Boot Snake Games's radical puzzle title, Containment: The Zombie Puzzler [$4.99], has just been updated with a new survival level and several smaller tweaks including an improved user interface for Survival mode. "The new free Survival level is 10 blocks long and takes place in Franklin graveyard," Boot Snakes tells us. And since it's half the size of a normal romp, Boot Snake figures it'll cater to the on-the-go crowd much better.
That new Survival mode UI, by the way, incorporates "improved Win / Loss" score screens and general score persistence. The other notable tweaks include performance boosts for the original iPad.
Dungeon Raid [$.99 / Lite], a match-3 that TouchArcade President-in-Chief Eli Hodapp freely argues is the greatest game ever created, has been updated on Android. You probably don't care about that considering this is an iOS-centric web site and all, but here's the twist: in a tiny celebration of the fact that DR has made the platform leap, the iPhone version's price has been reduced to $.99 from $2.99. Neat!
The RPG component is what hooks people as hard as Eli Hodapp. The integration of items, abilities, equipment upgrades, and character classes is seamless and super clever; they end bridging a gap you didn't even know existed in the well-worn genre. Our glowing review, which pours over all of the game's fine details, is available here if you'd like to learn more before taking the plunge.
Pound through Scribblenauts Remix [$1.99] on launch night? Now there's good reason to give it another go. Warner Brothers has just announced the availability of the game's first bit of DLC. It's a pack that adds a total of 20 new levels split into two chapters and an additional fantasy-themed playground complete with a king and a throne.
The price is pretty agreeable: 5th Cell is looking for $.99 in return for some more fun in the oddly entertaining and incredibly inspired puzzle game. We've spent a few minutes with the new content, by the way, and we're pretty sure you'll dig the new missions. Check out screens of a few just below:
Push Panic [Free] is a fast paced (and fun) puzzle game that up until recently was published by Appular. According to Push Panic's developers in our forums, Appular is getting out of the publishing game and has taken all of their published titles off of the App Store. So, in response, Push Panic has been re-released and made free for a brief period of time.
Keep in mind, if you ever downloaded Push Panic before, you'll need to re-download it again during this freebie promotion. With Appular removing the original Push Panic from the App Store, you'll effectively be locked out of any future updates and being able to re-download the game. Push Panic is a neat game too, so even if you didn't own the original, you should download it while it's free.
Games like Monkey Quest: Thunderbow [$0.99/HD] disrupt the feel-good media narrative we like to tell about the App Store. It's a low-risk way to capitalize on experimental games like Sword & Sworcery[$4.99], a place where Andreas Illiger, the one-man dev team behind Tiny Wings [$0.99], can sell thousands of copies. It's also where a giant corporation like Nickelodeon can sell us an Angry Birds [$0.99]Â clone to advertise its kid-friendly MMO, Monkey Quest.
It would be easier to find Thunderbow distasteful if it weren't so radical, born out of the same  mid-90s fever dream that brought us anthropomorphic turtles who were also ninjas. The hero of the game is a nameless monkey who carries a bow-and-arrow. After you beat the 30 available levels -- more are, supposedly, coming soon -- you can play a few bonus rounds with a girl-monkey who shoots lightning bolts out of her electric guitar-bow. It's incredible.
It's not that Snoticles [$0.99] is a bad game. Not at all - it's a competent puzzler across the board. It's just that I've grown to expect a lot from games published by Adult Swim. Right or wrong, they blew us all out of the water with Monsters Ate My Condo [$0.99] and Bring Me Sandwiches!! [$0.99] Both have a frenetic sort of madness underlying them, one that seemed like it might just be a trend. The come down since then has been harsh.
Taken on its own merits Snoticles is certainly a solid title, minus a few recent weeks of crash-happy downtime between updates. There are five worlds of physics puzzles to be solved with the excretions of Zit, Dread, Spark and Snot, the titular snoticles. Each has its own abilities that are put to the test in solving puzzles defined by (generally) static blobs that must be destroyed.
How long do you need to play to have a good time? Windosill [$2.99] is a straight up terrible value proposition if you like serious length from your games. It doesn't take much longer than 15 minutes to run through and there's no real replayability. But damned if it isn't a great 15 minutes while it lasts.
If you take it down to fundamentals, Windosill is a puzzle game about traveling. A toy car drives from room to room. Each is locked, each has to be solved with creative thinking and exploration to open the next. There are only eleven rooms, and they're over in a snap. Yet whimsy and charm makes it ever so memorable.
So I made all kinds of resolutions for the New Year. Yes I am aware of how dumb that sounds, and I know what you’re thinking. "Oh, resolutions never work, you have to make gradual lifestyle changes" or "You make the same resolutions every year" or "Why would anyone need to resolve to not get arrested outside Jeff Goldblum’s apartment?" etc. etc. But hey, it’s my life and my dreams, OK?!
Besides, one of my resolutions, the one striving to reintroduce simplicity in my life, led me to discover a really charming puzzle game for your perusal. That game is Blockwick [Free] by Kieffer Bros. It’s my new favorite puzzle game, and it may just become yours, too.
Whoa! World of Goo [$2.99 / UHD], a game that we're always stoked to talk about, has hit one of those benchmark download numbers. According to developer 2D Boy, the physics-puzzler has hit one million downloads across the App Store and the Mac App Store. That's a lot of loving for an indie game that doesn't have a toy line.
2D Boy, as it usually does in its sales post, highlighted some interesting facts. Like, these, for example: about 69 percent of this million have come from the more expensive Universal version of the game, while 29 percent came from its regular version. The rest come from the Mac version, which in our experience, is every bit as delightful as the touch ones.
Bryan Mitchell is the the developer of the popular Geared [$2.99 / HD] and Geared 2 [$2.99] games, which have reportedly been played by over 12 million people. He's partnered-up with an old school buddy Joshua Greenspan, who released Puzzling Penguins [Free] in 2009. Together, they've released a sequel, named quite appropriately: Puzzling Penguins 2 [99¢].
If you're familiar with the original game, this latest release features more of the "move-the-penguin-to-the-water" type puzzle-solving, but the graphics and music have improved, with the most obvious changes being a new isometric view of the playing area and the inclusion of snow-coated scenery in the background.
There’s something about puzzle games that seem to attract the cutest, most vibrant visuals to the genre and SubTub [$0.99] is no exception. However, despite the bright and cheery graphics, this action-puzzler is no slouch when it comes to difficulty. In fact, if you can get past some control issues and bouts of shallow gameplay, SubTub has enough content and challenge for completionists to possibly be worth checking out.
SubTub is a game of naval superiority. You control a cute red sub through four sets of 18 missions that have you destroying the opposition on the open sea. In the case of SubTub, the open sea is a 6x9 grid of blue filled with other subs, aircraft carriers and more. Your weapons are underwater mines that are placed on the grid. While you have an unlimited amount of mines, each one has a fixed timer and a range slightly more than a single square. Complicating matters are a variety of other seafaring units, such as the rubber ducky, a ‘friendly’ unit that you can’t blow up with your mines (or touch on the grid, for that matter). In addition, mines are chainable, adding to the overall strategy.
Normally, I would say "another day, another Chillingo physics puzzle game" as the developer pumps out these high quality iOS titles like it's nothing, but then I had to take a moment to stop. After all, Home Sheep Home 2 [$0.99] is not just any puzzler, it's a puzzler starring Shaun the Sheep from the Wallace & Gromit series, and if you have no idea what that is get off this website right now and go find out. It's that good, and I don't throw such idle threats around lightly.
The first Home Sheep Home title came out in May and earned a BAFTA award (see review here). Not too shabby since it started out as a free Flash game. Like the first game, Home Sheep Home 2 challenges the player to take charge of the three sheep Shaun, Timmy and Shirley and make their way through a series of levels. Fans of the original game that felt it needed more levels should be delighted that there are 40 in total to be explored here, so you should get more time out of it this go round.
Living in Southern California, I spend most holidays in front of a space heater watching White Christmas on TV and wishing I was one-half of a musical comedy duo trying to gain the affections of two sisters while saving the inn of my old Army commander.
But more than that, what I want more than anything is the snow that the movie is named for. I sit inside daydreaming about that beautiful, luscious blanket of powder covering the ground (yes, I realized that they probably filmed that movie on a sound stage not far from me, but a girl can dream!) while red-faced children fling snowballs at each other. Alas, as that is unlikely to occur pretty much ever, I’ve been making do with Snow Fight [Free].
Cut The Rope [$.99 / HD] is now infinitely better for those of us with an iPad and an iPhone or iPod Touch. Just before the App Store freeze, the talented hands over at ZeptoLab has added iCloud support to the creative physics-based puzzler. That means, of course, that you can now sync your saves across all of your devices, ensuring that you never miss a beat.
This latest update also adds in your usual "optimizations and fixes," and rolls in a new Buzz Box featuring rope-moving Bees. Oh! And Zepto has also re-ordered some of the game's level boxes "to ensure a better playing experience," according to the game's update notes. Nice guys, these Zepto guys.
Attention: if you're particularly fleet of finger, you can grab PopCap Games's new-fangled Bejeweled [$.99] for the price of $0. Apple is continuing its crazy promotional program via Facebook, and this week it's giving away Bejeweled while supplies last. All you need to do to claim a free copy is hit this link, mash a few buttons including a "Like" or two, and then you can download the game for free, like a boss.
We recently gave Bejeweled a spin and came away thinking, "Yep, this is Bejeweled." That isn't a complaint, either -- this new iteration is as good as any in the franchise, and that means it's really good. Especially in bursts. Give it a shot.
Also, get ready for a bunch of crazy deals in the near future. Ninety-nine cents off is going to be baby stuff compared to what we're going to see later this week.