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Newly Available On iOS : Satellina, LEGO Movie Game, Murder in the Hotel Lisbon, Adventure Time Game Wizard and More

Let’s kick off another exciting week of new iOS releases with a simple, yet oddly addictive little freebie called Moneygrabber!. It is and endless single-touch game where the player taps on the screen to cause the full-screen character’s hand to dart across the screen (and back) grabbing the money, jewels and other bonuses that are falling from the top of the screen. Money that is collected can be used to purchase status symbols, like tattoos, watches, clothing and more which may or may not enhance your grabbing capabilities. Miss any single falling item and the game is over, but items purchased persist forever and the goal is to keep playing to unlock all of the status symbols. Even though it is rather simple it’ll keep you coming back for more (much like Bitcoin Billionaire or Crossy Road) as you try to unlock that next item. The app is a fun first effort from Mårten Brüggemann’s new indie studio, Not My Jeans. Mårten previously helped design some of Toca Boca’ latest hits including my daughters’ favorite app of last year, Toca Town.

Conquerors Dice is a free-to-play strategy board game set during the bloodied Three Kingdoms period of Chinese history. Players must fight to collect all the brave commanders and soldiers of the Three Kingdoms and become conqueror of all the great lands of China. To be perfectly honest I tried to play through the tutorial of this one and it moves far too quickly, so I got a bit lost. However the game does have a partially rough, but appealing aesthetic to it, so I plan to give it another go and hopefully next time it’ll make more sense.

Next, if you aren’t completely burnt out on match-3 games yet, then you may want to check out Gameloft’s latest offering,
Puzzle Pets. It’s chock full of cute little ‘pets’, helpers with special abilities and boss battles.

Onto the paid apps…

A bit of a departure from Hunted Cow Studios’ usual tactical war game offerings, Invertical Touch is a retro style, grayscale puzzle platformer which uses a color inverting game mechanic. Your character, Qube, can only walk on platforms that are the same color as he is, so you must keep swapping his color to successfully navigate and traverse the levels. The game is available at a special launch price of 99¢ (50% off).

iOS newcomers, Point & Click, have just launched The Mystery of Haunted Hollow, an inexpensive, yet decent looking point and click puzzle adventure game in which you visit a spooky old house where you used to live, see a ghost and then utilizing haunted visions, your suitcase, a book and a compass, you must “roam the desolate area of Hollow, picking up clues, solving puzzles and riddles, & finding journal entries with clues to your past”. Sure it doesn’t sound like the most original plot line, but from the trailer and screenshots it looks like it could be a fun little point and click game.

Satellina is a great new puzzle/arcade/dexterity mashup where you presented with rhythmically moving and spinning patterns of green, yellow, and red particles. You must drag your finger to first collect all of the green particles, then the yellows (which will turn green once all previous green have been collected) and then all the reds (which will turn yellow then green when ready to be collected). If you accidentally touch a particle of the wrong color you have the start that level all over again. The total time it takes you to complete 5 sequential levels (retries included) is added up and you unlock additional groups of levels based on how quickly you complete the previous groups. It is frenetic, and frustrating in a very good way as you try to race the clock but still have the cool hands of a surgeon. This is a definite recommended pickup for me this week. For me the combination of aesthetics and gameplay kind of scratched that same itch which the no longer available game, Alphabetic by No Monkeys used to.

Since I like digital board games…here’s another one for you. Family Pastimes has released an iOS adaptation of their popular cooperative board game for kids ages 4 and up, Max the Cat. I have never heard of this game before, but apparently the goal is to help get the little Creatures home safely before title character, Max, the Tomcat, catches them. Looks like a fairly simple game which younger kids would probably enjoy and the fact that it is cooperative is always good for avoiding fights.

Glorkian Warrior developer Pixeljam is back with an iOS port of their challenging 2013 retro platforming game Potatoman Seeks The Troof. A bizarre, yet humorous looking game, I’m told that Potatoman, will test your reflexes as you “journey through scorching deserts, dark forests, busy cities, the tallest mountains and eventually your own potato-consciousness”. Are you prepared to face the TROOF?

Inspired by traditional Tibetan yak racing (I guess that’s a thing), our next title, Yak Dash: Horns of Glory is a 2D side-scrolling racer in which you customize (color, shape, facial features, horns) and then race your Yak, trying to complete each level as fast as you can by doing 360 flips, eating apples and leaping over and smashing obstacles.

Nerd Monkeys make a nice debut on the app store with the wonderfully named Murder in the Hotel Lisbon. It is an 80s/90s style low-resolution, pixel art, point and click adventure game. A strange murder has occurred in the Hotel Lisbon which only Detective Case and Clown Bot can solve. The game looks funny and a well-executed throwback to some of my favorite games as a kid. I haven’t had a chance to check this one out yet, but I am so looking forward to it.

Cartoon Network have teamed up with Grumpyface Studios and utilized the ‘game drawing’, Pixel Press engine to create a really unique new Adventure Time platformer game called Adventure Time Game Wizard – Draw Your Own Adventure Time Games. Finn and Jake happen upon a magical sketchbook (belonging to the evil Doodle Wizard) and “quickly discover that anything drawn in the book comes to life”. They sketch up their own adventures, but it isn’t all fun and games, for “a nefarious presence lurks within the sketchbook’s pages”.

Using special printable graphed drawing paper, you actually get to draw your own game content with pen and paper, take picture of the page with the app and your user-generated levels become part of the story. Adventure Time Game Wizard offers a cool new way to interact with your favorite characters and the game features original voice work from Finn, Jake, Ice King, Princess Bubblegum, and special guest “Weird Al” Yankovic as the Doodle Wizard.

Finally, we have something quite awesome…Warner Bros. and TT Games have just launched the iOS released of The LEGO® Movie Video Game. Recapturing the events of the film, the game follows Emmet and a cast of over 90 characters from the feature film (including all of the leads plus Batman, Superman, the Green Ninja, Gandolf and more) as they try to defeat the evil Lord Business and save the world from The Kragle. The game features 45 levels and the option of two distinct control schemes, Classic and Touch Screen, as well as MFi controller support. Both of my daughters and I have been enjoying the Xbox One version of this game, it’s a great addition to the Lego game franchise. Needless to say, I’m excited to see it come to iOS where it is not only less expensive, but really portable.