It’s the first ‘new release’ Thursday of the year and it seems like many developers are still in vacation mode, but we still have a handful of notable newbies that are worth mentioning.
We’ll start (as we always do) with a freebie. Warner Bros. continues with their Lego titles, this time, LEGO® Legends of Chima: Speedorz a third person canyon racer which allows you to “customize your animal minifigure, hop on a Speedor, and race through the Kingdom of Chima”. If you have younger sons, this is sure to be a hit.
Then there are a pair of titles published by Chillingo, Swing King and Catch the Ark.
Developed by Zoink!, Swing King is a puzzle/platformer that utilizes a slingshot style mechanic to allows players to attempt to navigate the king through various obstacles while attempting to collect stars, powerups and survive boss battles. Catch the Ark (developed by Playside Studios) is a cartoony third-person endless rafter, completely with a rolling set of missions, coins to collect and obstacles to jump and dodge. It looks a bit like the Kinect Adventures rafting game, but without all the physical movement.
Next up is Repulze, a single-player futuristic racer with a pedigree. You see, Repulze was developed by Pixelbite, the same team responsible for Reckless Racing and Reckless Racing 2, so it is a very safe bet that this game will not only look spectacular, but handle like a dream as well. This being their first self-published iOS title, it appears that Pixelbite has a clear plan for future updates to the title so you’ll want to grab it now at it’s special 99¢ launch price.
One title that actually launched earlier this week was Mayan Slice from FlukeDude Ltd, the same team that created the 2010 hit, The Impossible Game. Mayan Slice blends elements of Fruit Ninja and Jack Lumber, tasking players with timing their slices just right, so they can thread the needle as they slice through narrow tunnels in spinning Mayan medallions.
Finally, this week sees the triumphant return of Semi Secret Software, who’s 2009 hit Canabalt created the iOS endless runner genre and inspired quite a few other popular titles (and outright copycats). Their new game Hundreds is a challenging puzzle game that has you trying to grow circles to total at least 100 points. to do so you simply hold your finger on a circle and it will start to grow, but you have to be careful, because if that circle collides with any other object while your finger is on it, you lose. It is a fun and addictive game that will test your timing, greediness and hand eye coordination. It is also the reason this post is coming out on Thursday instead of Wednesday night, as I got too caught up in playing Hundreds to get my post up in time…oops. The game is currently available for $2.99 which is a special 40% off launch sale price, so you’ll want to grab this before it goes up to $4.99 next week.
 LEGO® Legends of Chima: Speedorz |
 Catch the Ark |
 Swing King |
 Mayan Slice |
 Hundreds |
