Thor Blitz, $0.99 (by Heitor Barcellos) Universal
Hello all, I am Frost and going to start with the game Thor Blitz, by one man developer Heitor Barcellos.
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Tower Defense games have been becoming increasingly common since the beginning of the App Store. Anomaly: Warzone Earth radically changed the tried and true formula by putting you in the place of the attacking forces. How will this new tower defense game hold up to the new standards of customers and how does it improve and change the genre? Find out after the break!
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Thank you for watching Channel 9 News now back to the story of the day. A local game company called Lambadu Games has released their game into the loving hands of Apple. Unfortunately the expected release date is not in fact the 18th but the 25th which is a surprising and heartbreaking development to us all. The good news is that we will be able to give you a detailed look at what is actually in this game so it will be just like you have it on your device except you wont and we will….just saying… Anyways this seems to be a very good remix of the genre and I feel will be well received in the gaming community.
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The first amazing change they introduced is the fact that it is played in the vertical position(that means up and down) which is always good because it makes you look like your doing work or something else you should be doing. On the playing field you have a few places where you can set your towers. You cant just set them anywhere and I imagine that you will be forced to strategically choose where you want certain towers to best win the round. Another interesting innovation is the fact that you can place a tower next to a tower of a different type and influence it to have a different attack like a slow splash attack for instance. New towers are introduced through the course of the game and you combine different towers to form entirely new ones. After you beat a level you get BioMatter which you can use to buy things in the inventory shop that will upgrade all your towers on the field. In order to gain their benefits you have to equip them in the slots which also adds more strategic elements to the game. Overall this is definitely a nice turn on the genre and reminds me a lot of GemCraft except more fun and better visuals.
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There are 3 different modes to play through Novice, Veteran, and Elite. I assume there are different levels after you complete each mode but there is a possibility there are not as well. Regardless that will give you a opportunity to stock up on the BioMatter and earn new powerups. As far as replayability goes you can try to score a perfect on each level which can be very difficult as it is very likely a lucky enemy will slip past your carefully planned defenses. One of my favorite things about the levels was that there is a huge boss at the end of each of them so you always have to be thinking of the endgame and what defenses you should put up.
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Overall, this is a excellent take on the genre and quite a few new features make the game fun and enjoyable to come back to. Combined with excellent retro graphics and a lovely shop system this game will find itself on your device for a very long time. You can play it on all devices as it is a Universal Game. Its coming soon to an AppStore near you on the 25th! I rate it a 9/10.
The AppStore is a hub for retro gaming goodness. Gamers in their 20’s and 30’s have been buying their childhood back a couple bucks at a time, and we couldn’t be happier about it. Eggcode’s latest game, Pixel Ghost, is their first addition to the retro platforming genre, and it brings with it some interesting mechanics. Pixel Ghost is not your traditional left and rightplusjump button platformer, instead, you drag the screen, moving the level left and right, while your character bounces off of the floors and ceilings of the stage. This may sound like heresy to NES era gamers, but Eggcode has taken some pretty big risks while putting Pixel Ghost together, and it works out surprisingly well.
The graphics are great, and very well done. Eggcode has decided to put the game inside of a TV screen, inside of your iPod screen, and since the iPod screen isn’t as big as the game’s TV screen, the game pans up and down depending on where your ghost is, to show more of the level. This risk with the graphics has paid off. It really adds to the retro feel of the game, and doesn’t hurt the gameplay at all. There’s also blocks that trail your ghost as it moves through the levels. They don’t do anything, but they look very cool, and I think were a nice addition to the graphics. The controls, swiping left and right to move the level, work surprisingly well, and are actually veryaccurate. They didn’t feel quite right at first, and I’m still hoping that they add some buttons to move the level in a future update, but after playing the game for a while, it does grow on you.
Cado HD [$2.99 (iPad Only)] by ClearCut Games is the latest physics-based game to hit the App Store. The first thing you’ll notice when playing the game is that the graphics in the game look pretty nifty. They look like they were hand drawn by a sharpie. That’s actually really cool if you think about! In this game you guide Cado, a ball shaped character with an eye to it’s destination which is the portal. Guiding Cado is actually very simple. All you have to do is use the 2 touch controls in the game to rotate left or right. There’s no option for tilt controls which is actually good. This game takes a lot of precise movements which you couldn’t do if you were tilting the device. As you progress through the 40 levels (20 more to come in a future update) you
start to notice sharper turns and spikes that make you restart if you run into them. That’s why precision is key in completing the levels. Throughout each level you can collect the star that’s hanging around. It’s not required to collect it to move on, but it does give you a reason to come back to the game and try to get it. In the later levels there’s a key that you must collect. The portal is usually inaccessible because it’s locked until you retrieve the key. Thankfully this game does not have a time limit because I would always lose. You really need to take your time and be patient especially later in the levels. I really like the part in the main menu where it gives you your Cado game playing stats. It will tell you things such as how many times you’ve died, rotated to the right, rotated to the left, total wins, and how to get rich quick. Well not the last part, I wish though! I actually got the privilege to test Cado while it was in beta. I sucked at it! I only collected about 20 of the 40 stars in the levels. That’s probably do to the fact that I tested it on an iPod Touch. Playing it on the iPad was a completely different story. I’m actually great at it on the iPad! I completed the entire game with the star for each level in just under
an hour. The game definitely needs that update with the 20 levels pronto! Also, Game Center support really needs to be included to make the game feel complete. Overall the levels were very well designed and the game provides a fun experience that I couldn’t put down until I completed everything there was to complete. My final rating is 4 out of 5 stars. You can check out Cado HD for iPad for only $2.99 by ClearCut Games here. Don’t have an iPad? Well don’t worry then! Cado for $0.99 is available for iPhone/iPod Touch here. Happy rotating!
It’s not too often we see a game come around and show us something new, but with Colorbox’s latest release, Candy Boy, they’ve shown that they have got some very creative minds in the studio. It seems that with each release, this small developing company gets more and more popular. After the releases of Arena Arcade, Dalton-The Awesome, Rooftop Escape, Rip Off, the ever so popular Wave-Against Every Beat, and Twins Candy, I wasn’t surewhat to expect. But this time they’re giving us a mixture of platformer and match-3 gameplay. Candy Boy hits that oh so sweet spot of genre mixing that makes us gamers wonder why something like it has not been made before.
You’ll play as Casper, a boy obsessed with candy who has woken up one day to find out there’s a group of candy hungry worms eating all your precious, mouth watering sweets, and it’s your job to stop them. You start off every screen sized stage with a certain number of candies, and end up using these candies to make groups of 3 or more, create candy towers to climb up on, and take out each of the worms hiding amongst the candies. You’ll also be dodging enemies and trying to get off of some platforms before they break.
SqueezeBastard is a new action-puzzle game from the relatively young studio of Kxh Games (Zombie Revenge, Doodle Rush, Mini Rocket). You play as a girl who needs to save herkidnapped pet from monsters that have taken it hoping for a ransom. But what-do-ya-know, you’re broke! Now it’s your job to squish monsters by pushing blocks at them in order to save your cute little pet from the hungry monsters who are dying to eat it.
Link: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/squeezebastard/id454921319?mt=8
Link: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/art-penguin/id449097181?mt=8