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Newly Available On iOS: Ferris Mueller’s Day Off, Shadow Blade, Cat Basket, Bardbarian, Lost Yeti and More

It seems to be a pretty popular week for new releases, so I’ll jump right in by mentioning a few apps that looks like they’d be perfect for keeping your little ones entertained.

First up is Small Fry, an endless swimmer developed by No Monkeys and published by Noodlecake Studios, which follows out titular little fish on an adventure through water, air and space. The cute cast of characters, customizable outfits and simple one-touch gameplay are sure to be a hit with your little gamers.

Retro Dreamer continues their series of simple, yet charming high scoring games with Cat Basket. Simply tilt your device to help the crazy little old lady (who is standing atop a giant cat) catch the falling cats in her basket. Tap the screen to flip the studded basket over to fend off any dogs. The game is free-to -play with ads with the possibility of future IAP similar to the mostly cosmetic ones in Retro Dreamer’s Ice Cream Jump. A paid (99¢ at launch) kid-friendly version (Cat Basket for Kids) is also available which contains no ads, no in-app purchases, and no links to leave the app.

Pato & Friends Snowball Fight is an action/physics-based game in which players join a snowball fight between Pato the hog, Tina the squirrel, Mishka the bear and Tiger and a group of hares. The game is free with “low-tier in-app purchases, and 10% of the revenues from the game will be donated to charities”.

Finally for the ‘kids’ apps we have the latest digital book offering from Oceanhouse Media, which is another in their Berenstain Bears collection, The Berenstain Bears and Too Much Car Trip. If you haven’t read it or seen the TV series episode, it is a fun story and is available at a special launch price of just $2.99.

That’s enough for the kid…what about me? Well don’t worry because there are PLENTY more new releases to cover…

It seems I jumped the gun last week when I announced Mega Jump 2, as it was only a soft-launch. Now this free-to-play title is available worldwide, so go ahead and grab it.

Gamelion Studio’s latest offering, Allies in War is a free-to-play military real-time strategy combat game with appealing cartoony graphics. There are both single player missions as well as the opportunity to form Alliances with friends and other players to engage in co-operative battles.

Next up is a title that I’ve been eagerly awaiting since it was first announced last year, Ferris Mueller’s Day Off. This is the latest point-and-click adventure from Glitch Games, creators of the fantastic Forever Lost series. Ferris is a fun, lighter departure from their usual fare in which you play as Mr. Rooney who is searching for his missing mule named Ferris. He believes that Rooney has taken advantage of for far too long and so you must find where he is hiding in this old western style town and make amends by bringing Ferris nine golden carrots. Utilizing the studio’s new game engine the game features some fun and crafty puzzles and there are plenty of puns, offbeat characters, funny dialog and loads of 80’s movie references (in addition to the obvious ones of course). The game is available in both SD and HD universal releases, both of which are only 99¢ at launch so you might as well go for the HD release which has better graphics.

Bulkypix’s latest publishing effort Bardbarian is billed as “a unique hybrid of: arcade, RPG, strategy/tower defense and a shoot-em-up”. You play as Brad the Bardbarian who (instead of fighting) uses his musical abilities to inspire the townsfolk to take up arms for him. Check out the trailer on page 2, the game play reminds me a bit of Nimble Quest. I’m definitely going to give this fun looking mashup a go.

With graphics and music that are throwback to the NES and Sega Master System days, Lost Yeti is a puzzle adventure game where players try to carve out a safe path for the Yeti by sliding around ice cubes, avoiding traps and enemies and collecting and using keys. And the final 99¢ title of the night is Arc War, a top-down endless vertical space shooter complete with a plethora of enemy ships, 6 types of boss battles, power-ups, Game Center achievements and the all-important leaderboards.

Next up is another of my highly anticipated titles, the stealth platformer Shadow Blade from publisher Crescent Moon Games and developer Dead Mage. With its choice of gesture-based or virtual controls, rich graphics and cool ninja attack animations, Shadow Blade looks quite appealing.

Time management fans will want to check out Jo’s Dream: Coffee Shop which makes its way to iOS as separate iPhone and iPad releases courtesy of Melesta.

The CGA-infused Magnetized employs the rather awesome Slingshot Racing style movement mechanic to craft an exciting looking physics adventure / puzzle game.

While I can’t say that I ever played FDG Entertainment’s 2010 Zelda-inspired retro 2D JRPG, Across Age, I know it was quite a popular game. Now they are back with the sequel, Across Age™ 2 which offers a number of improvements as well as 15 hours of 16-bit retro RPG gameplay. I’m sure that fans of the original will be jumping all over this one.

Finally we have the iOS release of BioWare’s classic PC RPG, Baldur’s Gate II, courtesy of Beamdog. This $14.99 game contains not only the original Shadows of Amn campaign, but a number of expansions as well. Once again, I can’t say that this is a series that I have any experience with, but the first Baldur’s Gate was favorably reviewed when it was ported to the iPad back in late 2012, so despite the higher price tag, I’d expect that this one will probably fare pretty well.