Adult Swim has been on a roll lately publishing flat-out incredible games, and if you thought Monsters Ate My Condo [99¢] great, the publisher has somehow managed to ever-so-slightly one up themselves with Bring Me Sandwiches!! [99¢]. The premise is simple, and delightfully ridiculous-- You play as Jimmy Nugget, a hapless employee of Stuffy's, a local fast food joint. For some reason, you and you alone have been put to the task of feeding an evil alien would-be overlord named Gourmo who has the strangest taste in sandwiches.

The idea is to make a sandwich by collecting ingredients from around the platform level. You can start with a basic cheese sandwich, but, you can add non-standard fillings like burgers, apples, oranges or hot-dogs. And then, what the heck, let's throw in: Wine bottles, flowers, tins, potted plants, beach-balls, and much much more. Each time you add another filling, your sandwich gets taller, until you're carrying around a giant towering treat filled with the craziest ingredients. A sandwich meter of sorts lets you know when your sandwich has grown large enough to please your alien master.

Soon, Gourmo starts placing more specific food orders: "Bring me ...1 sandwich with a cat!"  The particulars of his order are displayed as icons at the top of the screen which are ticked off you collect them.  To find the ingredients, you must explore the busy levels, which include buildings to climb, bouncy roofs, clothes-lines to cross and water hydrants to smash so you can ride the gushing water into the air. There's dissolving clouds, larger items to push around, locked sections that need a key and even hidden areas to discover. And all this time, you're still carrying around a massive sandwich, which expands and contracts depending where you are.

Once the food is prepared, you take it to a waiting alien representative, who transports it up to the obese invader Gourmo, who devours it hungrily. There's an indicator on the screen which always points towards the alien, so it's easy to find. As the game progresses, you're put to the task of building multiple sandwiches as well.

When you make a second sandwich, your slice of bread gets larger, so you can dump bigger fillings on it, like crates, televisions or satellite dishes. Apparently Gourmo isn't too fussy about his nutritional intake. When you make a third sandwich, you're given a VERY large slice of bread, which allows even larger fillings, like say, a fridge. I won't keep listing the ingredients, but according to the "Food Journal" in the main menu, there's heaps of fillings to discover.

After a while Gourmo starts asking for other things to eat; like cake. But food's not the only thing to collect. There's also 29 alien spaceship parts to discover (one per stage) and presumably these help you reach "the mysterious Planet Nuzz" mentioned in the iTunes description. There's also special pick-up items like the alien rocket pack for double jumping, or a food-magnet to attract out-of-reach items.

It''s not always easy to walk around with a towering sandwich. Birds and dogs are attracted to it and a protesting hippie might hit you with his protest sign, knocking  some fillings off your bread. Naughty children might fire slingshots at you and beware of dogs and nasty little girls on pogo-sticks. These hostile characters can all be slapped onto a large piece of bread and fed to the alien. Problem solved.

After being hurt five times, such as falling into a hole, your health meter is depleted and the stage ends. Although you can restart from a checkpoint, with the same score, stage time and sandwich percentage you possessed back at that point. Discovering a red heart will restore some health. Or, If you collect 50 coins, you earn one heart. With all the sandwich making, it's easy to forget this is also a platform game.

There are four chapters to play (USA, Mexico, Italy and Japan) with 29 stages in total, including four auto-scrolling stages which play like an endless runner in a platform game. Each chapter has one bonus stage to unlock. The chapters are all uniquely themed. For example, the Mexico chapter has a desert setting with prickly cacti and kicking donkeys, with Mexican-style music, bandits in sombreros and Mexican food items to collect, like tacos. The last stage in each chapter is a larger level, which can't be by-passed with the skip level function. Plus there's a special final chapter, at the very end of the game which you need enough spaceship parts to unlock.

Instead of a star-scoring system, three slices of gold bread are awarded for each level, based on specific targets for score, time taken and number of food spills. These three goals can each be achieved in different runs, which provides an incentive to replay levels. Although just by reaching the end of a level, you unlock the next level, even if you fail the time, score and spill targets.

Three control options are provided, including tilt, touch (choose one half of screen for running and the other half for jumping) or buttons. The developers even get bonus points for implementing buttons that can each be individually re-positioned on the screen. Although strangely, when the game starts you're presented with two control options to choose from, as this wonderful button option is not mentioned. Although it's available, in the options menu. My only criticism is that the jumping is a bit awkward when bouncing off someone's head, sometimes requiring multiple attempts. Apart from this the controls work perfectly fine.

We gave the last wacky game from Adult Swim, Monsters ate my Condo, a five star review, and Sandwiches!! is another quality well-constructed release, with similarly vibrant graphics. It's amusing, varied, highly entertaining and excellent value for a dollar.  Also, for you hopeful iPad owners out there, while an iPad version isn't available (and also isn't currently in the works, per the developers) it also hasn't been ruled out as a future possibility.

Developer Two Tribes recently celebrated the ten year anniversary of their wonderful little puzzle platformer Toki Tori [$2.99/Lite/HD/Lite HD]. The game originally launched back in late 2001 for the Game Boy Color, and due to that system's life cycle coming to an end and its successor the Game Boy Advance garnering all sorts of buzz, it never really received much recognition, despite being an especially excellent puzzle platforming experience.

Then, in 2008, Toki Tori finally got a chance to receive the accolades it deserved when a remade version hit the downloadable WiiWare service on Nintendo's Wii platform, with slick 2.5D visuals and several new or reworked levels over the original. This enhanced remake of Toki Tori earned high review marks and award nominations from the gaming media at large, and it was this version that was ported to the App Store in mid-2009, with a brand new touch control scheme and several other bells and whistles. We weren't shy about how much we liked the iOS version of Toki Tori in our review, and even included it in our Best Games of 2009 roundup that year.

So, what exactly am I trying to say with this longwinded backstory? Well that's simple – Toki Tori is good. Like, really good. And now it's finally getting a sequel. Two Tribes has announced in our forums that a sequel is in the works, and they have provided this super teaser-y teaser trailer to whet your appetite:

(more...)

That's right, my retro-loving brethren, Bounty Bob has tunneled his way into the App Store thanks to Magmic's release of Miner 2049er [free] for the iPhone and iPad (universal).

For those unfamiliar, the original Miner 2049er is a platform game that was highly popular in the early '80s home computer scene. (See Owen Linzmayer's February 1983 Creative Computing review.) Released in 1982 by Bill Hogue through Big Five Software, the game puts you in the shoes of Bounty Bob on a mission to search through Nuclear Ned's abandoned uranium mines in search for the elusive Yukon Yohan. The treacherous mines, fraught with ladders, chutes and hydraulic scaffolds -- not to mention the radioactive creatures that roam the levels -- must be cleared by walking over every section of the platforms. There are 10 levels in all, which was quite a few, for its day. Miner 2049er was the inspiration for Matthew Smith's Manic Miner.

(more...)

FakePup’s Super Bit Dash [$0.99] is an interesting combination of endless running and platforming all wrapped up in a nice retro-bow. Despite its incorporation of level randomization, Super Bit Dash's biggest weakness is the lack of content and variety within its gameplay. However, despite this shortcoming, this casual title still provides an enjoyable experience, assuming you’re a fan of its (increasingly prevalent) retro heritage.

Like a lot of casual games, Super Bit Dash doesn’t offer much of anything in the story department. You play the role of a caped pixelated hero moving through various rooms full of pitfalls and obstacles while collecting coins. Aiding your character is the ability to dash in any direction with a swipe. Each dash burns energy, however, which can only be replenished by collecting the coins that are littered throughout the playing field. You can use your dash ability to break through barriers, fly across chasms, or speed past spikes and other barriers trying to take you out. Since the dash is really the only special power you have (besides a normal jump), coin management becomes imperative as you’ll need to make sure you have enough dash charges for those harder areas.

(more...)

Everything about Helium Boy [$1.99] seems like it should make for a highly appealing, adorable platforming experience, and I admit I had high hopes for it when I pulled it off the App store. The 3D look reminded me of games from past consoles, but in that fuzzy, fond way that makes you nostalgic to go back and play 'em again. And hey, I like cute stuff. So why wouldn't a game about a boy and his balloons fill all my portable gaming needs?

Helium Boy doesn't bother with too much backstory, which I actually appreciate in a platformer -- I don't care why I'm there. I just want to jump on stuff. All you need to know here is that you're a boy who slightly resembles a frog, and you just so happen to have some balloons and a pump at your disposal. You will be able to use these balloons to float your way through many treacherous levels, and you can also burst them when you need to do some walking. Let's not forget that there are enemies out to get you too, so you'll need to avoid them using the tools you have at your disposal.

(more...)

We have a couple more upcoming games from Chillingo to share that we previewed at Wednesday's Naughty or Nice games event held by EA in New York. Two puzzle games of rather different pace.

Home Sheep Home 2

Back in May we took a look at Chillingo's iOS port of the BAFTA-nominated Flash game Home Sheep Home and found it to be "baaah-rilliant," giving it four stars. Sometime later this fall, the studio will be launching a sequel to this Shaun the Sheep-inspired game, entitled Home Sheep Home 2: A Little Epic.

Like its iOS predecessor, Home Sheep Home 2 is a puzzle platformer with a pencil-sketch aesthetic, featuring Shaun -- pretty standard sized, as far as sheep go -- along with his little pal Timmy and his massive gal Shirley.

Each screen of the game is a fairly elaborate puzzle proposition. The task at hand is to get all three sheep from one side of the screen to the other. To do this, each of the sheep most be properly employed in order to solve the puzzle and move on to the next screen. For example, you might need to hop Timmy onto Shaun's back to send him up to a button that needs pressing, and then use Shirly as a raft to float Shaun across a pool of water. That kind of thing.

The game looks to be not a radical departure from the original, but a collection of new puzzles in the spirit of the old.

Home Sheep Home 2 will be offered in two versions, one for the iPhone and one for the iPad, at as-yet undetermined prices.

Hank Hazard: The Stunt Hamster

Another upcoming title we were shown a the Naughty or Nice event is the action puzzler Hank Hazard: The Stunt Hamster. The game involves helping Hank live his dream of becoming the first daredevil hamster by sending him flying around level after level of arranged obstacles, collecting stars, and getting out with the best time left on the clock.

You set Hank in motion by removing various items on the screen to get his little run-about ball rolling. You might eliminate a column of blocks or pop a balloon from which he hangs. Once he's on his way, obstacles such as flames, floating sliders, chomping teeth and rocket fists -- some of which you can activate with a tap -- send him hither and yon, daredevil style.

Hank Hazard: The Stunt Hamster will support both the iPhone and the iPad and was developed by Red Rocket Games.

Mos Speedrun [Free] from developer Physmo is a retro-inspired platformer that was released this past April. I pretty much fell in love with Mos Speedrun when I reviewed it upon release, and the game has only gotten better since then with updates that have added things like new levels, a fun video replay feature, and support for the iCade and Joypad Game Controller [Free] app.

So basically, Mos Speedrun has been one of my favorite platformers on iOS, and has only been getting more awesome with the developer’s commitment to updates. Now, for the first time ever, you can snag Mos Speedrun for the incredibly reasonable price of FREE.

It should go without saying, but if you somehow don’t have Mos Speedrun yet, then you need to run straight to the App Store and pick it up during this free promotion. It’s Universal, and plays wonderfully on either the iPhone/iPod touch or the larger-screened iPad.

Physmo has also hinted that another set of new levels is currently in the works, so even if you blast through the 25 included levels (plus additional web levels which can be found on the Physmo website) then you can look forward to some more in the very near future. At any rate, don’t miss your chance to pick up this gem of a platformer while free.

For fans of classic PC gaming, the name Bounder’s World [99¢ / HD] may sound familiar. Indeed, the tilt-controlled game is an updated version of Bounder, a Commodore 64 game released in 1985 that had you control a tennis ball as it navigated a multitude of levels. The premise remains intact in Bounder’s World, but everything from the 2.5D viewpoint and graphics (and the humanization of the tennis ball) to the accelerometer-based controls are certainly a change. While I can’t affirmatively state that Bounder’s World manages to keep the essence of its spiritual predecessor intact, I can say that it’s certainly a solid tilt-based action title with a few shortcomings.

(more...)

Arcade Jumper [$1.99] by Black Hive Media is a retro side-scrolling platform game which feels like the old classic Mario. There's enemies to either shoot or jump on their heads, and the main character wears a red cap with red and blue clothes. Yup, that certainly sounds very Mario-esque, but fortunately there's plenty of innovation in this game too.

It's the 1980's and Eddy's brother Jimmy has been sucked into an arcade machine by 'Ghosty', the naughty child-abducting spirit with a friendly-sounding name. To save Jimmy, you need to complete 10 zones, each with three stages (30 stages in total).

Stages are completed by finding warp-tokens, then returning to the start of the stage to insert the token into the glowing arcade cabinet and warping to the next stage. There's a timer which counts down, so you need to keep moving. At the end of each zone (3 stages) you're confronted by the floating kidnapper, Ghostly, who must be chased down and then shot or jumped on before time runs out to complete the zone.

(more...)

Poor Timmy is not having a good day. CB Labs’ The Adventures of Timmy: Run Kitty Run [99¢] starts off in the thick of Timmy’s misery: He’s a playground outcast in a cat costume whose only friend/probable true love, Kitty, gets snatched away and held prisoner in hulking bully Mitch’s tree house. Rather than accept this, however, Timmy puts his cat suit’s hood up and gets down to business—a rescue operation that spans 36 levels of 2D platforming awesomeness.

There’s a reason that some of our forum users compare Run Kitty Run to classics like Super Mario Bros. It shares a lot of elements, from the rescue angle to gathering coins. Probably the most important similarity, though, is the way you feel playing it. It’s challenging, sometimes frustrating, but often rewarding.

(more...)

RobotRiot [99¢] from Glowing Eye Games and Retromite, is a Universal 2D sci-fi platform game with retro graphics where you control an armed, hovering, debt-collecting robot, named SLUG. And frankly, each part of that sentence sounds appealing.

SLUG's job description involves helping to repossess spaceships when citizens are late with their tax payments. To do this, he must enter each section of a spacecraft to locate and destroy the power generator. Once all sections have been powered-down, the craft is left disabled and defenseless, allowing a tow-ship to easily tow it away for impounding. And you'll be paid a wee bounty for your efforts, by your boss, Commander Krupp.

(more...)

This past week we posted a preview of the first three games set to hit the App Store, marking the launch of the Elite Collection of 8-bit home computer games from noted and long-running studio Elite Systems. The games have just gone live and are available in both iPhone and iPad "HD" versions.

The initial Elite Collection titles that have arrived are Datasoft's 1987 magical platformer Black Magic, Image Works' lovely 1992 release First Samurai, and the frantic 1992 space shooter Enforcer from Manfred Trenz. Every one of these titles is very well implemented in iOS and is among the top tier of games to be found on the 8-bit platforms of decades past.

The Elite Collection is Elite Systems' initiative to expand their ongoing retro rebirth efforts by utilizing a new proprietary system -- a facilitator, of sorts -- that was designed in such a way as to not incorporate, reference, or in any way rely upon third-party property and that is able to deliver, to iOS, games that originated on platforms other than just the ZX Spectrum (Elite's original source platform) in near-100% original form. For more details on these titles (including videos), see our preview.

Elite will soon be following up these three initial titles with an additional six Elite Collection releases.

A few weeks ago we brought you word that WayForward, the studio behind a brilliant A Boy And His Blob re-make as well as a new (and good) BloodRayne title, is setting its sights on the iPhone and iPad with a port of Shantae: Risky’s Revenge. Now, we have the its first trailer and we thought it’d be hip to share it with you because we’re cool.

As you’ll see in the trailer, Risky’s Revenge is an action-y platformer. Generally, the more kinetic the game the more its mobile port suffers, but WayForward has done a miraculous job on the virtual controls -- the game moves like it should and plays how it was designed to be played in the first place. Sounds strong, I know, but our preview build communicates that the studio knows what it’s doing here.

We still don’t have a solid release date, but the window continues to be “soon.” We’ll make sure fill you in whenever we know what’s up.

Commander Pixman [99¢] from One Minute Games is a retro platformer. In fact, it's so retro that the graphics are intentionally pixelated, the landscape is formed by a simple yellow line and the background is an old-school scrolling star-field. Graphically, this is platforming cut down to it's most basic form. And I'm totally enjoying it.

Commander Andrew “Pixman” Blazkowicz has crashed and must escape from an alien base by reaching the end of each level. If we do this fast enough, we'll be awarded three stars. And if we kill all the enemies on a level, we'll receive a red badge. Both of these goals can be completed in one attempt, or during separate runs. This allows a rapid enemy-avoiding run-through and a separate unhurried enemy-hunt, squeezing more playability from each level.

(more...)

Big Blue Bubble’s Fling a Thing [99¢] is one of those simplistic games with an almost indescribable appeal. Its core mechanic is so refined and entertaining and its constituent parts exist in such a strong harmony that you can’t escape re-visiting it. Fling a Thing is great because of the sum of its parts – the sound direction, the presentation, the action, and even the level progression system live to serve each other and it makes for a good time over and over again.

Fling a Thing is what happens when a studio takes the Doodle Jump formula and gives it structure, and then swaps the alien for an insect that has a suction-cup for a mouth. In the game, you control a sticky-mouthed "Thing" that adheres to glass panes. By grabbing its tail, you gain the power to fling the Thing in an arc. Sometimes you’ll need to attach to other bits of glass, but more often you’ll be flinging to bubbles, which act as a puzzle device. (more...)