Endless Runner based level games are starting to grab a group of fans. Fatcat Rush, Mirror’s Edge, Run Fox Run, Brain In Jar, Bouncing Penguin, DoDo Fly, 1-Bit Ninja, these titles will usually upset platformer fans because, well, they’re not platformers, and cause endless runner fans to scream “those are not endless runners!”, but whether you love or hate these types of games, you can’t deny that there are gamers that thoroughly enjoy games like these, and that there are more and more of them popping up as more and more gamers get hooked by their gameplay. I, for one, and a big fan of these types of games. Maybe it’s because my favorite genre of games is platformers, and I enjoy endless runners quite a bit. Maybe it’s because they’re perfect for playing while sitting in the bathroom, who knows? Whatever the case may be, a new title has emerged, and is ready to be conquered by gamers everywhere. Zombie Parkour Runner, developed by Break Media, is the newest addition to the endless runner/platformer mesh genre.
You’ll control Kara while she jumps, zips, climbs, swings, wall-runs, and kicks some zombie butt trying to get her stolen cat back. There’s 24 levels of smooth playing parkour running that you’ll control simply by tapping on the screen. A quick tap will give you a short jump, while holding your finger on the screen will give you a long jump, then timely taps on the screen when a white silhouette of your character appears will cause you to do specific parkour tricks and spiffy zombie attacks while running through each level.
The graphics are superb, and the environments full of great looking details and objects. The animations are also very well done, and make the game flow extremely smooth. The tap controls are very responsive, and even though it sounds like just tapping on the screen to do pretty complex moves sounds easy, choosing the right path, along with tapping at the right time can prove to be pretty challenging.
Making it through all 24 levels won’t take a lot of gamers too long, but making it through all 24 levels with a 3 star ranking and grabbing the special item in each level should take more than a little while, as should finding all the hidden areas and unlockable levels. There’s also a GameCenter leaderboard for each level, along with a board for the best score in a level, and 39 achievements, all adding immensely to the high replay-value. It would be nice to see a shop where we could unlock more characters, or different outfits, maybe give all those coins another purpose besides adding to the high-scores of players, and give those gamers out there that are not obsessed with high-scores something to aim for.
If you’re a fan of the genre, Zombie Parkour Runner is a game that’s definitely worth checking out. The addition of the Parkour moves, running on billboards, swinging off of poles, going down ziplines, and more adds quite a bit to the gameplay, as do the different zombies and zombie attacks. Priced at $0.99 for the iPhone version, and $2.99 for the iPad version, it’s a great buy, and a great game that will give you hours upon hours of entertainment.
Kemco, developers of the amazing turn-based RPG, Symphony Of Eternity, have returned with an equally amazing addition to the genre, releasing Alphadia. The developers over at Kemco have proven that they know exactly how to make a turn-based RPG comparable to the likes of Final Fantasy, so when they came out of the gate so soon after SoE with their second iOS release, Alphadia, RPG fans knew they had to have it.
First off, the graphics. Alphadia doesn’t fully share the retro look of it’s sister title, SoE, but it does share the retro feeling. Even though the graphics have been redrawn to take advantage of the retina display on newer iPods, the game still feels like a retro title. This amazing mesh of modern and old-school graphics has created quite an awesome looking world for gamers to completely immerse themselves in, with amazing character models, wonderfully detailed environments, and cute character animations, it all comes together extremely well, sucking players into the world.
The story of Alphadia takes place in a world free from war for 100 years. Either bored, or seeing something worth pursuing, the Schwarzschild empire has begun it’s conquest for world domination. You’ll control Ash, his brother, sister, and two mysterious characters, as well as others who join your party along the way, as you try and find a way to stop the quickly expanding Schwarzschild empire.
The story is, as to be expected from Kemco, extremely well translated, and very immersive. Feelings for the characters comes quickly, and the story is the main drive of the game. Where in SoE, the deep upgrade, equipping system was equal to the story, in Alphadia, the story takes the drivers seat, with everything else in the back.
Not to say that the equipping and leveling up system isn’t great, because it is. Each character, as well as enemy, has a certain element that they are familiar with, and have control over from birth. For instance, Ash’s element is fire. This means that almost all of his spells throughout the game will be connected to fire in some way. He is also most resistive to fire based enemies, and can have his butt handed to him by water enemies if you’re not careful. There are gems in the world that you can equip, and which give you either more control over your element, or give you the ability to use other elements, though not as powerfully as you can use your familiar element. All leveling up, and points are handled automatically by the game, so all the player needs to worry about is equipping a weapon, armor, and one accessory. This simplified leveling up and equip system makes the game a lot more accessible to casual RPG gamers, but there’s also formation handling, which can drastically change the outcome of big battles, so the whole formation, equip system is not so dumbed down that hardcore fans of the genre will find it boring and simple either.
Now, if you’re a player who doesn’t really focus on the story, and is more into the turn-based battle systems, you’ll be glad to hear that you can tap repeatedly on the screen to skip through the story, then find out where you need to go using the map along with the quest icon in the pause menu. There are some areas where you’ll just need to explore a bit, randomly running into enemies that do not appear on the field, more like an older Final Fantasy game, until you enter the room with the character you’re needing to find in order to progress. There is a bit of exploration in the game, as you would expect if you’re familiar with Kemco, for instance, the map will only highlight your final destination, but in order to get there, you might need to find a tunnel that’s “somewhere north-east of this facility”, so you will come across plenty of battles to feed your battle system addiction. However, there’s also an Auto button if you’re more interested in the story and larger battles.
The only bad thing I can say about Alphadia is that the battle results screen sometimes feels like it’s getting in the way of the game. It doesn’t matter how quickly or how much you tap on the screen, the battle result screen has a set time that it’s shown.(PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ OUR CORRECTION OF THIS, THE BATTLE RESULTS SCREEN CAN BE TAPPED THROUGH!) This could be fixed in a future update, but right now, it can feel like it’s breaking up the game just a little bit too much. Aside from that, Kemco has given RPG fans another amazingly well done title to completely immerse themselves in. With the launch price of $2.99, it’s a steal, and must-buy for anyone remotely interested in playing a top notch turn-based RPG on their iDevice.
Tweet We at the App Shack have always been huge fans of the developers over at Rocketcat Games company because of their previous hook-slingin’ games like Hook Champ, Super Quick Hook, and Hook Worlds. Deciding to branch out from that genre of games they created Mage Gauntlet, an ARPG (Action Role Playing Game) that is built in the image of Secret of Mana. Read our interview with them here to see what new direction this studio will turn next.
The backstory of Mage Gauntlet is very deep and intriguing and had me rewatching the cut scenes to make sure I understood it. Basically a great evil known as Hurgoth descends over the land causing pain and suffering. A wizard named Whitebeard conquers and sends the monster to the bleak Dark Realm. He and some appointed wizard guardians have been keeping watch on the seal to make sure that it does not get broken open. It appears that the seal is leaking out energy causing monsters to rise again in the land. I’ll let you find out the rest of the story on your own as it is best experienced without already knowing what’s going to happen! Each section of the game world is split into levels which are seamlessly integrated together much like different areas in Zelda. After you exit the level you immediately start walking through the next level without having to select it. You can earn up to 3 stars in a level. If you defeat all the enemies and dont lose any lives you get the perfect three stars for that level. You can earn a pet by doing so which is an awesome motivating factor. Also able to be obtained by beating levels are hats. Hats have always been a recurring theme in Rocketcat Games and in Mage Gauntlet there are 110 hats to collect. These hats don’t actually boost your stats in any way but are certainly fun to wear and let you customize your character. Pets, Swords, and Robes though, do influence your stats and the possibility of spell drops. You control Lexi by using one of three control methods which are all very adaptable and easy to use for both iPod and iPad users. To attack enemies you can quickly tap the attack button for a weak attack and by holding it you can initiate her power attack which stuns all enemies it touches. Also available are spells which you can get by cracking open magic vases. The battle system feels much like Secret of Mana’s and is quite fast paced as the enemies can get very cunning. Also there are no fetch quests at all so this really does hearken back to the 90’s era RPG’s. For added replayability they included a separate mode called Master Mode that puts new secrets and overwhelming monster numbers in the same levels you played before.
Overall this is refreshing take on the RPG genre and really adds something new to the App Store. With 84 levels, 110 hats, 19 pets, and 86 achievements you’ll be playing this gem for a long time. A update has already been announced which includes a new mode and a new pet. You really cant go wrong with this purchase and is in my opinion my absolute favorite RPG up to this point. Legit, get it now on launch day before it goes up in price permanently to 2.99. 10/10
Tweet Worms Crazy Golf is going to be released tonight at some time depending where you live. In the US it will be out at 11:00 p.m. and at 12:00 a.m. in the United Kingdom. It is already out in New Zealand and costs $2.99. The weird thing is that in the press release we received they said the game would be released on Wednesday not Monday/Monday night. Ever since iOS 5 and the iPhone 4S it seems that all the app release dates have been fluctating randomly. Regardless we are all thrilled that the game is coming out tonight and hope to have a review of it ready soon. Requirements: It is compatible with iPhone, iPod touch and iPad. Requires iOS 3.1.3 or later.
Here are some screenshots and a gameplay trailer to hold you over till its release.
iTunes Description:Worms™ Crazy Golf for iPhone and iPod is a hilarious mixture of the explosive action of Worms™ and the puzzle-based challenges of crazy golf! All of the trademark Worms™ humour, comic violence, and cartoon visuals are present, combined with addictive yet accessible golf gameplay. With extensive and re-playable single-player options, and hot-seat multi-player for up to 4 players, this is not just a load of balls!
KEY FEATURES:
• EXTENSIVE SINGLE-PLAYER CONTENT:
Single-player career mode – x3 18-hole courses – Britannia, Pirate Cavern and Graveyard – with Trophy achievements.
Single-player challenge mode – x15 challenges with leaderboards.
• LOCAL MULTI-PLAYER ACTION:
Hot-seat multi-player for up to 4 players.
• HIGHLY REPLAYABLE PUZZLE-BASED GAMEPLAY:
Crazy golf! Navigate the hilarious, and increasingly challenging, holes in unique ways with interactive objects, utilities and ball spin.
• WORMS™ HUMOUR AND CHARACTERS:
Worms™ humour! Exploding sheep, teleports, ball-whacking Old Women, ball-stealing moles, mines, magnets and even new bats!
• CRAZY CUSTOMISATION:
Customise the name, hat, club, speech and balls of your worm, and earn in game cash to unlock even more customisation options.
APP STORE SPECIFIC FEATURES:
• Game Center integration.
• Retina Display support.
• Fast App switching.
• Low graphic option for optimizing frame-rate on older devices.
Line drawing and tower defense genres really seem to go together quite well from the couple of titles that merge these two genres I’ve been able to check out. Phoenix Defense Force, Boom Brigade, A.I.R. Defense, Into The Blue, and the ever popular Axe In Face come to mind, and now fans of the genre have another game to add to that short list of incredibly well done line drawing/TD games; Anthill: Tactical Trail Defense, by Image & Form International.
To start things off, the graphics and animations. I&F has done an amazing job creating some very vibrant and layered environments. You get an idea of this right when you get to the main menu. The very well done environments match the equally well done bug models and animations. It’s actually so well done that you might end up finding yourself just staring at the screen watching them move around. The bugs are also very colorful, matching the vibrancy of the environments perfectly. It’s easy to tell that a lot of time and effort went into making the movement, look, and flow of everything within the game just right. To top it off, the music is Disney-esque, and almost like something that would have fit very well within A Bug’s Life. It compliments the atmosphere and feeling of the game perfectly.
Now onto the gameplay. You start out looking down at an anthill, surrounded by shrubbery. The tutorial is well explained, learning the basic mechanics in the first level, and then new mechanics when new units are added. You’ll need to draw a line from the top of your anthill to your desired location, and then decide what units to send out on that line. You’ll need to constantly collect food in order to send out more units, and there is almost always a leaf close-by that you can snag about 100 food points from over a short amount of time. So to start things off, you’ll usually draw a line from your anthill to that leaf, and then decide to send out your collector ants on that line. They will go out to the leaf, and start bringing the food back to the anthill. Now, to keep those ants safe, you’ll need to drag your finger across the screen, or pinch to zoom in and out, to scan the area for enemy bugs that will kill your worker ants and deprive you of food. Once you find out where those bugs are coming from, or where they might come from, you’ll need to draw another line starting from the top of the anthill to an intersecting point between the bugs and the worker ants, and then send out your attacker ants. These guys will kill whatever bugs are encroaching on your territory, and leave their bodies for your worker/collector ants to pick up and take back to the hill. So after your attacker ants have cleared out an area of enemies, you’ll draw another line to their bodies, and choose the collector ants to pick them up, and take them back to the anthill for some major food points. Once you’re done with a line, you hold down on it, and select the “X” that pops up. You are able to draw as many lines as you want, but the more you draw, the more spread out our available ants will become, so it’s best to erase the lines you no longer need in a timely fashion. You can also use bomber ants, who fly out of the anthill, and drop goo wherever you tap on the battlefield. A direct hit with the goo can kill an enemy instantly, but to do this, you’ll need to hit a moving target who has the ability to change direction at any point in time. Which brings us to the AI. Each of the bugs behaves differently. This makes learning how each of your enemies moves, and attacks essential in taking them out successfully.
After each level, you’re given a star ranking based on how many points you’ve collected throughout the level. This is more important than usual because you can then use these stars to upgrade your ants. The speed of the collector ants, brutality of the attacker ants, and more. If you don’t want to battle it out to gain stars, you can purchase them through an IAP, 20 stars for $0.99, which can upgrade your ants quite a bit, but it’s not necessary, and the game isn’t pushed toward you buying the stars at all. The difficulty is set just right, and you can replay levels to earn stars that you didn’t earn the first time through. You can not, however, re-earn stars, so if you got all the stars available in a level, you can not replay it and earn those stars to use for upgrades again.
Anthill: TTD is GameCenter enabled, and has leader boards for all 21 of the levels that are spread across the 3 different environments. There’s also a leader board for your total score, which combines all of your best level scores. Having a board for each of the levels, as well as a star ranking that gives you stars for upgrades does add quite a bit of replay value to the game, especially if you’re a high-score chaser. With the game at $2.99, and on sale right now for $1.99, and being Universal, it’s a great buy for the amount of content and gameplay you’ll get. If you’re a fan of line drawing or tower-defense games, this is one that looks beautiful, and has an insane amount of strategic elements. The controls are nice and tight, and really, everything within the game is so professionally done that it’s hard to not call it one of the best, if not the best line drawing tower defense title available for the iOS.
Anthill: Tactical Trail Defense gets a perfect score of 10 out of 10.
We mentioned in an earlier review that the iDevices, with their option for tilting controls, have opened up another little world for game development and genre expansion. Here we have another example of a genre expanded by these tilt controls, ball rollers. Escape From Cyborgia is a new addition the genre, developed by Maniac Dreamers.
First off, the graphics, like most other great ball rollers, are very immersive, drawing you into the dark world full of hazards and obstacles. The animations for all the moving objects, liquids, steams, and fires in throughout the game are also done very nicely. Coupled with the awesome music, great physics, and ability to tilt the camera by swiping on the screen you can see the levels from different angles, the developers have created an amazing atmosphere, making Escape From Cyborgia a game that you’ll experience just as much as you’ll play. There is also a story that is accessible from the main menu, which does add to the experience and feel of the game if you decide to take the time to read it. It’s pretty interesting finding out why you’re trying to “escape from Cyborgia.”
To make it through each of the 30 levels, you will need to guide your mechanical orb through the maze of paths, hitting switches that allow access to new areas, and collecting green, red, and blue orbs that give you points. These points can be used to slow down the timer or plant new checkpoints. You don’t need to plant checkpoints, but if you want to make it through the levels in a timely matter, it’s a good idea. Sometimes the orbs need to be collected by pushing crates or barrels over edges into the orbs, which counts towards your collected points as if you had run into the orb yourself. With this feature, the developers were able to make collecting all of the orbs a task that generally only the better players will be able to do, by placing some on the ground floor, which you are not able to touch without dying, in fire, at the bottom of holes in the floors, or behind other hazards, only accessible by finding the right switch, or moving a crate or barrel to the area, and dropping it on the orb.
You do not need to collect all of the orbs in order to finish the levels, but you will need to open up pathways by clicking on certain switches, which does require quite a bit of backtracking. The level design is extremely well thought out, giving players the opportunity to either spend more time in a level, and gain more points, but also run the risk of dying more, or let players try and speed roll through each of the levels, making it through as fast as they can, gaining a higher star ranking in the level.
The controls and UI in Escape From Cyborgia are very tight, and nicely laid out. You can adjust the calibration at any time in the main, or pause menus, as well as the tilt sensitivity. There are 3 buttons on the bottom right, and 3 on the bottom left corners of the screen. On the left, you can pause, go back to your last planted checkpoint, or reset your checkpoint to the beginning of the level. On the right, you can slow down the timer, requiring 1,500 points, set a new checkpoint, requiring 1,000 points, or enter the birds eye view of the level, which you are able to zoom in and out of as well as swipe and scroll around in. You can also swipe the screen at any point while playing the game to tilt the camera at a different angle, seeing if the pathways are slanted up or down, or maybe see if a path is accessible by seeing the set-up at a different angle.
For Maniac Dreamers first iOS release, Escape From Cyborgia is a very immersive addition to the ball roller genre. The only cons I can see is that there is no online integration, so there’s less drive to go back and replay levels with the hopes of bettering your score or ranking. Also, the level select screen always starts on level 0, so you will always need to scroll through the levels to find the one you last completed. There are also some sections on the paths, in the first couple levels, that have slight tilts on them. These slight tilts are almost impossible to see, even while tilting the camera. To make it over these slanted areas, players will need to tilt their devices to a pretty uncomfortable position. When you finally do make it past the slanted area, your ball will almost always go flying across the path. This isn’t too big of a deal, because the levels that do have these slants are only in the beginning, and there’s guard-rails on the path-ways, so you will not fling your ball onto the floor or into the green goo, but it is kind of strange that these sections only appear in the beginning of the game, and that more was not done to make them visible. Aside from that, which really isn’t anything to seriously complain about, and nothing that could not be fixed in an update, Escape From Cyborgia is a very well made, with skillfully thought out levels and textures. $2.99 for this Universal game is a solid price.
Most tower defense games really feel like they fit perfectly with touch screen devices. For many people, their iPod gave them their first experience with tower defense games, and have sense become hooked. But over the last year or so, it’s been pretty hard to find originality within the genre. Thankfully, there have been a couple of tower defense games that have really added something new, or expanded on previous ideas, instead of just re-packaging the same formula with a different skin. Infinite Dreams has shown, with previous iOS releases, that they know what it takes to put together a game that has substance, and with the release of Jelly Defense, they’ve proven once again that they know exactly what it takes to create an awesome game.
Jelly Defense sticks with the jelly graphics that Infinite Dreams have made popular with the past releases of Jelly Invaders, Jelly Clock, and Jelly Chronicles. Black and white backgrounds with colored characters giving the game quite a bit of personality, while keeping a very vivid yet minimal look and feel to the whole jelly universe. The animations and use of shadows give the world tons of life, and it really has turned out to be a graphic style that stands out and will soon be the first thing that will come to gamers minds when they hear “Infinite Dreams” from now on. Alright, enough gushing over the graphics, let’s get on with the gameplay and mechanics.
To start the game off, you’ll see the jelly’s home planet being invaded by another race of jellies who are bent on stealing the precious gems of the residing species. Thankfully, you are pretty well prepared, and have exactly what you need in order to defeat these wild and crazy beings. Each of the 22 levels has different paths that the enemy can take in order to snag the green crystals, and make it out of the level alive. So you will need to place your attacking jellies on the sides of multiple pathways to try and minimize the amount of gems that get stolen throughout each of the levels. You’ll have 10 gems available, and once all 10 are stolen, or you defeat all waves of the enemy, the level is over.
There are two types of enemies; Red and Blue. Like Jelly Invaders, you’ll need to match the attacking jelly with the color of the enemy in order to take them out. You’ll start off with one red attacking jelly, one blue attacking jelly, and one red/blue attacking jelly that can take out both types of enemies. As you progress through the game, you’ll be able to use more types of jellies to take out your enemies, but the invading jellies also get upgraded enemies, so there’s never really a point in the game where you can just kick the crap out of the enemy with new and more powerful jellies. In order to use your newer and more powerful attacking jellies, you’ll need to grow them in a tree, first paying for the tree to grow them, and then paying again to place them on the paths. This usually takes about 2 or 3 waves to grow the characters before they are made available for use, which adds a bit of strategy as to when you start to grow them, and when you decide to use them.
As you kill each of the enemies, gold will appear; to collect it, you need to tap on it before it disappears. This gold is accumulated in the center of your green gem collection, and is used to buy attacking jellies, and to upgrade your planted characters. I say “planted”, because when you select a spot to place your jelly character, they will quickly grow from a small ball to the jelly that can attack the onslaught of enemies. You’ll need to keep this in mind while placing them around the levels, as deciding where to put them a little late can result in an entire wave of enemies passing by it before it’s ready to attack. This also adds quite a bit of strategy to the game, aside from the obvious strategy of Jelly Defense being a tower defense game. You can most likely count on restarting a level more than once before you beat it with all 10 gems remaining, learning what jellies to plant, and where, to start everything off right. One wrong move in the beginning can ruin the rest of the level. The game is also built around buying and selling a lot of your towers. To make it through almost all of the levels, you will need to constantly be buying and selling jellies in order to take on the current wave that’s making it’s way through the paths at that moment.
On top of all of this, there are power-ups thrown into the game. They are all pretty nifty, and require pretty good planning for when exactly to use them. There’s power-ups that upgrade all of your towers, drop gold from the sky, produce an earthquake harming all of the enemies on screen at the time, sending meteors down in a specific spot that you decide, and more. All of these need to be used at just the right time to make sure they are used effectively. If not, you could end up wasting a pretty powerful power-up, and risking your gems.
Infinite Dreams has, once again, given gamers a quality title with Jelly Defense. The graphics, animations, game mechanics, level design, it all screams professional, and well thought out. Even the soundtrack is great, and you’ll probably end up pausing the game just to listen to the catchy tunes Infinite Dreams have thrown into it. The launch price is $0.99, but the price after will be $2.99. It is Universal, and will provide you with plenty of gameplay. However, it is missing an Endless or Survival Mode, like most TD games have, which could have taken quite a bit away from the replay value; but there are GameCenter leader boards for each level, along with boards for how many coins you’ve collected, how many jellies you’ve killed, and a total global ranking leader board, along with 25 achievements, all filling that replay void that leaving an Endless Mode out of the game left. If you’re a fan of tower defense games, Jelly Defense is a must buy. Hours upon hours of your life will be sucked away, and the feeling you get when making it through a level, keeping all 10 of your gems, is great, especially in the mid and later levels of the game. Infinity Dreams has definitely helped raise the bar within the TD gaming genre.
Get ready to go back into the wild wild west in Chillingo’s latest adventure game Cowboy Guns [$0.99]. In Cowboy Guns you play as a lonely cowboy who has to fight his way through towns, deserts, and canyons with bandits in the way. Your main goal is to defeat The Crimson Jackals to bring peace to the land. There’s 3 exciting modes to play through: Adventure mode, Bounty Hunter mode, and Survival mode. In Adventure mode you play through a story line facing enemies. In the Bounty Hunter mode you get rewards for defeating the 20 wanted criminals. In Survival mode you erm… basically survive. There’ll be a bunch of enemies coming all over and your goal is to stay alive as long as possible. There’s two controls in the game. The left analog stick allows you to move around and the right analog stick allows you to shoot your current weapon. Between the two analog sticks, your current weapons can be found there. You can only hold up to 3 weapons at once. On the top left side of the screen you have your health meter which indicates the amount of health you still have left. On the top right side of the screen there’s a little icon that looks like a bag. Once you click on that you can find your map and travel to different lands. You can also read about your current mission
that you have going on and upgrade your cowboy. The following upgrades that you can currently purchase are handguns, shotguns, heavy guns, explosives, armors, boots, and new costumes. Items can be purchased by using money that you’ve earned from missions or from the stars that you can collect that are hidden around each area. I’m really digging the game’s graphics and the western style music. The adventure mode is extremely fun and has a great story line. Overall, Cowboy Guns provided a fun cowboy experience and is
perfect for people who are into dual-stick games. I’ve found no issues with the game at all, except it crashed about twice. My final rating is 4.5 out of 5 stars. You can pick up Cowboys Guns from Chillingo for a mere [$0.99]. There’s also a universal version that’ll run on your iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad that you can pick up for just $2.99 by clicking here.
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.
The graphics are done in a very vibrant, 80’s/early 90’s type style that always makes me think of the Saved By The Bell show opening. Everything is very smooth and stylish, and gives the game a real retro feeling while staying modern. The animations are very well done, and the menus look great too. The music in Radballs is pretty nice electronica that’s not too cheesy, not too harsh, and really does play quite a big roll in the game with the Beat Wave bar moving to the beat, and when scratching with the bar, the music moves forward and backward depending on how you let go of it. You’re also able to use your own music to play the game, so if the in-game music isn’t really to your liking, you can still enjoy the game quite a bit. However, the Beat Wave bar will not always move to the beat with your personal music, but it‘s not so far off that it‘s distracting, which is a plus. Music also changes filter frequency when pausing the game, which is a nice little addition, and yet another attention to small detail that the developers have thrown into the game.
The gameplay itself is split up across 3 different game modes, Arcade, Survival, and Time Trial, with 8 different levels to play, each with a different theme, and 4 difficulties, Easy, Normal, Hard, and Insane. While moving radballs around, and trying to make Mega-Radballs as big as you can, there are power-ups that you’ll encounter; Bomb, Zapper, and Freeze. Each of which you’ll need to put your finger over, and hold it there while it starts to glow, and pulse, then let go when the glow is at it’s brightest. The Bomb will clear out a pretty large section of radballs, while with the Zapper, you drag your finger around the screen while a bolt of electricity pops radballs, and the Freeze power-up freezes the Beat Wave and stops radballs from falling, but you’ll need to wipe the screen clear of the frost that covers the entire screen before you can move radballs around again. The Bomb and Zapper result in pretty large Radness Meter jumps, while Freeze helps you create large Mega-Radballs that will give you big Radness point in return.
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.
Reckless behavior will get you many undesirable places in life like the bottom of a toilet, top of a building, and being chased by twenty cop cars. In this game being reckless is your main goal and destroying tons of cars with a awesome maneuver will certainly put a smile on any ones face. With lots of content including 17 levels, 2 game modes, and 2 different cars the fun wont be coming to a halt anytime soon.
The main catching point that got me hooked on this game is the floaty physics. Sure some people like down-to-earth physics that make games play like a rock but the physics in this game let it have that extra element of unpredictability. The two modes I mentioned before are Getaway and Wreckless. Getaway is basically the main campaign of the game. There are 4 different sets of levels each consisting of 4 levels each. These sets of levels have their own backstory and their own environmental theme like the dessert for instance. You unlock new levels and modes by earning stars in the previous levels. A star meter fills up depending on how many coins you pick up along the route and how much destruction you caused while driving….recklessly. Hidden along the level are little sub routes that deviate from the main course of the level. Often you will find way more coins and quickly elevate your star total if you can find them.
The second game mode, Wreckless is designed for the more destructive type. You are outfitted with a big rig and in order to gain the stars mentioned previously you have to destroy as many cars as you can which as you can imagine is amazingly fun. In both modes there are various power ups located randomly around the track. It’s the star rating system that really gives the game good replay value but after you complete everything there is little else substantial to work your way up to besides the GameCenter achievements. Fortunately the overall fun of the game makes up for that discrepancy and works this game to the top of my favorite games list. I highly recommend you check out this awesome and action packed game.
Overall Rating
Price: 2.99
Replayability: 8/10
Content: 8/10
Difficulty: Ranges per each level but is by no means a difficult game.
Overall Awesomeness Factor: 9/10
Percent Chance you will enjoy it: 90%
Ratio of Explosions to Overall crashes: 34/12
Chance we didn’t make up these statistics: 1000 to 1
Endless Runner based level games are starting to grab a group of fans. Fatcat Rush, Mirror’s Edge, Run Fox Run, Brain In Jar, Bouncing Penguin, DoDo Fly, 1-Bit Ninja, these titles will usually upset platformer fans because, well, they’re not platformers, and cause endless runner fans to scream “those are not endless runners!”, but whether you love or hate these types of games, you can’t deny that there are gamers that thoroughly enjoy games like these, and that there are more and more of them popping up as more and more gamers get hooked by their gameplay. I, for one, and a big fan of these types of games. Maybe it’s because my favorite genre of games is platformers, and I enjoy endless runners quite a bit. Maybe it’s because they’re perfect for playing while sitting in the bathroom, who knows? Whatever the case may be, a new title has emerged, and is ready to be conquered by gamers everywhere. Zombie Parkour Runner, developed by Break Media, is the newest addition to the endless runner/platformer mesh genre. 
You’ll control Kara while she jumps, zips, climbs, swings, wall-runs, and kicks some zombie butt trying to get her stolen cat back. There’s 24 levels of smooth playing parkour running that you’ll control simply by tapping on the screen. A quick tap will give you a short jump, while holding your finger on the screen will give you a long jump, then timely taps on the screen when a white silhouette of your character appears will cause you to do specific parkour tricks and spiffy zombie attacks while running through each level. 
If you’re a fan of the genre, Zombie Parkour Runner is a game that’s definitely worth checking out. The addition of the Parkour moves, running on billboards, swinging off of poles, going down ziplines, and more adds quite a bit to the gameplay, as do the different zombies and zombie attacks. Priced at $0.99 for the iPhone version, and $2.99 for the iPad version, it’s a great buy, and a great game that will give you hours upon hours of entertainment. 
