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Floria – 0.99 (m42 Studios)

Floria is a new endless floater, and first iOS game, from m42 Studios. In the game, you maneuver a flower through different enemies and objects trying to collect as many items as you can before the summer is over and winter arrives. Collecting the orbs throughout the game will give you points that you can use to unlock different types of flowers that have different abilities and power-ups.

The controls in Floria work well, but are a little jittery. Tilting moves the flower up and down, and rotating your device clockwise moves it forward, while counterclockwise moves it back. These controls do take a bit of getting use to, but once you do, they work well. The graphics look amazing, especially on devices with retina display. The animations in the game are done very well too. The backgrounds seem to come alive as you move through the world, with everything blooming right before your eyes. The movements of the flower, enemies, and growth of the thorns all looks amazing. The music and effects are also soothing, and add quite a bit to the atmosphere of the game.
There is a good variety of enemies throughout the world, lizards, spiders, birds, bees, and more will have you waving and dodging your way throughout the whole game. Orbs that you pick up for unlock points also add to your main score, and each different colored orb has a different score amount. There are also flower pick-ups, which fill a gauge at the bottom of the screen, and once you collect enough of the flowers, you can trigger the power-up and become invincible for a short time. During this time, running into enemies and objects adds to your score. There is an animation addition for invincible mode, having small flowers fly in a trail behind you, and when the power-up fades away, the flower starts to blink. There’s also special music for when the power-up is active, so you’ll never be stuck coming out of invincible mode, and running into enemies thinking the power-up is still active.
Through the world, there’s also time stopping pick-ups, shown as hour glasses, and speed increasers, shown as little arrows, that you’ll need to collect in order to get as far as you can before winter descends. Hitting enemies and objects will cause you to slow down, and if you hit a spider web, you’ll need to shake your device to get out of it.
Floria is a great ‘how far can you get’ game, with some great scoring, and nice game mechanics. It desperately needs some online leader boards though, as the only replay value you’ll have is for unlocking the additional 3 flowers, and beating your own score. Once you unlock all the flowers, the desire to play the game will drop pretty fast, and it will most likely just end up sitting there on your device waiting for an update that will add more content.
However, the game is very beautifully made, and the gameplay you have will provide you with quite the experience. The graphics are top notch, and the jittery controls really just effect the look, not the gameplay. At $0.99, it is a great buy if you’re into endless or get as far as you can games. M42 Studios has done a great job with their first release, and I’m really looking forward to additions to the game, as well as what they’ll come up with next.
Floria gets a score of 7 out of 10.
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September 15, 2011 Uncategorized 0 Read more >

Fractal Combat – Version 1.1 Update Released!

Fractal Combat, one of the best arial combat games in the AppStore, and one that I was given the chance to review last month, has just had it’s first update to version 1.1 – and damn, is it a nice one!
Version 1.1 has these new features;

– New, more challenging, bosses
– Improved user interface
– Added “Free Flight” mode
– Improved buttons layout on iPad
– Reduced shaking of controls
– Energy is now pulled towards the player
– Fixed bug about 500 enemies down achievement
– New Icon
The new bosses look great, and add a bunch to the already hectic action filled gameplay. As for the new user interface, if you’ve had Fractal Combat for a while, the level select screen might take you by surprise at first, I know it did me. But once you look around, you’ll see how improved it is. You can now see your scores and rankings for each level in each planet. Just tap on the planet in the top left, and all the levels show up on the bottom of the screen, with a list going down the right side of the screen with the rankings and scores for each level. This is awesome for being able to go back and replay the levels that you want to try and get better scores on, or to find that one level that you don’t have 3 starson yet. There is no more scrolling, and the whole look of it is a lot more cleaned up and organized.
The Free Flight Mode is a great addition, letting you visit each of the planets, and gives you an opportunity to play around with different ship set-ups without worrying about enemies. Here, you can master the thruster engines, or get a grip on the rotor powered ships, which in my opinion, are a bit harder to handle. But it’s worth learning how to fly them, as they have quite a bit more defensive strength. Also added is reduced shaking of the controls. This is a huge improvement, as there’s no longer noticeable shaking when you’re holding your device. It makes the flight aspect of the game a whole lot smoother, and in turn improves the gameplay experience.
Now, you are also able to fly by energy pick-ups without worrying about needing to go through them in order to pick them up. You can now fly over, under or beside the energy and it’ll be picked up by your ship. This helps a lot with focusing on the action at hand instead of keeping your eyes on the energy balls and not the enemies. It’s an awesome addition to the game.
Bottom line. If you don’t have Fractal Combat, the price has gone down to $0.99 permanently, and it’s now even better than it was before, you need to buy this game. It’s going to end up in my top 5 favorites of 2011 list for sure. Especially with the next update brining more features, larger enemy bases, more game modes, more game context, new weapons, new ships, and new worlds. The developer is also taking suggestions through a contact page on his blog, which can be found here – Fractal Combat Developers Blog – and is also a great place to stay up to speed with the new features being added to the game.
If you’d like to read the review from The App Shack, it can be found here – Fractal Combat Review – and if you’re ready to jump in and buy possibly the best arial combat game for the iOS for the amazingly low price of $0.99, you can get it here – http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/fractal-combat/id422010858?mt=8

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September 14, 2011 Uncategorized 0 Read more >

Wildlings – 0.99 (Metamoki, Inc.)

Wildlings is a new arcade tap defense game from Metamoki, Inc. In it, you will need to use different parent Wildlings to keep evil creeps away from your babies, while collecting sun-power, using power-ups, and finding pieces of each ship that will let you travel to the next world, and get the Wildlings to their final destination. It might sound a little cheesy, but as it turns out, it’s a very good game with plenty of strategic elements to keep even the most hardened defensive gamer on their toes.

To start it off, you’re given 1 slightly week bird to protect 3 babies in their nest. To move the bird around, you just tap on the screen where you want the bird to move to. To make the bird attack an enemy, you just need to tap on it. There are some cases where a group of enemies will come towards the nest, and to deal with those, you’ll just need to tap on one of the enemies, and then your bird will attack the whole group, one by one. Each enemy that’s killed drops a certain amount of sun power, depending on how strong they are. Some enemies will take multiple taps in order for them to be defeated, and tapping repeatedly makes the parent Wildling attack and move quicker and more ferociously. The babies in the nest also drop sun power, but on a timed schedule, usually only dropping 2 to 4 sun pieces in each level. Collecting the sun power is essential for using your power-ups, once they’re unlocked, and are needed to unlock the Wildling’s final destination, which requires a total of 3,000 sun points to unlock. Sun points that you do not use on power-ups in each level are stored, and put towards this 3,000 point total, or you can unlock the final destination with an IAP that’s $0.99.
There are 3 different worlds, each with 15 levels. These 3 worlds each have different enemies, and different Wildlings that you’ll need to use to protect the nests. Each world is also varied with the environments, giving you a different feeling each time you move to the next one. After each level, you’re given an item. These items are either a new power-up, a new parent Wildling to help you protect the babies, or a piece of a boat that you will need in order to move on in the game. There’s also a 3 star rating for each level, one for completing the level, one for not loosing any babies, and one for completing the level without having the nest touched. You are able to retrieve your babies if they’re taken by attacking the evil creep that took it, but if you loose all 3 babies, it’s game over.
The power-ups also change as you move on throughout the worlds. In the first world, you’ll get a dust-storm power-up, and a cherry bomb power-up. The dust storm makes it so that none of the enemies can see, and then can’t move for a short period of time, and costs 5 sun points, while the cherry bomb destroys all the enemies in play, and costs 20 sun points. As you move on, you’ll collect different power-ups, one cheap and good for holding off or sunning large groups of enemies, and one expensive, good for getting rid of enemies when there’s too many of them.
The graphics in Wildlings are very polished, and look great. Along with the animations for each of the different babies, parents, and enemies, it looks, and feels very professional. Each of the different environments are colored extremely well, and everything in play really stands out when set against them. When you use the power-ups, these animations also look great, from the dust storms and explosions to the lava pits and big earth slam.
Metamoki, Inc. has done a great job with creating a world for the Wildlings, and making that world a blast to play in. The tapping mechanics work extremely well, and the added strategy of needing to know what enemies pose the biggest threat, move quickly, and need to be taken out before other enemies also fills the game with quite a bit of action. The game looks and feels great, and you can tell that a lot of work has gone into the game. It is supported by GameCenter, but the leader board is a total of the number of sun points you’ve collected. This is my only complaint about the game because pretty much, the #1 spot is held by the person that’s put the most time into the game. Theoretically, the #1 spot could be a person that just replayed the first 5 levels over and over again, and these types of leaderboards usually turn people off, because it pretty much guarantees that the first person that bought the game, or the person that has more free time will rule the #1 spot instead of the best player, and is almost like having a leaderboard for the amount of time you‘ve been playing. There are also no achievements, which makes the GameCenter integration kind of flimsy. But in the end, $0.99 is a great price for this game, and it’s one that will give you plenty of gameplay, and entertainment, and is great for gamers of all ages, while still keeping it’s challenging gameplay in tact.
Wildlings gets a score of 8.5 out of 10.
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September 11, 2011 Uncategorized 0 Read more >

Bad Bugs On Fire – 0.99 (Dan Themikman)

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.
The graphics aren’t bad, and sort of have a cartoony feel to them. The flowers dance around while you’re playing, and almost everything has big eyes. The animations are good, from the bugs walking to the flowers moving, and the clouds in the sky, but I especially like how the beams of energy look; like a little beam influenced by 70’s art – nicely flowing, and kind of trippy.
To get through each of the levels, you’ll need to make sure that the bugs do not eat all of the flowers. If you loose 2 flowers, you’ll complete the level, and those two lost flowers will show up again at the start of the next level. Every 2 levels, a new bug will join in the fight, and you’ll need to figure out how to deal with those new bugs, and during the more hectic times, need to figure out which bugs need to be killed before other bugs, adding a nice strategic element to the game. There are no power-ups, aside from the white clouds giving you double the score for a few seconds, and you can only fire 6 rays at a time, so getting through some of the levels can be pretty challenging.
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.
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September 10, 2011 Uncategorized 0 Read more >

LightGuardian – 1.99 (Lukas Penkava)

LightGuardian is a new 3D defense game, and the first iOS release, from Lukas Penkava. It’s definitely a different type of game, as I’ve never seen or played anything like it. You’ll control a light tower’s light while blimps come flying towards you. In order to take the blimps down, you’ll need to focus your light on them, heating them and blowing them up.The controls are kind of hard to get use to, but once you do, they work so well, and I really can’t think of a better way the game could be controlled. To move your light tower’s light, you place your finger on the section of the tower that’s right under the light, and drag it around. Up for down, down for up, right for left and left for right. This type of control, combined with the camera control that’s movable 360 degrees, and up and down, moving the camera in the direction you want it to move; ie, dragging up moves the camera up, dragging left moves the camera left, and so on – can get a little confusing at first. Dragging left to move the camera left, then needing to drag right to move the light left will take some getting use to, but after you do, it feels perfect and natural. This is another original aspect I haven’t seen before in any other game. Original controls, and original gameplay is risky for a developers first AppStore release, but Lukas Penkava has pulled it off flawlessly.

The game is set up as an endless arcade type game, where you’ll go through wave after wave of incoming blimps. There are different types of blimps, some taking longer to kill than others. With them coming at you in every direction, there’s a bit of strategy thrown in, as you’ll need to decide, quickly, which blimps are posing the biggest threat. You’re given a radar that helps you know when enemies are getting close to you. When it’s green, most enemies are far away, yellow means they’re getting close, and red means you’re in trouble, and need to deal with a blimp IMMEDIATELY.
One thing that might bother people when they first start is that the radar does not show dots, or where the blimps are. It just lets you know if a blimp is getting close. However, moving around, up, and down in the 360 degree play-field, constantly looking around trying to see where blimps are, what type they are, and trying to figure out how close they are, and how big of a threat they pose is a huge part of the gameplay. Having a radar that shows you exactly where every blimp is would take away a lot from the mechanics of the game, and really, take away a lot of the fun and challenge.
Taking down 4 blimps will get you a light bomb, which shows up as a tab in the lower left corner. This light bomb will take out any enemies that are in your radar’s red zone, so using it when you can’t find a blimp, or are overpowered with blimps is great. There’s also items that some enemies drop. A bolt, and a green gem. Bolts signify parts, and collecting a certain number will make your light house ray stronger. It might take a while to level up, as getting to level 2 takes 40 parts, and that number increases as the level goes up, but you can only reach level 4, so taking a while to level up is understandable. Collecting 3 gems will give you a charged light ray that lasts for a short period of time. When it’s available, a green icon appears in the lower right corner of the screen, and when activated, it turns your ray green. This is good for taking out some of the stronger blimps that you’ll encounter, and can do away with the weaker ones pretty easily. The bolts and green gems are automatically picked up when you hit them with your light ray.
The graphics in LightGuardian are very nice. The whole environment looks, and feels, great. It is a little weird, when looking straight down, to see your light house on a piece of rock floating in the sky, but the main menu gives you a great image of the light house on the floating rock, that looks exceptional, with vegetation growing up the sides of it, it really is very unique. Floating around in the sky, with you and the blimps, are more of these floating rocks with vegetation growing all over them, presenting a very nice atmosphere for the game. Beautifully made clouds are also surrounding the area, and with the shadowing from dark towards the bottom of the play-field, and light in the upper part, the blimps that appear out of nowhere are easy to pick out. You’ll never find yourself searching for a blimp against the backdrop of the game, which is great, especially when you’re spinning around trying to find the blimp that set off the yellow or red color on your radar. The animations of the moving blimps look great, making it look like the wind is actually blowing them towards you. One thing I would love to see is an actual explosion animation. I’m not sure what it could look like exactly, as explosions would not look very good within the setting of the game, but something more than the blimps just disappearing would be nice. Maybe a puff of smoke or something would go together good with the overall aesthetic of the game, but right now, that’s the only real nitpicky thing I can think of.
Lukas Penkava and team have done an amazing job putting this game together. I don’t know exactly how many people worked/are working on the game, but when I talked to Lukas, he used the term ’we’ more than once. He’s also mentioned a couple of mechanics that they’re thinking of implementing, but I’m not sure I should share them as they aren’t set in stone. What I will say is that they are still working on making LightGuardian even better than it already is. There is no GameCenter integration, but the developers do have an in-game online leader board, which is great, because players won’t need to worry about hacked GameCenter scores like with most other GC supported games. Some in-game achievements would be a wonderful addition to the game as well, as there’s quite a bit the developers could make achievements for; destroying # blimps, collecting # parts, reaching level #, ect. Universal support would be awesome too, as I’m sure gamers with iPads would love to see the graphics how they’re meant to be seen on their bigger screens, but for $1.99 (and currently on sale for $0.99), this is a must buy game. Endless replayabilty, updates that will make the game even better, and a beautiful and original gameplay experience. I really can not recommend LightGuardian enough. I’m also extremely hopeful of what the developing team will come up with in the future.
Light Guardian gets a score of 9 out of 10.
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September 10, 2011 Uncategorized 0 Read more >

ArkanoArena – 1.99 (Sketch Games)

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
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September 7, 2011 Uncategorized 0 Read more >

Tapsteroids – 0.99 (UNAgames)

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.
To get through each level, you’ll need to make sure that a certain number of ships are able to dock on your space station safely. You’re given 5 shields, or hit points, and each time your station or a ship gets hit by an asteroid, you loose one of those shields. Scattered in with the weapon pick-ups, you’ll see shield pick-ups as well, which add on one hit point.
The graphics in Tapsteroids are done extremely well, and the space environments look really nice. The animations for the asteroids, space ships, weapons, and different space stations are done very well also. There’s tons of polish and professionalism throughout the graphics and animations, and really helps add to the atmosphere and feel of the game. There plenty of variation between the space stations, space ships, and with the asteroids. Small asteroids, medium asteroids, and larger asteroids will fill up the screen in the later levels, some of them breaking up into multiple smaller asteroids, going in every direction. There is music in-between levels, and on the menus, but while playing, you’ll only hear the effects of weapons firing, ships landing, and asteroids and space ships exploding. The menu music is really nice, and full of energy, and the lack of music in-game actually helps build some atmosphere in my opinion. Space is a lonely, quiet place; only having the effects sounds while playing was a great idea.
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
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September 7, 2011 Uncategorized 0 Read more >

VenomBlast – 0.99 (Pictosoft)

VenomBlast is an updated, re-release of Pictosoft’s shmup, Zapa Ray. Pictosoft has done a pretty nice overhaul of the original game, giving us better graphics, different sounds, IAPs, a special fighter ship, and loads of tweaks. There’s also 3 hidden levels, unlocked after you beat the game on Normal, Hard, and Hell difficulties. Getting through Normal will be a challenge in itself though.

VenomBlast is a great looking shoot-em-up, with beautiful environments, and loads of variation with the enemies, in fact, there’s over 100 different types of enemies throughout the whole game. The boss battles are huge, and very well scripted, and can throw out some pretty nasty bullet sprays. To make things clear, even though there are tons of bullets fired in VenomBlast, it is not a bullet hell game. The scoring is simple, with each enemy having a set score for killing it, and no multipliers or bonuses are given. There’s also no real bullet patterns, all of the bullets are shot depending on where you’re positioned on the screen. This setting might upset some people, as having more bullets and bullet sprays on the screen doesn’t necessarily make for a better game. Bullet Hell games have eye candy bullet patterns, that can weave in and out with each other, and that you can dodge through if you know what to look for, and know what the patterns are going to be like. With huge bullet sprays shot directly at you, there’s not a specific way to weave through the bullets, you’ll just have to keep moving around, and with a little luck, not get stuck behind massive walls of undodgible bullet sprays.
Pictosoft has found a nice little solution to this problem though. Spotlight; the Fire Ball ship. In VenomBlast, you’re given 3 ships, one to start out with, and 2 to unlock with credits, all 3 being upgradeable. The original ship, named the Vulcan, is your typical shoot-em-up type fighter, having a strong blast, and wide spread once fully upgraded. The Guided Laser ship has projectiles that follow and hit ships anywhere on the screen; In front of you, behind you, or on either side of you. Then the Fire Ball ship shoots fire balls (go figure), and has fire balls that circle the ship. This spray of fire cancels out almost every type of bullet shot at you by enemies, and is a real life saver in the more hectic areas of the game. Each of the ships also fires missiles, that can be upgraded between levels, that lock on to enemies, and are pretty destructive.
The controls in VenomBlast are done pretty well, as we’re given relative touch controls, along with 2 buttons that can be placed on the right, left, or one one each side of the bottom of the screen. One button fires a nuke type shield that wipes out all bullets and most enemies when triggered, and the other button controls your ships, letting you switch between all 3 in the heat of battle. Double tapping on the screen lets you fire a bomb that clears out bullets, and causes massive damage. You only fire when you’re touching the screen though, and in a game that has numerous enemies coming at you from all directions, forcing you to pick up your thumb or finger in order to see them, this can be a real problem. Along with the buttons, the UI is made up of a battery symbol in the top right corner which is your health bar, a shield counter to the left of that, and your bomb counter next to the shields. Shields deploy automatically when you’re hit, and look like wings coming off of your ship, which is a nice little animation.
Compared to other iOS shmups, VenomBlast is a pretty hectic shooter, but it really has some stunning backgrounds and great animations with the enemies and even better with the bosses. There is an Easy Mode if you’re finding the game a little too hard, which is nice for new-comers to the genre, and your scores are shared on GameCenter throughout 5 different leaderboards, one for each difficulty, and one for all difficulties combined. The In-App-Purchases are for unlocking harder difficulties, extra lives, and buying more credits, each of which can be unlocked or bought in the between-levels store, so you’re not forced into buying anything extra unless you just want to pretty much skip ahead in the game. For $0.99, VenomBlast is a great shooter, definitely worth checking out, even if you purchased ZapaRay before it was pulled from the AppStore. It’s got plenty of challenge, and enough replay value added on with the extra bonus levels and leader boards to keep any veteran of the genre busy for quite some time.
VenomBlast is getting a score of 9 out of 10.
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September 4, 2011 Uncategorized 0 Read more >

Deliver Da Bomb – 0.99 (Tapstatic)

Deliver Da Bomb is a new arcade game from Tapstatic in which you try to bounce a bomb from one side of the screen to the other side, blowing up a robot. It sounds pretty easy, and in the beginning it really is, as you can get enough bombs to the robot by just starting the first two bombs moving, and then tapping on the last group of men, then the middle group, then the first group, then back to the end and starting over again. The first 8 levels or so are played like this, but then you hit level 9, and it really starts to get difficult, especially on insane speed. Here is where they actually mix up the bombs shot by how high they start off, how fast they move, and in what order you need to tap the men in.

There’s two different game modes in Deliver Da Bomb, but they’re split up like difficulties. In Easy Mode, you’ll need to bounce bombs 3 times before they reach the robot, and in Hard Difficulty, you’ll need to bounce the bombs 4 times. With each of the difficulty modes you’re able to choose between 3 different speeds, Casual, Advanced, and Insane. Then to be able to play on Hard Mode, you’ll need to finish all the Easy Mode levels first, so it’s more set up like one mode that you just progress through in two, 25 level sections. Each bomb that you get to the end, hitting the robot, gives you one extra life point, and you can have up to 30 points for life. If you miss or drop a bomb, one point is taken away, and if you reach a life score of 0, surprise, game over.
The graphics are done fairly well, in a sort of NES-SNES retro type way, and the animations for movement, bouncing, and explosions are about what you would expect with a retro styled game. You are able to put a picture in the face of the robot, but it’s really small, so if you want it to be a picture that you’re able to see, it’ll have to be a close-up of something, or someone, and I prefer the default robot face. The sounds and music is inspired by old-school effects and music as well, and fit’s the game well enough.
Deliver Da Bomb is presented as an old-school arcade game that you can battle for a high-score ranking through GameCenter on, but there’s one pretty major problem with the scoring system; your score is cumulative, and adds up continuously. This means that you can raise your score to 50 thousand just by playing level 1 over and over again, if you so desire, but also that the #1 position on the GameCenter charts will not be the person who scored the most points in each of the 50 levels, but instead, will be the person who played the game more than anyone else, For a game who’s primary reason for playing is for getting a high score, this is a pretty big let-down, and to top it off, and really make sure the replay value goes down the drain, there’s no achievements.
Tapstatic has done a great job creating a high-scoring retro arcade game with Deliver Da Bomb, but it seems like they did a poor job in implementing the scoring system and GameCenter integration. However, these things could be easily fixed in a future update, and for $0.99, Deliver Da Bomb does deliver quite a bit of challenging gameplay, and is definitely worth the price.
Deliver Da Bomb is getting a score of 6 out of 10, with a little asterisk ** if this game is updated, and the scoring system is fixed so that you have a score fixed for each level that you can raise up by replaying the level instead of just adding to your total score by replaying a level over and over, it could be a 7 or 8 out of 10 game, and if more game modes are added after that, could easily score 9 or 10 out of 10 – and I do have some pretty high hopes for this one.
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September 3, 2011 Uncategorized 0 Read more >

Up And Up! – 1.99 (Swift Seven)

Up And Up is a new slingshot type adventure platform game from Swift Seven Multimedia, a 2 person outfit located in Sweden. Up And Up is easily one of my favorite games to come out in the last couple months, and the attention it’s getting, or lack of, is pretty surprising. Maybe it shouldn’t be, as there’s quite a few games I feel really deserve a lot more attention then they’ve gotten, but I can almost always understand why. The controls might be a little funky for some people at first, people might have been expecting to get something else, but with Up And Up, it’s a pretty straight forward adventure game that has you stretch and slingshot your character through the beautifully made levels, is made by indie developers, and is made for both casual and hardcore gamers. These types of games usually do pretty well in the AppStore. Then again, most of the games in this genre weren’t released the same week as Jetpack Joyride, Samurai Bloodshow, Frogger Decades and Crimson: Steam Pirates. So here’s hoping I can shed a little bit more light on this great title.

In Up And Up, you’ll play as a bungy monster who’s trying to escape from the rising lava, falling bats, angry frogs, and more, while using objects, tools, and power-ups to help you get to safety. There’s 2 worlds, each with 15 levels to try and make your way through, collecting the 8 pieces of cheese, finding the golden bat, and trying to beat the secret level times for even higher scores and a better star rating.
The controls in Up And Up are great. Tight, responsive, and they work extremely well within the game. To get your bungy monster through each level, you’ll need to tap down on him, pull him back, and fling him towards the next hook, which he attaches to automatically, while if you miss a hook, you can hold down on the screen to activate a sort of helicopter ability, and then move your finger left or right to guide him to a hook. The physics and camera angles come into play quite a bit here, and they’re both great. Physics-wise, the game is awesome, with just enough gravity to have an effect on where you fling your character next, and when you miss, the helicopter ability works perfectly and feels great. The camera angle changes depending on the angle that you pull your character back at, for instance, pulling to the left makes the camera sort of pan in a 3D way to the right so that you can see more clearly what you’re aiming at. It might sound like it would distract from the gameplay, but really, it adds a lot to the game and the overall aesthetic.
The levels are just long enough to stay challenging, and upset you if you die right at the end, but not get frustrating when you have to replay them. The level design is also very, very good, and when you’re playing, you can tell that a lot of thought, effort, and beta testing went into each and every stage, as well as each and every move you can make while going through the stages. 30 levels might not sound like a lot, but it’ll sometimes take you multiple tries to get through most of them, and with the difficulty curve, will take a while to complete. There’s also another world with 15 levels coming in a future update.
The enemies are stylish, and varied, while having a pretty big impact on how you make your way through each of the levels. Sometimes you’ll need to quickly jump from one hook to another to avoid one falling on you, other times you’ll need to wait until it’s safe to move through an area, and sometimes you’ll just avoid spots completely. The objects that help are very well placed, and varied as well. Yellow hooks that let you do a super jump, and jetpacks that run on depleting fuel, which you can also pick up while riding them, can be found scattered throughout the levels, along with green goo to bounce off of on the sides of the walls, moving hooks and more.
The graphics are very nice, and environments are extremely colorful and visually pleasing. The game is also supported by Retina Display and is Universal, so you can experience the game in all it’s visual glory. S7 has certainly done everything right for their first release in order to leave a lasting and very nice mark on the AppStore gaming community, except for leaving out online services. They will be added very soon in an update, but leaving them out in the initial release, along with releasing it the same week as many other big name games, might just be why this game has been knocked to the back of the pack in terms of ‘must buy’ games. I, however, am very, very glad that I have been able to experience this game, as it’s definitely left it’s mark on me. I’m eagerly awaiting GC support, future levels, and whatever S7 has in store for gamers in the future. At $1.99, Up And Up is a must buy game.
Up And Up is getting a score of 9.5 out of 10, and would get a perfect 10/10 if it included online support in this v1.0 release. Once it’s added, this might just be the first review I end up changing the last paragraph of, and re-posting with a 10 out of 10 score after it gets updated.
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September 3, 2011 Uncategorized 0 Read more >