Monthly Archive: September 2011

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.

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.

Links;

Full – http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/the-big-little-quest/id434397667?mt=8

Website – http://www.itlgames.com/tblq

Bad Bugs On Fire is a tap-arcade game from Dan Themikman. In it, you try and keep your flowers safe from bugs by shooting them with rays from the sun, and moon, while they move across the screen. There’s 20 levels, and once you complete those, you unlock a special endless survival level.

The controls in Bad Bugs are simple to use, understand, and master. There’s 3 flowers, each having it’s own row that various bugs will follow while trying to get to the flowers. Tapping anywhere in this row sends rays from either the sun, or moon, depending on which level you’re on, that kill the bugs, with each of the different bugs requiring a different amount of rays to hit them before they die. Once the sun or moon hit’s the middle of the sky, you’ll shoot a beam of energy down onto the ground, and to move this, you simply hold down and drag where you want the beam to fire. There are two different types of clouds that fly through the sky, white clouds, which double your score for a short period of time, and black clouds, which drop different things on the grass, sometimes a bug, sometimes a green bug eater that will help you fend off bugs, but each of the clouds needs to be hit by rays in order to be activated. Sometimes you’ll have no choice but to hit them, because they’ll fly through your line of fire, moving slower than the bugs, and the only way to kill the bugs before they eat a flower is to shoot the cloud so it disappears.

There is a GameCenter leader board for the endless level, and 10 achievements, adding to the replay value of the game, but with a leader board only for the endless level, after you get through the first 20 levels, you probably won’t have any desire to go back and replay them. This also makes it feel like the goal of the game is more to unlock the Survival Mode than to actually make it through the game. If the survival level was unlocked from the beginning, it would probably feel like more of a second gameplay mode than just something that was thrown in to give the game some sort of replay value. It would also be nice if a cumulative score was built up going through the levels, and there was a total score leader board within GameCenter, as this would give you reason to go back and replay levels to try and get a better total score, especially since the scoring system is pretty nice, having a set score for each bug, but also giving you combo scores for killing bugs in quick succession.

Bad Bugs On Fire is still a decent game, and well worth picking up, especially for $0.99. It’s got nice graphics, with the oh so cool looking energy beams, a nice scoring system, a fair amount of strategy, nice action, and with the endless mode, plenty of replayability. The developer has also promised more levels in the future, along with the developer asking for suggestions, so there will be quite a bit of gameplay content, and the game might just end up getting better once it’s complete. But for what it is right now, it’s definitely worth checking out, especially if you’re into arcade tap games, and is a very nice step up from Dan Themikman’s last game, Epic Pencil, making me pretty excited about what’s to come in the future from the quickly maturing developer.

Bad Bugs On Fire is getting a score of 7 out of 10.

Links:

Full – http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/bad-bugs-on-fire/id445295545?mt=8

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

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 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.

                           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.

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.

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

Link: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/tapsteroids/id453097220?mt=8

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.

ArkanoArena is a new brick-breaker game from Sketch Games. Early this year, iPhone users were given a taste of this steam punk styled brick breaker with a free demo version. It got a lot of great feedback, and produced a little following of excited gamers anticipating the release of the full version. Now it’s here. 50 levels of beautiful brick breaking action. The story adds to the atmosphere of the game as well, as you’re invited to take part in a competition put together by Mr. Arkano, held where “the land meets the sky and the laws of physics do not apply.”

The graphics in ArkanoArena are great. Various environments and, like I’ve said, steam punk style objects, which I’m just a sucker for, make this one of my favorite brick breakers available for the iOS. Animations are great, especially when your platform changes. The explosions are done extremely well, and there’s a lot of polish and professionalism shown with the look and feel of the game. The backgrounds look amazingly beautiful as well, which only helps add more style to this already stylish game. The addition of a store where you can buy weapons, ammo, extra life, and power-ups that you can use to take on the various enemies that can fire missiles at you even more interesting. The controls are like any other brick-breaker, hold under the platform, called the Stinger, here, and move left or right to bounce the ball off of it. To use your weapons, a shotgun, missiles, and a lightning strike, you tap on their icons on the right side of the screen. These icons might look like they’ll get in the way, but become transparent when you move or the ball goes to the right side of the screen. To launch your ball, you double tap in the direction you want to launch it.

There’s 2 different game modes, the Arcade Mode, which you can choose to play on normal or hardcore difficulties, and Survival Mode. In normal difficulty, you get as many retries as you’d like to get through all 50 of the levels, and in hardcore, you get your 3 lives, and when you loose them, it’s game over. In Survival Mode, you get one ball, but all of your weapons are unlocked at the beginning of the game. When you loose your ball, game over. The store is accessible in Arcade Mode, between each level, but not given to you in Survival Mode.

The scoring system is pretty nice, giving you different scores for each of the different blocks, and a time bonus at the end. The block mechanics are pretty interesting, as there’s regular blocks that take one hit to destroy, other blocks with numbers on them that take that amount of hits to destroy, blocks with timers that start when you hit them, and reset the block if you don’t hit it again before the timer gets around the circle in the block, bomb blocks that blow up blocks around them when hit, skull blocks and gold blocks.

The enemies in ArkanoArena are one of the best things about the game. Having them shoot missiles at you really helps bump the challenge up a bit. I would love to see more types of enemies added in the future though, as I think the developers could really do a lot with different enemies, attacks, and attack mechanics. For instance, seeing an enemy that shoots some goo at the Stinger, causing it to slow down for a second or two, or kamikaze enemies that come barreling at you, knocking you half way across the screen on impact would be awesome.

ArkanoArena is one of the best looking brick-breakers in the AppStore, and it’s looking like it’s going to quickly knock Anodia out of the #1 spot on my device. $1.99 for this game is a great price, as it delivers tons of replay, loads of levels, GameCenter leader boards for both difficulties of Arcade Mode, and Survival Mode, and 50 achievements. Aside from more enemies, there’s nothing I can think of that I would like to see changed or added. Sketch Games has done an amazing job with ArkanoArena, and it’s recommended to anyone who’s into the genre, or just loves great looking arcade games.

ArkanoArena is getting a score of 9.5 out of 10

Link: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/arkanoarena-for-iphone/id452680768?mt=8

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 !

Virtual City Playground HD [FREE] by G5 Entertainment is sort of sequel to their popular Virtual City HD [$6.99]. I’ve never actually played the original game so I can’t tell you how this stacks up to the first one. Well, in Virtual City Playground you get to build your city from the ground up. There’s a bunch of missions to complete in the game and a lot of cool buildings that you can build. As you build more things you start to notice more and more people starting to move into your city. You can only do so much at a time because a lot of the game requires you to use your energy to build things. As you earn more coins you can

expand your city. I actually like the integration with Facebook. A lot of these freemium games allow you to post what your doing in the game on Facebook, but this game actually gives you an incentive to post that you just leveled up. If you’re new to this game like me then you might have some trouble at first. This might be the first time that you might actually have to… read the instructions. YIKES! After you get a hang of it then you’ll have a really good time with it. Even though it’s a neat game I do have a few problems with it. I find that loading your city takes longer and longer as you progress farther in the game. The progressing in the game seems a bit slow for impatient people like me. This is also a game that I feel like you actually have to make some in-app purchases to move faster, because a lot of this stuff that you need to build your city seems to be pricey. Well in the end this game is free so you can always make the final verdict for yourself. Overall I found the game to be fun, but too slow for me. My final rating is 3 out of 5 stars. Go download it today. I’m pretty sure that a FREE game won’t break your bank account! Well what are you waiting for… get your building on!