Wow, wow, wow is it a busy and exciting week of brand new iOS game releases…
With the Super Bowl happening this Sunday and featuring my local team, the Patriots, I figured that I’d kick things off this week with a football-themed endless runner called Touchdown Hero. From a top-down pixel art view, you simply move your finger left and right, forward and back trying to help your receiver dodge oncoming players from the other team, as he runs down an endless number of football fields (I haven’t seen someone with this much this stamina apart from my 5 year-old), scoring a touchdown for each field that he can successfully navigate.
Next, SongPop publishers, FreshPlanet are back this week with their entry in the inexplicably addictive ‘tap-to-earn-virtual-stuff’ genre. The game is called LuckyPop and you essentially create Luck simply by tapping the Luck button as quickly and as often as you’d like. The Luck you generate can then be used to purchase a crazy assortment of virtual gifts and very unique items like a Psychic Dolphin. There are all sorts of items to discover and unlock and you can send luck to your friends so they can unlock items as well. Like Moneygrabber! last week, this is another of those games that you’ll keep finding yourself compelled to go back to when you have a little time to kill, and unlocking more virtual knickknacks just feels weirdly satisfying.
Exit Strategy™ is Chillingo’s new physics puzzle game that uses a Portal-like mechanic where you apply blue (entrance) and orange (exit) portals to the sides of white blocks on a gridded play area such that a ball can roll along a path (utilizing the portals) to collect stars, avoid danger and reach the exit. Levels get increasingly more difficult as you go and there are 100 levels total, all of which can be played for free w/ optional IAPs to remove ads, and purchase single-use powerups.
Up next is a title which I got a demo of at PAX East last year, a space themed game of survival, explosions and massive chain reactions. In Destructamundo, your goal is to make massive chain reactions by carefully placing and timing the detonation of your limited number of warheads such that they set off all (or as many as possible in a single blast) of the other explosives. It’ll take a careful eye, nice reflexes and a little luck, but when you see a single detonation cause the cosmos to go up in a ball of fire and explosions, I’m not gonna lie…it feels pretty good.
Do we have any Sons of Anarchy fans out there? While the TV series may have just finished its run late last year, Orpheus Interactive, and Fox Digital Entertainment are keeping the spirit of the show alive with the debut episode of their new interactive narrative adventure game, Sons of Anarchy: The Prospect. Based on the acclaimed crime drama about an outlaw motorcycle club, showrunner Kurt Sutter and his writing team helped collaborate on this game, which also features the series character Alex “Tig” Trager (voiced by the original actor, Kim Coates). It’s been crafted such that it’ll allow both new and die-hard fans to take part in “an original story that explores new and familiar characters, settings and intrigue within the Sons of Anarchy universe”. The $1.99 app gives you the first of the ten planned episodes which can be purchased via a single $14.99 ‘Season Pass’ IAP.
Much Party developers GlobZ are back with more pixelated entertainment. Lamp And Vamp is a cute looking vampire roguelike where you are trying to help a vampire get back to his coffin by successfully navigating the randomly generated tile-based neighborhood, avoiding the local neighborhood watch of vampire hunters desperate to take you out for a steak, or perhaps it was put a stake through your heart…either way, these guys are just bad news. You need to move such that you stay out of their line of sight and reach your home so you can rest in peace.
A bit of a departure from Atypical Games’s Sky Gamblers and Battle Supremacy franchises, Radiation Island is an open world survival adventure game, where you’ve become stranded in a parallel, alternate reality and you must forage for food, tools, and weapons to hunt, fish and fight off animals and zombies. Do you have what it takes to survive?
Yet It Moves is the first of a couple of PC ports arriving on the App Store this week. Originally released on the PC in 2009 under the name And Yet It Moves, this a 2D puzzle platformer offers a really neat paper collage world, where you tap to run and jump and drag to tilt your surroundings to avoid obstacles and turn walls into walkways. I never played the original, but the touch controls on this one feel smooth and intuitive, it works very well on mobile.
If you are in the mood for something a little more arcadey…then Andy Make’s Particle Mace should fit the bill this week. Players must defend themselves from a hostile and unforgiving universe by wielding their mighty titular particle mace, swinging it into enemies to deliver death sentences and avoid expiration themselves. It has that classic arcade look to it and I’ve heard some very good things about this one.
How about a few titles for the kids…
First off we have the second installment of 1st-day’s Charly the Vet series of interactive books for animal loving kids aged 4-7. In this new adventure with Charly and Yanis, your child will learn all about the largest bird of the world, the ostrich. Featuring nice voice-over work and artwork, this is an entertaining and educational series that kids will really enjoy, especially if they are into animals.
What kid (or even adult for that matter) hasn’t imagined what it’d be like to be a superhero. Playworld Superheroes is a rather cool new app where your child gets to craft their character’s own superhero costume out of cardboard, like they were playing make-believe in their very own tree house at home; Coloring and cutting cardboard boxes, just how they want them. They even get to design their own superhero insignia for their chest, then see their make-believe costume transform in front of their own eyes into a real-looking superhero outfit as they do battle against invading monsters, and collecting gems to unlock new items to craft into their uniform. My 5 year-old loved exploring the tree house and was enamored with the crafting aspects of this game, she couldn’t believe that SHE got to be a real superhero!
Another PC port this week is the remastered mobile release of RuneSpell Overture, an RPG / Poker and Collectable Card mashup set in a world of “Nordic Myths, Vikings and Battle Hardened Heroes and Heroines”. You are the Changeling, the son of a monster god, in search of your nemesis. Using poker mechanics to battle opponents, you can unlock power ups and special attacks via the collectible cards. The game features more than 30 different types of monsters to defeat, each of which has a unique card set and attack style. I don’t know about you, but this mashup sounds pretty darn cool to me. RuneSpell Overture is available at a special launch price of ($4.99) 50% off through mid February.
This week, Crescent Moon Games has released Exiles, its long-awaited Sci-Fi 3D RPG from the creators of the award-winning Ravensword: Shadowlands. It is the year 2375 and “a colony on a distant planet has been driven to isolation and desolation, as a corrupt government tries to enslave it with a lethal virus.” You are one of the Elite Enforcers, tasked with completing missions to help destroy the enemy aliens and uncover the truth. Players can choose from three different character classes (Soldier, Infiltrator, and Adept) each with their own unique specialty, special ability (Kinetic Blast, Cloak, Time Warp) as well as skill bonuses. I haven’t gotten too far into the game yet, but it appears to be a pretty lengthy campaign. Graphically it looks quite good and has well implemented swipe and onscreen controls as well as the option to use an MFi controller. I’m looking forward to delving into this one more over the weekend and kicking some alien butt.
Finally, we have one last PC port, 2005’s interactive noir adventure game, Fahrenheit: Indigo Prophecy Remastered from the folks at Aspyr Media. Set in New York City, this supernatural murder mystery follows the investigation of a series of similar but mysterious murders in which ordinary people are killing complete strangers in public. Players can take control of multiple characters and offers some level of replayability (not common in these type of game) thanks to branching dialog and multiple endings. This release of the game has updated graphics, a fully voiced script, fully orchestrated score and a streamlined control scheme designed specifically for mobile devices. I hadn’t heard of Fahrenheit before now, but it looks like one I’ll certainly be adding to my wish list.
And that’ll do it for this week…