“Chillingo is really the App Store kingmaker,” said Mikael Hed, CEO of Rovio. “No other company has managed to repeatedly raise previously unknown titles to the top of the App Store charts, making them into leading game brands as they have done with Angry Birds.”

“As soon as anyone plays Angry Birds, they are happy and addicted,” promised Chillingo’s Head of Publishing, Johnny Coghlan. “It has universal appeal to players of any age and experience level, thanks to Rovio’s expert design and development skills.”

Angry Birds Poster Giveaway

We absolutely love this game and we’ve mentioned the game numerous times on the site;read our full review here. We are helping to celebrate this milestone by giving away three Angry Birds posters (like the one pictured above). All you have to do is leave a comment on this post below using a valid email address at which we can reach you.*

Terms and Conditions:

Don’t worry, your email address is not visible to anyone but us and will only be used to contact you regarding this contest. Unfortunately due to unpredictable international postage costs, the giveaway is only open to residents of the Continental US. The giveaway will run this entire week, ending at 11:59 PM EST on Friday March 12, 2010.

The game is packed with features including a huge variety of enemies, bosses that keep growing with each subsequent level, and loads of upgrades and powerups. Additionally, Critical Wave has some really neat and more subtle features like a live leaderboard that lets you see how you are stacking up against the competition (in real time) and an auto pause feature when you let go of both virtual d-pads.

The graphics are simply stunning, with everything represented by geometric shapes of all shapes and sizes, giving the game nice stylized look, highlighted by bright colors and crisp, clean lines, though the colors are a bit less (for the lack of a better word) “glowing” when compared to games like the geoDefense series, with their over-saturated neon pinks, greens and blues. When a boss appears, you will see a little arrow on the screen pointing to the off-screen boss, so you’ll know how to navigate to him. The screen also gets a little darker, with a spotlight highlighting the boss and creating a really cool lighting effect. A steady techno beat floods your ears and helps build the ambiance and tension.

Our biggest single complaint is that we found the subtle system used to display your current health a bit too confusing for our liking. We’d love to see a more traditional and easier to distinguish/constantly visible health meter. If possible, we’d also really like to see some additional game modes other than just the survival mode. We could easily see either a blitz mode and adventure mode being a lot of fun in this polygon rich environment that Grannies Games has created.

In Conclusion

There is quite a lot to love about Critical Wave, but some players may find the abstractness of game’s graphics a tad confusing at first. This style is definitely not for everyone, but fans of Geometry Wars, Geo Defense and Geo Defense Storm will love the retro feel of the game. Critical Wave is a well-crafted, fast-paced and challenging dual-stick shooter. The more we play, the more of it’s nuances we discover and the more we really love this game. Critical Wave’s regular price is $2.99, but it is currently on sale for $0.99 through the weekend. At that price, you really can’t go wrong with Critical Wave, which is most certainly destined to become a classic on the iPhone platform.

Trailer

Abigale:Revenge of the Princess ($1.99 -> 99¢)
Ace Commando ($1.99 -> 99¢)
Amy’s Burger Shop – 99¢
Alive 4-ever ($2.99 -> 99¢) – Our favorite Dual-Stick Shooter of 2009
Against the Fire! ($1.99 -> 99¢)
Amy’s Dessert Shop ($1.99 -> 99¢)
Are You Alright? ($1.99 -> 99¢)

Emily has been having quite a bit of fun playing two titles (Color Me !!! and ShowMe Stories) from Polish developer, SID On. Both titles take a less is more approach, offering the tools to let children use their own creativity and imaginations. We’ll look at each title individually.

Color Me !!!

Color Me !!! is basically a portable coloring book for your iDevice aimed toward children between the ages of 2 and 6 years old. There are 30 different pictures to color, broken down three categories: aquatic creatures, numbers and animals/produce. On the bottom of the screen is a vast color palate with seemingly just about every color in the spectrum. To select a color, you can tap anywhere on the spectrum, or slide a ball to select the color you want or just tilt the device to move the selector. From there it’s just a matter of touching the screen on the part of the picture you’d like to color. If you want to start over, just shake the device. You can even save your child’s coloring to your iDevice’s photo library or post it on Facebook.

Emily spent a good deal of time playing with Color Me. She loved the big, cute pictures and the aquatic animals certainly captured her attention the most. At times she did have a bit of trouble properly selecting the smaller parts of the pictures and the accelerometer-based color picking caused a few issues. She kept accidentally tilting the device while playing, causing the color to either change from what she had selected, or get stuck all the way at one end or another. In many instances, it would end up sliding all the way to the left and get stuck on black until I had her hold it upright again. Unfortunately there is no way to toggle the accelerometer interaction on/off within the game. As anyone with a toddler can imagine, getting her to sit still is like asking the Earth to stop spinning, so we’d love to see this option added.

Overall, Emily found Color Me !!! fun, but her frustration with the color selector had her wanting to try another game before she normally probably would have. Color Me !!! could be a nice alternative to the real thing on a car trip or when you are out somewhere and you just don’t have room for all those crayons, or a surface to color on. It’d be really neat if the developers could find a way for you to import your own pictures to color as well.

ShowMe Stories

The other SID On title that Emily played is called, ShowMe Stories. It is a “hidden picture” game where you must use your finger to rub the screen, revealing a picture/animation underneath. ShowMe Stories’ thirty beautifully illustrated images are divided into three categories: animals, fairy tales and professions. As you run your finger across the screen, there a meter appears which shows what percentage of the picture has been revealed. Once enough of the picture is visible, children will cheer, the remainder of th picture will be shown and a little animation will play. The game randomly cycles through the pictures in the selected category, so you never know which one will be revealed next.

In addition to the thirty included pictures, you can also pull in any photo from you iDevice’s photo library, but you need to select these one at a time. It’d be nice if you could select several pictures at once and it would randomly display these, like it does with the stock pictures.

ShowMe Stories really excited Emily’s imagination and inquisitive nature. She started asking all sorts of questions about the pictures and made up her own stories about what was happening. The first time she sat down with ShowMe Stories she spent at least 30-45 minutes straight asking questions about the pictures and making up stories that went something like this:

E: What’s that animal Daddy? Is that a cat?
D: It’s a fox.
E: Oh…he’s walking…in the snow…his feet must be cold! Are his feet cold Daddy? Where’s he walking to? Is he going home?

It is really fun and often humorous to see what will come out of Emily next. AhowMe Stories is a great interactive tool for making up stories together, or a means for your child entertain his/herself for a little while. I’m just hoping that this doesn’t lead to an addiction with scratch tickets.

In Conclusion

Both games (though probably better classified as ‘activities’) did a nice job of sparking Emily’s creativity and entertained her enough for her to have specifically requested them on several future occasions. Color Me !!! and ShowMe Stories are available in the app store for $0.99 each and free lite versions are also available.

Freebies

Eco Punk – (Nitako)

You are and eco-warrior skateboarding bunny, just trying to defend his neighborhood from pollution. Go on a bloody killing spree as you attempt to clean up the streets by blowing up polluting vehicles. (Make perfect sense…huh?) See how long you can avoid cars racing through the intersection and help save the planet by taking out the trash. Eco Punk has great cartoony graphics and a rockin’ soundtrack. There are three different game modes, loads of power ups, intuitive and adjustable touch controls and even OpenFeint integration. Obviously this one is not for the kids, but offers a nice bit mindless mayhem.
(Regularly $0.99)

Timeloop – (Connect2Media)

Timeloop is a creative and original puzzle game in which you control a time-traveling janitorial robot named Nik. In each of Timeloop’s 32 levels, you must find a way successfully save the scientists (and their cats) and escape the laboratory before the oxygen runs out. Nik has a variety of tools at his disposal and has the ability to make a limited number of jumps back in time to help himself solve the puzzle. For instance, you may need him to hold open a door open (for himself). Confused yet? Well don’t be, you’ll quickly get the hang of things. It’s up to you to decide how best to use the time machine to solve the level. Timeloop is a lot of fun and the later levels can get quite tricky…just remember timing is everything! Read a full review of Timeloop here.
(Regularly $0.99)

Arcade Solitaire: TriTowers – (Endloop Systems Inc)

If you are faimiliar with our site, you may already know that we picked this game as our favorite card game of 2009. Endloop has done a fantastic job of taking something as mindless and mundane as solitaire and make it extraordinarily addicting and really fun! The game has great graphics, gameplay. The integrated and live-updating leaderboards are a brilliant touch. This one is a no-brainer to pick up right now while it’s free! See our full review.
(Regularly $0.99)

Notable Sales

Dizzypad – (NimbleBit)

($1.99 -> $0.99)

Critical Wave – (Grannies Games)

($2.99 -> $0.99)

All Doctor Seuss Titles from OceanHouse Media Still Just $0.99!

(($3.99- $1.99) -> $0.99)

Ski Jumping 2010 feels very technical and we found ourselves more focused on the fast moving bars for each of the segment of the jump, instead of really feeling like we were actually performing a feat of athleticism. Jumps are broken down into four components, push-off, take-off, balancing and landing, most of which will require the lightning fast reflexes of an actual Olympic Athlete to hit at just the right time. For each segment, the player can choose either an accelerometer-based tilt or touch control mechanism. We found the best combination to be touch for all but the “balancing”, otherwise we often ended up accidentally tapping way too early on the landing.

We were about to publish this review yesterday, when we saw an update was available to the game which added an “assist mode” to the control options. This actually slows down the speed of the segment bars to make it A LOT easier to pull off a successful jump, resulting in dramatically improved playability, but in the end, the gameplay still feels very technical and unnatural rather than a fun smooth and graceful experience. Sure, some may argue that mastering a sport like this IS very technical and that this is what the real thing is like, but the game just wasn’t terribly fun for us.

The goal of Ski Jumping 2010 is to become the best ski jumper in the world, competing in 26 tournaments spread across the globe. There is a leveling component here, where you earn money for long jumps which can then be used to upgrade your equipment. Ski Jumping 2010 offeres both single player and multiplayer (up to 4, via pass and play) options and a variety of game modes including Single Event, World Cup, Team Cup and Training. We can’t say that we really noticed much of difference between the 26 ski jumps (other than graphical skinning) or the 49 jumpers (whom each apparently have different skills).

Graphically, the game does look quite good with nicely varied backgrounds reflecting changes in weather conditions and time of day. It’s just unfortunate that you will spend most of your time focused on the movement bars to pull off the segments of the jump rather than being able to enjoy the view. We don’t think this game will be for everyone (especially not at it’s current $2.99 price), but we do recommend at least trying out the free version to see if you find it enjoyable. Perhaps you’ll feel that “judge AppAddict’s” score is one that should be dropped from the game’s total score.

Screenshot Gallery

Trailer

Assault Squadron appears to be chock-full of features (full list below) and just wait till you see the cinematic-style teaser trailer…it definitely got our adrenaline pumping! No specific details on the release date or pricing yet, but we’ll let you know once we hear anything.

Game Features

• Four Unique Playable Ships: Each ship has its own stats and unique abilities with fully upgradable weapon systems.
• Stunning Firepower: Earn upgrades for an arsenal of devastating weaponry ranging from Vulcan Cannons and Spiral Grenades to Torpedo Missiles and Tri-Vortex Bombs.
• Extraordinary Boss Fights: Unique enemy bosses present a unique, intense challenge accompanied by thrilling cinematic cut scenes.
• Special Abilities and Explosive Combos: Discover special abilities to unleash devastating chain combo attacks and achieve leading high-scores.
• Jaw-Dropping Presentation: Experience shoot-‘em-up gameplay the way it’s meant to be played, with a custom-built graphics engine enabling seamless 60 frames-per-second action. Experience the action from all angles via intense top-down and side-scrolling levels.
• Gameplay Modes: Battle armadas of unique alien invaders in the story-based Campaign Mode, or dive into Arcade Mode and start fighting straight away!
• Four Different Control Types: Weave through enemies and attack with meticulous precision via one of four control methods including Touch 1:1, Touch 2.5:1, Tilt Control, and Virtual Joystick.
• Three Difficulty Settings: Different levels of difficulty ensure this game is an appealing challenge to players of any combat capability – from Casual through to the most extreme shoot-‘em-up experience!
• Vibration Support: Feel every hit and enjoy every explosion via the vibration function as you are fully immersed in battle.
• Crystal Leaderboards and Achievements: Players can see how they compare to other fearless commanders around the world via a comprehensive scoring system, online leaderboards and achievements through Crystal!
• Licensed soundtrack: By psychedelic trance music artist, Psygone.
  

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  Teaser Trailer

  

  ]]> http://appaddict.net/2010/03/02/this-spring-chillingo-wants-you-to-blast-some-alien-butt/feed/ 0 http://appaddict.net/2010/03/01/letstans-dont-mind-if-we-do/ http://appaddict.net/2010/03/01/letstans-dont-mind-if-we-do/#comments Tue, 02 Mar 2010 04:30:44 +0000 Brett http://appaddict.net/?p=5540 LetsTans is a colorful and fun Tangram puzzle game, loaded with over 200 “hand-crafted” puzzles and three different game modes that make this title really stand out against similar titles on the App Store. In “classic mode” players try to fit the seven tans completely within the Tangram shape (no overlapping allowed). “Replica mode“, has players rotating their device, attempting to find (and tap) seven different colored adjacent tans which form an exact replica of the white Tangram shape provided. Finally, in “arcade mode“, you must drag the shaped mask to capture seven different colored tans.

  Individual puzzles are not categorized by level of difficulty, but all the puzzles are unlocked from the beginning allowing players to pick and choose whichever looks the most appealing. The game makes perfect use of of the touchscreen for moving, rotating and placing your pieces. The controls are both intuitive and responsive leading to really fluid and smooth gameplay. There is no in-game music but you can listen to your own music library while playing.

  While players can enter their name and a current record is kept of how much time is spent on each puzzle, the game lacks any real social network integration such as OpenFeint , AGON. etc. LetsTans seems like a perfect candidate for something like this and we hope to see it added in a future release. Other than that the only thing we could find to complain about is that perhaps the menus could use a bit of sprucing up. Don’t get us wrong, they do what they need to, they just feel a bit utilitarian and business-like and not very fun or appealing.

  In the end, LetsTans offers a fun and smooth Tangram puzzle experience. The variety of game modes really helps to elevate the experience and keep things fresh and creative. If you are looking for a Tangram puzzle game, then LetsTans would be a good choice. Best of all, it is currently FREE today on the app store as part of the FREEAPPADAY.com promotion!

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