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As I said in our review for the Bulkypix title, Funny Hell, base defense games have gained quite a bit of fans in the AppStore. The iDevice is a prefect platform for the genre, and almost all of them do well in the AppStore, because the genre has such a dedicated following. However, it’s hard to find one that brings something new and original to the table. Here’s where Soma Games (developers of Bok Choy Boy and a favorite of mine, G: Into The Rain) picks up at with their release of Wind Up Robots, a base defense game with a fantastic story, loads of polish, an awesome upgrade system, and great gameplay. You’ll control various robots that have been built by Jack, the grandfather of a young boy named Zach. These robots are used to vanquish the darkness that dwells within the world. You’ll use them to guard Zach of the evil that’s trying to get at him while he sleeps.

In order to do this, you’ll need to equip your robot box with the robots that you want to use for the stage. As you progress through the game, more robots are added to your arsenal. Once you have your set-up, and start the level, each of the robots are shown at the bottom of the screen. To select them, all you need to do is tap on them, and then tap on where you want them to go on the bed where Zach’s sleeping. While you do this, evil creatures will start spawning at the end of the bed, and will be making their way towards you. If you end up placing your robots on the edges of the bed, you might just miss the evil creatures walking in the middle, so it’s best to have them placed more towards the head of the bed, at least at first. With this lay-out, you risk not being able to defeat the creatures before they run into Zach’s head, taking away his “Z’s”. So in the beginning of the game, there is quite a bit of risk/reward, and strategy in where you place your robots. After a couple levels, you can start using the shop to upgrade your robots with the coins that are picked up as you defeat enemies in-game. Here, you can increase their attack, defense, speed, and more, making it easier to place them in various places around the bed, not needing to risk them passing you and running directly into Zach. The money you collect, as well as the upgrades you purchase also carry over to a new game, which is awesome. If the game becomes too difficult, starting over can drastically decrease the challenge depending on how upgraded your robots are. This comes in handy, especially when younger kids are playing.

The graphics and animations in Wind Up Robots are incredibly well done. They create an atmosphere that totally immerses gamers in to the gameplay. Considering the monsters only come out at night, you will be playing in dark rooms throughout the game, but because of this, the robots bight colors, and the light given off by them while taking care of the creatures, really stands out in a fantastic way. It’s not so dark that you are unable to see the objects found throughout the rooms, which is great, because they really give you the feeling that this is a house with a young boy living in it. Really, the game’s graphics and animations remind me of Disney movies, Toy Story in particular. The music is also a great addition to the atmosphere of the game, bringing the entire gameplay experience around, full-circle, making it an incredibly smooth, polished, fun game to get yourself wrapped up in.

For $0.99, and the game being Universal, it’s a fantastic buy. GameCenter is included, with 4 leaderboards for the Quick Play Survival Levels, adding even more replay value to the game. There are also 22 achievements to try and unlock, which also throws quite a bit of replay value at ya. The gameplay is suited for both adults, and kids, though it can get pretty challenging, which is where the carried over upgrades comes into play. If you’re a fan of base-defense games, and are looking for something new and original, Wind Up Robots is a perfect title to pick up. Soma Games has done an incredibly good job, and I can’t wait to see what they have in store for us in the future, both with updates for Wind Up Robots, and for future games they might end up releasing!

The Unreal Engine has considerably opened up the world of iOS gaming since it’s introduction late last year. Games taking advantage of the engine generally have incredible graphics and fantastic gameplay. Dungeon Defenders, Infinity Blade, Dark Meadow, Gyro13, these are titles that truly take advantage of what Unreal can do on the iDevice. However, there are a few titles that really do not grab onto everything that Unreal has to offer. Sadly, Puya Dadgar’s title, Arrow of Time is one of these titles.

First off, the graphics in Arrow of Time are done fairly well, however, the animations are really clunky, and not very impressive. Most of the time, it looks like characters are sliding along the ground while running or walking, and it looks like multiple frames have been left out of most of the animations.

There are various cut-scenes throughout the game, which are not terribly voice-acted, but there is no option to skip, and no pause button, so you’ll need to set aside a certain amount of time when you have no chance of being bothered. Some of the cut-scenes give you information which you’ll need in order to progress through the game, so they can be fairly important.

Summed up, Arrow of Time is a game that still needs a lot of work. It feels like a demo or beta version of what could eventually wind up being a decent game. Considering the game was made by two people over a period of 3 months, it’s not incredibly bad. However, the game shows that it was made by two people who worked on it only for 3 months. Priced at $1.99, it’s one of the cheapest Unreal powered games you can get in the AppStore, and the game is Universal. There is no GameCenter or OpenFeint integration, but the game doesn’t really call out for it. Basically, if you’re dying for a 3rd person action adventure game, Arrow of Time might be worth picking up. It does have 8 ratings in the US AppStore, 7 of them are 5 star ratings, however, if you read them, most of them sound like they are from friends or people that might know the developers. Hopefully, Puya Dadgar has plans of working on the game, and fixing as many issues as they can in future updates, but as it is now, it’s a very frustrating experience.

Bomberman is one of my all time favorite games. I can remember staying up all night at my best friends house when I was about 8, taking turns playing Bomberman on the NES. Luckily, buying back bits and pieces of your childhood is extremely easy these days, especially within the AppStore. If you can’t find a game you sunk weeks, months, or even years into as a child, it’s almost guaranteed that you’ll be able to find a game almost exactly like it. Here is where JayTouch Network’s game, Crazy Bomber, comes in to play. Though there isn’t a shortage of Bomberman and Bomberman influenced games in the AppStore, it’s definitely not a game that has been cloned to death, and finding a game influenced by an old favorite can sometimes prove to be an extremely great thing as it might include loads of new mechanics and gameplay ideas expanded from the original it’s influenced by.

Starting up Crazy Bomber, there are two different gameplay types; Story Mode, and Battle Mode. Story Mode includes 60 levels spread across 3 different environments; Jungle, Graveyard, Glacier, and then each having a more difficult set of levels, so really, there’s 6 different worlds. Each stage has a 3 star ranking available, and is based on score. Getting 3 stars can be pretty challenging as well, most of the time requiring multiple play-thoughs. There are also 4 different characters you can choose to play with; Vampire, Zombie, Wizard, and Knight, none of which have any special abilities, and are only there for purely aesthetic purposes, but I will admit that it’s nice being able to pick between different characters.

The graphics in Crazy Bomber are very polished, with each of the levels having wonderful design. The character models and animations are impressive, as are the explosions of each of the different types of bombs. Movement is extremely smooth, with no lag or drops in frame-rate even with multiple explosions going off at once. It would be nice to see some attack animations for when you run into enemies, instead of just seeing your character flash a bit, but not having any attacking animations for the enemies isn‘t necessarily anything that takes away from the gameplay. The HUD is a little messy. The different types of bombs, as well as how many of them you have, how much gold you’ve got, the number of enemies killed out of how many are in the level, as well as how many trees are left to blow up, your score, the pause button, and a picture of your character above the health are all thrown in along the top of your screen. Being able to tell exactly how many bombs you have can sometimes be frustrating. Aside from this, the amount of detail in the levels, objects like trees, bushes, enemies, and everything else is very professionally done.

For $0.99, Crazy Bomber is a fantastic Bomberman influenced game. There’s plenty of content, loads of replayability with the 3 star rankings, which is increased by the inclusion of the GameCenter leaderboard. However, there are no achievements, which is something I’m sure a lot of gamers would love to see added in the future. One thing that the developers have said is coming in a future update is multiplayer. This is where the game will really take off, as to have a real Bomberman type experience, it’s a feature that is desperately needed. Hopefully it’ll be added soon, but until then, there is plenty of gameplay to keep you busy. Crazy Bomber is definitely a game that Bomberman fans as well as arcade junkies should pick up.

Parogames first release, Parodise, a casual arcade slicer with one hell of a story, completely hooked me from the first time I played it. The amount of work that went into the story, as well as the crazy amount of content, different modes, great graphics, polish, and how insanely fun it was to play made me a fan of the developers very quickly. So when I heard about Parogames second release, Tap the Bomb, I was incredibly excited to check it out.

Tap the Bomb is set-up like Fruit Ninja, except with TtB, you’ll need to avoid the fruit, and tap the bombs. Who woulda thunk it, huh? Bombs and fruits are tossed up, down, and in from the sides of the screen, and it’s up to you to destroy all of the bombs. There are great scoring opportunities, with bonuses for critical hits (perfect hits), multi-tapping (tapping on more than one bomb at a time), and chain combos (tapping on a bomb that explodes, hitting another bomb and making it explode as well). With your points, you’re able to buy upgrades from the shop, which, in turn, will help produce higher scores. There’s also achievements that, when completed, you can cash in for more points to spend in the shop.

The graphics and animations are top-notch, the gameplay is challenging and tons of fun, the store is a great addition, story elements are fantastic, and the scoring system is great. Add on the fact that Tap the Bomb is Universal, and only $0.99, and you’ve got a casual arcade game that’s very easy to recommend. Parogames puts a crazy amount of work and polish into their titles, it’s hard not to want to support them. They listen very carefully to every players comments and impressions, and deserve way more attention than they’ve gotten in the past. Hopefully Tap the Bomb does well in the AppStore, as I’d love to see more games from them in the future.

With Action RPG’s pretty much dominating the Role Playing charts in iTunes for the last couple years, it’s pretty sad seeing most of them going down the drain. There’s just not much more you can do to make an original Action RPG these days. Thankfully, Turn-Based RPGs are making a huge comeback, with help from two big companies, Square Enix, and Kemco, and the latest addition to the old-school influenced turn-based RPG genre, is Kemco’s Eve of the Genesis.

Now, if you’re familiar with Kemco’s previous iOS releases, Eve of the Genesis is sort of a mixture of Alphadia and Symphony of Eternity. Fantastic story-telling, as well as top-notch translation, completely draws you into the plot, and makes you actually feel, and care for, the characters. The story takes place in the Empire of Gadalia. It’s kind of a matrix type story, with humans battling machines that ruled the empire, but were defeated 2,000 years ago. Now they’re back, and somehow able to travel through space, seemingly appearing anywhere they want to attack. Your characters are on a quest to try and find out how the machines are able to just appear anywhere they want, and eventually find a way to stop them from taking over the empire yet again.

As you explore the empire of Gadalia, you’ll encounter loads of different enemies, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. Encounters are mostly random, meaning unlike Symphony of Eternity, you can not tell where enemies are on the map, you will just run into them randomly while walking around. There are a few enemies that you will be able to see before hand, but you will not run into these enemies too often. Completing the game does not require too much grinding, in fact, if you plan on exploring every area of the map, dungeons, forests, deserts, mountains, castles, and buildings, no extra grinding should be required. But if you plan on avoiding a lot areas, you can pretty much expect to need to grind, around towns is the best place, as you can head back to town, and stay in an Inn for 20-50 gold, which completely restores all of your characters.

Right now, Eve of the Genesis is having a launching sale of 67% off, reducing the price from $8.99 to $2.99, but with how amazingly well done Kemco’s turn-based RPGs are, $8.99 is a great deal for this game. Yet again, it brings back memories of playing old-school Final Fantasy titles on the Nintendo, and SNES. The very well written story, as well as the fantastic graphics, great animations, and deep gem/orb system, makes for an adventure game that will totally immerse you, making it hard for you to focus on anything else until you complete it. Kemco has done it again, with another flawless release, and after visiting their website, you’ll hope that their other titles, like End of Aspiration, Machine Knight, Kamen Rider Fourze, and more will all be ported to the iOS.

Super Meat Boy has been a pretty big influence on iOS games over the last year or so. Sadly, very few of the titles influenced by SMB really capture the true gameplay and challenge of the original. ChocoRun is actually the only title I can think of that really hit’s the nail on the head. However, the lack of virtual controls puts a lot of people off. Don’t Die and it’s invisible controls didn’t really sit right with gamers, and since virtual buttons were added in the last update, it really shows how funky the physics in the game are. Tobor had the potential to be a decent SMB clone, but sadly, the developers refusing to have any sort of control scheme but tilt put the game straight to the bottom of the SMB clone list. Well now there’s a title that, at first, seems like it might just have the perfect set-up to be the best Super Meat Boy influenced game in the AppStore. Alphanoize Games’ CheeseMan. With its virtual controls, great physics, and some very nice level design, at face value, it stands out quite a bit.

So, first off, the major selling point for Alphanoize is the virtual controls. Left and Right buttons, along with a jump button, and the ability to double and wall jump. This is a highlight, as the controls are fairly tight and precise, except for when you’re in the air, and are trying to slow down or change direction, in which case, you’ll probably end up hitting whatever it is you’re trying to avoid. On the ground however, a slight skid is all you’ll need to get use to when changing directions at your characters top speed. For the level design, the controls work well enough to get through the game without any annoying issues, which is a big plus. The controls in other SMB clones are the cause of many un-necessary deaths, which is a huge issue for them. The physics are, surprisingly fairly good. Your cheese character isn’t floaty, or too heavy, which is very important for platformer games, as you might very well know.

This wouldn’t be such a bad thing if the levels were challenging. For those of you who are familiar with Super Meat Boy, or probably the best Super Meat Boy clone in the AppStore, ChocoRun, CheeseMan’s levels will provide only a mild challenge when trying to race through them. In other words, if you’ve beaten SMB, or ChocoRun, CheeseMan will be a piece of cake. That’s not to say that the level design is bad. It’s not, not by any stretch of the imagination. However, more hazards and obstacles would have been great to see added to the game.

For $0.99, it is one of the better Super Meat Boy clones in the AppStore. I’d place it right under ChocoRun actually. Though with Don’t Die and Tobor as it’s competitors, that’s not really saying much. I will add that it’s closer to ChocoRun’s quality than to Don’t Die’s, which does count for something. CheeseMan is supported by GameCenter, but does not have any achievements, which is kind of upsetting, as it’s a game that pretty much writes the achievements itself; Complete World 1, Get 3 Cheese Rankings in Every Level, ect. There is a fogged out ‘World 4’ that is supposed to be coming soon in a future update, hopefully the levels will be more challenging. Actually, it would be great to see a difficulty separation for the game, having all of the levels re-worked, adding more hazards and obstacles to each of them, and keeping the original levels as the ‘Normal’ difficulty, and the re-worked levels as a ‘Hard’ difficulty. As it is right now, it doesn’t really feel like a true Super Meat Boy clone in terms of difficulty. But at its current price-point, and with the lack of SMB type games in the AppStore, if you’re a fan of Super Meat Boy, CheeseMan is a game that’s worth picking up. If you’re worried about the difficulty after trying out ChocoRun, and not being able to get through even half the levels, you can quit worrying. CheeseMan is actually one of the easier platformers available for the iOS, but it does show that Alphanoize knows what it takes to make a polished platformer with nice controls, and physics that work. I’m really looking forward to see where they’ll take CheeseMan in the future, and will be keeping my eyes open for potential future releases.

There are quite a few games revolving around aliens in the AppStore, but only a few of them offer up some really exciting gameplay that will keep you coming back again and again. Future Games Of London (Hungry Shark Series) has delivered just that. A mission based alien title that puts you in the drivers seat of a UFO, and keeps you coming back over and over, trying to better your previous score, and it has a pretty cool name to go with it; Grabatron.

You’ll be able to control a UFO by tilting your device, and tapping to unleash your claw, which can pick up anything from humans and pigs to tanks and huge boulders. I’m not generally someone who likes tilt controls, but there are a couple of games that just feel completely right with them, and Grabatron happens to be one of them. The world is spread into sections, with big mountains separating them. The thing is, if you fly too high, you’ll have to deal with swarming jets and other aircraft all trying to shoot you down, and they will, without a hitch. To get through the mountains, you’ll need to explore, and find the upgrades that are hidden in the first section. Armor upgrades, and a big claw upgrade, which lets you move the huge boulders blocking the entrance to the middle of the mountain.

The graphics are fantastic, with even the small humans having quite a bit of detail, as well as the signs, and you could even sit there and count the leaves on a tree if you were so inclined. It’s actually very impressive that the load times are not long at all, and the game runs super smooth with no lag or framerate drops at all. The animations are also great. If you fly close to the ground, dirt will be thrown up in the air, the humans and animals all walking around look great and the explosions are incredibly impressive. There’s also a cut scene at the beginning of the game which shows your UFO flying towards earth, and it looks fantastic.

Priced at $0.99, including GameCenter with a leaderboard and 41 achievements, with tons of missions, and crazy high replay value, Future Games Of London has delivered one of the best action games in the AppStore. Seeing a challenge mode, or maybe even multiplayer, trying to grab objects and toss them at the other player, taking down their UFO, or maybe even co-op play would make Grabatron amazing. Though, I might just be asking for too much there. If you’re looking for a great action/arcade title, and love the idea of exploration mixed with mission based game play, and don’t mind tilt controls, Grabatron is a game you should definitely pick up.

Polarbit is no stranger to the AppStore, and their games are not lost on iOS gamers either. Fuzzies, Raging Thunder, Armageddon Squadron, and more, have all invaded iDevices, and marked their territory. The next obsession for Polarbit fans is now here; Tank Riders. This 3D tank battle game with both single and multiplayer modes offer up some pretty exciting gameplay.

You’ll guide a tank through 25 campaign levels using one of two control schemes; a virtual joystick for movement, and tapping where you want to shoot, and two virtual joysticks, one for movement, and one for firing projectiles. However, the second control scheme requires that you tap on the joystick every time you want to shoot, which can kind of get frustrating in the heat of battle. There are 3 star rankings for each level, based on score, which does help add to the replay value a bit.

Now, I’d love to get into where most people would like to be spending their time in the game; multiplayer. But after spending roughly a total of an hour and a half in the game room waiting for other players, I was saddened when NOT ONE other person showed up. So I can’t speak for what multiplayer is like, if it has lag, or if players have found cheats yet. I can say that there are 5 different maps to choose from, and they all look great from the small icon pictures of them that are shown, and there are no level systems, so everyone will start out with the same amount of health, defense, and weapons. Aside from that, I hope that sales pick up so that we can actually play multiplayer games.

Priced at $1.99, and being Universal, it’s a great buy. However, with multiplayer suffering, the lack of GameCenter, and only 25 single player levels, there’s not a whole lot of gameplay available at the moment. If sales pick up, I can see multiplayer becoming a big deal, especially if it’s got smooth gameplay. There are a couple of issues, like occasional short time freezing of the game, not triggered by anything specific as far as I can tell, and the sound cutting out for a short time if you get a call and come back to the game in-progress, all of which can be fixed with updates. Tank Riders is still a top notch tank battling game. One that looks and plays great, and is from a very responsive and supportive development group, so you know it’s only going to get better and better with future updates, which does make it fairly easy to recommend. If you’re a fan of the genre, or just action/arcade games in general, you should definitely pick it up, and help spread the word so we can get some multiplayer gaming on.

At first, rail-shooters did not seem very appealing to me. Not being able to explore or move around at will in a seemingly open environment really took away from the gameplay. I couldn’t understand why developers would take away the ability to walk around. But over the last couple years, that view has changed quite a bit. Titles like Doom Resurrection, Red Gun, Silent Scope, and the ever popular Time Crisis, as well as the small amount of space type shooters like ExZeus, Dark Break and Wizard Ops have completely turned me, and made me a fan of the genre, which I’m very thankful for, because without a lot of these great titles, I wouldn’t have thought twice about checking out Infinity Blade, Dark Meadow, Rage or any other fantastic on-rails titles. What does this have to do with anything, you ask? Well, without all of these titles, Ninja Hoodie, by Ink Vial Ltd, would have completely gone under my radar, not getting even a second glance. And boy would I have been missing out.

The controls in Ninja Hoodie are spot on, and work very well for this type of game. You’re able to drag across anywhere on the screen to aim, and are given block and attack buttons in the lower right corner. The dragging works very well, and to keep your finger out of the action, you’re able to roll your finger around while it’s sitting on the ninja’s back, giving you nice and accurate control over where you’ll be flinging your Shrunken. There are also sensitivity options in the pause menu.

The health and power of your attacks is tied together with a bar at the bottom of the screen. While you’re flinging your shrunken around at all of the enemies on screen, the bar fills up with each successful hit on an enemy. When an enemy ends up hitting you, or you don’t block a shrunken from the enemy, the bar will go down. Each time the bar fills up, it’ll change colors, meaning that your attack is now stronger. The only bad thing about this is that the bar doesn’t really let you know when you’re close to death, which can be pretty frustrating, especially with bosses in the later parts of the game.

Aside from that, everything about this game screams awesome arcade set-up. The game is not supported by OpenFeint or GameCenter, but it does have it’s own in-game leaderboard, which, as you know, helps keep hackers from submitting their scores, but also does not allow for competing against friends. But for $0.99, it’ll be hard to find another rail-shooter with as much action jam packed into every single second of gaming that you’ll get with your purchase, on top of that, it has some extremely nice artwork within the comic-book cut scenes, and priced at $0.99, being Universal, and tons of fun, it’s a great buy for anyone who’s into arcade titles. Hopefully Ninja Hoodie is just the beginning of what Ink Vial Ltd. has to offer for iOS gamers in the future.

10tons Ltd. is definitely not new to the AppStore. Their first iOS release, Rope Raider, showing up in the AppStore on November 4, 2009, was, even then, a prime example of what 10tons could do with the platform. Since then, 15 more releases have followed, each time, gaining more of a following, though it’s fairly safe to say that Sparkle the Game has been their most successful endeavor, it’s very clear that they know exactly what it takes to create a top notch game, appealing to both casual and hardcore gamers. Their latest release, Swingworm, is yet again, another prime example of that.

In the game, you’ll guide a worm named Swingy through an amazing 95 levels by grabbing either the front or back end of the worm, and swinging it from platform to platform, collecting the Rubbaberries that are scattered throughout the stages. Once you’ve collected all of the berries in a level, an elevator will activate, and take you to the next level. But it’s not as easy as it sounds. In order to reach most areas, you’ll need to figure out how to use the momentum of the worm while swinging so that either his head or end will attach to the leaves, which are pretty spread out, and it can sometimes pose a small challenge getting from one to the next. Each of the levels has a possible 3 star ranking, adding quite a bit of replay value to the game. To get a perfect 3 stars, you will need to complete the levels as fast as you can. There is a time limit bar shown in the top left corner, each time it fills up, a star is removed from your ranking. Once you complete the level, you’re shown the total time it took you to complete the level, and what time you’ll need to get the next best star ranking, which is very nice. I really wish all star ranking based on time games did this.

The graphics and animations done for Swingworm are top notch. The game is split in to Episodes, with the first having 10 levels, then Episodes 2-4 having 15, and 5-6 having 20, each Episode has a different environment, which also introduces new obsticles, objects, and hazards you can use, manipulate, or need to avoid. For instance, some levels have ice blocks you’ll need to swing into to break, others will have logs that rotate, which you’ll need to swing around on, gaining momentum to reach other platforms. All of the graphics are done in a cute cartoony way, reminiscent of Joining Hands, with the backgrounds filling in the holes of the levels perfectly, and the story breaks between the episodes, with Swingy talking to Big Bug helping round everything out. The animations for Swingy’s, enemies, and other character’s movement, objects breaking, Swingy attaching to objects, and collecting Rubbaberries is all very well done, allowing for the gameplay to flow very well, and come together in a near perfect harmony. To top it off, the cute and bouncy soundtrack, fitting the game to a ’T’ completes the atmosphere.

With GameCenter leaderboards for total Episode times on each of the 6 Episodes, and 14 achievements, the replayabilty is extremely high, and the drive to better your time is constantly looking you in the face. It’s arguable that Swingworm is 10tons best release since Sparkle the Game, bringing all of their knowledge of what it takes to make a top notch mix of casual and hardcore gameplay fit perfectly into an action puzzler. $2.99 is a great price for this Universal build, especially with the insane replay value, and incredible amount of content. Swingworm ends up being a game that’s extremely easy to recommend for gamers of all ages.