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Invasion Earth: 1953 – 1.99 (285 Digital)

Invasion Earth: 1953 is an endless shoot-em-up developed by 285 Digital. This is their first real game that’s been released for the iOS, and boy is it a great one. The AppStore has desperately needed a quality endless shmup for a long time now. We do have Gunrazor, but really, after about Wave 5, it’s just not very interesting. Invasion Earth: 1953 has filled a void on our devices, and really, we couldn’t be more grateful for it.

The game takes place in 1953, after World War 2, when tensions were still high, and the threat of invasion, both from other countries, and from space, were on the minds of everyone in the world. You’ll take the reigns of a UFO going up against the military, blasting them all to pieces. And better yet, it’s endless, so the difficulty just increases as you progress. This makes it a great game for casual and hardcore shmup gamers.
The game’s upgrade system is given to us in the Tiny Wings style. You will need to complete 3 different objectives in order to gain a power-up that will help you go further in the game, and get higher and higher scores. There are 31 objectives, and 12 different power-ups. Sometimes giving you a stronger magnet that will pull items to you from further away, other times giving you stronger abilities, or a permanent additional life to sacrifice in-game.
While you’re flying through the city, destroying helicopters, planes, and various aircraft bosses, each of the enemies will give you stars when destroyed. These stars add to your score multiplier, and fill up your ability gauge. There’s also random enemies that will drop weapon upgrades, and these are always highlighted by a little arrow that says “pickup” hovering next to it. When they’re destroyed, they’ll drop a hexagon shaped orb, when picked up, your weapon will get stronger.
You will always have 3 abilities that you can use when your ability gauge fills up. You’ll be able to choose between Magnet Power, which automatically draws all stars straight to you when enemies are destroyed, Shield, which absorbs enemies projectiles, and Laser, which lets you drag your finger on the right side of the screen to control a large powerful laser, each lasting a short period of time.
While you’re traveling through the city, you’ll be able to go through bonus rounds. These sort of signify the end of a wave, and start the next one when completed. Each bonus round has a certain amount of stars that you’ll need to try and collect. There’s also a health pick-up somewhere in the bonus level, which will take some quick maneuvering in order to snag. Collecting all the stars in a bonus round will give you a special perfect bonus round bonus score, which also helps with climbing the leader boards.
The graphics in Invasion Earth are extremely polished, and presented very well. The planes are graphically made to look the time period, and the animations are awesome, especially the animations for enemies blowing up, and the UFO being shot down. The music also adds quite a bit to the edge of your seat feeling you’ll have when playing through the game. The controls are also done extremely well, giving a 1:1 relative touch control that works perfectly, along with a little hit box on the UFO that’s easy to see, and great to use while dodging through enemy fire. However, your ship does cover up enemies projectiles when going over them, so perfectly maneuvering through enemy fire can be difficult, though not impossible.
285 Digital has presented an extremely well made, and very polished, professional shmup. One that is endless, with the difficulty rising perfectly. Casual gamers, as well as hardcore players will find Invasion Earth: 1953 extremely entertaining, and very easy to pick up and play. Right now, later in the game, there is some slowdown. After you hit around 200,000 points, you’ll notice that the frame-rate gets a little out of hand, and there’s some noticeable lag and jitteriness. The developers have commented on this, and have said that they are working on a solution to the problem by staying in contact with the #1 score holder on GameCenter, so hopefully this issue will be addressed soon. Aside from that one issue, and the UFO covering up enemies projectiles when going over them, I can not find anything else wrong with the game. It’s got loads of style, an awesome scoring system, fantastic gameplay, 3 GameCenter leader boards, endless replayabilty, and personality out the kazoo. Being $1.99, it’s an awesome buy, and one that every shmup fan should get as soon as possible.
Invasion Earth: 1953 gets a score of 9 out of 10
Links:
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September 24, 2011 Uncategorized 0 Read more >

Dodo Fly – 0.99 (Silver Delta)

Dodo Fly is a new arcade game from Silver Delta. In the game, you play as Dodo, a toy dolphin who has big dreams of reaching the real ocean, and becoming a real dolphin. Along the way, he’ll encounter loads of different toy enemies, along with a deadly shark that is hell-bent on making sure Dodo doesn’t get to become a real dolphin.

There are 8 levels in Dodo Fly, but each of them will take numerous play-throughs in order to beat. Each of the levels has a different environment, different enemies, and is set up so that you can memorize the level, and make it through getting the best score you can. It’s set up as a one-touch game, very accessible to casual players, but has enough challenge to keep even hardcore gamers interested and glued to the game til the end.
You’ll go through each level, slightly bouncing on top of the water, tapping the screen to jump and avoid enemies. There’s stars that are spread out through each level, and collecting these add to your score, and skill gauge. There’s also rockets, shields, and skill gauge booster pick-ups. There are 3 different skills that you can unlock and choose from in the main menu. One is a booster that lets you boost forward a little bit, knocking out enemies that are in the way. This skill is given to you at the beginning of the game. The second skill that you’ll unlock, when you reach 50,000 total points, is a submarine type power-up. When activated, you’ll end up in a large mechanical fish, able to plow through enemies, and jump in the air. The last skill you’ll unlock is given to you at 100,000 total points, and is an airplane. This sends you to the top of the level for a short period of time, making sure you will not come in contact will any enemies while it’s active.
The rockets are the most important items in the levels. They are set up and spread out so that you can stay on them, going from one to the next, with very well timed jumps. If you can manage to make it from one to the next without going back to the water, it will give you a score multiplier. The longer you stay jumping from one rocket to the next, the larger your multiplier will get. This is essential for scoring big. Once you’ve stayed in the air for a certain amount of time, hitting one or two rockets, you’ll get a burning type shield in front of you, which makes it so that you’ll knock out any enemies you come in contact with when hitting the water again. This is a very nice addition, because most of your deaths will be from coming back down after jumps, and hitting un-seen enemies.
Right now, the game is not supported by GameCenter or OpenFeint, and there are no in-game achievements. However, this doesn’t take away much from the replay value. The sheer amount of challenge in memorizing the levels well enough to beat all 8 of them will keep you going for quite some time. With the game being $0.99, it’s a great buy, and has a lot of potential. I really think an endless mode would add quite a bit to the game, as would online support, but as it is now, it’s definitely worth buying. Silver Delta has proven that they know exactly what it takes to make a casual game that will drive hardcore gamers crazy.
Dodo Fly gets a score of 7 out of 10.
Links;

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September 24, 2011 Uncategorized 0 Read more >

Monster Ate My Condo Update!

   The really excellent and entertaining and addicting and awesome game Monsters Ate My Condo has been updated with the Lord Ferocious update, and this are the new features:

· Lord Ferocious’ Points Boost power increased to 100x
· Each achievement gained adds 1 to your starting multiplier
· 10 brand-new achievements
· Stability fixes on all platforms
· Miscellaneous other bug fixes.
   Take my advice and buy it now. Very few games are this good and addicting. It completely reinvented the match-3 formula.

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/monsters-ate-my-condo/id459489208?mt=8

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September 23, 2011 Uncategorized 0 Read more >

Hypership out of Control, $0.99 (by Fun Infused Games) (Universal)

   Hello everyone, in back from a hiatus with a game that has been released not long ago called Hypership Out of Control, from developer Fun Infused Games.
   The game is presented in a retro old school pixel art style, both visuals and sound. Its fits the game pretty well, and I heard the icon is going to change to a Retina Display one, and they are investigating about the possibility of upgrading the whole game to be Retina Display. Its perfect and if you like pixel art, it cant get better than this… for now?

  The game is a hybrid of two genres perfectly blended together, it is half arcade and half avoidance game. Your ship has had a fatal error and cant stop so you are constantly moving and have to avoid several obstacles and enemies, and to make things worse (or more fun, depending on how you look at this) your ship is accelerating at a steady pace, and again, all this while collecting coins for a better high score. Luckily for you, your autofire is also broken and your ship is always firing, helping you to clear enemies and some obstacles along the way. And to help you out even more, there are power ups to collect. They slow down your speed (which is good), make you go faster, a better weapon and more. They are fun and useful.

   Controls are almost perfect and you control the game using a very easy method: your finger. That’s all. One touch gameplay is what works best. So your own ability and reflexes are what works here, as I said earlier this game has a big avoidance part in it, your ship will travel really fast and some barriers arent destructible, so the game will put you to the test. But it has one fault, and its no other than not being able to see part of the screen due to your finger… this isnt a big fault, since you can press anywhere in the screen to move your ship and many other games have this issue also, so its not a big deal after all.

   Replayability is good, you have four modes to explore. There is Normal, Hardcore, Coindown and Superspeed mode and you can play all of them in reverse mode. From all these modes, my favorite is Coindown. In it, there is a coin meter that depletes as the time goes on so you have to pick up as many as you can to stay alive.  All modes are actually great, except hardcore, but only because I didnt find it hardcore enough. There are 19 achievements to collect, and of course leaderboards, one for each mode, to compete with friends and the world. Features both GameCenter and OpenFeint.

   There are multiple sections you have to survive through, its a nice thing as it is constanly throwing new things for you to do, all being brilliant… but after a while, its endless soul appears and eventually you start to memorize paths as they are always the same, so a nice thing to do would be to randomize the levels so you have a fresh experience every time you play.

   This game has also been released for Xbox Live and WP7 if you happen to have one of those… and on Xbox Live features 4 players at the same time, which I think would be awesome to have that on the iPhone version as well.

   So i am having a lot of fun with this game, and so should you. Pick it up if you happen to like avoidance games, love pixel art or are just looking for a casual arcade snack.

Requirements: Compatible with iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPod touch (3rd gen and 4th gen), and both iPads. iOS 4.2 o better
Version Reviewed: 1.0
App Size: 8.7 MB




A video to see it in action:

Buy this app:

Check out their website for more info:
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September 23, 2011 Uncategorized 0 Read more >

Mobigame’s Super Sales!

Mobigame is celebrating Edge’s latest update with a Super Sale! Some of our favorite apps like EDGE and Perfect Cell have dropped from 2.99 to 0.99 and others like Cross Fingers and Truckers Delight have dropped to the low price of FREE!

This is the lowest these awesome games will get so I highly recommend you check these out before they go back up to their original price! The only question now is which ones your going to get!

Links:
Cross Fingers (FREE)

Truckers Delight (FREE)

EDGE (0.99)

Perfect Cell (0.99)

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September 22, 2011 Uncategorized 0 Read more >

“Minions App Review” Destruction, Evil and Minions?

You know that
awkward moment when you are happily taking over the world with hundreds of
thousands minions that you created. Then they decide they should be in control
and try to overthrow you? Well the developers at Villain LLC have. AppStore
company Villain LLC  sprung onto the
market with their success of the highly acclaimed  iPhone and iPad app Archetype. Archetype an
Fps featuring things never featured on iOS shooters such as Capture the Flag
and downloadable content took hours upon hours of over 1.5 million players.
Villain has been silent ever since the release of Archetype and presto! We now
have our gaming fingers on Minions.
      Minions relies on it’s whimsical cartoon
characters, seemingly a breed between the minions in Despicable Me and Rayman’s
raving rabbids. These quirky creatures are equipped with much more than your
standard plunger. They support the whole arsenal of sound guns to wooden
hammers to bird launchers.    
     You play as a mad scientists trying to
destroy the minions that once served you. This game relies on a level based
system in which minions spawn from spawn points that can be destroyed. At the
end of the level you are judged by your time, score and amount of minions
killed. When you achieve a perfect 3 stars you will be able to boost the speed,
health and power of your character adding an rpg element to this Fps.
       If you are familiar with Archetypes
controls don’t expect anything to change. At all. A dual stick control system
is set along with an auto shoot feature in which you just aim and little tiny
robots in your Idevice fire away. On screen radar shows the minions while UI at
the top shows health, score and time remaining. While no changes to the
controls or UI are apparent, it’s simple, if it ain’t broke, use it in your
next iOS release.  
     As you blast through 8 levels and
increasing difficulties Villain delivers promises of new levels and guns to wet
your minion killing whistle. As this does not support online multiplayer the
developers focused on delivering a fun, unrealistic, quirky Fps for hardcore
and casual fans of the genre. At 99c this will not burn a hole in your wallet,
but these minions will try to burn a whole in your heart.  


Link: http://itunes.apple.com/app/minions/id444404817?mt=8
by Gabriel Ruiz

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September 22, 2011 Uncategorized 0 Read more >

Stardash out for iPhone/iPod Touch this wednesday 21st

From the developer behind the excellent and varied platformer Meganoid, OrangePixel, comes a new game called Stardash, a game boy inspired platformer that will hit the AppStore this wednesday 21st. The game will come with 40 levels divided into 4 different worlds and 4 temple levels for you to unlock. And knowing OrangePixels support and love for their own games, I can bet there will be many new levels to come in future updates. Here is a video of the game running on an Android phone (its identical according to the dev). We will have a review for you once its released!

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September 20, 2011 Uncategorized 0 Read more >

QuBIT Gets a Major Update and Goes Free!

QuBIT, a crystal smashing, color matching racer from Secret Sauce Studios, just got it’s 1.2.0 update, and it’s a big one! This debut release from the UK company caught my attention the moment I saw the release trailer. I ended up staying up the night of it’s release to check it out, and even ended up updating my iPod from iOS 4.0 to iOS 4.3, which I previously swore I would never do for any game. But boy was I so happy that I finally did.

QuBIT turned out to be one of the best and most original racing games I had ever experienced. Everything from the graphics to the gameplay, scoring to the matching, down to the racing, I was completely hooked, and found it hard to play anything else for the first two weeks I had the game on my device. Then the obsession faded, like it does, until last Friday, the 16th, when Secret Sauce released it’s version 1.2.0 update, and the love affair was re-kindled.
Here’s a list of the new features;
–Retina Display Support
–New game mode, Surge
–2 new QuBOTs, QuBYT, and QuTI
–Solid Gold Plated Bot for those who bought the game before it went free back in July

and of course
–QuBIT is now FREE, with the new Surge Mode, and two new characters available through IAP.
Secret Sauce’s decision to make the previously $0.99 app, free, was not one that was taken lightly. Within the first week of the release, 50% of the activity on the leaderboards was from pirated copies. Cracked software has, is, and will always, be a problem for game developers, but it’s especially sad when it happens to such a great game made by such a great development team. With every issue brought up on the Touch Arcade and Secret Sauce Forums, the team has been there to swiftly and quickly address the issue, sending out a fix as soon as possible, and listening to what the gamers had to say.
So here’s hoping that the change to go free does help fight the onslaught of cracked copies, and those of you who bought QuBIT before it went free back in July, or even after it went free, only to see the part of the game that you paid for go free, will be glad to know that your money went back into the development of the game, and the in app purchase of the new Surge Mode, new characters, and unlockables, along with the Retina Display addition, is well worth another $0.99. Especially when coming from such a dedicated developer, who’s sure to put that money back into amazing, mind-bending games for it’s fans, and new-customers.
Be sure and check out QuBIT, now that’s free, you’ve got nothing to loose, except of course, for a buck that you’ll most likely end up spending on the Surge Mode once you get hooked on the Classic Mode that’s, to say the least, VERY addicting. We here at The App Shack wish Secret Sauce the best of luck with this new pricing set-up, and with the game, as it’s one of our favorites.
You can also check out the Secret Sauce team’s blog/forum/webpage at http://www.secretsauce.co/
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September 20, 2011 Uncategorized 0 Read more >

Interview with Llamasoft (The maker of Retro-styled games you’ll go apeshit over)


I sat down with Jeff Minter the developer of many retro iOS games to ask him a few questions regarding his studio and future steps. Some of the games he has developed include: Deflex [1.99], Minotron 2112 [1.99], Minotaur Rescue [0.99] and his latest game GoatUp [1.99] which we are giving away a few codes of on our twitter channel. http://twitter.com/#!/TheAppShack

1. How successful do you think your brand image and games are on the AppStore market?

Not hugely, largely because not enough people are aware of what we do.  In the app store it seems that marketing and generating visibility is pretty much more important than actual game design, and we don’t have a marketing person at Llamasoft.  And without that I doubt we’ll ever “get lucky” and have some huge hit.  All I can do is try my best to make good games with good controls and hope that enough people find out about them to make it worthwhile.  It’s kinda frustrating to be honest.

2. How do you compare yourself to the hordes of casual and 0.99 games?

Well, we’re more about providing an updated version of oldschool gaming, something that brings back some of the fun of that style of gaming but with less of the limitations – that’s what the Minotaur Project is all about.  And I have game design experience going back nearly 30 years, so I know how to make a game that plays well and has good controls.  I think that’s worth tier 2.

3. What message do you want to pass on to aspiring game developers?

Make the games you want to play.  When you still play your own game after you’ve finished it just because you enjoy it, then you’re doing it right.

4. Can we get an idea on what your next game will be like?

I’ve got several ideas I’m choosing between – I’ve the skeleton of a Defender game already started, I’d like to do a classic Star Force style scrolly shooter one day, likewise a Time Pilot style game because I do love TP.  I’ve also half a mind to make an unholy union between Caverns of Mars and Lunar Lander.  There’s my Scientology game I want to do as well, but that’ll probably be a longer project that I’ll do in two or three games’ time.

5. How long did it take for Goat up or Minotron 2112 to be created?

Each of those games took a month.  They were pretty straightforward as the basic idea was clear and simple to get up and running quickly.  For most iOS games I really don’t want to be taking more than a month or two on them.

6. What role do you play in the company?

I design and program the games and do my not particularly brilliant programmer art sprites.

7. How many employees do you have or is it a one man operation?

There’s just two of us here, me and Giles.

8. How did you get the idea to name your company “llamasoft”?

It came from a certain fascination for South American camelids that I developed at 6th form college, whilst learning to program on the Commodore PET. 

9. Will you be sticking to the arcade graphics or gradually maturing to some other form?

I’d like to do some more algorithmically generated stuff one day but I don’t know if I’ll ever get the time, at least while working tier 2 on iOS.  You simply don’t have a lot of time to explore or be experimental.  Keeping it retro at least fits in with the theme of the Minotaur Project games and allows me to handle most of the “artwork” myself, although some people do moan about that.  Haven’t noticed any of them coming to offer me better graphics though :).
The Scientology game will likely be more polygonal than sprite-y…

10. What is the one most important thing that should be in a game?

Fun, no doubt.  Too many games take themselves too seriously.  And good controls.  Why people release games with bad controls is beyond me.  Take the time to do it properly, or don’t bother at all, I reckon :).
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September 20, 2011 Uncategorized 0 Read more >

Devourer – 0.99 (Li Min)

Devourer is a new drag-collect-dodge arcade game from Li Min, in the same vein as Bit Pilot and Runaway UFO, but with more emphasis on collecting objects than dodging them, though the dodging element is still there. In Devourer, you’ll drag a black hole around the screen, sucking up all the green, blue, and yellow invaders, while avoiding the red ones. It’s a very simple game, but once you get into it, and understand the scoring, and start using the items in the shop, it becomes very addicting, and really, a very nice little arcade game.

The controls are set up nicely, using relative touch to control the black hole, meaning you can place your finger anywhere on the screen in order to drag the black hole around the screen. This makes it easier to see all the invaders around your black hole, and a whole lot more comfortable.
There are two different game modes in Devourer, Classic, and Survival. In Classic Mode, you’ll drag your black hole around the screen collecting the “normal”, or blue, invaders, which there are two different kinds, a regular invader, worth 20 points, and a type of super invader, worth 80 points, “bonus”, or green, invaders, which add 1 to your multiplier, and “bomb”, or yellow, invaders, that blow up everything on the screen. There’s also red, or “toxic” invaders. If you hit one of these, they will reset your multiplier, and drop you 100 points, along with coins that randomly appear on the screen, and give you 5 gold points. You’ll have 2 minutes to try and get the highest score you can, and can not die before the 2 minutes is up.
In Survival Mode, you’ll have all the same types of invaders, along with the random coins, and the goal is to not let any blue invaders escape the screen, and to not hit any red invaders. If you hit a red invader, or miss a blue invader before it disappears off the side of the screen, you’ll loose a life, and have 3 lives total. The amount of time you survive is your high score.
Both Modes let you use spells. Within the store, you can buy these spells, which can be equipped in the hotspots on the right side of the screen. Some of these include Shrink, which makes all of the invaders 30% smaller, Freeze, which slows down all the invaders, Slack, which reduces the rate of invaders by half, and many more. These power-up type spells will help out greatly when trying to achieve a high-score, though there are only a couple that will really, really get that high-score up when combined. For instance, I like to use Burst, which doubles the amount of invaders, Bless, which destroys all Toxic invaders, and prevents more from being spawned, and Double, which doubles the points. Using all 3 of these together will usually shoot your score up about 250,000 points, or more depending on when you use them. Each of the spells has a set amount of time that it will last, and you can only use the spells once after you buy them. This adds quite a bit of strategy to the gameplay, as you’ll need to find out what spells work best for your style of play, and when to use them.
The graphics in Devourer are done pretty well. There are movement animations for each of the invaders, making it look like they’re swimming through space. Along with the rock type soundtrack, it’s all got a pretty nice atmosphere. Considering this game comes from the same developer of Tap Burst, I’d say it’s quite a step up from the previous game, and has given me pretty high hopes for the future of Li Min.
With GameCenter and OpenFeint support, 2 leader boards, and 21 achievements that will take you quite a bit of time to unlock, and the two different game modes, Devourer has endless replay ability. The scoring system is set up very nicely, and the addition of the shop and toxic invaders add quite a bit of strategy to the game. It could use a bit more polish, and maybe more items in the shop, along with more enemy types, but for $0.99, it’s a great buy, packed with loads of action, and will give you hours upon hours of addictive gameplay.
Devourer is getting a score of 8 out of 10.
Links:

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September 20, 2011 Uncategorized 0 Read more >