In case you've never heard of it before, Dominion is a deck building card game created by game designer Donald X. Vaccarino and published by Rio Grande Games in 2008. Since its release, Dominion has been ripping up the charts over on BoardGameGeek, and has won all sorts of other awards including taking home game of the year at Germany's Spiel board game festival. In fact, Dominion's success and popularity have spawned an entire genre of other similar deck building games.
A few days ago, Dominion Donald X. Vaccarino [Free] hit the App Store, and since then I've been trying to verify the validity of this port. It seemed pretty shady, and the developer's web site sure didn't help things. After some additional digging, I came across a post by Rio Grande Games' Jay Tummelson over on BoardGameGeek. It turns out that over the years they've given their blessing to a number of developers to release iOS versions of Dominion, provided they agree to remove it once the official version hits the App Store.
What's more interesting though, is that the official licensed version, per this same forum post, is only "a few weeks" away. Even more curious though is that Chillingo currently has a game titled Dominion [$1.99] on the App Store as well. We'll just have to wait and see how the dust settles on all of this. If you're interested in Dominion, I'd snag the free version out now, and if you own Chillingo's Dominion it might not be a bad idea to back up the .ipa just in case there's any hijinks with take-down requests by Rio Grande Games so they can score the "Dominion" title on the App Store.
I hope Rio Grande is serious about this "few weeks" thing, as an official version of Dominion has potential to be awesome.
When prompted via Twitter by Xperia Play fan site XperiaGamer when we might see Reckless Racing 2, the sequel to 2010's excellent top-down arcade racer Reckless Racing [99¢/Lite/HD], the game's developer Polarbit responded that we can expect the game to hit next week on February 2nd.
We really liked the original Reckless Racingin our review, and the sequel looks to up the ante with a fleshed-out single-player campaign, longer tracks, and improved visuals over the already gorgeous first game. You can catch a glimpse of Reckless Racing 2 in the all-to-brief teaser video above, and we'll have more of the game when it launches next week.
Developer Microids and publisher Anuman Interactive have announced that Barbarian - The Death Sword will be hitting the App Store early next month. Barbarian is a modern remake of the classic Commodore 64 title Barbarian - The Ultimate Warrior, also known in the US as simply Death Sword. Released in 1987, the original Barbarian was a one-on-one fighting game pitting buff and brutal warriors against each other.
Despite the fighting genre being in its infancy, Barbarian was critically acclaimed for its competitive gameplay. However, most of its notoriety outside of the gaming world was garnered by its violent nature where you were able to decapitate your opponent in a shower of blood, as well as the scantily clad models featured on its packaging.
Bullet hell experts Cave have today announced their next forthcoming iOS shooter Dodonpachi Blissful Death. Known as Dodonpachi Dai Ou Jou in Japan, it's the fourth game in the Donpachi series and was followed up with Dodonpachi Dai Fukkatsu several years later, which we know as Dodonpachi Resurrection [$7.99/Lite] here on the US App Store.
There aren't any details just yet for Dodonpachi Blissful Death, but based on Cave's previous iOS releases I think it's pretty safe to assume a few things. It will likely include an arcade mode that stays faithful to the original release as well as a special Smartphone mode that has been retooled for touch screens and given some additional features.
While most of Cave's iOS releases follow this formula, they bucked that trend with their last release Bug Princess [$4.99/Lite], which was more or less just a direct port of the arcade version. This wasn't exactly a bad thing, as the arcade game was (and is) amazingly fun, but I've grown to really like the special Smartphone modes that Cave puts so much thought into. Hopefully we'll see this in Dodonpachi Blissful Death.
Beyond that, you can expect multiple ship types, weapon augmenters called Element Dolls, insane combo scoring, and hidden loops and bosses. So basically, tons of Cave shmup goodness. Really great news too, considering Cave has been contemplating focusing more on less hardcore, more social games. Glad to see them still bringing great titles to iOS.
As soon as we have more information on Dodonpachi Blissful Death's arrival on the App Store, like pricing and release date, we'll be sure to let you know. For now though, it's probably safe to hit up our forums and start drooling.
If you have a Kinect, you should probably own Dance Central 2. It's one of the best and brightest games the hands-free motion tracking device has in its library. It's also one of the few that actually shows off what the device can do well. If you need more a push, Microsoft might have just the thing: an app that pairs, loosely, what Harmonix did with VidRhythm [Free] to Dance Central 2. It's a promotional preview app, basically, dubbed Dance Cam. [Free]
In it, users can record video performances of themselves dancing to a sampling of tracks from the Dance Central 2 proper soundtrack. Then, the app spits out a music video containing both. Pretty simple stuff, really.
Dance Cam also has social hooks that allows for sharing and even mash-up videos between friends. The below fleshes out some of the finer details:
Hard to believe this might turn someone onto Dance Central 2, so we're kinda thinking about this more as a strange little toy than anything else. It's free, so give it a spin -- especially if VidRhythm is your thing.
If you're still into match-3 games, give Triple Town a shot. It's a fresh take on the style of puzzle game that doesn't mess with the purity of the mechanic, but it does do a good job integrating and introducing an interesting wrinkle: town building.
You might have heard of this one already. It has seen a couple of releases across other platforms, including Kindle and Facebook. The latter one should give you an idea of what to expect, actually. This is a free-to-play game with "social" game hooks, much like any other title on the social networking site. Where it departs is that it seems to feed off its best players in a particularly non-aggressive way. On iOS, you can just play and not worry. At least, that's been my experience with it so far.
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.
The PixBits' Junk Jack [$2.99 / LE] is easily one of our community's more celebrated games for two reasons: (a) it's a fun game and (b) The Pixbits has demonstrated a clear commitment to making it a bigger and more fulfilling experience via frequent updates. The rub with the latter, though, is that it's causing a slight delay with the iPad version.
Speaking to us about the eventual Universal update, PixBits tells us that it's still being planned, but has been postponed in order to make the iPhone version as good as it can be beforehand. "We are really busy developing the new update that will include many new features like walking mobs, bombs, etc," a studio rep says. "The iPad version is still planned, but we have delayed it. We want to make sure to have a stable and full featured game before doing that version."
Our collective gut says that we'll be talking a lot about Colaboratory's Puzzlejuice [$.99] in 2012. That's big praise considering it's January and all, but it has that indescribable feel of a remarkable game. To its credit, it does a great job convincing you that it is, in fact, this good; it has an unparalleled swagger, presence, and charisma that crops up in almost every aspect of the title, including the UI and tutorials. It knows it's hot.
We're not sure if it knows how crazy it is, though. Puzzlejuice deftly pairs the block matching of a Tetris to a free-form spelling mechanic like the one used in last year's stand-out, SpellTower [$1.99]. Basically, you create lines by rotating blocks of varying shapes and smashing them together at the bottom of the screen. Once you make a solid line, the matched blocks magically transform into letters that you then have to spell words with.
Way back in April of last year, we caught wind of an interesting looking Kickstarter project called Tweet Land. The idea was that Tweet Land would create randomly generated gameplay events based off of certain keywords sent out over Twitter. So essentially, real people tweeting would power what happened in the game.
It’s a really clever concept on paper, but we were a bit skeptical about how it would pan out in an actual game. Well, it looks like we’ll be able to find out later this month as Tweet Land is set to launch on January 31st.
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.
Adventure Bar Story, a Recettear-like RPG that originally released in Japan as Adventure Bar of Wonderland Portable on PSP, is being localized and fitted for iPhone and iPod Touch. Zigza Game, the studio behind this new effort, revealed its intentions to do this over on our message board, and even dropped a few new screenshots to stimulate the community. We're including a much less, er, eye-meltingPSP selection below.
Knock out the "item" part of Recettear's title and insert "bar" if you want a decent idea of what you'll be getting into with Adventure Bar Story. The goal is to have the best bar in the kingdom; To accomplish this, you'll need to dungeon crawl and harvest the component parts of a variety of monsters to win cooking and drink contests. You know, just like in real life.
The Indie Fund's first release, Q.U.B.E., is also its first success story: after just a few days on PC download, the first-person puzzle game has generated enough dough to repay its 90k investment from the Fund. Now, Toxic Games is looking to launch the title on other platforms, including iOS. "We're currently prototyping an iOS version, and a Mac version has been in the works for months now," a studio representative told Joystiq.
Q.U.B.E. is a fascinating puzzler that has you, as a telekinesis-wielding dude, rotating and generally fiddling with the size and shape of colored blocks in sterile rooms. It's a style of game that we don't really have on iOS, so we're stoked about the possibility and excited about what it could open up on the platform it ever does see a release. This isn't exactly a match-three, you know?
So, there you were. Looking at our upcoming games list and getting psyched about Smash Cops. And then the game was pulled before you could buy it. Good news: it's re-hitting the App Store this week, and reviews should be follow it on January 19th or so. Yay!
What was up with the delay? Licensing issues. In a statement sent to us at the time of the postponement, developer Hutch explained soberly that it hoped to "get [its] forms straightened out" and get back into the App Store this week. And, hey, it did -- but not before about 5,000 lucky dudes purchased the game.
Galaxy on Fire 2 [$9.99 / HD / Lite] is receiving its second add-on in Q2 of 2012, the studio behind the outer space adventure game announced earlier today on its blog. The new stuff sounds cool, too. The add-on, a 10 plus hour adventure dubbed "Supernova," will incorporate new mission types, new stories, better visuals, and even some fun callbacks to the series' more memorable characters, like Khador.
Supernova takes place immediately after events in the last expansion, Valkryie. Here's a blurb that explains what's going on in Supernova specifically:
In case you've never heard of it before, Dominion is a deck building card game created by game designer Donald X. Vaccarino and published by Rio Grande Games in 2008. Since its release, Dominion has been ripping up the charts over on BoardGameGeek, and has won all sorts of other awards including taking home game of the year at Germany's Spiel board game festival. In fact, Dominion's success and popularity have spawned an entire genre of other similar deck building games.
If you have a Kinect, you should probably own Dance Central 2. It's one of the best and brightest games the hands-free motion tracking device has in its library. It's also one of the few that actually shows off what the device can do well. If you need more a push, Microsoft might have just the thing: an app that pairs, loosely, what Harmonix did with VidRhythm [
If you're still into match-3 games, give Triple Town a shot. It's a fresh take on the style of puzzle game that doesn't mess with the purity of the mechanic, but it does do a good job integrating and introducing an interesting wrinkle: town building.
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