Tonight you’ll be doing a lot of dungeon crawling and adventuring when a new batch of iOS games hits the App Store.
Speaking of dungeon crawling, the first freebie of the night is Gamelloft’s eye-catching Dungeon Hunter 4. The popular action RPG saga returns with COOP and PVP multiplayer modes as well as a robust single-player storyline. For this fourth outing, Gameloft has chosen to go with a free-to-play model, so if you’ve passed on the previous titles in the franchise due to their premium pricing, it’ll cost you nothing to try this one out.
Another dungeon crawler also hits the app store tonight from publisher Forest Moon Games. Mighty Dungeons takes a more classic approach, this is a mashup between “old-school board games like Heroquest, Warhammer Quests, and famous oldies like Diablo I and Dungeon Master“. The game features three campaigns with six heroes and a treasure trove of creatures, weapons, spells potions and armor at launch. There is even a way for users to submit their own quests, creatures and game boards for possible inclusion in future updates of the game, allowing for a breadth of regular new content down the road. The game is on sale for 99¢ (50% off) at launch.
Backing up a second to another freebie from Bulkypix, we have Tink, a cute looking arcade-style high scoring game where you are a frog trying to use his tongue to catch as many bugs as possible. There are power-ups, combos and leaderboards to keep you coming back for more helpings.
Next is a new game from indie fave Everplay, who returns tonight with their highly anticipated speed run platformer, Lumber Jacked. Players take on the role of a lumberjack named Joe who is trying to get vengeance on Bustin Beaver and his lumber lifting band of beaver bandits (say that three times fast). Jump, dodge and avoid obstacles as you try to outrun the clock in each of the game’s levels, beautifully decked out in Everplay’s signature pixelized art style. I love the retro-style speed run games, so this will be an easy pickup for me.
Keeping with the retro theme, we have HEAVY – sword, a retro platformer that kind of looks like a fun mix of Alex Kidd and Wonder Boy in Monster World. Check out the video on the next page…looks like a real treat, guess we’ll find out tonight.
Big Pixel Studios (Land-a Panda, Off the Leash) tempts us with Bottle Cap Blitz, which looks like it could be an ideal simple little time waster. Using just a single hand, you fire bottle caps up from the bottom of the screen to try to smash flying ice cubes. This skeet shooting / Fruit Ninja hybrid looks like it could be habit-forming with its fruit power-ups, different unlockable cap designs and global leaderboards.
Mr. Crab is an unexpected title from Illusion Labs. Available at the low launch sale price of 99¢ (virtually unheard of for an Illusion Labs game), it is an adorable twisty vertical climber featuring some nice looking polish and assets reminiscent of those used in Blast-A-Way.
Alawar Entertainment’s latest offering Runaway Snack arrives in separate iPhone and iPad releases. The game is a colorful level-based physics puzzler that appears to be in a similar vein to that of Cut the Rope, and bound to be pretty popular. There are free versions available as well, if you want to try before you buy.
Finally we come to a couple of adventure game ports that should satisfy all of you point-and-clickers out there.
The Blue Toad Murder Files episodic series garnered mixed reviews when it launched on PSN in 2009, however, Blue Toad Murder Files: A Touch of Mystery looks quite appealing to me. This animated English Whodunnit has players trying to solve a murder mystery by performing puzzles and collecting clues. Relentless Software has taken the first three episodes of the series, modified them for touch controls and added a few other enhancements and extra features. The remaining three episodes will be released at a later date, but how that will be done is still up for debate.
Last but certainly not least is a title that I got to see at PAX East this year. Gemini Rue is a port of the classic Sierra-style point-and-click sci-fi adventure game from Wadjet Eye Games LLC. Originally released for the PC in 2011, it is a futuristic detective story set in a rather bleak existence and spread across multiple planets. The player can (and must) engage with the story by swapping between two very different characters whose paths eventually converge. It has the classic PC-style action hub and inventory systems and feels very much like a game that would have been put out by either Sierra or LucasArts back in the day. Gemini Rue is the studio’s biggest hit to date and was chosen as its first title to painstakingly port to the iOS platform with easy to use touch controls. The game is on sale for $1 off during launch.
Let us know which of these games you’ll be picking up tonight when these (and more) new releases go live at 11pm EST.
So what should you do to pass the time until 11pm (EST)?
Why not grab a copy of the recently released FREE version of Whitaker Trebella’s Polymer….it’s FREE and FUN!
Note: All of the links below will go live at 11pm (EST) on Wednesday, April 10th.
 HEAVY – sword |
 Mr. Crab |
 Mighty Dungeons |
 Bottle Cap Blitz |
 Runaway Snack |
 Runaway Snack HD |
 Blue Toad Murder Files: A Touch of Mystery |
 Gemini Rue |
