Fotonica, Dark Slash Hero & Orbitum (iOS)

Over Easter I downloaded a bunch of games most of which I deleted afterwards - but three made the cut and here they are : 

Fotonica - I already own this game twice; once on PC and once on the OUYA, but it really fits on the iPhone - the one button endless runner is so stylish and well designed - it's no surprise it's makers are Italian. I just find that there are too many numbers getting in the way of actually gaguing a high score and wish it was simplified in that area a little more so I could easily compare to friends and leaderboards and know if the run I am on is a good one or not.

Santa Ragona are also responsible for making the equally stylish and well designed (albeit confusing at times) MirrorMoon Ep and (and I just found this out while writing this) they are making their own card game: check it out.

Also just check out the webpage for Fotonica - it looks so good.

Dark Slash Hero - I played the original Dark Slash when it came out and thought that it was so good: simple controls, pixel graphics and sounds and colours directly from the world of Diablo. Slashing baddies like a Samurai gets you points and at some point there is a boss and on it goes - what is not to like?

But interest in the original dried up for me quicker than I expected - there just wasn't enough reason to keep playing. I left it on my phone as a reminder that this game was really good and that at some point there was going to be an update or maybe a some kind of reincarnation for the OUYA as a multiplayer game. Then suddenly out comes Dark Slash Hero.

Essentially it's the same game except with more of everything and this time around they've given us unlockables to upgrade our hero to survive longer and give him some special abilities. I found the IAP to be a little steep and was going to grind for a while before deleting it - maybe I wasn't alone because they dropped the price of their "coin doubler" upgrade by 50% making the game much more playable and grindable. Still there are some characters that can only be unlocked for €2 each (I think €1 would have been more reasonable) and you can't get them any in game currency (in this case : Souls). Still running in circles with your sword trailing behind you like a Ronin and then slashing up a 20 combo never gets old - that and the zombie moan that I am sure is from Diablo - I keep heading back for more.

Orbitum - is apparently a rhythm-based reflex game. I actually didn't play much with the sound on (playing mostly with one hand while I sat in my son's room humming looping melodies to make him sleep.) so for me it was simply a really clean swirling hypnotic high score game.

It's an intriguing concept that gives you charge of this little particle looping around a black hole that eventually will suck the orbit that you are on in, so you must jump to a higher orbit and avoid it. There are also evil red triangle particles that will destroy you riding on some orbits and green and blue particles which you can crash into for bonuses and special effects. At some point the game goes faster, the colours change to distract you and the red triangles form all kinds of formations.

The real dizzying doozy about this is that while everything is swirling you can only go "up" an orbit, so whatever you pass it passed for good - this calls for some careful planning. The thing I find most difficult is when the game "freezes" and everything stops orbiting (maybe the black hole even stops) and you are the only thing that continues to move. Kills me every time.

Funnily enough, this isn't the only game that I have played lately that uses an orbit as a game play mechanic - 0RBITALIS being another, and if you are counting games that rotate and are circular this might even be the 3rd of 4th game I have played this year. Spinning is the new thing I guess....

The game is made by Happy Magenta, who also made Laser Hell (a game I checked out while playing all kinds of Flappy Bird clones) that was one of my favourites and have made a few other (I hesitate to use the word....) 'clones' that are actually worth playing - but they are all very different from Orbitum, which you should check it out (Bonus : also playable with one finger thumb....!)

Sunburn (iOS) & Framed (iOS)

We are moving at the end of the month just across town but this will be our first move with children and I am quite stressed out by the whole thing. I have been packing all weekend - trying to get most of it done early. 

Lately, I haven't really been able to sit down and calmly play something. My sessions are short or non-existent - I have been watching more movies though - I can do that while packing....

I did find time to play Apotheon for a few hours this weekend but mostly it has been small "breaks" from sorting and packing Sunburn and Framed, on the iphone and ipad respectively.

In Sunburn your crew has been scattered between planets, stuck in black holes, orbiting asteroids and it is up to you to rescue them, tether them do to you, balance your oxygen level and avoid flaming asteroids while doing so and then finally fling yourself and everyone tied to you into the sun to die a flaming death because no one should die alone. I love the cute style of the game juxtaposed with dark humor of the suicides and the little details like the screen shake and sound effects really make this feel like a finished thought through physics puzzler with character. It reminded me somehow of Little Luca which doesn't seem to be on the App store so don't delete it if you've got it! But it's still available for Android.

Framed is an interesting premise - by rearranging the frames in a comic book like scene you can complete the story, do it wrong and you can watch the outcome of the scene. I really enjoy the palette of this game and the animation - the mechanic of rearranging the story is good - some are as simple as 2 frames, others 6 which becomes more of a logic puzzle - but it loses it's luster after a few pages. There is no story, voice over or speech bubbles to read so I am now just playing with the sound turned off. It's still fun to watch but it left me thinking that it could have been so much more. Maybe Framed 2? You can watch a gameplay video here (spoilers!)

Both games are actually pretty good and fit my attention span right now, Framed snuck up on me - I didn't think I would like it as much as I do and the quick pace of the story made me want to play more each time I promised myself "one more page" - Sunburn had me stumped a few times and if it didn't have such a great space premise I think i probably would have given up on it by now, another thing that is strange about that is that it is the 3rd game to go though my hands this past week or so with an orbit / gravity mechanic.

While packing I have also been watching alot of video game review channels, Angry Joe is still my favourite but I found ProJared this week and have been enjoying some of his insights - both of their "Most Disappointing Games of 2014" are worth watching so I'll leave you with that : 

Timberman (iOS)

Timberman is the new Flappy Bird - at least that's what some people have been saying  and despite it's "Canadian" theme it's made by Pawel Jedrysiak of Poland (where I am told it also has trees and people that cut them down) It has quite a few similarities with Flappy Bird too: a difficult game with a simple premise, leaderboards, randomly generated levels, "retro" graphics and one hit insta-deaths.

You tap the left and right sides of the screen to chop a chunk out of the infinity-tree avoiding the branches and keeping an eye on a timer. You can set your own pace but that timer can only be replenished by moving quickly so you have to choose your poison; either move fast and dangerously or carefully and run down the timer.

The free version is plagued by these terrible commercials that can only be removed with the tiny X. The 'gold' version only costs a buck and has a few perks (more trees and lumberjacks) but also removes the ads so anyone who is going to play even over 2 hours of this should definately just pay the dollar and be done with it (I just had to post this example of one of the ads because seriously "You can be a Hero..." Does that look like a HERO to you? and does it look like something you WANT to play? Strange....)

Also in the free version there are three landscapes that you chop in and after you die, as was with Flappy Bird, you are going to want to try straight away again because you were "so close" to that highscore. 

I wonder where the concept of the game came from and I wasn't able to find anything online. I would guess that it started with the idea of tapping left and right on the screen and having something in the middle that advanced towards the player which that player also dodged something....but why lumberjacks? I'd really like to ask Pawel about that.

Some of the new lumberjacks can be unlocked with a highscore or simply by chopping a lot of wood; A Trapper in a racoon fur hat,  Sir Tim (-ber?), Mr.Tree (Mr.T), an indian, and a hockey player to name a few. You can unlock "Jason" of horror film fame simply by liking the game on Facebook. Some are far more difficult to unlock like "Mr.President" - who requires you to get the score of 600 three times in a row!

Dr.Jones is also in there (who I personally believe should be a playable character in pretty much EVERY single game) and there is an homage to the most famous of the one-button genre "Lazy Bird."

If you're game is popular you're going to get cloned and I found quite some ugly screenshots to show you just the kinds of clones that are floating around on the App store. A developer named Oliver Joyce wrote an article about making his own clone (and the nature of cloning) worth reading here.

For a moment this afternoon during my lunchbreak I was tempted to buy the Gold version of this game (or at least just leave the free version on my phone, its just tiny right?) but then when I looked over at all the other icons of Flappy-esque and twitchy one-button games I have already got myself into I thought better of it. I need to stop playing time wasting games like this. 

When I got back to my computer and began to read things like: the game "you'll hate yourself for playing" or "frustratingly addictive as Flappy Birds" or this article titled "senselessly addictive or just senseless" - I decided I am going to have to delete this.....just after I beat my own highscore (Come on 300!)

Here's a link to Timberman's official page.

And another link to Pawel's company "Digital Melody".

Out There (iOS)

Few games lately have grabbed my attention and held it like 'Out There.'

I have been watching it since its release but it took my brother to visit (playing it on his android phone) and then a board gaming night (where we played 'Space Alert') to finally get me into the mood to really dig into it.

I turned it on today around lunch; am now on my fourth attempt and have loved every minute (every hour actually, I've clocked 4 I think). Each time getting a deeper understanding of the game and getting a little further. 

One of my favorite sci-fi movies is Duncan Jones' "Moon" and this game touches on the same vein and I'm loving it. And until we get a beautiful point-and-click (fan made) version of that movie, this will do...

Firstly the visuals stand out: comic book style eye-popping colours accented with clean fonts but it won't be out done by the sound and music which seems to hold the game in its magical and lonely space journey. I'd love to upload all the screenshots I've been taking but am afraid to ruin the mystery for the players I know who are currently enjoying 'Out There' or who might be (should be) now considering it.

Log entries happen every time you enter a new star system (or dungeon - because the game design is rooted in the Rogue genre) and are interesting, humorous, believable and realistic as they become more and more bizarre the longer our lone hero is isolated in space.

The pace of the game really fits me well at the moment too: no timers, nothing that requires speed. If my kids (or my boss) come to interrupt my game I can simply close the app and continue where I left off - there are no battles (that I have seen) in the way that FTL or Star Command have. The excitement comes instead through the decisions and discoveries you make and risks you take and there are many.

The most original idea is learning an alien language; the more you encounter an alien species the more you learn, slowly working away at it, piece by piece, word by word. It's refreshing and clever and adds to the isolation and strangeness in this deep space adventure. 

 

Mutant Mudds (iOS/3DS)

It's Mutant Mudds of Nintendo 3DS fame! I was really excited to play this, having heard about it on the 3DS. It would finally be a full fledged platformer on iOS, not just some platformer that breaks the action after every level to make you spend coins, or gems, show you a bunch of commercials, before allowing you to play the next short level.

But somehow the mechanic of jumping into the background, then back into the foreground and back and forth etc.....it just wasn't enough to hold my attention. Maybe you need to see it in 3D, maybe it was because I recently played FEZ (which I loved) and it just seemed flat in comparison, maybe you have to be able to play on a screen where you aren't covering a quarter of it with your thumbs... either way with a tear in my eye: deleted.

Knightmare Tower (Ouya/iOS/Android)

The first thing that I played on my Ouya was Knightmare Tower. I had already played Burrito Bison on my iphone and found it funny and challenging and hard to put down. I played the free version for a few hours and already had upgraded my knight and rocket as far as they could go - then I decided I was having lots of fun and bought it. Thank you Juicy Beast.

The first couple blast-offs are short lived, but slowly you accumulate enough gold to make some serious upgades to your knight, which leads to longer flight time, which leads to more money which leads to more upgrades...(and repeat). Oh and there are a bunch of Princesses to save, not just one. Each Princess that you save will give you a chance to get an item during a run, nice little bonus. There are also potions that you can upgrade with gold and challenges that you can skip with gold (thanks for that by the way, that made the game much more enjoyable - no sarcasm). It still feels a lot like a mobile port, which I am sure it is, although the iOS version came out later and a two player mode would have really made it a substantial game, but nothing beats being completely in the zone and just smashing and slashing enemies in half or popping bubbles filled with gold and hearts - it just feels very "classic" somehow.

I love colourful games right now. The simplicity of the concept really sucks you in, the art-style is typical of Juicy Beast : great. I also really enjoy reliving that feeling that my first Nintendo games gave me, I don't really understand how to explain that, maybe it's an obsessive drive of sorts, but this game seemed to give me that feeling. It could almost be a Mario game, he would just be jumping on flying Goombas & Koopas and he would make that funny spread eagle death jump when he hits the lava....yeah it would totally work. I'm loving Knightmare Tower.

ps. I have read that it's perfect on the iPhone. If you've got it let me know.

Tinman Can (iOS)

I guess what attracted me to this was the cute graphics and simple racing idea - but it has that terrible level-chooser that I hate. As you play you try to land jumps perfectly and master your energy by collection 'hovatrons' to be the first to the finish line. Spend 'hovatrons' to pimp out your unicycle-robot with bling and vanity items. In single-player you are always first, because you're playing against the clock....it's a lonely experience. In multiplayer you....erm, don't play at all because I couldn't find anyone playing.....so, cute backgrounds, but deleted.

The Pinball Arcade (iOS, Android, PlayStation3, PS Vita, Xbox 360, and Mac)

Going to the arcade as a kid, I was never a big pinball person myself.  Although the tables looked cool, I found them kind of arcane with their magical 'specials' and 'lit' ramps and such.  Plus, I was never a good enough player to make my quarter last more than a few minutes.  For that reason I tended to gravitate towards more familiar games such as air hockey, Die Hard Arcade and the Terminator 2 shooter.

However, as arcades have come and gone (and hopefully are coming back again, albeit more sparsely), my interest in pinball has been renewed.  It would seem that pinball and its associated community is still relatively strong, despite the downfall of arcades.  In fact, it is much easier to find a pinball table in a bowling alley than it is to find an older style arcade cabinet.  There seems to be something about pinball that keeps fans dedicated to its upkeep.

I have never been all that impressed with digital pinball games.  Although my wife swears by Epic Pinball (Epic Megagames - DOS), I could never really get in to pinball games in general.  Manipulating the flippers by using buttons on a keyboard just didn't feel right, and the physics always seemed very artificial.  That has all changed though with my discovery of The Pinball Arcade.

I can't remember where I found out about this game.  It could have been a mention on Reddit, or maybe an advertisement in RetroGamer magazine.  Either way it doesn't matter.  This game is the cats meow.

You only have 20 minutes to kill?  Fire up your favourite table and practice hitting the left ramp a few times.  Your schedule suddenly clears up a bit and that twenty minutes becomes an hour of downtime?  Perfect!  Now you can put your practice to good use and go for the jackpot.

Farsight Studios obviously loves pinball and obviously cares about their product.  You can feel it in the fit and finish of the game.  I'm not talking about genius menus trees, or amazing intro cinematics because it has neither of these.  I'm talking about the game play itself.  It. Is. Awesome.  It easily is the closest thing to playing pinball you can experience without having a table in your house.

Tables run for about $4.99 for two (usually), or you can buy the season pack for either $30 or $40 depending on season.  Yes, that seems expensive, but the tables have been beautifully recreated from original, authentic pinball tables.  Plus, the pinball table at the local bowling alley near me costs a dollar per ball, or three balls for two dollars.  It doesn't take a genius to see how fast you can eat through real money, especially when you're new to a table.  This game also includes instructions for every table so that you can unravel those previously mentioned 'arcane' strategies and put them to use racking up points!

Having mentioned the fact that the tables are based off of real tables, I want to speak to this for a moment.  Being a nostalgia junky, I think it is absolutely amazing that a company is taking the time to digitally archive electro-mechanical devices, and that they're doing it properly right from the beginning.  Yes, you can emulate old consoles and arcade cabinets but it's never truly the same.  Somehow, Farsight has done it in such a way that it 'feels' right. It'll never be exactly the same as playing a real table - you can't feel the life of the table through you hands nor can you smell the warm bulbs, but it's pretty freakin' close.  I'm not sure what they've put in their secret sauce, but I hope they never change it!

I highly recommend that anyone with any device (sorry Blackberry!) at least give it a shot.  There is a free table of the month available for play, and you can try any table up to the minimum high score.

Who knows, maybe you'll get hooked as well.  The more pinball fanatics, the better for the community!

|http://www.pinballarcade.com/

Dungeon Hearts (iOS)

Devolver Digital (of Serious Sam & Hotline Miami) has recently released Dungeon Hearts - a twist on the match three genre. You play a band of heros that stand in the oncoming wake of the "fatestream" - four lines on which little gems slide towards them. By matching these gems, mixing and linking them horizontally and vertically, you create combos and damage and kill of monsters in your way. After every battle you get a chance to play a mini puzzle on the fatestream to level up your characters, and then they get skills etc. The monsters have gems too and when these reach your heroes they take damage or other bad things happen, blindness, freezing, the usual. The whole thing looks like Guitar Hero mixed with Bejeweled mixed with Hero's Academy - which is good, the lack of actual violence and the colourful gameplay makes is possible to play infront of my little daughter (who loves to watch her daddy play on the iPad)

I bought this to support Devolver, since I loved Hotline Miami, but I'm already having a ton of fun with this face-paced puzzler. Another positive : only 1 in-app-purchase and that's to unlock the soundtrack right away (which must unlock eventually if you play well) - which shows some respect for the people that bought this game, there's no IAP for costumes or character upgrades or different skills...and it makes a big difference - gold farming here would really bring down the quality of the experience.

League of Evil (iOS)

If you like Super Meat Boy then your going to like League of Evil! The controls are tight and precise - the levels are short but often pretty tricky. Like SMB (huh, an acronym that could mean Super Meat Boy or Super Mario Bros.) the game is all about timing and precision so it's good that the controls are the best you can get on iOS.
The idea of a flying kick attack is also pretty cool, as its used to lengthen double jumps over spike filled gaps and take out pesky enemies.
The graphics are small and simple, but detailed. Ravenous games knows that a smaller character allows for the player to have a good overview of the level (unlike Mega Man X* on iOS)

Everytime you die your recorded reply appears as a ghost during your next retry. These pile up as soon (as in SMB) there's a small army of jumping, distracting ghosts that preeters out towards the end on the level, it's quite amazing to think this is on a handheld. Too bad it's not on Steam with a community and player-made levels because it I really want to play it with a NES contoller.

*review pending

Infected by Infectonator

Infectonator got me quick. Sitting next to my 2 year old daughter while she had a bath, I turned on my phone wanting to delete some apps and clean up a bit. I stumbled upon Infectonator and decided to give it a chance before I deleted it. I remember the only reason I downloaded it was because of the pixel zombies - I thought they looked pretty darn good. Little did I know the blood bath that I was in for.

Goal: infect or kill citizens. That's right, it's not just infecting you can also "support" meaning to throw in an exploding barrel of infectious slime or a grenade and land mines. This game is so violent (achievements for killing police, blood smeared asphalt) and death and carnage all over - it would have been banned in the years of the SNES - and now it's on your friendly App Store!
The more you kill the more gold you can collect to upgrade your zombies and unlock new ones. Oh and the graphics are rally great, the people and the world looks a little generic but the zombies are cool and when the fighting starts its fun to sit back and smile with schadenfreude.

I love that there's a real world map and you go around major cities infecting people, then the FBI and other enemies show up in hazmat suits - there are some special characters too (for some reason I have a Christmas version and there's a snowman and Santa that love to kill zombies) there are also references to other games and movies: Skyrim, Left 4 Dead, Super Mario and Game of Thrones. There's also a little news TV channel that gives you a carnage report at the end of every level, but you can also access it from the menu to read an interesting random fact (did you know hippo milk is pink?)

Another fun detail is the speech bubbles that pop-up in the crowds, in the language of that city - I only understand the French and German but they were pretty funny.

But hey Altec, it's just a trick! There's IAP and the world map you like it's just a variant of the level selector you so much hate! Yes and no.... The IAP is never really present, only of you try to access it and the game is definitely beatable without using it. The map-level-selector I think is forgivable because thy tried something different and it fits well to the style - they could have just make a list of the levels on little squares with a star rating under it like all those ugly games but they didn't.

Funny things I found out were that you can replay a level over and over again (support objects like grenades are one use only but zombies are reusable) so you can rack up gold quickly by grinding a well populated level. Also the "free gold" that you are rewarded for linking the game to your Facebook and twitter accounts you can get just by clicking on the button, allowing the respective app to open (but not confirming) and then returning to the game - easy! Strangely though when you start your 2nd play through everything you unlocked is gone - which makes me wonder what would have happened if I had payed real money for those unlockables. (?)

Sure, at its core your just dropping units in and watching them randomly attack or die, but somehow the gore and the madness make it worth it. It's a mobile game for short breaks but as I found over the day I started playing - you'll be through in 2 hours and on your 2nd play through before you know it.

Keeper.

Bit Dungeon

I read about Bit Dungeon a while back, when it was only for the iPad. At the time I didn't have an iPad so I forgot about it, until they released the iPhone version. However I didn't really see a reason to rush off and buy it - my iPhone already has pages of unplayed games I want to check out and more then a few rogue-likes.
Today Bit Dungeon is free and I have been a little bored with the offerings on my phone so I checked it out during some downtime at work : it's awesome.
I'm only on my 2nd character (first one died rather quickly) but here's what I know:
The game doesn't insult your intelligence by putting you through a 20min tutorial. It doesn't have a bunch of pop-ups for Facebook-linking or try to sell you some stupid coins!
You travers each room and battle some monsters, some drop potions for health and magic, others drop little black circles you use for buying stuff later, more likely they drop nothing. When all the monsters are killed you get a key and use it to open another door and make your way through the dungeon. If you just run trough you will die so you're going to want to grid a little, re-entering areas where you will find ghosts and rats eating the corpses of your fallen foes that you can kill. Sometimes after clearing a room three globes will appear and clicking one of them will up your stats: level up yo!
Which brings me to the details, the game does this very well, I've already seen different styles of attacks from different weapons, bloody footprints because I walked over a bloody corpse and my 2nd character had to fight a totally different set of baddies in the first dungeon meaning some of the dungeon generation is done randomly. Equipment you pick up shoes up on your character (ie. skull helmet equipped makes your character wear a skull helmet - not just upping his stats) and a quick click on the health globe shows that there is a bit of depth in the stats too!
The retro style looks great, the inventory shows slots for rings and magic (meaning its coming) and I finally found a place to save!
In short: this is a keeper, fast action (even with dodging projectiles) leveling up, interesting art style - combing dungeons for loot! On my iPhone! So I guess for a while ill be taking far more "extended bathroom breaks."