If there’s one thing I think we’ve all learned after 4 years of gaming with a touch screen, it’s that the simpler you can make the controls on a device that’s devoid of buttons the better. Sure, virtual buttons that mimic a traditional game controller have come a long way, and are certainly adequate for many situations. But there’s really nothing like a control scheme that feels tailor-made for a touch screen device and gaming on the go.
The simplest control scheme out there is the single touch. You know, games like Tiny Wings [ $0.99 ], Canabalt [ $0.99 ], or Jetpack Joyride [ Free ], to name just a few, only really require you to touch the screen anywhere and are built around simple game mechanics to support this. That’s the same approach that Snowbolt Interactive and Crescent Moon Games have taken with their new game Slingshot Racing [ $0.99 ], and in turn they’ve created one of the most enjoyable racing games on the platform that feels perfectly suited to both touch screens and mobile gaming.
It's been a while since we visited Bag It! [$0.99 / Free / $0.99 ], which we rather adored when it hit back near Christmas. It's the sort of game that puts the fun into an otherwise mundane task, a tradition that goes back all the way to Paperboyand beyond. This week brings us a host of new reasons to get back to grocery bagging, with a free update that includes new content, achievements, and the adorably destructive Fizzy, a soda bottle on a hair trigger.
There has always been an element of violence in Bag It!—just try stacking a watermelon on a couple egg cartons if you want to see cute groceries die violent deaths. Fizzy takes it to the next level. He's a contents-under-pressure sorta guy. Move him around too much, shake him up or bury him under too much weight and boom, you've got yourself a bag of food slurry. It would be horrifying if Bag It! weren't so relentlessly adorable.
Fizzy comes with 16 new levels focused on him and Boomer, another soda bottle that's timed to explode. Fizzy has also been added to all three endless modes, which have been tuned and revamped for better experiences. Endless Rampage mode was a great way to blow off steam before, rewarding players for crushing everything they can. Throw in Fizzy the live grenade and it gets a lot more satisfying. Check out the trailer below to get a sense of the destructive potential.
Wondering why we're so into Bag It! in the first place? Take a minute to peruse our review—here's a taste:
"It's rare to find a puzzle game that feels so fresh but also so obvious. I've never played a game about bagging groceries before, but why not? It should be mandatory training for everyone who moves out on their own, never mind the folks who work at grocers. I have a quibble with the controls -- it can be hard to rotate an item and move it to a new area at the same time -- but otherwise it's hard to complain about Bag It! It turns something that ought to be a chore into an absolute blast, and it does so with a huge, rich game"
This update also brings in 27 Game Center achievements, fixing the most glaring oversight of the original release. And to celebrate the update, Hidden Variable Studios dropped the price of Bag It! HD from $2.99 to 99 cents. Get it while the getting is good, it's flying off the shelves as we speak.
The ability that developers have to completely control the pricing of products they put on the App Store has really turned traditional software pricing models on their ear. Now 99¢ seems to be the price many game developers try to target, and finding any excuse to have a sale has proven a popular marketing tactic for the iOS developer (just look at the staggering number of games on sale for this Memorial Day weekend, as an example).
Also, making games temporarily free has proven to be an important promotional tool to gain visibility and increase a user base for your game on the App Store. This has created a whole new market of 3rd party free app promotion websites and services, but it appears that even Apple might be getting in on the free game bandwagon as well.
As the official App Store Twitter account posted earlier today, Cut the Rope: Experiments [Free / Free (HD)] is their "Free App of the Week", which as far as we can tell is the first of its kind.
Now, don't get me wrong, Cut the Rope: Experiments is an excellent game and you should go download it immediately if you haven't already, no matter what the promotion is. But it will be interesting to see if this is something that Apple keeps doing each week, and I'd be curious to know how they decide on which games or apps to promote.
Also worth pointing out are a couple of changes to the App Store itself, like the disappearance of the Staff Favorites section, the changing of the iPhone/iPad Game of the Week banners on the front page of the App Store to "Editor's Choice", and the ridiculously large banner text denoting Cut the Rope: Experiments as the App of the Week right on the game's App Store page.
We'll keep our eye on the App Store to see how this continues to evolve, but with visibility being such a big problem it's nice to see Apple exploring different promotional ideas on their own.
Semi Secret Software’s Canabalt [ $0.99 ] certainly wasn’t the first endless auto-running platformer around, but it’s definitely one of the most high profile and arguably set off the trend off hundreds of similar running games coming out on the App Store since its release in October of 2009.
While some of the games that followed expanded on the core idea with additional character moves, items and powerups, new environments and more, Canabalt always played it cool with its simplistic elegance, a finely-tuned masterpiece that did so much with very little. Even today, two and a half years later, Canabalt is still one of my favorites in the genre that it helped establish.
So, just because Canabalt never felt like it needed anything doesn’t mean that the game’s creator Adam Saltsman hasn’t had some ideas for updates. In a new post on the Semi Secret blog, he explains that recently he’s been thinking long and hard about what sort of new features would make sense for Canabalt while still retaining the simplicity that made it such a hit in the first place.
What he came up with was not necessarily what can be added to Canabalt to make it better, but what can he take away instead. Wait, what? Take things away? Canabalt is already so minimalistic, what on Earth is there to take away? Well, how about the buildings for starters.
That’s just a teaser shot showing just where Adam’s head is at in this whole thing, and we don’t know if such a radical idea will necessarily make it into the game. In fact, Semi Secret is being pretty hush hush regarding just what new features actually will become a reality, but they have committed to a few. First, a local two-player mode (which we heard whispers about back in March), eight new hardcore game modes with associated leaderboards, and Game Center achievements.
Best of all, these things will be coming as a free update to Canabalt, and although we don’t have any sort of timeframe for release just yet we should be hearing more details about it soon. Also, don't forget that Canabalt is part of the humongous Because We May sale that's currently running until June 1st.
We've been waiting nearly three years for a follow-up to Defender Chronicles, the title that popularized the "vertical tower defense" style of gameplay and was one of the most beloved games from a still young iOS App Store back in 2009. Well, the time is finally upon us, as Defender Chronicles II: Heroes of Athelia [ $2.99 ] has just gone live in the US App Store.
Defender Chronicles II brings back all the things that made the original game such a hit, and improves upon them at practically every level. We took an in-depth look at the game in our preview from last week, and we'll be bringing you a full review in the very near future. However, if you were a fan of the first game you more than likely will be all over this new release anyway, and as always there are early impressions and discussion of the game rolling into our forums.
In the midst of the two year anniversary celebration of Halfbrick's Fruit Ninja [$0.99 / Free ] which includes a huge new update hitting the App Store sometime tomorrow, the Australian developer hasn't forgotten about their five o'clock shadow-wearing bad ass Barry Steakfries, star of such iOS titles as Monster Dash [ $0.99 ], Age of Zombies [$0.99 / Free ], and Jetpack Joyride [ Free ]. They've just released a new trailer revealing Flash the dog, a helpful sidekick for Barry who is coming to Jetpack Joyride in a future update.
As you can see, Flash is a helpful pup, grabbing coins for Barry and riding along in his own doggy versions of the various vehicles in the game. Also part of this update is the new gadget the Dezapinator, which will cause some of the zappers in the game to fizzle out and fail, and the Turbo Boost which will drop rings that explosively propel your forward. Finally, new DJ Headphones are available in the shop and offer up a remixed techno version of the game's music.
The only bummer is we don't know just when this update for Jetpack Joyride is going to hit, but we imagine it will be really soon, and in the meantime you can get back to trying to teach your dog how to use a jetpack.
Update: Via Halfbrick's Twitter (and the astute commenters below) both updates are coming out today.
Updated update: All the updates are now available!
Crashing into things and making them explode almost never gets old, and that’s exactly what Bravo Games was banking on when it released Crash Mayhem [ Free ]. Luckily, this game lives up to its name and is just as fun as it may sound.
The thing about Crash Mayhem that immediately sucks you in is the lure of making as big of a crash as possible, racking up repair bills just as high as you can in the process. If this concept sounds familiar, that’s because the Burnout series was basically built on this same premise, even up to the iOS release of Burnout Crash[ $0.99 ].
Let’s preface this by saying that Burnout Crash is a pretty good addition to the Burnout series, and only debuted about a month ago on the App Store. The control style in Crash Mayhem is similar, the camera view is similar, the drivers are still incredibly stupid, and the scoring system is basically the same, too. Now that you know that, you should also know that Mayhem might even improve on Burnout’s formula a bit.
I admit without shame that I was a huge Poké-nerd back in Pikachu's heyday. The explosion of Pokémon's popularity coincided with my sophomore year of high school, and being nerdy enough to know my cool-kid rep was in the negatives even before I started lugging around a Pokédex with my textbooks, I wore Pokémon t-shirts and evangelized the games and cartoon without a care. I also saw new Pokémon movies on opening night and, surrounded by squirmy kiddles and their irritated parents, broke out in wild applause and cheers when the Nintendo logo appeared on the screen, which prompted all the kids to whoop and holler along with me (and the parents to stare at me with such loathing that I wanted to crawl into the nearest Poke-ball).
There is, however, one immediately noticeable difference between MonTowers ~Legend of Summoners'~ [ Free ] critters and Nintendo's kid-friendly goldmine. Amid the fantasy- and horror-themed creatures you will amass, you'll also accumulate anime girls so scantily clad and busty they make Lara Croft look like a teenie bopper who has only just started to blossom. Fortunately, unlike the milky-white flesh of your personal monster-hunting assistant (and what soft, creamy, heaving flesh it is), there is much more to MonTowers than meets the eye.
The success of the digital version of a physical board game hinges on three things: the quality of the base game, the accuracy of the representation of said game and if both of these things are pulled off well enough to sustain a community long after you’ve tired of getting beaten by friends and family. With that in mind, is Scotland Yard [ $4.99 ] a successful iOS port of a classic board game? No, but it could be.
It’s not as if Ravensburger’s Scotland Yard, the 1983 Spiel des Jahres recipient, isn’t fundamentally sound. One player is Mr. X, terribly creative criminal mastermind, stealthily darting about London in an attempt to avoid the grasp of five Scotland Yard investigators, represented by the other players. Players move about via ticket cards allowing access to modes of transportation around the game map: taxis, buses, boats or the London Underground.
It would be easy to write Witch Wars [ Free ] off for its, shall we say, intensely aggressive IAP implementation. It would be hard to argue that Com2Us hasn't reached new heights on that score. But let me play devil's advocate for a minute. Sure, there are characters that can be unlocked for ten dollars. That's a thing that happens in this game. But it's also a solid competitive match-3 in a market that doesn't have many of those to choose from. If, say, you've been waiting for a successor to Puzzle Quest 2 [ $4.99 ] all this time, that might not be something you can afford to ignore.
The IAP breaks down a bit like League of Legends. You start with Athena, the default witch. She's a bit middle-of-the-road as far as abilities go. You can unlock six other characters, half with coins and half with (far too much) cash. If you do, you can use them online or solo any time. Otherwise, be patient. Every day, a new witch unlocks temporarily for everyone to try out online. In the course of a given week, you'll be able to play each and every character Witch Wars has to offer.
Everybody’s favorite fruit slicing arcade game Fruit Ninja [$0.99 / Free ] originally launched back in April 2010, and to celebrate its two-plus year anniversary on the App Store the Halfbrick team are currently touring around Australia in search of the best Fruit Ninja high score and they have a big new update releasing for the game later this week.
In the animated trailer below, we meet the merchant Gutsu and his piggy sidekick Truffles who will offer new powerups in exchange for Starfruit, the new in-game currency. These items will allow you to do things like swat away bombs, add additional time on to a game, and cause massive berry explosions.
The Fruit Ninja update is set to hit this Thursday the 24th, and it’s pretty crazy to think of how well Halfbrick has supported the title over the past 2 years, and how far it’s evolved from its initial release. It sounds like they don’t plan on stopping any time soon either, with more new content planned for the future.
As mentioned, Halfbrick are currently jetting around their homeland holding several high score competitions for a chance to compete in a finals tournament in Sydney at the end of the month. Some crazy scores are getting set already, and you can follow the team’s exploits as they post photos and blog about the tour on the Halfbrick website.
How do you feel about endangered species? Does your heart ache for the poor creatures that, through no fault of their own, are being driven to extinction? If so, you might want to join up with Adult Swim and PikPok'sExtinction Squad [ $0.99 ], the bloodiest game about conservation I've ever seen.
As the story goes, the surprisingly well-preserved Chuck Darwin, father of evolution, has found a lost colony of dodos. Seems like a miracle, but then the terrible truth is revealed: the scent of dodos causes other animals to jump to their deaths. Animals are killing themselves by the thousands, so Chuck pulls together his extinction squad to save 'em. Running back and forth with a jump net, the squad bounces the suicidal animals to safety, earning points, coins and the occasional surprise in the process.
Wings of Valor [ $1.99 ], the “Wings of Fury” spiritual remake by Idea Spoon, is a rare gem in the app store - a game that might not sell you on its screenshots alone, but is an automatic purchase for gamers “in the know.” Based on a classic game for the Amiga/PC/Apple II, Wings of Valor has a familiar, nostalgic feel to it, with all the best parts of an arcade shooter and a surprisingly complex strategy sim.
The base gameplay is straightforward and simplistic, as illustrated by the image-only help file. Take off from your carrier, and destroy your targets. Targets range from islands, to other planes, to ships, and you’re given an entire (unlockable) arsenal for dealing with the threats. For people such as myself, who never played the original, it may take you a few tries to even get off the ground. For instance: mashing the engine button over and over to get it started (just like a real old plane!), or trying to fly off the right side of the carrier and taking a bath instead. Missions are relatively quick, and can easily be squeezed into a bus ride, a work break, or any spare 5-10 minute period of time.
Once you get in the air, the game plays like a dream. Lovingly handcrafted visuals and spot on controls make you wonder why the side-scrolling fighter pilot genre died off so long ago. Aerial combat is a joy, pure and simple: the banks, the arcs, the turns, it all manages to feel “simulationy” and “arcadey” at the same time. Touch controls suffer somewhat from the usual lack of physical feedback, but not as much as you would think with this sort of game.
Dogfighting lacks a bit of challenge, as the enemy AI seems all too easily confused when you turn around directly behind them and light up their tail. Strafing runs are exciting, and can prove to be a test on resources - are you more of a T-16 piloting, womp-rat bullseyeing sharpshooter, or a light-up-the-jungle, empty the plane sort of carpet-bomber? The game plays into both strategies, but the latter sort will have to get very used to landings/takeoffs while they return to their ships to replenish their arsenal.
The camera work is spot on, zooming in as you approach the ground, adding to the feeling of speed. The music is old-timey, “Welcome to the world of tomorrow!” radio static fanfare, and adds to the retro feel. Sound effects are sufficiently explodey and ratatatty, and the particle effects are excellent, whether it's planes smoking and plummeting to the earth or water kicking up as you bring death to dozens of unseen ocean critters. It is incredibly difficult to believe that the entire game was put together by a single person.
With plenty of challenges, unlockables, an upcoming iPad version, and promised updates to the visuals and AI, Wings of Valor makes for a very attractive package at $1.99. For people who have boldly proclaimed the death of classic gaming at the hands of iOS, I can only gesture wildly in this direction - here is a game with no IAP, no freemium model, just classic, old-school gameplay at its finest. Whether you’re a fan of the genre or completely new to this style of game, here is a something that is very worth your time.
The first time you have a bogey on your six, you tear off straight upward at top speed, and see the stars for just a second before stalling out, turning back towards your prey, spitting hot death, you'll get it. Get it?
Usually when we call a game a sandbox, we're referring to some kind of open world game where you can wander, free of restraints, and do anything you can think of. The Sandbox [ Free ] isn't quite that kind of game. Instead it straddles the border between game and art project, rewarding players for creativity while giving them near-infinite possibilities.
You don't play a character in The Sandbox, you play a god. You can paint with pixels of stone, draw towers of earth and set them to grow. You can draw just about any non-living thing you can imagine, paint it into a scene, and then bring it to life with the forces at your command. You have electricity at your fingertips, steam and oil in your grasp, and much more. It's less a sandbox than a blank canvas, waiting to be filled.
I love the App Store. On a single platform, I can draw from a well of my favorite classics like Doom [ $4.99 ], and try out thousands games like N.O.V.A. 3 [ $6.99 ] that take their inspiration from popular console and PC games but offer an experience tailor-made for tablets and smartphones. But what I enjoy most about the App Store is the chance to drop a buck or two on quirky titles you don't see on any other platform. Take Rocket Fox [ Free ], for example, a new puzzle/platformer game starring a fox named Guy who loves fireworks. He loves them so much that he's not content to admire them from afar like your average Fourth-of-July party-goer. No, Guy likes to hop aboard rockets before they blast off and ride them skyward. Of course, what goes up must come down, and that's where you come in.
Each level begins with Guy slipping inside a large flower while a counter ticks down from three. Once the clock strikes zero, the camera flips to an overhead view, the flower bursts open, and Guy, mounted on a rocket, shoots up to the clouds. Seconds later, his rocket blows apart in a torrent of colors, and Guy begins to freefall. From here, you tilt your iPhone to guide Guy away from the hard earth and watery depths, and toward trampoline-like flower pads. Flower pads come in different colors and designs that denote their functions. Red flowers give you a slight boost, blue ones throw you up even higher, and yellow pads give a breathtaking view of surrounding topography. Flowers can only be used once before withering away, leaving you to find the next one by the time Guy starts hurtling back down once again.
If there’s one thing I think we’ve all learned after 4 years of gaming with a touch screen, it’s that the simpler you can make the controls on a device that’s devoid of buttons the better. Sure, virtual buttons that mimic a traditional game controller have come a long way, and are certainly adequate for many situations. But there’s really nothing like a control scheme that feels tailor-made for a touch screen device and gaming on the go.
Everybody’s favorite fruit slicing arcade game Fruit Ninja [
Wings of Valor [ 
