Last week we talked about the massive update to last summer's quirky platformer Bean's Quest [99¢/Lite] that added a ton of brand new levels and fleshed out the storyline with appropriate intro and ending sequences. Basically, Bean's Quest was originally an incredibly short game, featuring just 8 levels. That was the chief complaint in our original review, though we did enjoy the game a lot while it lasted. In about 6 months time, Bean's Quest has expanded to 50 levels and is finally the full and complete game it was always intended to be.
For today only, you can grab the full version of Bean's Quest for just 99¢. If you've always admired Bean's Quest from afar, but weren't sure if its "constantly bouncing" gameplay was the right fit for you, then a recently released lite version can help you make up your mind. I would urge all platformer fans to give the lite version a spin, and if you're into it, then definitely grab the full Bean's Quest while it's just a dollar.
Remember League of Evil [$1.99]? It came out early last year, and the best way to describe it is the title of our review: "The closest thing to Super Meat Boy on iOS." League of Evil controlled great, making difficult Super Meat Boy-style platforming surprisingly fun. They even eventually added iCade and Joypad [Free] support, giving two more awesome control options.
Check out the recently released trailer for the sequel:
I'm digging the new art style. February 15th can't come quick enough.
Bean's Quest [$2.99] from Kumobius launched in July of last year, and it was kind of awesome. Actually, it was kind of really awesome. It was just one of many platformers on the App Store that nailed the neo-retro aesthetic, harkening back to the days of 8 and 16 bits. However, there was one key element that separated it from other iOS platformers – you're constantly bouncing. Picture a sideways Doodle Jump mixed with Super Mario Bros. 3 and you kind of get the idea.
The automatic nonstop bouncing was easy enough to get used to if you're just trying to make it through the game, but the real brilliance of Bean's Quest was that it kept track of the number of your bounces and tasked you with completing each level within a certain number of them to maximize your reward. Along with diamonds and a hidden toy creature that had to be collected, Bean's Quest had come up with an excellent little system for maximizing replay value.
There's a lot of value, to me, in something I can confidently call "a happy little game." Niko [Free] fits the bill, with a cute little dude at its center named Niko who is bound and determined to save the lives of his friends who just so happen to have been doomed to exile in some unknown world that lies beneath the forest.
We've heard all varieties of the backstory before, and surely this is just another of those, but you can't deny that developer Sulake knows what they're doing. After all, they're behind the Habbo Hotel world, and the ten million monthly visitors there is nothing to shake a stick at.
Originally developed for the Amiga, Babylonian Twins [99¢/HD] never made it to market but found life nearly 17 years later on the App Store. This platformer that has you swapping between two different characters, each with different abilities, in order to solve the many puzzles and progress through the game. It's a lengthy and satisfying trip too, and currently you can grab the iPad version for free for the first time ever.
You can read our thoughts on this Babylonian Twins reboot in our full review, and you can learn even more about the amazing history behind the game finally being finished and released. To summarize: Babylonian Twins is an excellent game and it's practically a miracle that we're able to finally play it. Suffice to say, if you own an iPad and have even a passing interest in puzzle games or platformers, you should download Babylonian Twins HD while it's still free. For iPhone and iPod touch owners, you should also consider dropping the 99¢ for the small version if you don't have it already.
Way back in 2010 when Monster Dash [$0.99] was released it felt a tiny bit lacking. Not that it wasn't a fantastic game, but it could have used a little more depth. You know, upgrades to earn, a complex mission system, maybe eventual retina support?
Now there's no need to worry about any of that. Not because One Epic Game [$0.99] brings any of that to the table, mind, but because Jetpack Joyride [Free] came out a year later and blew its predecessor out of the water. So why is it we're still seeing retreads of an older, lesser product? Could it be, she wonders, because Grip Gamesforgot their own game's roots when bringing it back from PlayStation Minis?
The just-released Paper Monsters [99¢], co-developed by Robots Vs Wizards and Crescent Moon Games, has been in the works for a long time. In fact, development originally began way back in mid-2010, and we didn’t learn until well into 2011 that Crescent Moon had actually jumped into the project to give it a graphical makeover (as they’ve been known to do from time to time).
With such a long development cycle, it’s easy for the hype over a game to do one of two things: either people start to lose interest as the months drag along, or the hype builds up to the kind of level that would be hard for any game to deliver on. Well, Paper Monsters finally has reached the App Store, so if you’re part of that first group then it’s time to start paying attention again.
We'd love to have been there when Electric Pixel Factory dreamed up Gorilla Gondola, as it's easily one of the stranger game ideas we've seen come to fruition. In the game, you control a gorilla on a gondola. The objective is to collect bananas and avoid hazards by shaking the gondola with swipes, tilts, and taps. There are also power-ups that change the gorilla and his interaction with the world, as well as what appears to be light puzzle elements, like, laser beam deactivation and so on.
The thing that's getting people the most excited on our message board is its look; it's definitely a sharp game with tons of cool little effects and background touches. We're trying to get some hands on time at the moment, but the wait until release won't be too long: Gorilla Gondola is set to be released on February 2nd.
The world of Jazz: Trump's Journey [$2.99] is a lush throwback to 1920's New Orleans, brought to life with watercolor backdrops and great tunes. You take the stage in parades and theaters, prisons and sewers, all the way to the French Quarter as you run through the history of Trump's success. You rise from a boy with dreams of making beautiful music to a man at the top of his game.
The game you play over the course of that journey is a platformer, with all your standard platforming elements: running, jumping, collecting widgets, and so on. Trump's music has the power to stop people in their tracks - literally freeze time - which opens the way for a few clever puzzles and challenges. But imprecise controls and terrible translation keep Jazz from reaching the heights it deserves.
To steal a line from Jon Irwin, "The platforming genre, once dominant, has now been relegated to counterprogramming." Which is to say that the two-dimensional platformer has overtaken, like kudzu, much of the niche and indie landscape that isn't dominated by games that involve shooting things in the face. For mobile gaming, that idea is more or less maintained if you swap face-shooting for physics-puzzling or colored-block-sliding. But that kind of reductive generalization doesn't leave room for nuance, and nuance is exactly what you need to talk about Terra Noctis.
At first blush, Terra Noctis [$.99] seems pretty derivative: the pits are inexplicably endless, the physics are rudimentary, and the enemies -- pumped in straight from the Mushroom Kingdom -- die if something lands on their heads. Even the narrative introduction seems particularly on the nose: Allen is a nightmare who isn't scary enough to pass his monster exams. Desperate, he sneaks out of school to find a way to get scarier. The idea is never revisited.
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.
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.
In some ways, platformers are the toughest to make on a mobile platform. There’s always questions regarding the length and difficulty of individual levels, as well as whether the developer can successfully implement a control scheme to make the game accessible enough for level completion and item collection. Crazy Hedgy [$1.99] from Cybertime is a great example of how platformers should be done on iOS. Not only does it get the basics (like gameplay and replayability) right, but the tilt-based control scheme works very well with the rest of the game. Assuming you don’t mind tilt controls, Crazy Hedgy is well worth it and highly recommended.
At its core, Crazy Hedgy is an adventure-platformer that has you playing through a large amount of levels with the primary goal being to get to the end. There’s not much of a story to go on, other than the fact that the land of Green Hedges has changed (and not for the better) and you need to save it. Along the way you’ll find various types of diamonds that can be collected and act as the currency to upgrade your character in the in-game store (IAP need no apply here). In addition, players are charged with collecting gold coins, which unlock the ability to purchase upgrades and are used as an artificial barrier between worlds (each world has about ten levels). In your way is a variety of different enemies and traps that you can either avoid or take on (extra points awarded if you can toss the enemies into those traps).
Walkabout Journeys [$0.99] is a game of almosts. It's almost a puzzle game, almost a platformer. It's almost beautiful enough, almost clever enough, almost deep enough - but always falls just short.
It's love at first sight, too, with its striking visual style and a solid central conceit. A little bit Lemmings, a little bit And Yet It Moves, Walkabout Journeys gives you a handful of Burton-esque characters to shepherd, characters that will die tragically given the slightest neglect. Rotating the world around them, you have to ensure they stay alive and stay together as they slip back and forth across each level. It's almost wonderful.
You guys, I had the Worst Christmas Ever this year. No, it’s not because I didn’t get an iPad 2 – I mean, it’s pretty much a job requirement for me to be set in that department – so my (ex-) friends and (former) loved ones are off the hook for that. No, what I can’t get over is the fact that Santa did not leave me a puppy this year. Seriously, I blew up Twitter for weeks with links to dog videos and pet adoption websites and no one picked up on the hints? Collective friends and family, you are dead to me.
Luckily, RagTag Studio'sPuppy Panic [$.99] is here to numb my pain. A cute, well-made endless runner, Puppy Panic helped take my mind off of the callousness of those most dear to me by presenting me with a stable of eight (nine, if you count the secret one) puppies for me to race and play with. Each puppy has special abilities unique to their breed that help it in various ways throughout the game’s two modes. When you start with the Beagle, for example, you can double-jump really high, and when you get the Eskimo, you can bark and clear all the obstacles from your path.
We'd love to have been there when 
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In some ways, platformers are the toughest to make on a mobile platform. There’s always questions regarding the length and difficulty of individual levels, as well as whether the developer can successfully implement a control scheme to make the game accessible enough for level completion and item collection. Crazy Hedgy [$
