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Finger Gravity is a new physics based action puzzler developed by Wode Mobile. In the game, you’ll guide a hi-tech triangle through 39 intense levels, and two mini-games, each a way to perfect and test your skills. To navigate through the levels, you’ll need to tap on the screen in the direction you want your triangle to move, a line will then be drawn from your finger to the triangle, pulling it towards you.

Once you let go, the triangle will keep it’s momentum until either hitting a wall, or being pulled in another direction by another finger tap. Various hazards, obstacles, and enemies add quite a bit of challenge to the game while you try and snag each of the 3 well placed blue stars within each of the levels. With some skill, and maybe a little luck, you’ll be able to earn a 3 star ranking. To achieve a 3 star ranking, you’ll need to score over 8,000 points which are added up based on how many of the blue stars you grab, how quickly you do it, and how much total life, which is measured by a circle inside of your triangle, and slowly recharges, you’ve lost while bouncing off of walls and running into enemies. Scoring between 7,000 and 7,999 gives you 2 stars, and 6,999 to 5,000 will give you 1 star. Anything 4,999 and lower, and you will not be given a star.

To unlock the mini-games, you’ll need to get 30 stars for Finger Dodge, in which you guide your triangle around an open screen dodging mines and enemies that come flying towards you, and collecting stars that spawn in various places around the screen. Collecting a certain amount of stars will give you a shield which you can use to crash into the mines and enemies, adding to your points. 72 collected stars gives you access to the Finger Maze, where, you guessed it, you navigate through a maze as quick as you can.

The hazards, obstacles and enemies all fit together very nicely. There’s timed lasers, 8-sided cannons, pulsating mines, gravity orbs, rubber walls, portals, spider type enemies that move along a straight path, space ship type enemies that move in circles, and various types of walls/square objects to navigate around and through. All of these are used to put together some very interesting level designs, most of which have a quick and challenging solution to them, while others require a very slow, methodic, and well thought out course in order to get to the glowing green exit.

The graphics are done in a very polished and colorful vector style, while the animations add quite a bit of personality to almost everything within the levels. The music adds a sci-fi, outer space sort of feel to the whole game, while combined with the graphics create a great atmosphere.

Finger Gravity is supported by GameCenter, with a leader board for your total combined score of all 39 levels, along with 13 achievements. The replay value is pretty high, and it should take gamers a while to complete the game, especially if they want to snag all 117 stars. The difficulty level is pretty high on this one, and you should expect many, many deaths while making your way to the end of the game. You are aloud 5 level skips, in case you’re finding a level or two too hard, and just want to come back to them later, but being able to take your time in each level, almost all gamers, casual, and hardcore, will be able to see the end. The only bad thing I can say about Finger Gravity is that the framerate can get a little low, causing your triangle to skip a bit, and then disappear and end up somewhere else on the screen. With the game needing precision movements in order to get 3 star rankings, or even beat a level, experiencing these drops in framerate and skips can get pretty frustrating. It doesn’t happen every now and again, it’s very noticeable, in almost every level. Once this is fixed, Finger Gravity could definitely turn out to be one of the best games of the genre. At the moment, for $0.99, it’s worth picking up, because if you’re careful, and go through the levels slowly, the framerate issues won’t cause you too many “crashing into walls, enemies, or hazards” problems, but it will effect your score since your score is 1/3 based on speed, but this is a game that will keep your interest so long as a performance enhancement update is pushed out fairly quickly.

Finger Gravity gets a score of 7 out of 10.

Version Reviewed: V 1.0

Reviewed On; 4th Generation iPod Touch – iOS 4.3.3

Gyro13 is a physics based helicopter arcade game developed by Cinemax. Within the game, you’ll pilot a steam powered helicopter through South American gyroxide mines while picking up stranded miners, and avoiding hazards, obstacles, and navigating through wind-gusts and sometimes extremely narrow paths. Gyro13 builds on old-school gameplay while using extremely polished graphics, and top notch physics.

Cinemax used the Unreal Engine to develop Gyro13, and it quickly joins the ranks of Dungeon Defenders and Infinity Blade in terms of amazingly beautiful graphics right at first glance. The environments are awe-inspiring, making it hard to go through the levels quickly. But since the atmosphere is toxic, you must get the miners to the safe-zone before they run out of air, and die.

To top it all off, the soundtrack is astounding. I actually paused the game on levels 15 and 16 this morning, plugged my iPod into my stereo, and listened to the tracks on repeat for about an hour. The music adds so much to the feel of the game, it’s a shame I know a couple of people that are going to turn it off while they play just because they refuse to listen to any game music while playing games, but this is yet another game that will be added to my “I seriously hope they release the soundtrack on bandcamp or iTunes” list. The effects fit in with the music as well, the sound of the helicopter and the sounds for running into walls, machines, or picking up miners all fits in with the atmosphere that the music brings.

So by now, you probably think that Cinemax has paid me to write up this review, and might have blown me off as another sold soul, but I assure you, that is not the case. This truly is one of the best iOS games I have ever had the pleasure of playing. It’s incredibly immersive, has amazing graphics, superb animations, intelligent level design, great music, top notch physics matched with outstanding controls, and, of course, awesome gameplay. It’s no surprise that the game is $5.99. I really hope that more developers start putting this amount of work into their games, and bring us more console-like experiences on our handheld devices. The pricing doesn’t bother me at all when the game could be sold on Steam for double the price. Gyro13 is also universal, so you’ll be able to see all the amazing graphics the way they were meant to be seen on your iPad as well. Cinemax has definitely raised the bar for immersive iOS arcade gaming with this release. I really can not recommend it enough.

Gyro13 gets a perfect score of 10 out of 10.

Links:

Full Version – http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/id463401185?mt=8

Website – http://gyro13.com/

Neon Thrust is an action physics puzzler from shiny-games in which you’ll guide a little neon box, named Neo, through 60 levels while trying to collect each of the power crystals and make it back out of the levels before they explode. There are also green and red Neons to collect and avoid while navigating through each of the 4 zones.

The controls in Neon Thrust work exceptionally well, giving players a joystick and a thrust button. Moving the joystick in the direction you want to go, and then pressing the thrust button will give you a nice push in the desired direction. The thrust doesn’t last long after you let go of the thrust button, so navigating is done smoothly, and easily throughout the levels.

There are 60 levels, split up into 4 zones, giving us 15 levels in each of the different zones. The difficulty builds pretty slowly, giving players an opportunity to get a pretty good grip on the handling of the controls and physics within the game. The difficulty also climbs at a rate that will leave enough room for gamers to want to return to the first world of the game in order to try and better over all scores, and get the 3 star scores for each of the levels once they’ve gone through the game and can handle Neo with near expert precision. This, along with the GameCenter leader boards for each of the zones, and a total score, add a lot of replay value to Neon Thrust.

While going through each of the zones, new obstacles will be added, like red walls that Neo can not touch, spots in the levels that either end up pushing or pulling gravity, timed lasers, doors that are triggered with switches, and more. The level design is wonderful, and the placement of each of the green and red Neons will leave even the most expert gamers wondering how to get through the level in the shortest amount of time while collecting all the required items in order to get the best score. In order to get 3 stars on a level, you must guide Neo through the level, collect all of the green Neons, avoid all of the red Neons, grab the power crystal, and make it back to the entrance/exit of the level before the timer that starts when you pick up the power crystal reaches zero.

Graphics in Neon Thrust are simple, and minimal, but work extremely well within the game. Neo, the green box that you guide around the levels, is a simple neon green with 2 white squares for eyes, and a white rectangle for his thruster. Each of the 4 zones is a different color, red, purple, brown, and turquoise, each with squares and sharp angles being the main visual theme. The walls are outlined in white, or red, red being the color that you can not touch while going through the levels, either with the walls, or the Neons. The graphics do come off as being retro inspired, but still keep a very modern look about them. This sort of graphical style is quickly becoming a favorite for me, not just throughout mobile iPod games, but with any console.

There is no music except for on the main menu, but the game does have some excellent sound effects. However, I did find the sound that’s made after you die and are given a ‘retry’ screen to be pretty annoying. It would have been much better if the level automatically restarted after each death, because each gamer will die quite a few times throughout the game. Having to hit ‘retry’ every 3 seconds in some areas really took away from the flow of the experience, though this is nothing too big, or really an issue for most people.

In the end, Neon Thrust is a great gaming experience. Wonderful level design with great obstacles and puzzles, along with quite a bit of action because of the timed aspect makes it a very enjoyable game. The addition of GameCenter was done very well, with each of the scores changing each time you do better on a level. This means that players can not simply play the first zone over and over again, and end up with the #1 score on the total leader board. You’ll need to play through each level in the game multiple times, and try and find the best possible route for Neo to take. 60 levels gives us quite a bit of content, but the levels are pretty short. However, more levels are coming in the future, and with the replay value being pretty high, the shortness of the levels shouldn’t really be a problem. Great graphics, and a very smooth gameplay experience make Neon Thrust a great buy at $0.99. If you’re a fan of action, puzzle, physics, or just all around good score driven games, it’s one that you should definitely check out.

Neon Thrust is getting a score of 9 out of 10.

Links;

Full Version – http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/neon-thrust/id451117107?mt=8

Website – http://www.neonthrust.com/

Spin The Nut is a new puzzle game from P-O-M Apps in which you try and get an acorn to the end of the level to feed the squirrel. You’ll also try and collect 3 golden nuts while getting the acorn to the end. The quicker you collect the golden nuts and make it to the squirrel, the better your score will be.

We’re given 80 nicely designed levels to try and get through, spread across 4 different worlds, with plenty of different objects to have the acorn interact with along the way, like bouncy platforms that are stationary, and then later in the game become platforms that you can move, spikes, helicopter baskets, pieces of wood that break after using them once, signs that will change the direction of the acorn while it’s in the air, and loads more.

The controls in Spin The Nut are done very well. To shoot the acorn, you place your finger on the piece of spinning wood that it’s stuck to, and then slide your finger away from the acorn so that you can see which direction it’s pointing. When it’s aimed in the direction that you want it to go, you let go of the screen, and it’ll shoot forward. There’s no gravity, so you don’t need to account for that, and the acorn will automatically stick to the next piece of wood it comes in contact with. Later in the game you’re also able to move the rotating pieces of wood that the acorn sticks to by single tapping on it to move it, and double tapping on it to activate the firing ability.

The graphics in Spin The Nut are polished and professional, and look very good. The squirrel is extremely cute, and the movement animations are done very well, and the music and sound effects fit with the cutesy vibe going on. The backgrounds, however, are not varied, and although they do let you see the objects throughout the levels very well, they feel pretty bland. For instance, in the treehouse world, the background is yellow with slight shaded in areas resembling branches, in the helicopter world, this changes to a pink background, and as you move on, the background color changes, but nothing else does. I don’t know how much the backgrounds were played around with, but seeing backgrounds that really match the worlds you are playing in could help liven up the game quite a bit, for instance, having an actual forest or tree background for the treehouse world, and the sky with some clouds for the helicopter world.

Spin The Nut is supported by GameCenter, and has 4 different leaderboards, one for each world, which helps add to the drive of getting as good of a score as you can in each level, but there are no achievements, and in a puzzle game like this, achievements go a long way. However, it is a pretty unique puzzle game with nice graphics, and great physics. The objects and gaming mechanics given to us are great, especially with the game only being $0.99. Spin The Nut is definitely a puzzle game that I will play through all the way, and will most likely go back through trying to get better scores and move up in the leaderboards. P-O-M Apps has shown that they have what it takes to make a nice puzzle game with great physics, and I’m really looking forward to seeing what they add with future worlds, and what they have in store for us with their next game.

Spin The Nut is getting a score of 7.5 out of 10

Link: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/spin-the-nut/id447830290?mt=8

iBlast Moki needs no real introduction, the physics-puzzle game from Godzilab is one of the most popular on the iOS, snagging the #2 game spot of all time on metacritic. So when iBlast Moki 2 was announced, everyone was eagerly anticipating this sequel, and for good reason. In iBlast Moki, you use bombs and other items to get Moki’s into the portal at the end of each level. The physics are amazing, the level design is top notch, and the environments are varied, and extremely vibrant. The sequel includes even more kinds of bombs and items to help the Moki’s reach the portals, the same amazing physics, even more interesting level design, and more vibrant environments, and it takes advantage of retina and HD display. There’s also a level editor and a level sharing service thrown in for endless hours of entertainment and fun.

In iBlast Moki 2, you’ll encounter some very interesting bombs, and you don’t need to play for hours to get into the new game mechanics. They are thrown at you almost from the beginning. Paint bombs that each have different characteristics, ropes, and balloons are some of the first you’ll see. There’s also objects that you can stick your Moki’s to in order to get them to the portals at the end of the levels. In the game, it’s your job to place bombs throughout the levels, and set them to go off at specific times in order to fling the Moki’s to the end while collecting all the flowers in each stage, and doing it as fast as you can. Your regular bombs are the ones that you’ll really have to play with trial and error getting the timing just right, making them explode at just the right time to send your characters off in another direction. This is done easily because the level resets every time you press the stop button in the lower left corner. The paint bombs, however, are more about where you place them, and timing isn’t really an issue with these. You’re given red, green, and orange bombs. The red acts as a bouncy liquid, and once your characters or any other objects touch it, they bounce up into the air. Green bombs act as glue, making your characters stick to whatever objects get covered in the liquid when the bomb goes off, and orange bombs act as turbo speed bombs, drawing your Moki to them, and shooting them forward at faster speeds.

Because iBlast Moki 2 is a physics-puzzle game, the physics are a huge part of it, and Godzilab has done an amazing job with them. Everything feels real, and sometimes it might seem like you’ll have to be a physics major in order to get the solutions on the first or second time through the level. I actually would not be surprised if Godzilab had some physics majors help them with this aspect of the game, as they’re done so perfectly. This, coupled with the superb level design, add a ton to the challenge of getting up on the high-score board that’s in-game in the pause menu. The top 3 scores for each level are shown, and if you’d like, you can pay 1 Moki coin, which you earn throughout the game, to see these top solutions. This, is something that’s already upsetting people. Some gamers work for hours on a level trying to get the best score they can, and then their solution, if one of the best, is saved to the server, and accessible to everyone for 1 Moki coin. Godzilab has commented on this issue, and said that they will come up with a fix for it in a future update, but until then, the best solutions for each level are there, ready to be seen by everyone, unless you play offline. This is the only bad issue I can find with iBlast Moki 2 though.

With 90 levels spread across 6 different environments, and a level editor that lets you share and download created levels, there’s pretty much endless gameplay. A cut-throat leaderboard helps immensely with the replay value, and like I’ve said, some people will spend hours with one level, and some might even spend weeks creating one. iBlast Moki 2 could very well end up being the best puzzle game in 2011, maybe even the best puzzle game for the iOS, period. The scoring mechanics are great, the graphics are cute and polished, physics are perfect, level design is mind bending, and the gameplay is endless. For $3, it’ll be pretty much impossible to find a better puzzle game out there. It’s highly recommended to fans of the genre, and new-comers to the scene alike, and is on sale for launch, so you can grab it now for a buck! The universal version is $3, and should shoot up to $5 soon. If you don’t have it yet, make sure you get it soon, because it’s going to be a game that you end up buying eventually after hearing everyone you know talk about it.

I’m giving iBlast Moki 2 a score of 5/5, with a strong recommendation to get it now.

Link: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/iblast-moki-2/id437400857?mt=8

Cubes Vs. Spheres is a new 3D physics attack game by ShockPanda Games, creators of Space Bunnies, a personal favorite of mine. In it, you’re job is to fling spheres into cubes, protecting the circled area around your sphere chute. You’re given 30 levels, 10 in each difficulty of Easy, Medium, and Hard. The goal is to blow up cubes as they make their way towards you using different spheres that you can buy in the between levels shop; trying to produce huge combos by hitting cubes with bits and pieces of cubes that your spheres smack into and getting 3 stars, and a P, for “Perfect”, by not letting the cubes hit your area that‘s marked off within a circle.

The game’s graphics are very minimal, but this makes it so that the engine can handle huge waves of cubes coming at you. The minimal graphics work so well, and look so polished, that it’s hard not to see how impressive they are while you’re playing. The level designs are great, and the structures in which the cubes come off of, and out of once they come towards you get more and more impressive as the move on. I found myself just scrolling around the levels sometimes checking out the structures, not paying attention to the cubes, and ended up with huge waves of them coming at me. It’s really a great looking game.

You’re given 6 different spheres, that come out of a chute inside of your area. They are selectable at the bottom of the screen, and do not appear until you decide which sphere you want to fling at the cubes. There’s your regular sphere, which you can upgrade to split into 3 and 5 other spheres by tapping on the screen after you fling it at cubes, a fire sphere that explodes on impact into about 8 smaller spheres, a big black sphere that squashes cubes, and can smash through them, hitting cubes behind it, a sphere that locks on to the closest cube to your area, a freeze sphere that slows down cubes, and a decoy that draws cubes to it, exploding after a certain amount of time. You end up unlocking these with credits earned throughout the game, and need to keep buying them in order to use them. This isn’t a real problem though, because you’ll earn enough credits in each level for about 15 different spheres or more, and helps add to the strategic side of the game.

There are only 3 different cube enemies in the game. Red cubes, which you will see a lot of, black cubes, which are mixed in with the red cubes, and are more powerful, and harder to destroy, and sometimes cubes that are almost invisible. There are not very many of the invisible cubes throughout the game, but you will be checking the sides of each level just to make sure you know when they’re there or not. It would have been nice having more types of enemies, maybe enemies that are immune to some of your power-up spheres. Seeing a flaming cube that could melt your freeze spheres ice, or an assassin cube that could take out your decoy would have been awesome. But with the three enemies in the game, you get enough variety to keep you busy, and with the cubes moving differently each time you play the levels, you’ll never have the exact same experience twice. This randomized intelligent movement is great, and coupled with the GameCenter leaderboards, 3 star and P rankings, and achivements, add immensely to the replayability of the game.

The physics in a game like this are very important, and ShockPanda Games has done an amazing job getting it just right. Seeing each cube explode when it’s hit with a sphere or bits of an exploding cube is awesome, and really nice eye candy and the spheres feel like they actually have some weight to them. The music in Cubes Vs. Spheres is fitting, minimal but kind of catchy, and fits with the atmosphere, but the effects for throwing spheres and hearing them bounce kind of made them sound like hippity hops that were filled to the extreme, and about to blow up. You are given two control schemes, one is tilt to turn, and the other is swipe to turn. Both work very well for this type of game, but there were a couple of times the screen would end up shooting upwards when I tried to fling my ball forward using the swipe controls. Not often, but it did happen. I’m giving Cubes Vs. Spheres 4.5 out of 5 stars, because even with it only having 3 different enemies, and experiencing a cube getting stuck way in the back of a level, unreachable, and having to replay that level, it’s an awesome game. Very well made, very polished, challenging, and a blast to play. The replayabilty is off the charts, and it’s one game that will never leave my device. For $0.99, including retina display, and being Universal, it’s a great deal. ShockPanda has definitely put a lot of time and effort into this game, and with them taking part in the Touch Arcade thread, I have no doubt that this game will get even better with only a few updates.

Link: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/cubes-vs.-spheres/id434117289?mt=8