Here's a question: How in the world does a puzzle game generate buzz in a world dominated by 'match 3' games? Well, you can either stand out via presentation, or stand out via quality gameplay. Quell Memento [$2.99], a new Sokoban-style puzzler available on the App Store, tries to do both.
On the gameplay side of things, Quell Momento makes a...lacking first impression. There are a lot of nuances to Quell Memento's seemingly simple gameplay, including portals, color-changing orbs, one-way passage ways, light-refraction mechanics, power-switches, and about a half-dozen other modifiers that Quell is more than happy to teach you about.
On one hand, I appreciate that. Puzzle Quest had a pretty decent tutorial, but once you got invested in the dungeon building mechanics, things got pretty confusing, pretty fast. On the other hand, after putting five hours into Quell Memento I still feel like I'm in the tutorial. Typically the game introduces a mechanic, teaches it to you, then gives you four or five puzzles to use it before introducing a new one. Eventually the mechanics combine and the puzzles become increasingly complex, but I've yet to have my mind totally bent around backwards, which is something I was looking forward to after seeing all the different mechanics I'd be dealing with - though to be fair I have quite a ways to go.
Role-playing games are almost universally about becoming the big damn hero, playing the one central character or party that changes the whole world. No one wants to play the innkeeper, shopkeeper, or that old guy who hangs out in a cave waiting to give the hero his sword.
Except, of course, that some people do. There are games that let you play out those unglamorous roles, like Recettear or Adventure Bar Story [$2.99] on iOS, and they can be a breath of fresh air in an otherwise repetitive genre. Merchant to the Stars [$0.99] tries to fit into that same strange space of shopkeeper sims in a much more streamlined fashion.
Where others try to maintain as much of the RPG experience as possible, Merchant to the Stars throws most of that out the window. There's no dungeon crawling here; thats what the heroes—your customers—are for.
So you hang out in a series of menus. At the front desk you meet your heroes and look through the loot they farmed in whatever hellholes they've been exploring. With your appraiser's eye you pick out the items that might have some use. You repair their equipped gear and send 'em back out for more.
Then you open the forge menu to hone the items you purchased, increasing their monetary value and worth to your heroes. Anything that you can't find a way to sell to another hero (or back to its seller) heads off to the guild, where your progress as a merchant is tallied and rewards are prepared for the day you level up. Level up as a merchant, that is.
Merchant to the Stars is an RPG as much as Farmville is a city-building simulator, barring a few big differences. It's not free, for one thing, and there are no in-app purchases to be found. There probably ought to be, though. It plays for all the world like Man Up Time Studios designed a freemium title and changed tracks at the last moment: timers that get longer as your heroes level up don't really make much sense without some way to jump ahead.
The game's complete lack of strife doesn't make a great lot of sense either. You can push to improve your stock by ensuring heroes are equipped with items they like or items that suit the environments they tend to explore. You can make more profit by carefully choosing the right items to hone, the right things to scrap. Whether or not you do, however, your profits keep going up, the money keeps coming in, and you can keep improving your little operation.
This isn't exactly an unusual state—plenty of fantastic games feature timers and utterly lack of any sort of risk. It's just that again, these are usually free-to-play games that pride themselves on being time wasters. Merchant to the Stars doesn't present itself like a member of that crew—not until you're deep enough in that it becomes obvious that the numbers ain't ever going anywhere but up.
There are two games in the offing here. One is a premium title that ties your success to the decisions you make for your heroes and for your shop. The other is a timer game where you push buttons to equip your dudes, send 'em out into the world and wait to reap great rewards each and every time. I'm more into the former than the latter, but either direction has the potential to be pretty great.
Instead we have ourselves a middle ground that doesn't quite work either way. At first you can't put it down—there's always another hero to serve, another piece of gear to hone, more profit to be made. Those early moments are good ones. They could be a great start; instead they're a promise unfulfilled. It's possible to make mundane roles great fun, but Merchant to the Stars hasn't quite worked out how.
Let's be clear: there is little danger of the world ever coming up short on games in the runner genre. Whether it's running left to right, running into the screen, running out of the screen, or running late for dinner, you name it, there are plenty of examples of it available on the App Store. At this point, a runner can really only stand out by doing one of two things: being the absolute best take on the same old ideas, or by bringing a unique hook to the table. Radio Trek: Music Powered Runner [Free] will never be accused of the former, but it wears the latter with pride.
The gameplay of Radio Trek will be very familiar if you've ever played Temple Run or anything like it. Avoid incoming obstacles and collect currency (in this game, notes) by swiping to jump, slide, or move left and right. The obstacles are randomly generated to an extent so that the game is a little different every time. The hook is that the obstacles and notes for each stage are generated based on the music. Faster songs with pounding beats will generate a lot more of everything than a quiet, mellow song. Stages end when the song itself ends, at which point, if you've survived, you'll earn a clear bonus in the form of more notes. There is no option to run endlessly and there is no score, beyond how many notes you've collected.
The game comes loaded with nine different songs, covering a variety of genres. You need to unlock each of them, at a cost of an increasing number of notes. The music is actually quite good, and the game sounds great with headphones. Unlocking all of these songs doesn't take very long, however, so you'll likely get through them all in fairly short order. At this point, the best thing you can do with the notes you collect is to spend them on the game's most interesting feature: importing your own songs from your device's music collection.
Yes, you can finally play a runner with stages generated from the dulcet tones of Burt Bacharach, if that's your thing. As stage difficulty scales with the speed and intensity of the song, you can actually make the game more or less challenging as you see fit. Want to take it easy? Michael Bolton time. Up for a challenge? Give 'Miserlou' from the Pulp Fiction soundtrack a try. This feature is a lot of fun, and really elevates the experience offered by Radio Trek.
It's a good thing, too, because in most other regards, Radio Trek really could use some work. The graphics in the game are very simple, albeit quite eye-catching, but the choice of colors and shifting camera angles frequently make avoiding obstacles more difficult than it should be. The interface is completely awful. Buttons for various options are placed in very poor places, the font choices are ugly, and the labels aren't always clearly descriptive.
Perhaps worst of all, the controls just aren't as good as they need to be. Swipes will occasionally be misunderstood by the game, causing you to move in a direction you didn't intend to go in. It goes without saying this can bring an abrupt end to your run. Another very big problem is that the price for importing a song is somewhat steep. You'll need to clear a stage three or four times to earn enough notes to import a song, and that wouldn't be so bad except that you can only have one song imported at any given time. If you import another song, the previous one is gone and if you want to play it again, you'll have to pay again. Moreover, if the App is completely closed at any point, even the one song you have imported will be cleared. Given the best part of the game is playing your own music, this is a major letdown.
Even with all of these problems, though, I still enjoy Radio Trek a lot. Its replayability is essentially limited only by your music library and your patience for its shortcomings. It's frustrating, because with a couple of problems resolved, I'd be singing this game's praises from the rooftops. As it is, it's still worth checking out, as long as you aren't completely sick of runners and have a little music in your heart (and iOS compatible device).
As extensively explained already in our original post when Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic [$9.99 (HD)] hit the App Store, this is a game with a ton of history behind it. With its tenth birthday coming up this summer, there's no better time to either replay this classic, or get deep into the game as a new player.
Set roughly 4,000 years before the events that transpire in the movies, players travel around the galaxy doing various Star Wars-y stuff as they track down Darth Malak, who not only used to be a Jedi but also now holds the title of Dark Lord of the Sith. The game is largely framed around a series of events that have lead to a almost-too-typical setting where the Jedis are now spread across the universe, many have died, or, potentially worse yet, have defected to the dark side.
"People in weird uniforms yell at you, control when you wake up, when you go to bed and every last thing you do all day. It’s either evil or it’s the army!"
And thus begins Jacob Jones and the Bigfoot Mystery: Episode 1 [$0.99], a cute puzzle adventure by Lucid Games. You play the role of Jacob Jones, a little boy being dropped off at Camp Evil Feath—sorry, that’s Camp Eagle Feather, by his mom and dad, who are about to embark on a fantastic journey. And, naturally, you're not going with them.
The first thing you’ll notice upon launching the game are the graphics and the set design. Jacob Jones was built using the Unreal engine, and even though it doesn't look as realistic as what you might expect from an Unreal-based title, the game's visuals are fantastic. The characters, items and world all look as if they were cardboard cutouts, with seams on the character models to match. Details definitely make the game here, from leaves blowing in the wind to snot coming out of the kid's nose before slowly retreating back inward. For a high-end, cartoony look, Jacob Jones comes across as nicely put together.
Your journey starts simply enough, and before you know it you've made the rounds and are introducing yourself to the rest of the camp. You have an eclectic, if not cliché, cast of characters here. There’s the old lady, Mrs. Haggardy, who founded and runs the camp and is quite cantankerous. There’s the science counselor, the quirky, young and bubbly woman, and, naturally, the hard-ass phys ed coach, who hates you from the start and threatens to put you in the cooler.
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.
Better Than Portal [$0.99] certainly makes lofty claims with its attention-grabbing title. With clever storytelling, a cheeky sense of humor, fresh mechanics, and interesting puzzles, Portal is an amazing title. Better Than Portal is, of course, not better than Portal. While it openly draws inspiration from that title, it contains almost none of what makes Portal the outstanding game that it is.
The basic setup of the game isn't going to win any prizes for innovation. Each stage is a single screen affair where you need to reach the exit. There are barriers, spikes, and bottomless pits applied liberally to impede you. Naturally, some devilish fellow has strewn exactly three stars in each stage in ostensibly hard-to-reach places. You know the drill.
The main play mechanic involves the use of a gun that allows you to create a portal on specific surfaces. You can have up to two portals on-screen at one time. These portals work as you would expect portals to, allowing you to travel from place to place by placing them intelligently.
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.
I can't be the only person who's totally sick of zombies. Our media is absolutely saturated with them. When zombies start showing up in Call of Duty, you know they're played out. Faced with this dilemma, Developers Game Whizzes decided to move one spot down on the list of "things that go bump in the night," and employ vampires in their side-scrolling action game, Fangz [$1.99 / $1.99]. It's this one little twist on the genre that gives Fangz just enough legs to save it from being a carbon copy of the Zombieville USA series.
Fangz definitely owes much to the excellent Zombieville USA 2 [$0.99]. Fans of the Zombieville series will feel instantly at home in this hack 'n' slash gorefest. In Fangz you take control of an Everyman named Frank as he cuts a bloody path through undead hordes to rescue his family. Toting a shotgun and a few extra pounds, and clad in business casual attire, Frank calls to mind Michael Douglas' character in the cynically comedic 1993 drama, "Falling Down."
Oh, to be a ninja. With rooftops to run along, shurikens to chuck, and warlords to be dispatched, what's not to like? This was my thought process as I downloaded Ninja Wrath [$1.99]. As it turns out I would have plenty of time to consider this question. My conclusion? Being a ninja isn't all it's cracked up to be; at least, not in the world of Ninja Wrath, where the steepest castle walls have nothing on even steeper paywalls.
Though the true existence of ninjas is disputed, they were supposed to be unparalleled in martial arts and to have demonstrated immense patience when hunting down their target. As the story goes, one ninja waited in the cesspool beneath an outhouse for days before a particular warlord placed his keister on the throne. With his target overhead, all it took was an upward thrust of the ninja's sword to dispatch the warlord.
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.
Games Worksop is is one of the most well known game studios of all time. In Junior High I spent hours carefully painting dozen of plastic miniatures like Orks and Wood-elves. With the recent gold-rush for Games Workshop licenses, there are now or will soon be several of their classic titles available on various platforms, such as Talisman and Space Hulk. Rodeo Games, the makers of the Hunters [$4.99] series have brought us Warhammer Quest [$4.99], a dungeon crawling romp through the Warhammer fantasy universe. This reworking of the classic board game harkens back to its roots while presenting an excellent video game experience.
The world of Warhammer Quest is a dark place. A few settlements dot the land but they are surrounded by wilds overrun with Orks, Goblins, Trolls, and other threats. Taking on the role of a party of four adventurers, you will journey the land seeking quests, fame, and fortune. Your basic team will consist of a human Barbarian, a Dwarf Iron-breaker, a Human Wizard, and a Elf Waywatcher. Each party member plays differently with their own fighting style and special abilities. Also available (via in-app purchase) are additional characters such as the Troll Hunter and the Warrior Priest.
As you battle through dungeon after dungeon, you must learn how to best utilize each team member to succeed. The basic nature of each warrior, combined with a fully customizable inventory for each, provide a great level of customization. The variety of items may not be Diablo level, but there is still a lot and each one feels like a real boost in power. Unlike other dungeon crawlers on iOS, you feel like a bad-ass early on and none of the gameplay feels like grinding or work. One hit kills are common and you really own your heroes. As silly as it seems to say, it is refreshing how fun the whole RPG experience is.
The game is divided into several towns, each acting as a hub for quests. As you visit a new location you are treated to a cool cut-scene depicting the village literally emerging from a book. Within each you can visit the market (to buy and sell inventory items), train your warriors, and more. Each village has one or more main quests (that drive the game towards its conclusion) and will randomly generate a host of optional quests. As you travel around the land you will also encounter random events that can benefit or hurt your party. The main quests feature story segments and interesting situations. The random quests have different goals such as bounties, rare items, and other benefits. This system appears to allow for almost endless gameplay as you take on quest after quest.
Below the surface level is the main dungeon crawling gameplay. You guide your party through, turn by turn and room by room. As you enter a new room there is a chance that there will be monsters waiting for you. You will face off against spiders, rats, goblins, orcs, trolls and more as you explore. Combat is turn based with your warriors having various numbers of melee and ranged attacks. It is quick and dirty with many engagements taking only a few turns. The tile sets of each dungeon are diverse and randomized. In each room the level of detail is impressive. This same quality is found in the hero and monster models which animate as you move and attack, as well as die quite fantastically. The easy controls and the surprises at every corner will make you want to delve in over and over.
Sadly, there are a few flies in this ointment. One point of debate is the inclusion of some IAPs. Gold is an important resource in the game as it is needed for both new items and leveling. You will earn some through the game and can also pay for it if you prefer. The issue comes when certain random events can take large amounts of your gold. This seems like a conflict of interest to me. While other purchases make sense in terms of basic expansions, this one just seems off. It is a strange choice in an otherwise excellent game.
Warhammer Quest, while being an excellent port of a classic board game, is actually an amazing dungeon crawler on iOS, no matter what your experience with the source material. You owe it to yourself to check out this excellent hack and slash experience.
I’m a sucker for throwback games. The original Mario Bros. Tank. Ms. Pac-Man. Crystal Castles. I love them all. Starship Battles drums up fond, and not so fond, memories of Missile Command, which I played the hell out of on Atari 2600. Destroying lines that fell out of the sky with blue-purple explosions was a guilty pleasure. Well, that is until the entire screen was filled with lines and my base was wiped from the face of the galaxy. Sigh.
Starship Battles [$1.99], from Empty Flask Games, updates the Missile Command framework with high res graphics. However, it’s still a survival game at its core. Instead of a land-locked base, you’ve got a cruiser spaceship. Don’t be fooled by the name, this cruiser is permanently docked in space. Although you won’t be able to move, you can swipe through your environment, grabbing up minerals that can later be used to buy stronger ships with better weapons.
Uh-oh, what’s that… a giant enemy spacecraft launching tiny ships like an Imperial Star Destroyer?
The game gives you about seven seconds to explore before the survival game begins. Tiny ships start to fly toward you from every which way. Actually, they only come from the right two-thirds of the screen. These kamikaze spacecrafts have one purpose: crash into your ship until your shields breakdown and your craft eventually explodes. Playing on iPhone, the tiny brown-grey enemy colors tend to get gobbled up in the blackness of space. Thankfully, amber and red alerts cue you as to their proximity.
Pretty much, you spend most of your time tapping the screen as quickly as possible to stop all the wack-job enemy spaceships from completing their suicide mission. If the screen gets flooded, you lay down a nuke to destroy all the enemies on the screen. It’s a temporary fix that will give you less than a second of relief.
This is where the game starts to get a little different from Missile Command. You can simple survive by using your missiles to destroy all of those tiny attackers or you can go on the offensive. Two or three swipes to the right, you’ll find the alien Motherships. These guys require a little more power to destroy. But, if you switch your torpedo, you can usually take them out in one energy-powered blast.
Here’s the caveat, use your torpedo and drain your shield. It’s a subtle nuance, but adds in just the right amount of strategy to the tried-and-true Missile Command dynamic. Usually, there are two or three large Motherships that are dispensing the tinier Frigate, Cruiser or Corvette style enemies (sounds like Battleship, doesn’t it). Destroy a single Mothership and you will leave yourself open to a barrage of alien vessels.
After about four minutes of play, the game forces you to rely heavily on quick-swipe reflexes. Destroy as many mini ships as possible, lay down a nuke, then swipe to take out a Mothership and finally swipe back to defend your base. It’s that fast, frenetic action that I love – until I die of course. Then, I curse the survival game gods.
The starter ship is somewhat weak and can only take a few blasts. You can purchase new ships if you’ve accumulated enough minerals or buy minerals from the store to use as currency.
After the Missile Command novelty wears off, there isn’t much to this game besides the survival fest and some eerie music. It could benefit from more space anomalies to shake up the pacing, as well as a broader spectrum of weapons or other power ups. But if you like points and leaderboard bragging rights, then Starship Battles may be your cup of tea.
Here's a question: How in the world does a puzzle game generate buzz in a world dominated by 'match 3' games? Well, you can either stand out via presentation, or stand out via quality gameplay. Quell Memento [$2.99], a new Sokoban-style puzzler available on the App Store, tries to do both.
