Stolen Couch Games' tactical RPG Kids vs Goblins has been getting a lot of traction on our message board for good reason: it looks hot. In the game, you'll control three kids with up to 80 different spells on a quest that'll see them exploring a total of seven unique environments. As you'll see in the new trailer below, the spell system takes a cue from Magicka; it encourages users to combine individual spells and then exploit the combined power in order to progress and beat up waves of bad dudes. There seems to be a fair bit of standard action RPG-ery, too.
Kids vs Goblins is being published by Crescent Moon Games, and is expected to hit the iPad first later this February. In the game's message board thread, the publisher has noted that Apple has it in its hands right now, so it's just a matter of approval. We'll continue keeping our eye on this one, for sure.
Zombie Wonderland 2: Outta Time! [99¢] has everything a good zombie game needs: guns, girls, guts, green goo and a generous amount of cleaning equipment. Oh, come on. Don't raise that eyebrow at me. You know it's true. Every good shoot-out tends to leave an inevitable mess and Zombie Wonderland 2, unlike so many of its peers, is not afraid to acknowledge it.
Here, in this goofy little defense/time-management/real-time strategy title, you'll have the dubious pleasure of playing as the redneck stereotype Chuck. Being the responsible Zombie Cleaner (and someone totally oblivious to the idea of job security) that he is, Chuck will stop at nothing to rid the world of the cannibalistic undead.
Urban Crime [Free], the newest game from Gameloft, is the latest title attempting to take a traditional genre and infuse it with free-to-play elements. In this case, it’s the open world third-person shooter made popular by the likes of Grand Theft Auto III that gets the freemium makeover. Normally, these types of games are treated as forums discussing the merits of freemium and whether the gameplay and overall presentation outweighs whatever hooks are put into the game. In the case of Urban Crime, that discussion isn’t necessary as the game has so many issues (freemium and otherwise) that you really should just avoid it completely.
Red Zebra Game's Raid Leader reminds me a lot of Mika Mobile's Battleheart [$2.99]. Like that game, it's a real-time strategy RPG hybrid that seamlessly blends these two styles of play into a series of trying instance-based conflicts. Where the two depart the most dramatically is in the name: raid.
In Raid Leader, you'll be taking a knight, a mage, and an archer, against a variety of damage-eating, MMO-like bosses that all appear to have special mechanical hooks. For example, there's a yeti-like monster with a freeze spell that turns its target into a block of ice. In order to break out, you'll have to tap on the screen. There's also a worm that, much to the archer and mage's chagrin, spawns mobs of life-sucking blood leaches all over the battlefield.
Absolutely nothing about the first five minutes of Darkness Rush: Saving Princess [$0.99] gave me any reason to think it would be a good game. There's that mouthful of a title, for one thing. An absolutely incomprehensible story and translation didn't help, and the Castlevania stylings and scantly clad ladies plastered everywhere just made me nervous. Even the tutorial was off-putting - I mean, seriously, how does it take that long to show us how to use a jump button?
It was a huge surprise when I realized two things: this game is an endless runner, and it's really, really fun.
The easiest way to describe 5th Cell's Run Roo Run [$.99 / HD] is to call it Canabalt, but with levels. That works. In the game, you control a kangaroo in search of its joey, and the path to finding it involves plenty auto-running and manually hurdling obstacles. To jump, you tap the screen. To run, you tap the screen. It's as much of a triumph in that style of minimalist design as Canabalt is, and it has similar elements and mechanics.
The "but with levels part" is a pretty big game-defining departure. Run Roo Run's world has oodles of color and instance-based content. In all, it rocks over 400 levels, all of which are clumped into individual chapters that introduce new mechanics. You'll bounce on tires, float on fans, play around with a double jump, and avoid retracting spikes as well as the rest of its outback's hazards, like cactuses, jagged trees and wood, and so forth. The way the game builds on itself, considering it has just a single, super-easy action, is pretty impressive.
A shoulder surfer would describe Super Crate Box [$.99] as a mess, a pixelated mash of vivid colors and explosions wrapped in a whirlwind of erratic movement, 8-bit sound, and some decidedly bizarre character design. They'd be right. Super Crate Box is a mess, but it owns its fast-moving arcade chaos, and deftly brings you along for the ride.
You don't even realize that you embraced it until it's an hour later and you hate that godforsaken disc launcher with the passion of many angry men. What renders you helpless has a lot to do with its infinite, looping structure and purity of play. This is a minimalist, throwback-style game that wants you to do one thing: capture crates for a high score. The hooks are in its constituent parts, which seamlessly blend into a cacophony of arcade action surrounding this pure purpose of play. It becomes hypnotizing, fast.
Super Crate Box's [$.99] five million crate update is now available as a free download for all of its crazed, crate-nabbing fans. Starting now, Vlambeer and Halfbot are giving us all the power to pick and play with our favorite characters. Also, it has added a total of five more to earn through rigorous killing and crate obtain-ation. Spoiler: one of these guys is Super Meat Boy.
Another milestone-tied unlock is being teased in the game's patch notes. According to the notes, at 40 million crates users will receive a hero character named "her" as a prize. Oh, and speaking of exclusive, check out the game's new virtual control functionality -- it's been tweaked and now allows for customization.
UPDATE: We caught this one pretty fast and the update notes were shuffled around after the fact. It's 40 million, and not 20. Also, one character will be unlocked when this milestone is reached.
Scribblenauts [$.99] developer 5th Cell isn't one-and-done with iPhone and iPad. This Thursday, actually, will see the release of its second game, a "micro-platformer" called Run Roo Run. It looks remarkably 5th Cell, and according to exclusive details given to Joystiq, it certainly sounds like a game we'll definitely be getting into.
In a nutshell, Run Roo Run is an extremely cutesy and heavily instance-based runner -- think, Canabalt [$.99] but with levels and a kangaroo. The experience is sliced and diced into a series of 420 individual levels that are, also, divided cleanly into chapters that all introduce new obstacles or other new elements, like, items. Each week 5th Cell plans to push 10 more additional levels to the game without the need to update.
One really interesting thing that popped up during the Joystiq interview about Run Roo Run was the subject of its inspiration. The initial idea came from Space is Key, an insanely awesome flash game that you've got to play right now.
Studio Pixel, the one-man studio responsible for giving us the original Cave Story, last Friday released its first iPhone and iPod touch game, Azarashi [$.99]. It's as minimal as it is pure in focus; in it, you attempt to catch three seal keychains before they fall to the ground, and at the end of the round you are scored on your speed. Hit too early and you kill a delightful little seal, but do it just fast enough and you'll earn more keychains to catch after all three rounds are over.
This is a really mini mini-game, so be aware of that before you download. If anything, it's a brilliant display of Studio Pixel's art, sound design, and edge. We've got some screens for those of you who don't want to take the plunge just yet:
Cave Story is brilliant, by the way, and the PC and Mac versions are still free. If you've got some extra computer time today, we highly suggest you give it a look.
Last week, we told you about Glitchsoft's upcoming Star Marine: Infinite Ammo, a run 'n gun shooter that looks to capture the magic of classic action platformers like Contra and Metal Slug. A game like Contra demands precision in its controls due to the hectic action on screen, and it's hard to say whether or not that type of precision can be possible with virtual touch screen controls. Star Marine is hoping it's found the answer to this problem by taking a dual-stick approach to its control scheme, which is looking pretty good so far.
In our preview last week there were just screenshots for Star Marine, but Glitchsoft has just released a trailer for the game so you can get an idea of what it looks like in action.
From the trailer, a few things stick out at me as looking particularly awesome. It appears there are quite a few weapons to use, including one that looks a lot like the infamous spread gun from Contra. Also, I really like some of the enemies that are absolutely humongous, sometimes filling up the entire screen. Finally, Star Marine incorporates a feature that slows down your descent when you're falling through the air, giving you a better opportunity to lay waste to the enemies on the screen. I imagine this coupled with the dual-stick controls will allow a game like Star Marine to be quite playable with a touch screen.
Star Marine: Infinite Ammo is scheduled for a release this week, and we'll be looking to get our hands on the title to see just how well it turned out when it hits the App Store.
Wizard Ops [$0.99] by Phykentech is an on-rails 3D shooter with lots going for it. The gameplay is fast, controls are simple, and there’s some variety in the weapons and uniqueness in the sound effects. However, these positives can’t make up for the fact that the game is very short with not much room for replayability. Add in some performance issues, and Wizard Ops becomes one of those frustrating games that have potential but fall short.
Wizard Ops has you playing the role of a fire mage once part of an elite group of wizards that served the royalty of the kingdom. After the queen dies in an accident, the king irrationally imprisons the wizards in dungeons throughout the land. When the king’s daughter is subsequently kidnapped, he reluctantly releases you and charges you with freeing your brethren and taking down the enemy forces that hold the princess captive.
If you were thinking, "Hey, I haven't shot a zombie in awhile" this morning, well, we've got great news for you: Nexon Mobile has released Combat Arms: Zombies [$4.99], the first-person spin on the fairly popular series' Fireteam mode. Users have been reporting all kinds of crash bugs since its release, but a new update might have firmed that out. Either way, it's still available at its special holiday pricing of $4.99.
Earlier this October, we brought you a first-word because it looked so darn impressive. Functionally, the game does more than look pretty -- it offers players "a hand-picked selection" of guns, has a ton of carnage, customization, and control schemes, and even gives current Combat Arms Online players free weapons in its combat shop with the redemption of a bonus code. Gotta love tie-ins.
Surprise! Infinity Blade has made a lot of money. The other afternoon, Epic Games announced that, overall, the franchise has earned $30 million since the debut of the original Infinity Blade [$5.99] in December 2010. An astounding $5 million of that comes from the earnings of Infinity Blade 2 [$6.99], which released November 30th, 2011. A month or so ago.
Here's some boilerplate for your eyeholes:
“The success of the Infinity Blade franchise is testament to our talented team who is devoted to making games we want to play, all while using Unreal Engine technology to redefine what is expected from games on iOS devices,” Epic Games President Dr. Michael Capps says in a statement. “We have so much more in store for players, and will continue to make great content for Apple’s evolving platforms.”
The thing to take away from this isn't exactly "wow, that's a lot of money." Nah, it's that big-budget, AAA-quality releases on the App Store can make money. Not everything needs to be $.99 and require a razor-thin development budget to see ridiculous returns. Also, there's a significant audience out there who wants to play great, deep games with superb visuals -- and for us, that's the most heartening news.
Super Crate Box [99¢] finally launched yesterday to a fairly rousing reception. I caught tons of people praising the game all over the Twitters, in our forums, and probably in other social outlets that I'm not even cool enough to know about yet. With no other big releases this week, Super Crate Box has been the talk of the town for the past 24 hours or so, and has in turn been shooting right up the paid app charts, currently sitting just inside the top 40 overall.
But another clever way to see just how many people are engrossed in Super Crate Box is by the "total crates collected" counter on the main menu. Basically, it tallies up the number of crates that have been collected across all players on iOS, or at least the ones that have connected to the internet, since the game's release. At the onset, developer Vlambeer had said on their blog that if players could grow the total crates collected tally up to 5 million then they would release the first content update for Super Crate Box.
Stolen Couch Games' tactical RPG Kids vs Goblins has been getting a lot of traction on our message board for good reason: it looks hot. In the game, you'll control three kids with up to 80 different spells on a quest that'll see them exploring a total of seven unique environments. As you'll see in the new trailer below, the spell system takes a cue from Magicka; it encourages users to combine individual spells and then exploit the combined power in order to progress and beat up waves of bad dudes. There seems to be a fair bit of standard action RPG-ery, too.
Zombie Wonderland 2: Outta Time! [
Urban Crime [
Absolutely nothing about the first five minutes of Darkness Rush: Saving Princess [
Super Crate Box's [$.
Last week, 
Wizard Ops [$
If you were thinking, "Hey, I haven't shot a zombie in awhile" this morning, well, we've got great news for you: Nexon Mobile has released Combat Arms: Zombies [$
Surprise! Infinity Blade has made a lot of money. The other afternoon, Epic Games announced that, overall, the franchise has earned $30 million since the debut of the original 
