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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.

There’s quite a bit of old-school platforming to do in Candy Boy, which means there’s virtual controls and the games physics to try and get use to as well. Colorbox has done a pretty decent job giving us responsive and tight controls, though not as tight as League of Evil, or Mos Speedrun, but more like the controls in Elemental Rage or Castle of Magic. The physics are really nice as well, and don’t make the game feel weighed down or floaty at all. Moving platforms are decently sized, and collision detection is great, so you won’t be standing on air or falling through platforms. You might have slight problems using the candies as a climbing tool, and some of the thinner platforms in the mid and later levels, but it’s nothing you won’t get use to after doing it a couple of times. There’s also 3 coins in each stage you can try and grab if you’reup for more of a challenge, and grabbing every one in each stage will unlock worlds faster, as they’re opened up when you collect a certain number of them. All of this makes for some pretty neat level design, and challenging moments in the game.

The graphics are very polished, very cute, and the animations are great. The music and fx also fit this cute world very well, and can be turned off in the main menu if you don’t care for game music. With over 100 levels spread across 4 different worlds, Candy Boy should offer plenty of gameplay to keep even hardcore gamers busy for a while, especially with the GameCenter leaderboards, one for each world, and the 13 achievements they’ve given us to try and unlock. And as with every other release from Colorbox that I own, I know Candy Boy will end up staying on my iPod for a very long time. It’s getting 5 out of 5 stars from me, and you can nab it in the AppStore for the very low price of $0.99.

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.

The controls in SqueezeBastard are relatively nice and minimal. You’re given an invisible floating joystick, and a push button. It is kind of hard to navigate through some of the puzzles, because they’re set-up diagonally, so you might find yourself fighting to get into the right spot at times, which can seem like a pretty big down-fall when you’re weaving your way through the block maze filled with monsters. But once you get the hang of it, it seems like less of a chore, and more of a pretty decent game design. Having the board set diagonally gives the game an extra bit of challenge, especially when lining up your monster killing shots.

The graphics are really good, though the game is not retina supported at the moment, so their true beauty doesn’t stick out like it should. There isn’t a lot of diversity throughout the world of SqueezeBastard, only moving from the forest to the castle, but while moving from stage to stage, you’ll be confronted with different game mechanics that will open up new moves and ways to play. The first additions you’ll see are tiles that move blocks in certain directions for you. Once you push a block onto them, they shoot the block in the direction of the arrows moving on it. This comes in handy for hitting monsters that are around corners that you’re sometimes not able to squish any other way. You should be careful with these though, because sometimes they can shoot a block right back at you. Boxes of explosives are also mixed in with the blocks, and can blow up a nice section of blocks and monsters around it just by pushing them into an edge.

There’s also portals that not only let you through, but also the blocks. Looking to see if a monster is in the right spot next to a portal, you can kill them from the other side of the level. Things like this really add to the game a lot, and make you plan out your attacks more tactfully. Enemies that can break through blocks are also thrown into the mix, and staying out of their way until you can line up a good shot really does add to the challenge.

The scoring could use some more work, as you’re not given any combo bonuses at all. It would be nice to see the developers add some sort of combo for hitting two or more monsters with one block, or killing a certain number of enemies back to back in a short period of time. You do, however, get a bigger score for collecting the jewels that pop up around the stages once you defeat all the monsters in that level. Racing to get them all before the level ends can be pretty challenging. There’s also a treasure chest in each level, figuring out how to open it also adds to the challenge, and quest for a great score. Though all of this kind of seems pointless withoutGameCenter or OpenFeint leaderboards. Achievements would also have been a great addition to this game, and would drive the need to play, and re-playability quite a bit as you are also able to replay previously beaten levels by selecting them at the map screen.

The music and FX fit the cute graphics and gameplay, and the game does play very smoothly. For a puzzle game, it doesn’t really bring any new mechanics to the genre, but what it does have is done very well. You can tell that a lot of time, effort and thought has gone into the making of SqueezeBastard. For $0.99 it’s not a bad or regrettable purchase at all. However, with retina display, and online ranking not put into the game, I’m going to give it 4 out of 5 stars. There’s not a lot of room for improvement within the game, but it’s missing that drive to play it, and re-playability. If they are added in the future, this could very well be a 4.5 or 5 star game. Still worth getting if you’re looking for a good new puzzle game with quite a bit of action to waste away the end of summer with.

Link: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/squeezebastard/id454921319?mt=8