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Carrot War is a new, and pretty original, line-drawing action game for the iOS by Sphinx Entertainment. As this is their first game in the AppStore, they’re up against some pretty high-profile companies in the genre, but this isn’t your typical line-drawing game. In Carrot War, you play as a rabbit who’s home-planet was invaded by aliens who came to take all your precious carrots. You’re the last hope of a dwindling civilization, armed only with a magic pen. The Rabbit Planet is counting on you to get the carrots back, and withstand the alien invasion.

The graphics in Carrot War are great. Showing the true professionalism of Sphinx Entertainment. Very smooth and flowing animations, along with nice explosion effects and great scrolling backgrounds are retina display supported, so you can experience all the beauty the way it’s meant to be seen. The controls are very tight and responsive, which is very important in a line drawing game, but I haven’t once died because I was busy fighting with the controls, or trying to get something just right. There’s enough give in the game that if you die, it’ll be because you weren’t quick enough. Which brings me to the gameplay.

In Carrot War, your goal is to make it to the end of the level without loosing your 3 lives. If you’re going for a 3 star performance, you won’t want to loose one. You’re also graded on how many carrots you collect and how many enemies you kill. To kill enemies, you’re required to do different things for each of them. Most can be eliminated by connecting a line between the two or more stars that are floating around them. For instance, if there’s just two stars around an enemy, you draw a line from one star to the other, going through the enemy, then it blows up. If there’s three, you can draw a triangle, or a circle, so long as it goes through each of the three stars. If there’s 4 stars, you’d draw a square. Killing more than one enemy at a time is pretty easy, because most enemies will stop moving if you place your finger on one of their stars, causing them to overlap each other, and making killing huge numbers of enemies a little easier. There’s also enemies that can shoot at you, and in order to kill them, you draw a line from the projectile they shoot, back to their ship, there’s bullets you can bounce off of lines, and much more. How long your line can be depends on how much ink you have in your pen, but this refills very quickly after using it, so you’ll never be stuck waiting for the pen to reload. To avoid being hit, you can place your finger on your character and move him around the screen freely as well.

There’s a total of 52 levels spread across 5 different worlds, each unlocking when you beat the boss at the end. There is quite a bit of difficulty within the game, as keeping up with the different enemies on the screen can get pretty hectic, but it’s never frustratingly difficult. In a game with only one difficulty, finding the right mesh between easy and hard is never easy, but Sphinx Entertainment has done a great job here, making a game that gamers from casual to hardcore can play and enjoy. There’s also an IAP purchase which gives you 3 extra lives per level, and 2 extra pens full of ink, so if you do find the game too hard, you can make it easier for $0.99.

GameCenter and OpenFeint leaderboards, and 12 achievements are included, and added with the 3 star rankings on levels, do help add to the replayability and challenge of the game. It’s got smooth graphics, great gameplay, and music and effects that fit right in with the experience, but I would love to see some power-ups, or maybe upgrades in the future. It seems to be all that this game is missing. I’m giving Carrot War 4.5 out of 5 stars. Highly recommended to action and line drawing fans. It is $2.99, but right now it’s on sale for $0.99, so pick it up before the price goes back up! If you do miss the sale, you can rest assured that this game is worth at least $2.99, and it will be spending quite a bit of time on my iPod.

Link: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/carrot-war/id453936519?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

Destroy Gunners SP is a new mech game by Shade Inc. First off, yes, it is kind of pricy for an AppStore game, but hopefully this review will help you decide if it’s up your ally or not. Shade Inc. is no stranger to the video game scene, having made The Granstream Saga, Orphen: Scion of Sorcery, Onslaught, and more, they know what it takes to make a great action game. But having worked primarily on console games, the question still remains, do they have what it takes to make a great mobile game? After playing the lite version of Destroy Gunners, I was convinced that they could make a game that controls well, but it seemed a little mindless and there wasn’t much customization available. With the full version though, you get enhanced graphics, missions, more environments, and tons more customization, along with a couple more mechs to unlock and obtain in the store. But I will be comparing between the lite and full version quite a bit throughout this review, because let’s face it, for $9, most of you are going to be checking out the lite version before you buy the full.

The goal of the game is to go through the levels collecting upgrades and weapons, blowing up enemies, and killing bosses. You control your character by using a joystick in the left corner, and using left and right buttons in the right corner to turn your point of view, and flip your mech around. To fire, you place your finger directly on the middle of the screen, dragging around with the crosshairs slightly above your thumb. You’re also given a jetpack button which lets you reach higher areas of the levels, and touching on the gun select button brings up your equipped weapons. You can change between pausing the game when you press on the weapon select button, or keep the action going in the options menu. Between the lite and full versions, control isn’t really different, so you can get a pretty good idea of how it works by checking out the lite. It actually works extremely well on a touch screen, which surprised me quite a bit.

The missions in the full version range from collecting upgrades, to killing bosses and killing a certain amount of enemies in a given amount of time, and more, but it does stay fresh through each of the levels, and upgrading your mech with new abilities, defenses, and weapons will definitely keep you going through each mission. Enemies drop ammo, health upgrades, and components, which are turned in at the end of the stage, or at death, and can be equipped in the customize section. The components consist of new weapons, defense upgrades, attack upgrades, and special abilities like power recovery and increase component drop rate upgrades. You’re able to equip 6 of these components at a time, and goes up with each unlocked mech, so switching out and checking out what you’ve recently picked up between stages is a pretty big part of making it through the game. In the lite version, your upgrades are picked up on the battlefield, and automatically equipped, but you only get certain weapon and HP upgrades, so the customization between the lite and full versions is extremely different, and a lot more customizable in the full version. Also, in the lite version, you are not given missions, you just end up going through the levels, blowing up enemies, and taking out the same boss at the end of the two environments they give you.

The graphics in the full version are better than in the lite version, unless you’re running the game on an older device, in which case, you’ll probably have to select lower graphics in the options menu in order to get the game to play smoothly. But the graphics on full graphics mode are great. The environments really stick out, textures look great, and the explosion animations are better, along with better smoke trails on your missiles, and the like. They are impressive graphics to have on a mobile device, and the atmospheres really give you something to sink your teeth, or eyes, into. All of the animations and movement are very smooth as well, giving you awesome eye candy.

There’s loads of challenge, especially since you can select the difficulty in the options menu, so the game will keep you busy and your heart pounding most of the time. OpenFeint leaderboards and achivements are also included and do help add to the replayability quite a bit. Music and effects are top notch as well, adding to the feel and general aesthetic of the entire game. To make a long story short, you will be getting your moneys worth if you decide to buy Destroy Gunners SP, and Shade Inc. has definitely thrown down the gauntlet in terms of mech gameplay on mobile devices, though some might find it repetitive and mundane after a while, since the only real drive is grinding to collect more gear to equip on your mech, and rising up the leader boards. There‘s no story, or any sort of plot to follow, and that would have really been a very welcome addition to the game. But if you are a fan of mech attack action games, this is the best you’ll get on a mobile device, and $8.99 will be money well spent considering how much gameplay and content is included, and how good it looks and plays. I’m giving Destroy Gunners SP 4.5 out of 5 stars, with an exception; if you don’t care about story, or plot, this is a 5 out of 5 star game, controlling extremely well, looking beautiful, and packing loads of challenge. If a story or plot is essential for you to enjoy a game, you might not care for Destroy Gunners SP. But I’m certainly glad I picked it up, and it will never be deleted from my device.

Link: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/destroy-gunners-sp/id453434062?mt=8

Fatcat Rush is a new side-scrolling runner game from Tomodomo Oy. It’s his first game in the AppStore, and like many of the previous first publishers I’ve reviewed lately, he shows hardly any signs of being a newcomer to the scene. In the game, you play as Tombo, a cat who lives on the peak of a huge tower. Every week his favorite food is shipped to him by a hot-air balloon. But this week, the balloon carrying his delivery was struck by lightning, flinging his food all throughout the pathways of the tower. With his stomach grumbling, he decides to go after it all, making sure to hurry before the food spoils.

There’s 15 levels in Fatcat Rush, each with different environmental hazards. The level scrolls, and spins around, while you climb up the pathways further up the tower. There’s food littering the paths, and some shortcuts full of extra food hidden along the way, so keeping an eye open for kind of harder to reach paths usually pays off. You’re given 3 hearts for each stage, and crashing into a part of the terrain, or an obsticle will bring you down a peg. There’s different kinds of food all over the place, some giving more points than others, for instance; Whipped Cream Taco’s give you 1 point, while PizzaBurgers give you 10, and Ketchup Lollipops give you 3.

There’s also Health Shakes which give you a heart, but you can never have more than 3 hit points at any given time. Fish are all over the place, in a bright blue circle, and impossible to miss. Each one adds to your speed/score multiplier and boost meter, which gradually decreases over time. Running into objects drops your multiplier as well. This means that the more fish you collect in a level, the higher your multiplier will be, and the bigger your final score will end up being.

The controls in Fatcat Rush are simple, and work very well within the game. You have a button for jumping, and a button for dashing while you’re on the ground, and kicking while you’re in the air. Dashing on the ground helps you break open crates that are hiding food, fish, and shakes, but you need to be careful with your timing, because running into one of these crates causes you to loose a heart. While you’re in the air, pressing the dash button makes you dash kick, this is very useful for long jumping, reaching harder to reach places, shortcuts, and long strands of food only accessible by jump kicking.

The graphics are great. Smooth and professional, and the environments are very colorful and vibrant. The user interface is great, very clear, and easy to navigate, as well as the HUD during gameplay. You have your 3 hearts in the top left corner, your level progress in the middle, and then your score. Underneath your score is your speed multiplier, and boost meter, going down the right side of the screen, then your jump button on the bottom left, and dash/kick button on the bottom right, with the pause button in-between the two. The physics are great, not too floaty, and never feeling weighed down, coupled with the speed and flow of the game, it plays wonderfully. The music and effects also fit in the game nicely, and add to the atmosphere and overall feel of the game.

There are no leaderboards for Fatcat Rush, which is a shame, because there’s great scoring mechanics, and it would add a whole lot to the replayability of the game. There are however, in-game achievements, 15 to be exact, along with 4 different outfits you can unlock, including one that makes you look like Mario. This does help add to drive the game, and help with the replayability, but once you get them all unlocked, you might loose a lot of the drive you once had to play. The game is very well done, very cute, and really is a blast to play. Great level design, and wonderful controls and physics, along with great scoring does make it a game that you will want to play through completely. But it does need a little more to make you want to keep it on your device for any extended period of time, an endless or survival mode would go a very long way. It is a very well made game, and the way it’s going now, will end up being one of my favorite runners, especially if the developers end up adding another mode, and online leaderboards. For $1.99, it’s a great deal, and definitely a game you should pick up if you’re a fan of the genre, or cats.

Fatcat Rush gets 4 out of 5 stars from me.

Link: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/fatcat-rush/id457251993?mt=8

GooMonsters is a new top-down hack-n-slash game from DigitallyBold, the makers of Fly Away Rabbit, which was on the CNET 100 in 2010. With their success of Fly Away Rabbit,DigitallyBold has set their standards pretty high. GooMonsters is a great example of that. In GooMonsters, you play as a girl who ends up stranded on a remote island in the middle of the ocean. When you come to, you realize that your dog has gone missing, and that there’s tracks leading off to the distance. Following them, you find your dog, only to see him right before he’s taken away by a Goo Monster. Now, you need to battle the Goos in order to save your dog,Fluffy.

Starting off in the Campaign Mode, you’ll go through 26 stages, each having one of 4 different missions to accomplish, Vanquish, Survival, Collector, and Trainer. Vanquish missions give you a certain number of Goo’s to kill while in Survival missions, you just need to stay alive for a certain amount of time. Collector missions give you a certain number of items to pick up, and Trainer missions require you to stand next to a Goo for a certain amount of time without killing it while other Goos come at you. You only have one life, but unlimited retries, if you die you start the mission over from the beginning.

There’s 11 mini-games that are unlocked while you progress through the Campaign Mode. These are pretty much mini-missions, not unlike the missions in the Campaign. For instance, the first mini-game you’ll unlock is called “Green Overdose”, in it you’ll try and kill as many Green Goos as you can in one minute. The second mini-game puts you up against Goos that explode and Black Goos that stick to you and slow you down, seeing how long you can survive. It’s a nice addition to the game, but some more differences here, really separating it from the Campaign Mode would have been nice.

There’s also a practice mode, where you can select which Goos you want to practice against in a sort of training level. If you get hit, you just re-spawn at the center of the screen with the stage cleared of enemies. It’s nice for getting use to the different goos you’re having problems with if you get stuck in Campaign Mode. You can also find a weaponry area where you can unlock different bombs and weapons setting their buttons next to your attack button. Once you unlock a bomb or weapon, you don’t need to buy more, they slowly recharge after each use. There’s lots of different items here, bombs that attract goos, drones that help you take out goos, weapons that emit high-frequency sound waves that have vibrations that blow goos up. Unlocking these weapons and bombs is a big part of the gameplay, using them to your advantage will be critical in moving on in the game, and DigitallyBold has done a great job giving us loads of different items to buy. There are no IAPs in the game, everything is unlocked with in-game points, and everything recharges, you don’t need to keep purchasing weapons after you’ve unlocked them, which is very nice.

There’s numerous colors of Goos, each with different abilities. Green Goos don’t really do anything, and you can just hack-n-slash at em all you want, they also are the only Goos that don‘t hurt you if you run into them. Blue Goos leave a puddle of blue goo on the ground, if you walk into it, the goo splatters onto the screen, blocking your view of a small area for a short time. Yellow Goos leave an acidic puddle on the ground that can damage both you and other Goos. There’s loads more, each with different attributes.

The controls in GooMonsters aren‘t what I was expecting from the screen shots. You tilt your device to move the character, holding on the button in the left corner to stop and stand still, rotating your device to turn around, and tapping the button in the right corner to attack. You are given calibration options before you start levels, but no sensitivity options, and I found myself wishing I wasn‘t needing to tilt my device as much as I was quite a bit while playing. During the first couple missions, I also couldn’t help but think that the game would play a lot better with a joystick and attack button. I did get use to the tilting controls, but I still really think that some control options should have been added into the game, and hope that they are thrown in in the future. The controls as they are now are very responsive though, and do end up working pretty well. The graphics are nice and polished, and the animations for the goo moving around and splattering on the ground are nice, and there‘s different animations for each different goo. You can tell that a lot of work went into making each goo look and move differently, and this does add quite a bit to the gameplay. The music and FX are fitting for the graphics and gameplay as well. The game does run very smoothly, no lag or jitters, and the game hasn’t crashed once on me.

There are GameCenter leader boards for the campaign, along with separate boards for each of the mini-games. There’s also 58 achievements, all of which adds a ton to the replay value. I’m going to give GooMonsters a 3.5 stars out of 5, and if you’re into hack-n-slash games, this is one worth checking out. At $0.99, it’s a great deal, and includes lots of content to keep you playing and re-playing for quite some time.

Link: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/goomonsters/id432923253?mt=8

Vertex Blaster is a new dual-stick space shooter from Warner Skoch. In it, you travel around a sphere, blasting away enemies, upgrading weapons, dropping bombs and going for a high-score. There’s 3 different game modes, each with different play styles. Arcade Mode, Meteor Shower Mode, and Survival Mode. Giving us loads of gameplay packed into this great game.

Arcade Mode, which drives you to get as many points as fast as you can, giving you more powerful weapons the more points you earn. The quicker you gain points, the better the weapon you’re given. Usually going after asteroids here helps boost your weapon quicker, giving you a bunch to shoot at in a very compact area. Two types of bombs are key here, one is a decoy bomb, and the other is a regular, drop and explode bomb. Decoy bombs leave a decoy of your ship behind, and are very useful for distracting the multitude of enemies that will be swarming you on the sphere. You’re awarded more bombs as your score progresses, regular bombs every 100,000 points, and decoy bombs every 150,000 points.

Meteor Shower Mode is a mode without enemies. You’ll just spend your time blowing up waves of asteroids, and protecting buildings on the surface of the sphere. There’s no bombs in this mode, but you do get a repair beam which helps you keep the buildings up and standing. In this mode it’s very important that you don’t hit the buildings with your weapon, or it’ll damage them, and also make sure not to hit asteroids with your repair beam, or else they will get bigger, giving you more of a problem while trying to keep your buildings safe. The last mode is Survival Mode. In this mode, you gain points by staying alive. You can’t earn extra bombs, and you don’t gain points by killing enemies. This is more of a dodging mode, waving through the swarms ofenemies coming at you, trying to stay alive. You’ve only got one life in Survival Mode, so it tends to be the hardest mode out of the three, but is also just as fun. This mode is better for little spurts of gameplay.

The graphics in Vertex Blaster are great. The game looks and plays like a retro version of Super Stardust HD. The simple graphics are presented in retina display, and the game is universal, so you’ll be able to enjoy the nice crisp graphics on your iPad as well. You can also pinch to zoom in and out of the sphere, taking you closer in, or further away from the action, which is a very nice addition to the game. The controls are spot on, and very responsive, even though the sticks don’t move, you won’t really notice while playing, because you’ll be pretty focused on the super smooth action going on in the center of the screen. The bomb buttons are placed on the right side of the screen, one above and one below your firing stick. GameCenter leaderboards are included, along with loads of achievements, making the replayability factor pretty high.

All-n-all, Vertex Blaster is a nice solid dual-stick space shooter. One that I’m very happy to have in my collection. The only complaint I have is that a couple of times, in the pause menu, I’ve accidentally hit ‘Return To Menu’ instead of ‘Resume’ causing me to loose my game. If the developer made it so that you were asked if you were sure you wanted to quit, it would fix accidents like this from happening, but I can’t really hold it against the developer because it was my own fault. It would also be nice if there were more weapons added. It is very nice not having to pick up weapon upgrades, and that they happen automatically, but it seems like a variety of weapons would be a very welcome addition to this game. Auto Pause for when you take both thumbs off of the screen would be a very nice addition as well. Lots of dual-stick shooters have this mechanic in their game, and it seems to work really well. The last thing I would like to see changed is that you’re thrown right into the action after you hit the button for whichever mode you decide to play. Having a countdown once your ship hits the sphere would be a great way to avoid some unfortunate off-the-bat deaths. Vertex Blaster is getting 4.5 out of 5 stars, and is recommended to any fan of the dual stick genre. At $0.99, it’s an awesome deal, and will definitely give gamers hours upon hours of entertainment.

Link: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/vertex-blaster/id453873865?mt=8

Bloo Kid is the first game for the iOS by Eiswuxe. It’s a platformer, soit’s a risky first game, but Eiswuxe has pulled it off almost flawlessly. You play as Bloo Kid, who is trying to rescue his girlfriend from the evil Wizard. You’re given 60 levels through 5 different worlds. Each level is the size of the screen, so don’t expect any side-scrolling goodness. But to avoid clutter, the developer has made it so that enemies spawn in different places of the levels, giving you waves of enemies to defeat before you complete the level.
With each level, you can get 3 stars. One star for beating the level, another for collecting the star that shows up at the end of the level, and lastly, for making it through the level without taking any damage.
With platformers, controls and physics are huge. If you can’t nail those, then your game will pretty much tank. Eiswuxe has done an amazing job here making the physics and controls work great. The controls are nice and tight, you don’t need to lift your thumb up to change directions, and the jump button is very responsive, and how high you jump is directly related to how long you hold on the jump button. The buttons are also placed very well, and are just the right size. The physics are great. The game doesn’t feel floaty or weighed down at all, which is always very nice to see. It makes the game feel like a game that’s meant to be played instead of a game that’s meant to be fiddled with, struggling with the controls the whole way through.

World 1 stars out pretty bland, but it’s designed for you to get a real grasp on the levels and how the game works. Eiswuxe decided to make the first world available in the lite version, which might have been a mistake, because most of the interesting gameplay comes after the first world. World 2 gets more difficult, and way more interesting, as you’re faced with enemies that throw objects at you, more platforms that move and take you to other parts of the level, bouncing spikes that you need to avoid, dashing enemies, enemies that you need to jump on in order to make it to other parts of the level, and enemies that need to be jumped on more than once in order to kill them. From here on, there’s not too many new enemies, but you will facemore and different ones as you progress. The level design as you go along gets better and better as well, and level design in a one-screen platformer is very important. But just like the controls and physics, Eiswuxe has pulled it off almost flawlessly. There are a couple of areas that it’s impossible to jump over spikes without an enemy being there, and a couple levels where the star is placed in an area where you’d need to jump on the last enemy in order to get there before the star shows up. You are given 5 hearts in each level, but having the stages set up this way just adds to the difficulty, and if you’re really worried about getting 3 stars on each of the 60 levels, this adds to the re-playability of the game.

At the end of each world, you’re faced by a boss, who takes 6 hits to kill. Each of the bosses has a special attack that you’ll need to figure out in order to survive the battle. Also, at the beginning of each world, you’re given a little clip of your girlfriend being taken to the next area where you’ll be playing. The animations in Bloo Kid are done very well, even when you stop running your character starts to take deep breaths. It’s got a cute factor to it, but it’s a game with difficulty for sure. Especially if you’re trying to get all the stars. Making it through some of the levels without taking damage might take you multiple tries, but each time you screw up, you’re going to end up cussing yourself, and not the controls or game. The retro graphics are fitting, as it’s a game that reminds me of older NES games with it’s frustration level, and difficulty, and that just draws me to it even more.
For their first game in the AppStore, Eiswuxe has shown that even though they’re new, they can make a professional game with top notch controls and physics, along with wonderful level design. You can check out the lite version in the AppStore, but it only contains the first world, which isn’t a very good representation of the entire game. I almost skipped out on this one because of the lite version, and it would have been a mistake on my end. But the lite version will give you a feel for the game, and let you check out the controls, physics, and first world level design for yourself. I’m giving Bloo Kid 4.5 out of 5 stars, and recommend it to all platformer fans. It could be a 5/5 game if it had online leaderboards, achievements, and some power-ups thrown in, but it’s definitely a game that you will play all the way through, and then most likely end up going back to just to try and get most or all of the stars. For $0.99, it’s a wonderful game.

Link: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/bloo-kid/id452677855?mt=8

DEO, by Strapped To A Meteor, is a new platformer available in the AppStore. Strapped To A Meteor’s last game, Go Go Giraffe, was an interesting addition to the iOS platformer genre as well, but this time it seems that they’ve taken Deo a couple steps further in terms of gameplay, graphics, and presentation. And we as gamers could not be more happy about it.

As soon as you start Deo up on your device, you’ll notice the awesome graphics. You’re thengreeted with a short tutorial, explaining how to navigate the level select menu, and how to play the game. Controls are simple, touch the screen to start charging your jump, let go to execute the jump. The goal of the game is to make it around the rotating level to the red piece of real-estate without touching any black part of the levels. While you’re making your way around the levels, charging your jumps and landing on the grassy parts, you need to kind of be quick and time your jumps just right because the gravity stays the same while the level is rotating, so you could potentially end up sliding off of the level, or jumping right into a part of the level that ends up blocking your path if you’re not quick enough. The level design here is a huge part of the game, and thankfully, STAM has definitely spent an extreme amount of time working on the levels, and getting the physics and rotation just right.

Between levels, or after you die, there’s a nifty little screen jump that sounds and looks kind of like static. This little addition helps set the mood of the game, along with the dark graphics and rain, really create a gloomy atmosphere. Coupled with some light music, it conveys sad and bittersweet feelings while playing the game. Playing Deo for long periods of time just gives you the same feeling you’d usually get staring out the window while it’s dark, cloudy, and muggy. I personally love this sort of atmosphere within games.

But even with all of these very nice graphics, and good tutorial, there are some issues that might hurt the gameplay. The amount of charge that you give your character isn’t always clear, making it pretty hard to know how far or high he’s going to jump. Also, closing the app, then re-opening it, it can be pretty confusing to find out where you left off, and you might just end up re-playing previously beaten levels. This complex level select screen might turn people off of playing as much as they normally would, along with the unknown charge amount, you’ll probably end up playing levels over and over again, even after you beat them. This is a pretty major downfall for the game, as everything else is just top notch, and looks awesome.

There’s also no online leader boards for fast times, and in fact, no scores for the game at all. You pretty much just play the game to experience it. I don’t really mind this, as Dirt is one of my favorite iOS games, and is also just a game that you play to experience. But for a lot of people, no scores, no times for the levels, no leader boards, and no achievements can be a very big turn off. It’s very hard for me to rate Deo 3.5 stars out of 5 because they got so much right, but neglected quite a bit as well. I do have very high hopes for this game’s future updates, and even higher hopes for Strapped To A Meteor’s next game, because the jump from Go Go Giraffe to Deo was a HUGE one.

Link: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/deo/id452167352?mt=8

Fractal Combat is a new aerial combat game from NewType K.K. It’s also their first offering to the AppStore, but it sure doesn’t show in their presentation. Fractal Combat is a very polished, top notch aerial combat game. The fractal graphics are wonderful, the music is great, and the controls are user interface are phenomenal. I really was not expecting what I got out of this game. The animations of the exploding enemies, along with the flaming bits of wreckage you see after the explosion is great. You rarely find this much attention to detail within games like this on the iOS, and seeing that it can be done, and done very well, might make you start to think less of all the other aerial combat games in the AppStore.

You’re given 10 missions throughout each of the 7 different landscapes, that‘s a whopping 70 missions. Each of the missions it’s your job to take out the targets, highlighted in red on the map. While you’re going after the targets, you’ll be bombarded by enemies that show up on the radar as yellow triangles. Each time you blow an enemy up, they leave behind some energy which if collected, gives you some shield. If you have no shield power, your armor, which is pretty much health, gets knocked down with each hit. Once you have no armor, you’re dead, and need to start at the beginning of the mission. If you happen to succeed in the mission, you’re awarded with a rating of 1 to 3 stars, along with credits which you can use to buy better weapons, generators,radars and even new ships in the garage.There’s 5 ships total that you can unlock byprogressing through the game, and then buy. Each has stronger armor, more shield capacity, and a different flight mode, or way of flying. For instance, you start off with a ship that has thrusters for flight, and the next ship up that you can buy uses magnetic rotors, each having drastically different ways of controlling them. There’s 7 different weapons, each with different speed, range, damage, and other attributes. 3 different radars, and 5 different generators. There’s slots in the game to have 6 profiles, so you can play the game on a device that’s shared between friends or family, and not end up playing each others games, or you can just start from scratch, and re-organize how you set up your weapons and which ships you buy.

You are given two choices of control options, a joystick which you can have on the left or right hand side of the screen, or you can use your devices accelerometer, and tilt while you play. You can also set the sensitivity, angle of accelerometer, and put the throttle on the left or right side of the screen. Fire buttons are on both the left and right hand sides of the bottom of the screen if you decide to use tilt controls, and on the opposite side of the screen of the joystick, if you decide to use that control method, enemies are also locked on automatically, so you can pretty much just keep tapping the fire button to blow them up. However, you are not able to change the Y direction, so pressing up on the control pad makes you go down, and pressing down makes you go up. Which is not the case for tilt controls, tilting the top of your iPod towards you makes the ship go up, and away from you to go down.This set up is a tad weird, but manageable if you’re use to default settings in most aerial combat games. You can also change the music and fx volume, which is always a nice option, and there is, of course, a reset to default option, just in case you end up screwing everything up and want to start from scratch. All-n-all, there’s quite a bit of customization going on in the options menu. But I think an option to turn the HUD display on or off would have been a good idea too, as it can seem kind of crowded on the screen, but not in a way that distracts from the gameplay.

The only real thing I think this game is missing is another mode, or a story. I know it’s not easy to create a story for a game, and it’s pretty much pointless to just cram a story into a game just for the hell of it, but if Fractal Combat had a story to go along with the missions, like why you’re fighting these ships, why they’re you’re enemies, something so that you know WHY, it would make this game a lot better. That, along with a survival mode, where you could take your fully equipped ship into a battle that only ended when you got shot down, would make this an even more amazing game. But with what it has now, Fractal Combat is still worthy of 4.5 out of 5 stars, and comes along with a strong recommendation from me. Anyone who’s into aerial combat, flight sims, or just action and arcade games in general should check this out one, it’s a game that you will never regret buying. It’s universal, and only $1.99.

Link: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/fractal-combat/id422010858?mt=8

Blast Zone Mega is the first iOS game from Maximilian Bode. The goal of the game is to destroy cities by maneuvering a bomb through circles, avoiding planes, and hitting the bullseye on theground. You start off as a grenade dropped out of a plane, and each circle you successfully make it through, makes you bigger. Hopefully, the end result is you being a big flashing mega-bomb that can take out the entire city. You move the bomb while falling through the air with a joystick in the lower left hand corner. Planes seem to come right at you, and get in your way quite a bit. Getting around them without touching them and still making it through the redcircles in the air is quite the challenge. The first world is pretty easy, but by the second world, you’ll be ready to throw your device at a wall if you keep trying to get perfect scores. You can, however, just avoid the planes, and not go through circles, hitting the ground as a grenade if you’d like to just rush through the story mode, and unlock arcade mode.

There’s 12 story mode levels, and 9 levels in arcade mode. Doesn’t sound like much, but after the first 4 levels, the difficulty will make it hard to unlock arcade mode, and even if you do manage to unlock it, you can go back and re-play the game trying to get a better high-score. GameCenter, or OpenFeint would be a very welcome addition to this game, as it is pretty much structured around getting a highscore. Right now, your only drive for score is to beat your own local scores, which does take away from the replayability quite a bit. No achievements is also a factor when it comes to replayabilty. But even without online scores or achievements, Blast Zone Mega has a certain spark that just keeps me going back for more.
It’s difficult, but it’s got the perfect amount of difficulty, where you want to keep going back to try and get further and further in the game. You’re given 5 lives for each of the 3 worlds that are split up into 4 levels, and the deaths are never caused by the game, bad controls, or lag, it’s always reflexes that aren’t quick enough. So there’s no battling the control system in this one, and you only have yourself to blame for each life you loose.

The retro graphics are also very well done, picturing Blast Zone Mega being released in the days of NES/SNES and SEGA games isn’t hard at all, and just like most of my favorite old-school games, it has that ‘just one more time’ feeling after each game over. You will be able to fly through power-ups that give you a shield you can use to blow up planes with, and help add to your score, and they’re placed in pretty good areas, giving them to you right before a little cluster of planes comes your way.
For Maximilian Bode’s first entry to the iOS gaming industry, this is a great game. Really, for any developing company, this would be a nice entry to the AppStore. More power-ups would be great to see in a future update, as right now, the only one in the game is a shield that lasts about 5 seconds. Maybe some more modes, like something that has you go after the planes or something would also be nice to see. But as it is right now, I’m giving Blast Zone Mega 4 out of 5 stars. There is room for improvement, but it’s still worth getting if you enjoy NES/SNES/SEGA era games that keep pushing you to play regardless of their difficulty. I will definitely be keeping my eyes on Maximilian Bode to see what he comes up with in the future. Blast Zone Mega is available in the AppStore for $0.99.

Link: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/blast-zone-mega/id455962619?mt=8