Steampunk-themed programs have done pretty well on the App Store. Games such as Gears [$1.99] have certainly demonstrated the viability of incorporating that sort of fantasy/mechanic aesthetic into a game. ArkanoArena [$1.99 / Lite / HD] is the latest game to incorporate the fantasy/steampunk motif, this time in a brickbreaker. While I think ArkanoArena definitely nails the steampunk visuals, issues with the controls may turn off some folks.
Before we get started, a quick history lesson on ArkanoArena. It was originally released as an iPad-only game back in early January. A “free” version of ArkanoArena then appeared on the App Store for the iPhone in July as a prelude to the full version of the game, which came out last week. This full version of ArkanoArena for iPhone includes more levels (or “Arenas”) as well as a third weapon that wasn’t in the main gameplay mode of the free version.
I've long been a fan of Jeff Minter's unique take on game design, and his iOS releases are in my list of best games to be found in the App Store. His titles all drip definite old school appeal, and so I was extremely pleased to see his recent tweet indicating that he has worked iCade support into all of the iOS titles where it makes sense.
All titles mentioned should be getting an update soon that includes the demonstrated iCade support and GoatUp should arrive any day now. We'll be bringing an in-depth look at the latest title when it lands.
On this week’s episode of The TouchArcade Show, I do my best to stop nerd-gasming over Relic Entertainment’s Space Marine long enough to discuss the hottest iOS games and App Store news of the week alongside my co-hosts. At the top, we really dig into Grand Prix Story as well as Bungie Aerospace’s and HareBrained Schemes’ Crimson: Steam Pirates. Eventually, we get into other new releases such as King of Dragon Pass and, of course, that Max Payne HD story we ran the other afternoon.
We’ve got one heck of a running gag this week courtesy of Eli’s neighbors, so I hope you have as much fun with it as I do. If you’d like to give us a listen, you can do so just below via all these links. Of course, you can also subscribe to us via iTunes and the Zune Marketplace if you want to get each and every episode of TAS as soon as they’re uploaded.
If you missed out on our WWDC preview, allow me to calibrate your expectations about Tiny Heroes [$2.99], a new tower defense title from Simutronics Corp. You may have heard that the team behind this game was headed up by David Whatley, the developer of the outstanding geoDefense [$1.99 / Lite] and geoDefense Swarm [$1.99]. Already your brain may be whirring along, thinking about upgradeable towers and mazing. Stop that. You won't find those here. And you won't miss them, either.
In Tiny Heroes, you are the master of a dungeon rich with treasure. In classic Dungeons & Dragons style, where there is treasure, there are heroes. Are you going to sit back and let them take your treasure? Heck no! So you set up defenses in their way, and who can blame you if a few of those defenses are a touch lethal? You have liability insurance, right?
WayForward, the studio that’s just finished cleansing and manipulating Majesco’s Bloodrayne franchise into something that’s actually fun to play with Bloodrayne Betrayal for Xbox Live Arcade, is porting the second game in its original Shantae franchise to iOS. In a couple of weeks, the studio plans to launch Risky’s Revenge on the App Store for the iPhone, iPad, and the iPod Touch, a representative has confirmed with us.
Risky’s Revenge debuted on the Nintendo DSi e-store in 2010. Despite the relative obscurity of the platform, people have been downloading and embracing the action-platform game. Heck, its even gathered some lofty awards with the media at large, which isn’t something download-exclusive Nintendo DS games do. (more...)
What I like about the Hector: Badge of Carnage games is how comparatively different from one another they are. The gap between We Negotiate With Terrorists and its follow-up Senseless Acts of Justice [$4.99 / $6.99] highlights not only the breadth and scope of the adventure genre, but also Straandlooper’s willingness to use episodic content as an avenue for experimentation and iteration.
There are some technical improvements to note -- Straandlooper have added helpful on-screen cues to show players precisely where they’re tapping, and Senseless Acts of Justice is significantly longer than its predecessor -- but Hector’s cirrhotic core remains largely unchanged: it's still a competent adventure, smartly written and well-designed.
Earlier this summer, Limbic Software did what I thought couldn’t be done: it created a zombie game with a unique mechanic in its inaugural Zombie Gunship [$.99] [Universal]. Since release, the developer has yet to take its foot off the pedal -- it has dropped two updates since July, the latest of which is pretty newsworthy.
Version 1.2 introduces brand new audio commentary to the game, a noteworthy improvement since it mixes up the bland and once-super repetitive speech. It has also dropped in a new inverted controls setting, bug fixes, and a headline-worthy in-game “upgrade” that doubles the amount of friendly fire casualties you can have in a single round. Brad Nicholson doesn’t play when he’s in an AC-130, so people -- undead or not -- tend to die in droves. No doubt, this will extend his playtime by minutes, if not hours.
We reviewed Zombie Gunship when it hit and, yeah, we dug it quite a bit. If you still haven’t given it a try, check out that write-up and see what you think about it after the fact. It’s definitely worth your time.
On the heels of a cool new content update to Plants vs. Zombiesfor iPhone and iPod Touch, creator PopCap Games has slashed the prices of the vast majority of its App Store catalogue. From now until whenever the studio decides to call it quits, you can grab its best games on the cheap, including the aforementioned Plants vs. Zombies as well as Peggle.
It’s hard to believe that everyone doesn’t own Plants vs. Zombies or Peggle already, so I thought I’d plug Chuzzle real fast. It’s another neat match-three game in a long line of match-three titles that don’t quite do enough to distance themselves from Bejeweled, but it’s hip in bursts and has a ton of character to spare. At this price, it’s worth a shot if you’re into puzzle games.
We recently brought news of the BulkyPix announcement that the much anticipated iOS port of Eric Chahi's Another World will be landing in the App Store on September 22nd. Xavier Liard of DotEmu, the studio developing the iOS version, put us in touch with the game's renowned author to discuss details of the upcoming release.
As we indicated yesterday, Another World for iOS will feature both the graphics of the original game as well as re-mastered "HD" graphics done specifically for this release. (A two-fingered swipe up the screen will toggle the visuals at any time.) In speaking with Chahi, I learned that this 20th Anniversary Edition of the game is running a tweaked version of the core script from acclaimed 15th Anniversary Edition, as executed by Chahi's own custom script interpreter that has been converted from 68000 assembly to C++. All of the sounds in the game have been re-mastered as well, to deliver an enhanced audio experience as compared to the original. (more...)
This past July, SNK Playmore surprised everybody by releasing The King of Fighters-i [$4.99], a mobile version of their popular fighting series, into the App Store. Until that time, Capcom’sStreet Fighter IV Volt [$6.99] had been the pinnacle of touch screen fighters, but just like the 90s arcades that I grew up in, King of Fighters gave Street Fighter a worthy opponent for the title of best iOS fighting game. We gave the nod to The King of Fighters-iin our review, but just barely, and in reality both titles are extremely evenly matched when it comes down to gameplay and features. It really may just boil down to personal preference which one you like more, or if you’re like me, you just play and enjoy both. Problem solved.
Anyway, The King of Fighters-i has just gotten even better with a brand new update that adds 6 new playable fighters as well as an interesting new Challenge Mode. The new fighters are Iori Yagami, Mature, Vice, Elisabeth Branctorche, Shen Woo, and Duo Lon, bringing the total character count to 20, the same as in Street Fighter IV Volt. I’m not as familiar with The King of Fighters series' characters as I am with the Street Fighter ones, so I don’t have any real attachment to any of these new additions, but I am pretty stoked to have 6 new people to learn how to use.
If you’re a regular listener of our TouchArcade Show podcast (and if you’re not, then really, shame on you) then you are most likely familiar with my Kitty Korner segment, where I break down games that can be either bad or good but will always at least feature a feline of some kind. This is my promise to you, the listener. During our episode 12 podcast last month, my kitty game du jour was a fun physics arcade game called Sushi Cat [99¢].
In Sushi Cat, the goal is to drop your kitty from the top of the screen and bounce him down through the level in a Peggle-esque fashion, collecting sushi along the way and eventually ending up in a bin at the bottom of the screen. As kitty eats sushi he grows fatter and squishier, which can make for an interesting trip through the many objects that make up a level. I really ended up digging Sushi Cat much more beyond the initial “it’s a cat game” infatuation. The gameplay is surprisingly fun, and I especially love the entire aesthetic and the humorous animated cut scenes that tell the story of Sushi Cat’s plight.
King of Dragon Pass [$9.99] originates from what I consider to be on the tail end of the golden age of PC gaming, where developers focused more on depth and originality instead of texture resolution and polygon count. In fact, King of Dragon Pass is a fantastically extreme example of this as there's no polygons to speak of, and the graphics only really consist of a assortment of hand-drawn illustrations to accompany whatever event is taking place at the time. I think the easiest way to describe what the game is all about is to call it a largely text-based menu-driven mash up of a Civilization game and a Choose Your Own Adventure book. If you're the kind of person who requires flashy graphics, fast action, rock-bottom pricing, and online multiplayer, stop reading now. This is not the game for you. If, however, you can barely even fathom a more glorious conglomeration than Civilization and Choose Your Own Adventure, prepare to absolutely lose yourself in King of Dragon Pass.
The game is set in the fantasy world of Glorantha, created by Greg Stafford, and used in several other traditional roleplaying games, literary works, and even a board game. The universe was originally imagined in 1966, and is chock-full of things which have since become standard in fantasy-based worlds. The people of Glorantha are the pawns of an array of both new and old gods who offer various benefits in exchange for worship. Magic and supernatural occurrences play an important role in the world, and aside from the typical races found in most fantasy worlds like elves, dwarves, etc, Glorantha is also home to strange humanoid hybrids such as anthropomorphic ducks and scorpion-men.
A lot of people have learned a lot from id Software’s classics, which are available in open source form all over the Internet. Even the iOS versions of DOOM Classic [$6.99] and Wolfenstein 3D [$1.99] have been floating around available for anyone to take a look at and tinker with if they so choose. If you’re one of those people, you’ll like this bit of news: Bethesda has released the open source code for these two games in their latest iterations. You can download DOOM Classic open source here and Wolfenstein 3Dhere and check out what went into the big-time updates that hit both games just as Quake-Con kicked off earlier this summer. (more...)
Plants vs. Zombies [$2.99 / HD] for the iPhone just received a little more feature parity with its cousins on other platforms and a touch of free-to-play to boot. Creator PopCap Games has just added in a total of nine new mini-games to experience in-between your bouts with the undead. Each mini-game comes bundled in packs of three, all three of which you can buy through Crazy Dave for 50,000 coins respectively.
In a fun twist that I’m sure certain crowds are going to love, the studio is allowing users to spend $.99 three times in exchange for oodles (read: 100,000) of in-game coins. Naturally, you can exchange these coins in return for these packs -- or presumably whatever else you want, including new plants or slots -- from the in-game shop that Crazy Dave runs. (more...)
Big news on the Max Payne front: the third title in the series -- which has been teased for what feels like centuries -- is hitting the PC and consoles in March 2012, according to the game’s publisher Rockstar Games. Also, a mobile version of the original Max Payne has been announced. It’s slated to hit unspecified platforms and will support “connectivity” to Rockstar Games’ Social Club, features similar to “its PC counterparts,” HD resolution, and support for wired controllers.
The boilerplate about this mobile version is buried underneath a ton of promises and hyperbole from the publisher about Max Payne 3. It's ridiculously vague, which makes us think that Max Payne HD for mobile is going to be targeted at beefed up Android devices that may or may not have been announced yet. Still, considering the reach of the App Store, it’s hard to believe that an iOS version isn’t in the works. (more...)
Steampunk-themed programs have done pretty well on the App Store. Games such as Gears [$1.99] have certainly demonstrated the viability of incorporating that sort of fantasy/mechanic aesthetic into a game. ArkanoArena [$1.99 / Lite / HD] is the latest game to incorporate the fantasy/steampunk motif, this time in a brickbreaker. While I think ArkanoArena definitely nails the steampunk visuals, issues with the controls may turn off some folks.
If you missed out on our 
What I like about the Hector: Badge of Carnage games is how comparatively different from one another they are. The gap between 
Earlier this summer, 
On the heels of a
We recently 
King of Dragon Pass [
A lot of people have learned a lot from id Software’s classics, which are available in open source form all over the Internet. Even the iOS versions of DOOM Classic [$
Plants vs. Zombies [$
