Search Results for: label/0.99

Number of Results: 123

The Big Little Quest – 0.99 (ITL Business Ltd)

The Big Little Quest is the second isometric puzzle plat former from ITL Business Ltd. The game plays like an extension of their first game, Alone, in that the controls, UI setup, and general gameplay are pretty much the same. But in The Big Little Quest, you’ll play the first episode as you try and save your sister from a villain that kidnapped her and took her to his castle. To get through the game, you will need to talk to everyone you can, find items, weapons, kill dragons, and solve multiple puzzles in order to get to the end.

The graphics in The Big Little Quest have been updated quite a bit from the previous release, Alone. They are a lot smoother, and look more modern, while still retaining the retro feeling. The controls are the same, as in you’ll have 3 different options for control, a d-pad facing up and down with two buttons, jump and attack, a d-pad in isometric position, with attack and jump buttons, and being able to move by touching on each of the 4 corners of your device, double tapping to jump, and swiping to attack.
The gameplay, like I stated, is pretty much just like it was in Alone, moving from screen to screen, but in Big Little Quest, you’ll need to talk to everyone you run into, and do quite a bit of exploring. At the beginning of the game, you’re told to go and talk to your father, who is with a monk in the building just south of the building you’ll start out in. He’ll tell you that you’ll need to find the coins, and a map in order to progress. From here on, you’ll be given different quests as you complete each task, smoothly progressing through the game.
As it is just Episode 1 of the game, it is a little short. It took me 1 hour to complete the game. But there are some head-scratchers with the added puzzles. Just like in Alone, they are very well planned out, and well made, even though this game is more about exploration. You’ll move throughout the world collecting items, finding the 3 dragons, and maybe re-finding them, after you manage to collect your weapon, and then making your way to the castle and through the dungeon, where most of the puzzles are found.
For the game being only the beginning of the full story, it’s pretty entertaining. I’ve played quite a few games in the past that were first episodes, and they didn’t really give me this much gameplay or promise, and with the developer being active on his website, and on the Touch Arcade Forums, having completed his previous game, it’s pretty solid promise that there will be more to come.
As the game is now, there’s not a whole lot of gameplay, but for $0.99, with the promise of the game expanding, it’s well worth the purchase if you’re into exploration games, or if you liked the developers first release. It’s got nice adventure elements, and really feels like you’re moving forward in the game as you progress. I’m looking forward to playing the future episodes, and can’t wait to find out where the story goes from here.
The Big Little Quest is getting a rating of 6 out of 10, but could very well turn into an 8 out of 10 game after more is added to it.
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Alone – 0.99 (ITL Business Ltd)

Alone is an isometric puzzle platform game from ITL Buisness Ltd. In it, there has been a terrible chemical warfare attack, and your city is left in ruins. Now you’ll need to find a vaccine for yourself, and your girlfriend, while trying to survive the aftermath outside.

In the game, you’ll go through 14 pretty short levels gathering different objects and items while going through traps and avoiding or killing the mutants that plague the town. Each level has a pretty straight forward objective, and usually only a few screens that you’ll need to navigate through in order to complete the levels. You’re given 3 different control schemes, a regular d-pad with attack and jump buttons, an isometric d-pad with 2 butons, or you can move by tapping in each of the 4 corners of the screen, double tap to jump, and swipe to use your weapons. I’ve found that the d-pads are the best way to navigate through the game, as using the 4 corners controls can get pretty frustrating.
The graphics are retro inspired, and work well with the feeling of the game, which is pretty surprising given the advances in graphics and the post-nuclear games that have come out over the years, and shaped the apocalyptic world for us, but the retro graphics are done well, and fit with the difficulty of the game. It reminds me a lot of old-school NES games.
The puzzles scattered throughout Alone are done pretty well, and are timed. This would be a nice feature if some online services were added. GameCenter leader boards for the fastest times in each level would be a great addition to the game, and add quite a bit of replay value. As it is right now, there’s really not much drive to replay any of the levels after you’ve beat them. With each of the levels taking about 2 to 5 minutes to beat, it seems that having GameCenter or Openfeint should be included.
Aside from the lack of online features, there are endless possibilities with the addition of the online level editor. After you finish the 14 levels of the game, you can register at http://alone.itlgames.com and make your own levels. This does drastically help with the replay value of the game, but only if you have the drive to go online and work on your own levels. So in the end, Alone is a very nice isometric puzzle platformer. It is very short, but the time spent playing the game will be enjoyed quite a bit. If you’re a fan of old-school gaming, or just want a platform game that will challenge you to think pretty quickly, with a nice environment, and good controls, Alone should be right up your ally. For $0.99, it’s definitely a game worth checking out.
Alone is getting a score of 7 out of 10.


Fly Wars: Conflict – 0.99 (B&C Mobile)

Fly Wars: Conflict is a new action strategy game from B&C Mobile. In it, you will move flies around each level, shooting other flies, and collecting poo, trying to kill the enemies before they kill you, and getting the best score you can. There’s blocks that you’ll need to shoot through, break, and bounce your bullets off of in order to defeat the other team, but the controls are somewhat finicky, making the gameplay harder than it needs to be.

To control your fly, you’ll need to tap on it, and then tap on where you want them to go. Aiming is done with a bar on the right side of the screen, but you can only shoot in about a 45 degree area. Now, if you’re aiming, and you try to tap on your fly to move it, you can’t. The game has one touch controls, and can get pretty annoying, even in the early levels. In a game like Fly Wars, where you need to move to different areas of the screen and set up your shots as quick as you can, having a multi-touch interface is almost a necessity.

Aside from the control issues, Fly Wars looks decent, and does have some pretty nice strategic gameplay. It might be hard to understand how to play at first, as the developer is not a native English speaker, and the instructions are pretty hard to understand, but once you catch on, which should be pretty quickly, it’s a piece of cake to play. You start off with the lowest level fly, who can only fire one bullet at a time. You’re also occasionally given helper flies that you can not move or control. After progressing through 3 levels, you’ll get the next fly up, that can fire two bullets at a time, and then every 3 levels after that, a stronger fly is unlocked. You’re given a total of 6 slots for flies, but you only start off with 1 slot open. Slots then open up about every 10 levels, so by level 11, you’ll be controlling 2 different flies.
The levels are split up in groups of 10, with 90 stages total. Each group of 10 levels is set in a different environment, with different objects to bounce your bullets off of as you move on, some of which are really pretty interesting, and do add quite a bit to the gameplay. The backgrounds aren’t really anything too special, but do fit the graphical style, and are noticeably different as you move on.
It does have a GameCenter leader board for your total score, but aside from that, there’s no achievements, and no real reason to replay any of the levels unless you die before beating them, so it’s a good thing there’s 90 levels. The scoring is alright, and the graphics are good. You’ll probably fight with the controls in the beginning, but once you get the hang of it, the gameplay does get better. For $0.99, it’s a good strategy action game, and if you’re into the genre, it’s a game that’s definitely worth checking out. There’s tons of objects that do make the gameplay very interesting as you progress through the game, and with the 90 levels, it’ll take quite a while to finish the game. I am looking forward to updates that will hopefully add some multi-touch controls, and am very interested in seeing what B&C comes up with next.
Fly Wars: Conflict is getting a score of 8 out of 10.


Tapsteroids – 0.99 (UNAgames)

Tapsteroids is the first iOS game from UNAgames, a two person team based in Italy. Daniele, who worked for 7 years on high-budget games for the Amiga, PC, and first-generation consoles, and Erika, a mathematician who works on 2D and 3D graphics. After playing Tapsteroids, hearing this information doesn’t necessarily come as a surprise. The action filled tap/arcade game has that ‘one more play’ feel to it, and it is made extremely well, with loads of polish, and tons of challenge.

In Tapsteroids, it’s your job to keep navigation routs safe to travel by wiping out waves of asteroids that are hurtling through space. To do this, you’ll be given an unlimited number of missiles, and are able to pick up extra weapons as you progress through the levels. To get rid of the asteroids, all you need to do is tap on them, and which-ever weapon you have equipped will automatically fire at it. The extra weapons are picked up by tapping on them, and selected by tapping on the space station, pausing the game, and then tapping on the weapon you’d like to use.
To get through each level, you’ll need to make sure that a certain number of ships are able to dock on your space station safely. You’re given 5 shields, or hit points, and each time your station or a ship gets hit by an asteroid, you loose one of those shields. Scattered in with the weapon pick-ups, you’ll see shield pick-ups as well, which add on one hit point.
The graphics in Tapsteroids are done extremely well, and the space environments look really nice. The animations for the asteroids, space ships, weapons, and different space stations are done very well also. There’s tons of polish and professionalism throughout the graphics and animations, and really helps add to the atmosphere and feel of the game. There plenty of variation between the space stations, space ships, and with the asteroids. Small asteroids, medium asteroids, and larger asteroids will fill up the screen in the later levels, some of them breaking up into multiple smaller asteroids, going in every direction. There is music in-between levels, and on the menus, but while playing, you’ll only hear the effects of weapons firing, ships landing, and asteroids and space ships exploding. The menu music is really nice, and full of energy, and the lack of music in-game actually helps build some atmosphere in my opinion. Space is a lonely, quiet place; only having the effects sounds while playing was a great idea.
There are three difficulties in Tapsteroids, but when you’re playing, the difficulty automatically goes up as you progress through the game. Easy difficulty is levels 1 through 4, Medium is 5 through 9 and Hard is 10 and up. Selecting Medium or Hard difficulty at the beginning of a game will automatically start you at level 5 or 10. This might turn some people off, but if you’re into older games, and love the difficulty levels of old-school NES/SNES and SEGA games, you’ll probably feel right at home with Tapsteroids.
Only having one mode is something else that might turn people off. An endless or survival mode would be awesome to have, but as it is now, Tapsteroids is a very entertaining game, with tons of replay value. The GameCenter leaderboards and 21 achievements help add to that too. It’s a very professional game with loads of polish, and tons of potential for the future. If the developers keep adding to the game, this could easily turn into one of my favorite arcade tapers for the iOS. $0.99 is a great price for endless gameplay, and tons of action. Get it now, and start climbing up those leaderboards!!
Tapsteroids is getting a score of 8.5 out of 10


To-Fu 2- 0.99 (HotGen Ltd.) “To-Fu is back and badder than ever!”

                           There’s no way that I can start the review until I say something about that icon. Now that icon is EPIC! Alright I’m glad I was able to get that out of my system. Now what is To-Fu 2? To-Fu 2 [0.99] by HotGen Ltd. is the sequel to their wildly popular first game called To-Fu: The Trials of Chi which you can actually pick up for free right now in celebration of the release of the sequel! So, just in case you’ve never heard of this game (if that’s even possible) you can go pick up the first one for free on your iPhone/iPod Touch and or iPad. If you’re not familiar with how the game works then I’ll give you a little recap.  In the game you control To-Fu who can stretch. You have to ping, stretch, rebound, and stick him throughout the levels. There’s 3 emblems that you can earn in each level. The first one is completing the entire level in a certain amount of moves or less. The next one is collecting all the Chi in the level. To get the last one all you have to do is finish the entire level by hitting the Fortune Kitty (this is the easiest one to achieve). You don’t actually have to collect all the emblems in one try. You can always go back to each level and try to get a certain one. Now, that I’ve been able to bring you up to speed if you haven’t played To-Fu before or haven’t played it in a while, I think it’s a great time to tell you about all the

 new features and goodies! The first new feature is the Time Trial mode. You’re given a certain amount of time to try to collect as much Chi as possible, with the ability to hit extra time bonuses to give yourself more time. I’m just gonna say that this is a great new feature, it definitely adds to the replay value of this game. There’s also new game features such as the rotating rebounding platforms and the “Super Ping”. The “Super Ping” allows you to break through obstacles. To activate it, all you have to do is hold down where you want it to go for a few extra seconds and it charges into the “Super Ping”! Another new feature is the store, where you can spend real cha-ching (money) if you’d like to. You can purchase new costumes, themes, and you can unlock all the levels in the game. The coolest IAP that I would not mind purchasing at all is the Golden To-Fu. The Golden To-Fu sort of works like the Angry Birds Mighty Eagle. The Mighty Eagle allows you to complete the level, but can only be used once every so hours. The Golden To-Fu works in the same way. It takes you right to the Fortune Kitty and collects all Chi en route. Just like the Mighty Eagle this also has a time limit of once every 8 hours. So if you purchase it, use it wisely! Overall, I found this game to be magnificent. It keeps what made the first one so successful and it builds off of it! The difficulty level is definitely higher than the original, but who wouldn’t like a challenge? The first 15 levels will re-introduce you into the game, with the next 85 levels to be challenging and a blast at the same time! If you’re a fan of the original then there’s no way in the world that you can pass this up. Also, if you’re new to the game I’d advise you to go pick up the original first and play a little bit of that before you play this one. My final rating is 4.5 out of 5 stars. You can go pick up this amazing sequel for just $0.99 (universal app for your iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad) from HotGen Ltd.

Trailer:


Anooki Jump- 0.99 (Bulkypix) “Sort of like Doodle Jump, but with Eskimos!”

Get ready to become Anook and Nooki and bounce from ice cube to ice cube in Anooki Jump [$0.99 (UNIVERSAL)] from Bulkypix. Anook and Nooki are two Eskimos who need your help to bounce as high as possible. The mechanics and the game will sort of remind you of Doodle Jump, but the game is completely different. For one thing, there’s no monsters that are trying to make you die. You’re probably wondering how you can play as 2 characters in this game. We’ll it’s actually really cool how you do it. Both of the Eskimos have a health bar. You start the game off with one of the characters and as you bounce higher the characters health that your bouncing with starts to deteriorate. Along the way there’s sort of a “pit stop” I guess you could say with the energized Eskimo waiting. When you land on it, your characters swap out and your immediately thrown back into the game with

the well rested Anook or Nooki. If you fail to swap out, your health will go down and once it reaches the end then it’s immediately game over. There’s a bunch of power-ups in the game that allow you to jump a decent amount of distance such as the star, the ballon, and a few other things that raise you higher up. With power-ups comes obstacles. Some of those obstacles are the bomb that spins you out of control for a little bit which makes jumping hard to do. Another one is the oil spill that gets you stuck in it, which requires you to shake your device to get out of it. There’s also a sort of Jack-in-the-Box that you can land in which can either shoot you straight up or shoot you straight down. So, that can be considered a power-up and an obstacle. In the

end this game is pretty addictive. The only thing I’ll say is that I’m not a fan of the colored world. It’s cool that every time you play the background is a different color, but it would be even better if the backgrounds were actually themed. Also, tilting on the iPad feels clunky, but well most tilting games on the iPad do. Overall, Anooki Jump is a cute game that you could easily spend hours trying to beat your high score by getting higher and higher. My final rating is 4 out of 5 stars. Anooki Jump is a universal app so you don’t have to double-dip if you have an iPad and iPhone and would like to play on both. You can grab Anooki Jump for $0.99 from Bulkypix !

Anooki Jump iTunes Link: 
Trailer: 


VenomBlast – 0.99 (Pictosoft)

VenomBlast is an updated, re-release of Pictosoft’s shmup, Zapa Ray. Pictosoft has done a pretty nice overhaul of the original game, giving us better graphics, different sounds, IAPs, a special fighter ship, and loads of tweaks. There’s also 3 hidden levels, unlocked after you beat the game on Normal, Hard, and Hell difficulties. Getting through Normal will be a challenge in itself though.

VenomBlast is a great looking shoot-em-up, with beautiful environments, and loads of variation with the enemies, in fact, there’s over 100 different types of enemies throughout the whole game. The boss battles are huge, and very well scripted, and can throw out some pretty nasty bullet sprays. To make things clear, even though there are tons of bullets fired in VenomBlast, it is not a bullet hell game. The scoring is simple, with each enemy having a set score for killing it, and no multipliers or bonuses are given. There’s also no real bullet patterns, all of the bullets are shot depending on where you’re positioned on the screen. This setting might upset some people, as having more bullets and bullet sprays on the screen doesn’t necessarily make for a better game. Bullet Hell games have eye candy bullet patterns, that can weave in and out with each other, and that you can dodge through if you know what to look for, and know what the patterns are going to be like. With huge bullet sprays shot directly at you, there’s not a specific way to weave through the bullets, you’ll just have to keep moving around, and with a little luck, not get stuck behind massive walls of undodgible bullet sprays.
Pictosoft has found a nice little solution to this problem though. Spotlight; the Fire Ball ship. In VenomBlast, you’re given 3 ships, one to start out with, and 2 to unlock with credits, all 3 being upgradeable. The original ship, named the Vulcan, is your typical shoot-em-up type fighter, having a strong blast, and wide spread once fully upgraded. The Guided Laser ship has projectiles that follow and hit ships anywhere on the screen; In front of you, behind you, or on either side of you. Then the Fire Ball ship shoots fire balls (go figure), and has fire balls that circle the ship. This spray of fire cancels out almost every type of bullet shot at you by enemies, and is a real life saver in the more hectic areas of the game. Each of the ships also fires missiles, that can be upgraded between levels, that lock on to enemies, and are pretty destructive.
The controls in VenomBlast are done pretty well, as we’re given relative touch controls, along with 2 buttons that can be placed on the right, left, or one one each side of the bottom of the screen. One button fires a nuke type shield that wipes out all bullets and most enemies when triggered, and the other button controls your ships, letting you switch between all 3 in the heat of battle. Double tapping on the screen lets you fire a bomb that clears out bullets, and causes massive damage. You only fire when you’re touching the screen though, and in a game that has numerous enemies coming at you from all directions, forcing you to pick up your thumb or finger in order to see them, this can be a real problem. Along with the buttons, the UI is made up of a battery symbol in the top right corner which is your health bar, a shield counter to the left of that, and your bomb counter next to the shields. Shields deploy automatically when you’re hit, and look like wings coming off of your ship, which is a nice little animation.
Compared to other iOS shmups, VenomBlast is a pretty hectic shooter, but it really has some stunning backgrounds and great animations with the enemies and even better with the bosses. There is an Easy Mode if you’re finding the game a little too hard, which is nice for new-comers to the genre, and your scores are shared on GameCenter throughout 5 different leaderboards, one for each difficulty, and one for all difficulties combined. The In-App-Purchases are for unlocking harder difficulties, extra lives, and buying more credits, each of which can be unlocked or bought in the between-levels store, so you’re not forced into buying anything extra unless you just want to pretty much skip ahead in the game. For $0.99, VenomBlast is a great shooter, definitely worth checking out, even if you purchased ZapaRay before it was pulled from the AppStore. It’s got plenty of challenge, and enough replay value added on with the extra bonus levels and leader boards to keep any veteran of the genre busy for quite some time.
VenomBlast is getting a score of 9 out of 10.


Deliver Da Bomb – 0.99 (Tapstatic)

Deliver Da Bomb is a new arcade game from Tapstatic in which you try to bounce a bomb from one side of the screen to the other side, blowing up a robot. It sounds pretty easy, and in the beginning it really is, as you can get enough bombs to the robot by just starting the first two bombs moving, and then tapping on the last group of men, then the middle group, then the first group, then back to the end and starting over again. The first 8 levels or so are played like this, but then you hit level 9, and it really starts to get difficult, especially on insane speed. Here is where they actually mix up the bombs shot by how high they start off, how fast they move, and in what order you need to tap the men in.

There’s two different game modes in Deliver Da Bomb, but they’re split up like difficulties. In Easy Mode, you’ll need to bounce bombs 3 times before they reach the robot, and in Hard Difficulty, you’ll need to bounce the bombs 4 times. With each of the difficulty modes you’re able to choose between 3 different speeds, Casual, Advanced, and Insane. Then to be able to play on Hard Mode, you’ll need to finish all the Easy Mode levels first, so it’s more set up like one mode that you just progress through in two, 25 level sections. Each bomb that you get to the end, hitting the robot, gives you one extra life point, and you can have up to 30 points for life. If you miss or drop a bomb, one point is taken away, and if you reach a life score of 0, surprise, game over.
The graphics are done fairly well, in a sort of NES-SNES retro type way, and the animations for movement, bouncing, and explosions are about what you would expect with a retro styled game. You are able to put a picture in the face of the robot, but it’s really small, so if you want it to be a picture that you’re able to see, it’ll have to be a close-up of something, or someone, and I prefer the default robot face. The sounds and music is inspired by old-school effects and music as well, and fit’s the game well enough.
Deliver Da Bomb is presented as an old-school arcade game that you can battle for a high-score ranking through GameCenter on, but there’s one pretty major problem with the scoring system; your score is cumulative, and adds up continuously. This means that you can raise your score to 50 thousand just by playing level 1 over and over again, if you so desire, but also that the #1 position on the GameCenter charts will not be the person who scored the most points in each of the 50 levels, but instead, will be the person who played the game more than anyone else, For a game who’s primary reason for playing is for getting a high score, this is a pretty big let-down, and to top it off, and really make sure the replay value goes down the drain, there’s no achievements.
Tapstatic has done a great job creating a high-scoring retro arcade game with Deliver Da Bomb, but it seems like they did a poor job in implementing the scoring system and GameCenter integration. However, these things could be easily fixed in a future update, and for $0.99, Deliver Da Bomb does deliver quite a bit of challenging gameplay, and is definitely worth the price.
Deliver Da Bomb is getting a score of 6 out of 10, with a little asterisk ** if this game is updated, and the scoring system is fixed so that you have a score fixed for each level that you can raise up by replaying the level instead of just adding to your total score by replaying a level over and over, it could be a 7 or 8 out of 10 game, and if more game modes are added after that, could easily score 9 or 10 out of 10 – and I do have some pretty high hopes for this one.


Spin The Nut – 0.99 (P-O-M Apps)

Spin The Nut is a new puzzle game from P-O-M Apps in which you try and get an acorn to the end of the level to feed the squirrel. You’ll also try and collect 3 golden nuts while getting the acorn to the end. The quicker you collect the golden nuts and make it to the squirrel, the better your score will be.

We’re given 80 nicely designed levels to try and get through, spread across 4 different worlds, with plenty of different objects to have the acorn interact with along the way, like bouncy platforms that are stationary, and then later in the game become platforms that you can move, spikes, helicopter baskets, pieces of wood that break after using them once, signs that will change the direction of the acorn while it’s in the air, and loads more.
The controls in Spin The Nut are done very well. To shoot the acorn, you place your finger on the piece of spinning wood that it’s stuck to, and then slide your finger away from the acorn so that you can see which direction it’s pointing. When it’s aimed in the direction that you want it to go, you let go of the screen, and it’ll shoot forward. There’s no gravity, so you don’t need to account for that, and the acorn will automatically stick to the next piece of wood it comes in contact with. Later in the game you’re also able to move the rotating pieces of wood that the acorn sticks to by single tapping on it to move it, and double tapping on it to activate the firing ability.
The graphics in Spin The Nut are polished and professional, and look very good. The squirrel is extremely cute, and the movement animations are done very well, and the music and sound effects fit with the cutesy vibe going on. The backgrounds, however, are not varied, and although they do let you see the objects throughout the levels very well, they feel pretty bland. For instance, in the treehouse world, the background is yellow with slight shaded in areas resembling branches, in the helicopter world, this changes to a pink background, and as you move on, the background color changes, but nothing else does. I don’t know how much the backgrounds were played around with, but seeing backgrounds that really match the worlds you are playing in could help liven up the game quite a bit, for instance, having an actual forest or tree background for the treehouse world, and the sky with some clouds for the helicopter world.
Spin The Nut is supported by GameCenter, and has 4 different leaderboards, one for each world, which helps add to the drive of getting as good of a score as you can in each level, but there are no achievements, and in a puzzle game like this, achievements go a long way. However, it is a pretty unique puzzle game with nice graphics, and great physics. The objects and gaming mechanics given to us are great, especially with the game only being $0.99. Spin The Nut is definitely a puzzle game that I will play through all the way, and will most likely go back through trying to get better scores and move up in the leaderboards. P-O-M Apps has shown that they have what it takes to make a nice puzzle game with great physics, and I’m really looking forward to seeing what they add with future worlds, and what they have in store for us with their next game.
Spin The Nut is getting a score of 7.5 out of 10


Spooky Hoofs – 0.99 (Gamesmold)

Spooky Hoofs is a new endless runner from Gamesmold. In it, you guide a stagecoach through woods and marshes collecting orbs for power-ups and avoiding holes, monsters and bosses. The game is semi-level based, in that you will always start in one of 3 randomly generated “first-levels”, but then after the first 3 levels, and after you defeat 3 bosses in a row, you move onto the harder section of the game, seeing enemies and bosses that you will never see within the first 3 levels. The end of each level is sectioned off by a boss battle and then a quick ride past another tavern. Each of the levels is generated based on what power-ups you have, and what kind of enemies there are. For instance, if you’re in a section that doesn’t have a lot of holes, you’ll face more ground enemies. In a section with lots of holes, you’ll face more flying enemies, and in a section where you have the double jump power-up, you’ll face lots of long holes and a pretty decent mixture of both types of enemies. Each of the boss battle sections are scripted, so that the difficulty stays fair and the choreography of the bosses works with the jumps and shots. This intelligent random design makes the game extremely well balanced as you’re progressing through the endless run.

The graphics in Spooky Hoofs are great, and have a similar style to Castlevania, which is awesome, and it‘s given to us in retina display, which makes it even better. The animations for the stagecoach, enemies, and bosses are done extremely well, making the flow of the game, and the gameplay, feel very professional and polished. The scoring is also done very well, separated between distance and a kill score. Each enemy and boss has a different amount of points, which when defeated, are added to your kill score, in the top right corner, under your health, while the distance is shown in meters, and is in the center top part of the screen.
The controls are done very well, as are the physics. You’re given a whip-speed boost button is on the left side, and the jump is on the right. You can use the whip button to whip the horses, also killing any flying enemies that might be above you, and holding it down sends you bursting forward. You can also boost forward while you’re jumping, making jumping over the bigger holes a lot easier. The power-ups in Spooky Hoofs are done very well also. To activate them, you need to collect 3 of the same colored orbs. There’s Blue, Orange and Purple, while Red orbs just need to be collected once, and add to your health. Collecting 3 blue orbs turns your horses into flaming blue invincible beings, giving you 3 chances to run into and through enemies, killing them, and adding to your kill score. Orange orbs give you the ability to shoot projectiles at enemies by hitting the dash-whip button, giving you 9 shots for every 3 orbs you collect, and purple orbs, when 3 are collected, give your horses wings and 9 air jumps, which you’re able to use consistently until you run out, meaning you can stay in the air for 10 full jumps before it’s used up and you fall back down to the ground.
There’s 2 leaderboards supported by GameCenter, one for distance, and one for your kill score, and no achievements. Having no achievements kind of takes away from the replay value, but with the leaderboards, it doesn’t take away too much, as you’ll be trying to get further and further, seeing more and more varied enemies, and increasing both your distance and kill scores. For $0.99, Spooky Hoofs is a great endless runner with awesome graphics, and great power-ups, while the gothic vibe of the game makes it even better. This is one game that will be staying on my iPod for quite some time.
Spooky Hoofs is getting a score of 9 out of 10.
Link: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/spooky-hoofs/id455577493?mt=8