microsoft Kinect on your iPad? Me neither. However, you can get a similar effect with Madparker's just released iPad game Recurse [$1.99 (HD)]. Originally starting life as a No Quarter Art Game event project in 2010, Recurse came to PC and became one of those underground hit party games, sort of like J.S. Joust.
The idea is that you prop up your iPad, stand in front of it's front-facing camera, and then use your actual body to manipulate the green areas of the screen while trying to avoid the red areas. The results can be hilarious as you twist and shape your body around these virtual blockades, as demonstrated in this video.
I have to admit that Recurse is a clever game concept, and a great use of the front-facing camera equipped iPad 2 and 3. I'll definitely be giving it a try myself (while nobody is around, hopefully) to see what it's all about, but if it sounds like something that interests you or you're familiar with previous versions of the game then it's just a buck to check it out for yourself.
It was in early may that Rovio teased and then confirmed that the game formerly known as Casey’s Contraptions had been purchased by them, and that they would be re-releasing the game with new graphics, levels, and features under the name Amazing Alex.
It was sort of a surprising announcement, but also intriguing. We enjoyed the original Casey’s Contraptions and weren’t really sure what Rovio would do with it. Now we can finally discover the answer as Amazing Alex [$0.99 / $2.99 (HD)] is now available in the App Store.
We’ll be digging into Rovio’s take on this clever puzzle game to see what it’s all about, but given that the source material was good to begin with I highly doubt they’ve done anything to change that, and chances are that with Rovio’s vast resources it will be even better as the new Amazing Alex. Check back for an official review in the near future and also check out our forums for early impressions of Amazing Alex.
Here we go, the moment many of us have been waiting for. Tiny Wings 2 has hit the New Zealand App Store and will make its way through the different time zones, ultimately landing in the US App Store tonight at 11pm EST. But wait, what's this? This isn't a new game at all, but rather an update to the original Tiny Wings [$0.99]. Neat!
Yes, that's right. Tiny Wings 2 is actually Tiny Wings 2.0. It's a free update to the existing game as well as a brand new, separate iPad specific version, something we've been waiting for ever since the original release. When talking to Andreas Illiger about this decision, he had this to say regarding updating the original game as opposed to releasing a brand new app:
I [never] clarified if it will be an update or an seperate app before the release because then my fans will be happy on the release day when they see that the sequel isn't a seperate app and they will get it for free. I worked on the 2.0 version for the last 12 months and everyone told me I should make a seperate app out of it and sell it again (because it is almost a new game and I would earn a lot more money). It was a heavy decision for me to give away this new version for free but it feels right (most people I talked about this subject don't understand it .
So I decided to give it away for free as a big "thank you" to all my fans for changing my life. That's really important for me and the reason why I make this little stupid marketing trick of confusing my fans before the release.
Tiny Wings 2.0 retains the same mode from the original while also adding a new one called Flight School, which sees you controlling one of 4 different birds as you race against 3 AI opponents towards the finish line across 15 brand new levels. In addition, the iPad version comes with a same-device multiplayer mode which gives 2 players one half of the screen each to compete against each other. Both versions also (finally!) support Retina Displays.
Here's some video of the new Tiny Wings HD on the iPad along with some commentary from yours truly and Mr. Brad Nicholson:
If you are one of the millions who already own Tiny Wings, keep your eye on the App Store for an update which should hit at some point today that adds the 2.0 features. If you're an iPad owner, the new HD version will be making its way to every time zone including the US at 11pm EST tonight, and the NZ link can be found below. And if you're fretting on having a separate version for your iPad don't worry, iCloud save game syncing is one of the new features as well so you can always keep things straight between devices.
Also, don't forget to revisit the Tiny Wings topic and new iPad version topic in our forums and discuss this massive new update with the rest of the community.
Curiously absent from this week's release onslaught was Madfinger Games' Dead Trigger [Free], but following our forums it sounds like they were victim of some 11th hour Apple approval drama. Regardless of the reason for the delay, Dead Trigger is finally here. The game is a buck, and features a wide array of IAP options for various in-game currencies to unlock additional weaponry, power ups, and other things like that.
We're not very far into the game just yet, so it remains how optional these IAP items are, but it seems like you earn enough money from playing that at least the early options seem to be easily earned just by playing.
We'll have a full review, and potentially even some gameplay video shortly. In the meantime, swing by the thread in our forums.
Getting a head start over the batch of this week's slate of new releases which are set to hit in just under 24 hours is the Game Bakers' Squids Wild West [$1.99], the follow-up to last year's well-received turn-based strategy game Squids [$1.99]. We went pretty in-depth with an early build of Squids Wild West just last week, and really liked what we saw.
The stretch-and-fling combat mechanics still feel incredibly well-suited to touch screens, the environments and overall art style are still charming and colorful, and the challenge is balanced even better than last year's offering. On top of all that there's still plenty of new mechanics, additional squids to play as, and brand new environments to explore.
Remember Probe the Humans? We covered its release date announcement during a rush of E3 related news, so it might have flown under your radar. Humans, for your information, is now out and available. It's also good -- it's a sharp, fun, and otherwise delightful endless runner with awesome production values and generous free-to-play mechanics. If you're still into the genre, we suggest giving it a look.
The barrier to entry is pretty low since its $0 and all, but we went ahead and grabbed some footage of the game in action. Below, you'll learn a little bit about its mechanics and its power-up structure, as well as get a feel for the game.
An excellent premise is more than enough to carry a game.
