Monthly Archive: September 2011

Burn The Rope: Worlds is the sequel to the very popular Burn The Rope, by Big Blue Bubble (also responsible for Paper Munchers, City Of Thieves, Thumpies, the Fighting Fantasy series, and more). In Worlds, there’s more of the same great gameplay that made the original so popular, which is great, because companies that change up gameplay too much in their sequels, trying to find a new gimmick, generally upset the previous games fans. Big Blue Bubble has taken the approach of, “if it’s not broke, don’t fix it, expand on it”, and we really couldn’t be happier about this decision.

Fans of the original Burn The Rope will feel right at home when starting up BTR: Worlds. The controls work the same, rotating your device to keep the flame pointing upwards, but with better handling of the corners on each rope, which is a great addition, because there‘s more turns than ever in Worlds. You can also touch the screen to increase the speed of the flame. You’ll burn designs made of rope, trying to burn more than 60 percent of the shapes to move on. There’s also the bugs that change the flame’s color. Big Blue Bubble has added more of these bugs. There’s now fire bugs that when hit with a flame, will explode, causing everything in it’s radius to burn up, and sending multiple flames out in every direction, electric bugs, that when hit, will connect to another electric bug, and burn everything in-between the two, and more.

Along with new bugs, new levels, and new mechanics, there’s bonus rounds, which come into play every 4 levels. In these bonus rounds, you’ll get to try and burn as many bugs as you can in a certain amount of time, giving you a time bonus for burning them all before time runs out. These bonus rounds do not effect your score on the game, and are more for fun, and adding to the gameplay. There’s also a new mode called Endless Burn, where you will get to play a snake-like game, where you’ll rotate your device to change the direction of a growing flame. Each bug you burn with the flame adds to the length. You can pick between 5 different types of flames, yellow, orange, purple, blue, and green, each with different size and speed, and each is unlocked by rating the game, liking the developer’s FaceBook page, sending your friend an e-mail, and things like that.

Also, to keep in the tradition of the original Burn The Rope, there are puzzles of the day, which are supported by ads. Free to play, but if you want to get rid of the ads for the daily puzzles, it’ll require an IAP of $0.99. This is a great way to add endless replay ability to the game, and give it more life on your device.

In the end, Burn The Rope: Worlds is done like Cut The Rope: Experiments. More of the same type of gameplay with a couple of expansions on the gameplay. Again, if you enjoyed the original Burn The Rope, Worlds will give you the same kind of great gameplay you fell in love with, just more of it. For $0.99, and loads of content, it’s a great buy. One that every puzzle fan should experience.

Burn The Rope: Worlds gets a score of 9 out of 10.

Links:

Full Version – http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/burn-the-rope-worlds/id449606608?mt=8

Original Lite Version – http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/burn-the-rope-lite/id417015740?mt=8

Website – http://www.bigbluebubble.com/

Floria is a new endless floater, and first iOS game, from m42 Studios. In the game, you maneuver a flower through different enemies and objects trying to collect as many items as you can before the summer is over and winter arrives. Collecting the orbs throughout the game will give you points that you can use to unlock different types of flowers that have different abilities and power-ups.

The controls in Floria work well, but are a little jittery. Tilting moves the flower up and down, and rotating your device clockwise moves it forward, while counterclockwise moves it back. These controls do take a bit of getting use to, but once you do, they work well. The graphics look amazing, especially on devices with retina display. The animations in the game are done very well too. The backgrounds seem to come alive as you move through the world, with everything blooming right before your eyes. The movements of the flower, enemies, and growth of the thorns all looks amazing. The music and effects are also soothing, and add quite a bit to the atmosphere of the game.

Floria is a great ‘how far can you get’ game, with some great scoring, and nice game mechanics. It desperately needs some online leader boards though, as the only replay value you’ll have is for unlocking the additional 3 flowers, and beating your own score. Once you unlock all the flowers, the desire to play the game will drop pretty fast, and it will most likely just end up sitting there on your device waiting for an update that will add more content.

However, the game is very beautifully made, and the gameplay you have will provide you with quite the experience. The graphics are top notch, and the jittery controls really just effect the look, not the gameplay. At $0.99, it is a great buy if you’re into endless or get as far as you can games. M42 Studios has done a great job with their first release, and I’m really looking forward to additions to the game, as well as what they’ll come up with next.

Floria gets a score of 7 out of 10.

Links;

Full Version – http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/floria/id451928277?mt=8

Website – http://www.m42studios.com/

Fearless Ninja is a casual arcade game from Box Shaped Games (Max Injury + Max Injury 2). You will play as a ninja who needs to kill as many enemies as possible by collecting blue orbs that let you attack them, trying to get the highest score you can.

The graphics and animations in Fearless Ninja are done pretty well. The animations for attacking, movement, and the enemies is all top notch, while the background of the game looks nice. There is no variation in the environments though, and you’ll only see a couple of different enemies in the game until you get reasonably good. The variation with enemies is nice, but it would have been better if different enemies came out of the woodwork earlier in the game. Even playing on Easy, it took me 2 days before I saw the 3rd enemy.

The controls are done well, giving you a tap option, which lets you use the corners of the screen kind of like arrows, tapping on the bottom right to move the ninja right, and left to move left, and a swipe control that’s still kind of hard to be precise with, swiping in the direction you want to move, making moving while attacking a difficult task.

Enemies are spawned about halfway up the screen, and bounce along the ground, making you weave and dodge through them while trying to get to the blue orbs that come down from the sky as well. The orbs send you into an attacking flip where you can either run into enemies, or bounce off of them, chaining together combos for bigger and better groups of points. The more enemies you kill before touching the ground, the bigger your score.

The main enemies only need one hit in order to be killed, but occasionally, a more powerful enemy will bounce across the screen, and need 4 hits. These enemies that need more hits are great for bouncing on, killing all the one hit enemies in the process, shooting your combo score through the roof. There are also scrolls that drop once you hit a certain amount of points, and collecting them lets you use a power-up. To start off, you’ll get a tornado attack, which lets you spin up into the air, and then float there for a second, hitting enemies as they spawn, and then floating back down to the ground. If you store these power-ups, and another scroll falls, you’ll get some added health, which can really help extend your game quite a bit. You’re given 4 hits on your health bar before you die, so saving up the power-ups until you really need them is rewarded well.

GameCenter has leader boards for each of the 3 difficulties, Easy, Medium, and Hard, as well as a leader boards for how many enemies you’ve killed in one play-through on each difficulty, and one Ninja Score leader board, which is calculated from your Easy, Medium, and Hard scores to rank every player. There is plenty of variety once you get conformable with the game to push the fact that there is no change in the environment to the back of your mind. Different enemies and power-ups coupled with getting the best combo you can to drive your score up will be your main focus. For $0.99, and Universal, Fearless Ninja is a great casual arcade game that will also fit well on any hardcore gamers iDevice. The challenge is high, but like most high-scoring arcade games, the replay value is higher, and once you feel like you’ve mastered the game, it’ll still be able to beat up on you. Hopefully more modes will be added in the future to help give the game a bit more variety, but as it is now, it’s definitely worth the price of admission. If you’re still curious, you can check out the game for free on the developer’s website, inside the Unity player.

Fearless Ninja gets a score of 7 out of 10.

Links;

Full Version – http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/fearless-ninja/id451921335?mt=8

Website – http://www.boxshapedgames.com/fearless/

Neon Thrust is an action physics puzzler from shiny-games in which you’ll guide a little neon box, named Neo, through 60 levels while trying to collect each of the power crystals and make it back out of the levels before they explode. There are also green and red Neons to collect and avoid while navigating through each of the 4 zones.

The controls in Neon Thrust work exceptionally well, giving players a joystick and a thrust button. Moving the joystick in the direction you want to go, and then pressing the thrust button will give you a nice push in the desired direction. The thrust doesn’t last long after you let go of the thrust button, so navigating is done smoothly, and easily throughout the levels.

There are 60 levels, split up into 4 zones, giving us 15 levels in each of the different zones. The difficulty builds pretty slowly, giving players an opportunity to get a pretty good grip on the handling of the controls and physics within the game. The difficulty also climbs at a rate that will leave enough room for gamers to want to return to the first world of the game in order to try and better over all scores, and get the 3 star scores for each of the levels once they’ve gone through the game and can handle Neo with near expert precision. This, along with the GameCenter leader boards for each of the zones, and a total score, add a lot of replay value to Neon Thrust.

While going through each of the zones, new obstacles will be added, like red walls that Neo can not touch, spots in the levels that either end up pushing or pulling gravity, timed lasers, doors that are triggered with switches, and more. The level design is wonderful, and the placement of each of the green and red Neons will leave even the most expert gamers wondering how to get through the level in the shortest amount of time while collecting all the required items in order to get the best score. In order to get 3 stars on a level, you must guide Neo through the level, collect all of the green Neons, avoid all of the red Neons, grab the power crystal, and make it back to the entrance/exit of the level before the timer that starts when you pick up the power crystal reaches zero.

Graphics in Neon Thrust are simple, and minimal, but work extremely well within the game. Neo, the green box that you guide around the levels, is a simple neon green with 2 white squares for eyes, and a white rectangle for his thruster. Each of the 4 zones is a different color, red, purple, brown, and turquoise, each with squares and sharp angles being the main visual theme. The walls are outlined in white, or red, red being the color that you can not touch while going through the levels, either with the walls, or the Neons. The graphics do come off as being retro inspired, but still keep a very modern look about them. This sort of graphical style is quickly becoming a favorite for me, not just throughout mobile iPod games, but with any console.

There is no music except for on the main menu, but the game does have some excellent sound effects. However, I did find the sound that’s made after you die and are given a ‘retry’ screen to be pretty annoying. It would have been much better if the level automatically restarted after each death, because each gamer will die quite a few times throughout the game. Having to hit ‘retry’ every 3 seconds in some areas really took away from the flow of the experience, though this is nothing too big, or really an issue for most people.

In the end, Neon Thrust is a great gaming experience. Wonderful level design with great obstacles and puzzles, along with quite a bit of action because of the timed aspect makes it a very enjoyable game. The addition of GameCenter was done very well, with each of the scores changing each time you do better on a level. This means that players can not simply play the first zone over and over again, and end up with the #1 score on the total leader board. You’ll need to play through each level in the game multiple times, and try and find the best possible route for Neo to take. 60 levels gives us quite a bit of content, but the levels are pretty short. However, more levels are coming in the future, and with the replay value being pretty high, the shortness of the levels shouldn’t really be a problem. Great graphics, and a very smooth gameplay experience make Neon Thrust a great buy at $0.99. If you’re a fan of action, puzzle, physics, or just all around good score driven games, it’s one that you should definitely check out.

Neon Thrust is getting a score of 9 out of 10.

Links;

Full Version – http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/neon-thrust/id451117107?mt=8

Website – http://www.neonthrust.com/

Fruity Jelly is a new puzzle platform type game by Scorsoft and published by the oh so popular, BulkyPix (Pix‘n Love Rush, Babel Rising, and many more). In the game, you will play as a little jelly who is the only one of his village left after an evil being went on a vicious rampage, threatening the fate of the peaceful and calm jelly society. You will need to collect all the fruits in each level and make it to the flower that pops up to save your friends, and restore the balance of this jelly land.

There are two control options for the game, tilting and virtual controls. Tilting will let you tilt your iDevice to move the little jelly through the levels, while having a button on each of the lower corners of the screen that can rotate each of the levels. The virtual controls will give you a slider bar for movement on the right side of the screen, and have both of the level rotating buttons on the bottom left side. Choosing to have the movement bar on the right side, instead of the left side, like most games, was kind of a risky move, but it works very well in Fruity Jelly, and only took a couple of seconds to get use to. You’re also able to pinch and pull the screen to zoom in and out, and double tap to enter a ‘scan’ mode, so you can look around the entire level before deciding what route you’d like to take. Wooden crates are also found in some of the levels, and to break them, you’ll need to tap on them, and some sections in the floors will require you to rotate the level to a certain angle, and then swipe down to make the jelly move through the holes in the floor.

The graphics in Fruity Jelly are done exceptionally well. Along with all of the animations for all of the different enemies, the flower, water, all of the different animations for jelly, like squishing when falling from a high spot, or being hit by an enemy, even all of the fruits move, Fruity Jelly looks very professional, and playing through each of the levels, you can tell that a lot of work and thought has gone into each and every aspect of the game, how it looks, how it sounds, how it plays, and each and every route you can take to get to the end of the levels.

Fruity Jelly does have OpenFeint support, with 23 achievements, but no leader boards, which is kind of upsetting. Having a Time Trial Mode, with no leader boards, so you can’t compare your times with friends or other players around the world, makes the Time Trial Mode a little less interesting, and takes away quite a bit from the replay ability. But there is still a bit of replay ability in getting all of the stars in the game will require a few replays of certain levels, and in some of the later levels, getting through them will require multiple plays. The level design is top notch, and the gameplay is super smooth, and entertaining. Being Universal, and $1.99, with more content on it’s way, it’s a great buy.

Fruity Jelly is getting a score of 9 out of 10.

Links;

Full Version – http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/fruity-jelly/id453731825?mt=8

Website – http://www.bulkypix.com/game/fruity-jelly

Colored Bubbles is a new tap/swipe action puzzle game from Zabiyaka. In the game, you try and match up bubbles without popping different colored bubbles in the process. To match the bubbles up, you’ll need to either tap them when they’re overlapping each other, and not touching another colored bubble, or drag a bigger bubble, which is made by combining bubbles, into a smaller bubble that is touching a different colored bubble. This might sound kind of confusing, and it kind of is at first. Finding out what you can and can’t do within the game is something that is easily learned though, and once you do, Colored Bubbles becomes quite the addictive little bubble match + pop game.

The controls are simple to use, and very responsive. When two bubbles of the same color are touching each other, or overlapping, just tap on them, and they will merge together. Once you have a bubble that’s made up of two or more bubbles, you can drag it around the screen, and catch smaller bubbles of the same color, even if they are touching or overlapping bubbles that are a different color. If you tap on a bubble that is touching a different colored bubble, they will both pop, and you will loose your points. The bubbles will also pop, resulting in a negative score, if you drag a smaller bubble into a larger bubble that is touching different colored bubbles. To beat the game, you’ll need to clear the screen of all the bubbles, or have a screen filled with 50 bubbles. After each bubble or bubbles pop, more bubbles will appear on the screen, or you can just wait, as bubbles appear randomly every couple of seconds as well. If you don’t like how the bubbles are floating around, or the current overlapping of a group of bubbles, you can also shake your device to shake up the bubbles, sending them all in different directions, which is a nice mechanic, and a great little helper move if you get stuck.

There are 3 different difficulties within the game, Easy, Medium, and Hard, each setting having more different colored bubbles. Easy has 3 colors of bubbles, Medium has 5, and Hard has 7. Also, the amount of bubbles that you start with, and the frequency in which they appear, or amount of bubbles that appears when you pop or match bubbles, also goes up with the difficulty. There aren’t any extra modes, but with each difficulty, it’s almost like having 3 modes within the game. Though having a time trial or something would have been nice. Also missing from the game are power-ups, which would have fit in extremely well with Colored Bubbles. Something like multiplier increases, changing half the bubbles to one specific color, and things like this would have really spiced up the game.

There is also no online support, so the replay value is limited to beating your own scores, and building up your own score board, as the scores that are already inserted into the game are very easy to beat, with the #1 spot being 100 points (or one match of 5 bubbles). Not being able to battle over the #1 spot, or challenge friends is a pretty big upset when playing a score-oriented game like this. However, Zabiyaka has done a very good job in creating a game that’s pretty addicting, and doesn’t necessarily need online leader boards to have decent replay value. The game is only $0.99, and it’s Universal, so you’ll be able to see and play it the way it’s meant to be played on your iPod as well as iPad.

Colored Bubbles is getting a score of 7 out of 10.

Links:

Full Version – http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/colored-bubbles/id459492959?mt=8

Website – http://zabiyaka.com/colored-bubbles

Wildlings is a new arcade tap defense game from Metamoki, Inc. In it, you will need to use different parent Wildlings to keep evil creeps away from your babies, while collecting sun-power, using power-ups, and finding pieces of each ship that will let you travel to the next world, and get the Wildlings to their final destination. It might sound a little cheesy, but as it turns out, it’s a very good game with plenty of strategic elements to keep even the most hardened defensive gamer on their toes.

To start it off, you’re given 1 slightly week bird to protect 3 babies in their nest. To move the bird around, you just tap on the screen where you want the bird to move to. To make the bird attack an enemy, you just need to tap on it. There are some cases where a group of enemies will come towards the nest, and to deal with those, you’ll just need to tap on one of the enemies, and then your bird will attack the whole group, one by one. Each enemy that’s killed drops a certain amount of sun power, depending on how strong they are. Some enemies will take multiple taps in order for them to be defeated, and tapping repeatedly makes the parent Wildling attack and move quicker and more ferociously. The babies in the nest also drop sun power, but on a timed schedule, usually only dropping 2 to 4 sun pieces in each level. Collecting the sun power is essential for using your power-ups, once they’re unlocked, and are needed to unlock the Wildling’s final destination, which requires a total of 3,000 sun points to unlock. Sun points that you do not use on power-ups in each level are stored, and put towards this 3,000 point total, or you can unlock the final destination with an IAP that’s $0.99.

The graphics in Wildlings are very polished, and look great. Along with the animations for each of the different babies, parents, and enemies, it looks, and feels very professional. Each of the different environments are colored extremely well, and everything in play really stands out when set against them. When you use the power-ups, these animations also look great, from the dust storms and explosions to the lava pits and big earth slam.

Metamoki, Inc. has done a great job with creating a world for the Wildlings, and making that world a blast to play in. The tapping mechanics work extremely well, and the added strategy of needing to know what enemies pose the biggest threat, move quickly, and need to be taken out before other enemies also fills the game with quite a bit of action. The game looks and feels great, and you can tell that a lot of work has gone into the game. It is supported by GameCenter, but the leader board is a total of the number of sun points you’ve collected. This is my only complaint about the game because pretty much, the #1 spot is held by the person that’s put the most time into the game. Theoretically, the #1 spot could be a person that just replayed the first 5 levels over and over again, and these types of leaderboards usually turn people off, because it pretty much guarantees that the first person that bought the game, or the person that has more free time will rule the #1 spot instead of the best player, and is almost like having a leaderboard for the amount of time you‘ve been playing. There are also no achievements, which makes the GameCenter integration kind of flimsy. But in the end, $0.99 is a great price for this game, and it’s one that will give you plenty of gameplay, and entertainment, and is great for gamers of all ages, while still keeping it’s challenging gameplay in tact.

Wildlings gets a score of 8.5 out of 10.

Links;

Full Version – http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/wildlings/id453585952?mt=8

Website – http://www.metamoki.com/?cat=games&page=wildlings

Radballs is a new block matching puzzle game from Glow Play. In it, you’ll need to match up Radballs in groups of 4 or more, making a Mega-Radball. When the Beat Wave, a bar that moves down the screen in time with the beat, hits your Mega-Radball, you’ll need to tap on it, and swipe up and down “scratching” the bar against the Mega-Radball, building up energy, until it’s glowing brightly, then release, and build the Radness Meter at the top of the screen. Filling up your Radness Meter is how you beat the level, and progress through the game.

Radballs controls like most match 3 games, needing to swipe orbs with one another in order to make groups of them. Here, you don’t need to make a match in order to move the orbs, so you’re able to move one orb across the screen to make a match. Once you’ve created a Mega-Radball, you can keep adding to it by putting more orbs on the ends or sides of it, so long as you have enough like orbs there. For instance, if you have a Mega-Radball that’s 3×3 orbs big, you’ll need 3 orbs on top to extend it, or 3 orbs on the side to extend it and make it 4×3 orbs big. The larger the Mega-Radball, the more Radness will be added to your meter. Also effecting Radness is the brightness of the Mega-Radball while you’re scratching the Beat Wave over it. If the Beat Wave just moves over the Mega-Radball without you scratching it, you’re given very few Radness points, hardly filling up the meter at all.

In Arcade Mode, you’ll need to fill your Radness Meter in order to move on through 8 waves in each level. If you fail to continuously build up your Radness Meter, it will drain, and if it empties, you’ll need to replay that wave. Survival Mode lets you play the same way as Arcade Mode, but lets you play through unlimited waves until you fail. Time Trial requires you to fill up your Radness Meter before 60 seconds is up, seeing how fast you can fill the meter all the way. You will also run into Radness Multipliers. These happen when you make a Mega-Radball, bust it with your Beat Wave, and the cascading radballs end up making another Mega-Radball. It will automatically explode, giving you 2x, 3x, even 4x the radness points.

Glow Play has done an extremely good job at mixing the block matching genre with the music/DJ genre, and this mesh works exceedingly well. Giving players the option to play with their own tracks, having Survival and Time Trial Modes, 4 difficulties, GameCenter support with 3 leader boards, and 40 achievements gives Radballs an endless amount of replayabilty. The graphics are awesome, there’s tons of action, and everything about the game is extremely polished and professional, while screaming fun at every turn. $2.99 for this Universal game is a great price. You’re also given the option to listen to the music tracks in-game if you enjoy the music, and having the soundtrack available to just listen to is something I personally think all music games should do. This is one game that will not leave my device in the near future.

Radballs is getting a score of 9.5 out of 10.

Links;

Full Version – http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/radballs/id436204338?mt=8

Game’s Website – http://glowinteractive.com/project/radballs

LightGuardian is a new 3D defense game, and the first iOS release, from Lukas Penkava. It’s definitely a different type of game, as I’ve never seen or played anything like it. You’ll control a light tower’s light while blimps come flying towards you. In order to take the blimps down, you’ll need to focus your light on them, heating them and blowing them up.The controls are kind of hard to get use to, but once you do, they work so well, and I really can’t think of a better way the game could be controlled. To move your light tower’s light, you place your finger on the section of the tower that’s right under the light, and drag it around. Up for down, down for up, right for left and left for right. This type of control, combined with the camera control that’s movable 360 degrees, and up and down, moving the camera in the direction you want it to move; ie, dragging up moves the camera up, dragging left moves the camera left, and so on – can get a little confusing at first. Dragging left to move the camera left, then needing to drag right to move the light left will take some getting use to, but after you do, it feels perfect and natural. This is another original aspect I haven’t seen before in any other game. Original controls, and original gameplay is risky for a developers first AppStore release, but Lukas Penkava has pulled it off flawlessly.

The game is set up as an endless arcade type game, where you’ll go through wave after wave of incoming blimps. There are different types of blimps, some taking longer to kill than others. With them coming at you in every direction, there’s a bit of strategy thrown in, as you’ll need to decide, quickly, which blimps are posing the biggest threat. You’re given a radar that helps you know when enemies are getting close to you. When it’s green, most enemies are far away, yellow means they’re getting close, and red means you’re in trouble, and need to deal with a blimp IMMEDIATELY.

One thing that might bother people when they first start is that the radar does not show dots, or where the blimps are. It just lets you know if a blimp is getting close. However, moving around, up, and down in the 360 degree play-field, constantly looking around trying to see where blimps are, what type they are, and trying to figure out how close they are, and how big of a threat they pose is a huge part of the gameplay. Having a radar that shows you exactly where every blimp is would take away a lot from the mechanics of the game, and really, take away a lot of the fun and challenge.

Taking down 4 blimps will get you a light bomb, which shows up as a tab in the lower left corner. This light bomb will take out any enemies that are in your radar’s red zone, so using it when you can’t find a blimp, or are overpowered with blimps is great. There’s also items that some enemies drop. A bolt, and a green gem. Bolts signify parts, and collecting a certain number will make your light house ray stronger. It might take a while to level up, as getting to level 2 takes 40 parts, and that number increases as the level goes up, but you can only reach level 4, so taking a while to level up is understandable. Collecting 3 gems will give you a charged light ray that lasts for a short period of time. When it’s available, a green icon appears in the lower right corner of the screen, and when activated, it turns your ray green. This is good for taking out some of the stronger blimps that you’ll encounter, and can do away with the weaker ones pretty easily. The bolts and green gems are automatically picked up when you hit them with your light ray.

The graphics in LightGuardian are very nice. The whole environment looks, and feels, great. It is a little weird, when looking straight down, to see your light house on a piece of rock floating in the sky, but the main menu gives you a great image of the light house on the floating rock, that looks exceptional, with vegetation growing up the sides of it, it really is very unique. Floating around in the sky, with you and the blimps, are more of these floating rocks with vegetation growing all over them, presenting a very nice atmosphere for the game. Beautifully made clouds are also surrounding the area, and with the shadowing from dark towards the bottom of the play-field, and light in the upper part, the blimps that appear out of nowhere are easy to pick out. You’ll never find yourself searching for a blimp against the backdrop of the game, which is great, especially when you’re spinning around trying to find the blimp that set off the yellow or red color on your radar. The animations of the moving blimps look great, making it look like the wind is actually blowing them towards you. One thing I would love to see is an actual explosion animation. I’m not sure what it could look like exactly, as explosions would not look very good within the setting of the game, but something more than the blimps just disappearing would be nice. Maybe a puff of smoke or something would go together good with the overall aesthetic of the game, but right now, that’s the only real nitpicky thing I can think of.

Lukas Penkava and team have done an amazing job putting this game together. I don’t know exactly how many people worked/are working on the game, but when I talked to Lukas, he used the term ’we’ more than once. He’s also mentioned a couple of mechanics that they’re thinking of implementing, but I’m not sure I should share them as they aren’t set in stone. What I will say is that they are still working on making LightGuardian even better than it already is. There is no GameCenter integration, but the developers do have an in-game online leader board, which is great, because players won’t need to worry about hacked GameCenter scores like with most other GC supported games. Some in-game achievements would be a wonderful addition to the game as well, as there’s quite a bit the developers could make achievements for; destroying # blimps, collecting # parts, reaching level #, ect. Universal support would be awesome too, as I’m sure gamers with iPads would love to see the graphics how they’re meant to be seen on their bigger screens, but for $1.99 (and currently on sale for $0.99), this is a must buy game. Endless replayabilty, updates that will make the game even better, and a beautiful and original gameplay experience. I really can not recommend LightGuardian enough. I’m also extremely hopeful of what the developing team will come up with in the future.

Light Guardian gets a score of 9 out of 10.

Links;

Full Version – http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/lightguardian/id460430907?mt=8

Website – http://www.wix.com/lightguardian/game