It’s basically Raptisoft Christmas but in January. Four of my very favorite games from the long-time developer have been updated recently with support for the full screens of modern devices as well as the latest versions of iOS. Well technically, Robot Wants Kitty was updated with these features back in October, but I just didn’t notice until now due to the other three games being updated this week and a helpful reader pointing it out to me on Twitter. Thanks helpful reader! Folks who have been reading TouchArcade for a long time likely don’t need an introduction to any of these titles, but for those who do here’s a rundown.
Solomon's Keep, Free – Solomon’s Keep is the first title I ever played from Raptisoft, who prior to getting into the world of mobile had been successful in the world of PC gaming. In fact when I originally reviewed Solomon’s Keep it was only a few days after I started at TouchArcade and it’s only the second full review I had written for this site at that time, which was nearly ten years ago now. So it definitely has a special place in my heart. Beyond that, though, it’s also just a kick ass dual-stick dungeon crawler with randomly generated levels and a decent amount of loot. What really pushed Solomon’s Keep over the edge though was a huge version 2.0 update that came out about a month after the original launch and added this incredibly awesome ability-combining mechanic that added a ton of variety to the types of offensive abilities you could use in the game. For an even more in-depth look at this game, check out Shaun’s RPG Reload for Solomon’s Keep from 2014.
Solomon's Boneyard, Free – Solomon’s Boneyard launched about nine months after Solomon’s Keep and was originally designed to be an extra mode in that game. It kind of blew up in scope though, and so Raptisoft spun it out into its own separate game. Mechanically, this is more or less an endless wave-based version of Solomon’s Keep with multiple playable character classes and some other additional goodies. It also fleshes out the surprisingly interesting lore of the series as it takes place more than 20 years before Solomon’s Keep back when our old pal Solomon was just starting to flirt with the dark magic that would eventually lead him to become the evil wizard we know and loathe today. Unsurprisingly, we really enjoyed Solomon’s Boneyard in our original review from 2010 and Shaun also covered this one even more in-depth in this RPG Reload File from 2015.
Robot Wants Kitty, Free – Robot Wants Kitty actually began life as a Flash game of the same name that was developed by Hamumu and then officially ported to the iPhone by Raptisoft. It’s a Metroidvania-style platformer which means you’ll roam around large open maps collecting various types of new abilities for your character which will then allow you to open up previously inaccessible portions of the map, until ultimately you find all the gear you need to let you into the room that’s housing the poor little kitty you so desperately want. I mean it’s right there in the title, Robot Wants Kitty. The game comes with 11 levels to play through, including the Flash game’s original level, but it also has a full-blown level editor called the Maker Mall which allows you to create your own levels and play the creations from others. You can see what we thought about Robot Wants Kitty in our original 2011 review here.
Hoggy 2, Free – Back before Solomon’s Keep won our hearts, Raptisoft released a super popular platformer on mobile called Hoggy. Visually you might mistake it for some bizarro take on Super Mario Bros. 2, but mechanically it was more of a puzzle platformer where you didn’t have the ability to jump but could move left and right and switch gravity at will. Very similar to Terry Cavanagh’s classic VVVVVV which launched right around the same time. Fast forward the better part of a decade later and the sequel Hoggy 2 made its way to iOS during the summer of 2017. The main concept of gravity-flipping puzzle platforming remained the same, but Hoggy 2 featured more than 200 new levels to complete as well as a full-blown level editor similar to the one in Robot Wants Kitty. And since Hoggy 2 released on desktop several months before the mobile version, there were already tons of user-created levels to take a stab at when it launched on the App Store. We really enjoyed Hoggy 2 and chose it as our Game of the Week when it released, and it’s really nice to see it running in full screen glory with this week’s update.
It’s important to note that with the exception of Hoggy 2, which is only a couple of years old, the other games mentioned here originally released almost a decade ago, and so visually they’re not the highest fidelity games you’ve ever seen. There’s also a couple of extremely minor areas where either the notch or the rounded edges of the full screen support get in the way a bit, but so far I haven’t come across anything game breaking. I’m just so, so happy to be able to play these games again with proper support for my iPhone 11, and revisiting them even all these years later just shows me how well these games still hold up. They’re also all free with ads and IAP to disable those ads, so there’s really no reason not to try all of them if you haven’t before. And of course if you’re an existing fan of any of these games from back in the day but had lost track of them as I had due to their outdated nature, now is a good time to dive back in and re-experience the fun all over again.
