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‘Blind World’ Review – Artistic 2D Rolling Puzzler
First Screenshots of Upcoming ‘Battleheart’ from Mika Mobile
First Screenshots of Upcoming ‘Battleheart’ from Mika Mobile is a post from: Best Iphone Apps Review Website
Developer Mika Mobile, who are responsible for the popular Zombieville USA [$1.99/Lite/HD] and OMG Pirates! [$1.99/Lite], have just announced their newest iOS project called Battleheart. Battleheart is a real-time tactical strategy RPG that uses a line drawing mechanic for controlling the actions of its characters. You'll create a party of 4 from 8 different classes, and Mika Mobile assures there will be a robust skill system that offers a ton of ways to outfit your party members.
Here is an excerpt of some additional details about Battleheart that Mika Mobile has offered up in our forums:
The strategy lies in how you configure your party between the 8 classes and dozens of active and passive powers they possess. As they level up, you choose new skills which when used properly help to control the chaos of the battlefield. Examples include spells that slow time or raise your defenses, poisons that paralyze enemies, or attacks that simply deal heavy damage to thin out the enemies numbers fast.
Not too much more is known about the gameplay in Battleheart other than what can be found in the upcoming games thread, but we do know that the game will have universal iPad support and be optimized for Retina Display and fast-app switching. Mika Mobile is shooting for a release before the holidays, but are not going to rush anything out before the game is ready. They are currently working on a video preview of Battleheart in action, and we'll bring you any more news on the game as soon as it's available.
‘Pocket Frogs’ Review – Much Like the Cane Toad in Australia, This Game has Taken Over my Household
‘Pocket Frogs’ Review – Much Like the Cane Toad in Australia, This Game has Taken Over my Household is a post from: Best Iphone Apps Review Website
Note: As of this writing, Pocket Frogs is available in Australia, New Zealand, and other App Stores which reside in time zones where it's currently 9/15. It will appear in App Stores across the world over the day until it finally shows up for download in the US App Store at 11:00 PM EST.
We've been following the development of NimbleBit's Pocket Frogs [Free] for quite some time now; the thread in our upcoming games forum has even grown to over 800 posts. Beta testers loved the game and the excitement surrounding a freemium game that was designed from the ground up to provide a great gameplay experience without making gamers feel nickel and dimed seemed contagious. Having spent a considerable amount of time with pre-release builds of the game and the final pre-release copy of the game, and Pocket Frogs really is something that everyone should try– even if you've shied away from freemium games in the past.
In Pocket Frogs, as the title may suggest, you are responsible for breeding, growing, and maintaining a habitat (or eventually, multiple habitats) of cute little frogs. The process goes a little something like this: Tapping a frog brings up a menu, initially you have the option to move the frog to another habitat, take the frog out to the pond, or just sell the frog for coins. Usually you will want to take frogs to the pond, which consists of a quasi-exploration mini-game where you hop around on lily pads somewhat similar to Dizzypad [$1.99 / HD]. After eating a certain number of dragon flies in the pond, the frog is tamed. A tamed frog when tapped in its habitat has three additional options. You can breed it (more on that later). You can catalog it, which allows you to essentially re-order a frog in the in-game mail if you sell it or need another one. Finally, you can gift the frog to any friend via the Plus+ network.
At any time you can take any of your frogs back to the pond, which will allow them to fill up on dragonflies to increase their happiness. In addition, you will randomly stumble across presents which could be an additional frog, new backgrounds or objects for your habitat, coins, or the various in-game consumables. Also, there are other frogs bouncing about the pond which you will run in to, and when you jump to the same lilly pad you have the option to breed with said frog.
Initially, breeding frogs seems fairly simple but as you progress further in to the game it actually gets quite complex. Basically, frogs have three traits: Their base color, their pattern color, and the pattern itself. When you breed two frogs you're shown the possible outcome, which could be up to 8 different combinations of colors and patterns. You can either breed frogs just for the fun of creating new frogs with cool colors and patterns, or you can shoot for the various goals in the game.
Pocket Frogs is host to tons of different awards (each coming with their own experience point bonus) which involve breeding to collect a certain number of specific frogs of various colors. You can either complete these challenges entirely on your own by breeding your existing frogs and collecting new ones either by buying them with coins at the in-game store, finding them in the pond, or breeding with other frogs in the pond. Alternatively, if you have other friends playing the game, they can send you the frogs you're missing (or the ones you need to breed with) via an in-game mail system. In addition to awards, there are also frog requests that you can take which act like an in-game quest system that require a specific breed of frog. These are completed the same way.
It seems like people are (understandably) skeptical about any freemium game, as often whatever in-app purchase fuels the game doesn't feel optional at all. Pocket Frogs has the best balance of free gameplay and in-app purchases of any free game I've played both on the App Store and in other freemium markets such as Facebook games. Like any freemium game, Pocket Frogs is monetized both through iAds that appear in a few of the submenus (but never in any actual gameplay screens) as well as buying in-game consumables.
When you breed frogs, little frog eggs appear in your nursery. Different frogs take different amounts of time to hatch, and you can either wait for them or spend growth potions to get them to hatch instantly. Frogs that are bought from the frog shop or sent to you by friends appear in your in-game inbox, and take time to be delivered. Just like the frog eggs, you can either wait, or spend stamps to have them delivered instantly. Also, if you mail frogs to friends, that costs stamps too.
The cool part is that you can always take your frogs out to the pond, and if you hop around enough, you can find both stamps and growth potions randomly. Unlike nearly every other freemium game I've played, it doesn't seem like you're ever at a point where there is nothing to do in Pocket Frogs. Even if your nursery is full and you can't breed anymore and your mailbox is full preventing you from getting any goodies and you're waiting on the timers of frog eggs and mail, you can still jump around collecting coins. Overall the entire experience doesn't seem to be anywhere near as limited as most freemium games if you decide to not pay, you just won't get the instant gratification of seeing what your eggs hatch in to.
Pocket Frogs is a fantastic game loaded with cute graphics, tons of content, and a free/paid system that is masterfully balanced to truly feel optional instead of required like many freemium games. Even if cute graphics aren't your thing, the depth of the game is extremely impressive and breeding the rarest frogs could serve as a great goal for the hardcore. I've barely scratched the surface of what there is to do in Pocket Frogs in this review, but if all this sounds even remotely interesting you really should give this game a try. To sweeten the deal, it even comes loaded with Retina Display graphics and is universal to play on either the iPhone or the iPad. If you've already got the game and are looking to friends to play with, stop by this thread on our forums.
App Store Link:
http://itunes.apple.com/nz/app/pocket-frogs/id386644958?mt=8″>Pocket Frogs, Free (Currently only available in international App Stores, will be available in the US App Store at 11:00 PM EST)
‘Slice It!’ Review – This Puzzle Game Will Have You In Pieces
‘Slice It!’ Review – This Puzzle Game Will Have You In Pieces is a post from: Best Iphone Apps Review Website
Slice It! from developer Com2uS is a new puzzle game where you must dissect various shapes into equal parts. It may sound painfully simple, and can be if you're just dealing with straight circles and squares. But Slice It! throws some seriously crazy shapes at you that will have you scratching your head in how to approach them. A hint system helps prevent you from getting stuck on some of the harder shapes, and a nice five star scoring system urges you to retry puzzles in an effort to get a perfect score. With 60 levels to tackle, and room for more to be added in the future, Slice It! provides a surprising amount of slicing fun.
Right off the bat you'll notice that Slice It! has a very nice presentation, utilizing a hand drawn colored pencil look with graphics enhanced for iPad and Retina Display. Levels are displayed in groups of twenty on a stage select screen, and are unlocked one after the other as you complete them. There are five tabs on the side to select the different groups of levels, though only the first three currently have content. Tapping the fourth and fifth hints that more levels should be coming in future updates. It's slightly annoying to see these empty tabs in the game, but the 60 levels are more than enough to occupy most gamers attention for a good amount of time.
When you select a level, the shape that must be sliced is drawn for you. Touching a point outside of the shape anchors a starting point for the slicing line, and dragging across the shape gives you a dotted line of where the slice will take place. The real trick to Slice It! is that you must slice the shape into the required amount of segments for each level, as well as use up all of the slicing lines. This can call for some more creative thinking, even with basic shapes. Once you've fulfilled the segment and slice line requirements, the shape is sliced up, and you are graded on how accurately you can get each segment to be the same percentage of the entire shape. For example, a square cut into fourths would require each segment to be as close to 25% of the entire shape as possible to earn 5 stars.
If you slice too many segments, don't use all your slices, or have segments that are a much different proportion than the rest then you will fail the level and have to retry. If you do well and get 5 stars on a stage, you earn a hint to be used on one of the future stages. Each hint will tell you where a slice line needs to go to get you started, and in my experience with some of the more odd shapes, the hints can be invaluable.
A couple of small issues stick out in Slice It!. For starters, it can be hard to accurately place the anchor point on the iPhone's smaller screen, and I sometimes found myself having to try multiple times to get a line started where I needed it to. Related to this, if you draw a line and decide it's not where you want it to be, you can drag the end point of the line back to the starting point to not draw a line at all. Unfortunately the game often ends up drawing the line anyway, which can easily be erased with the undo button but is annoying nonetheless. Finally, sometimes multiple slice lines can intersect in the middle of a shape and cause a very tiny segment to be made, unbeknownst to you until you actually try to complete the level. This causes you to have to retry the level since that extra segment goes over the requirement.
These are all minor issues in an otherwise fun game, and merely serve to annoy rather than ruin the overall enjoyment of Slice It!. I was surprised by how much I enjoyed playing, and there is a strong “one more try” factor when aiming to get the most equal segment proportions possible. Even when I had already achieved 5 stars, I found myself retrying a level anyway just to see if I could get exactly equal segments purely for my own satisfaction. Players in our forums are enjoying the game as well, and if you're looking for a new type of puzzle game with a charming style that's easy to pick up and play, take a look at Slice It!.
App Store Link: Slice It!, $0.99 (Universal)
Choose Your Own Adventure with Choice of Games’ Library of Interactive Fiction
Choose Your Own Adventure with Choice of Games’ Library of Interactive Fiction is a post from: Best Iphone Apps Review Website
We've posted a few times about the Fighting Fantasy, Gamebook Adventures, and Sorcery! series of interactive fiction and have gotten a surprisingly positive response every time. Those books are like the Choose Your Own Adventure novels you may remember reading as a child, with an element of randomization thrown in by needing to complete various dice challenges throughout the books to determine which way the story forks. Choice of Games abandons this dice-based gameplay model for a much more traditional (and in depth) multiple choice system for each decision that I actually enjoyed quite a bit.
Under the hood of all these games is something Choice of Games calls "ChoiceScript". ChoiceScript allows for works that are much more complicated than your typical two decision fork that leads off to two different pages as it supports things like variables in the story. These variables not only allow you to sometimes name characters yourself, but are often used as character statistics, with some decisions leading to gaining a particular stat which could potentially open up areas later in the book.
Choice of the Dragon in Mobile Safari on the left, Choice of Broadsides app on the right.
The coolest part about all this is that Choice of Games has a guide on how to use ChoiceScript, and it's actually quite simple. If you've got the time to invest in to building a piece of interactive fiction in ChoiceScript, they'll even host it for you on their online game portal and App Store listing, sharing 75% of the profits.
The presentation of these games is very bare bones, and are little more than black text on a white background with UI elements that just consist of basic form components. They play the same both in the browser on ChoiceOfGames.com as they do in app form, so if you've got constant internet connectivity you can just make a home screen bookmark for the game you're playing. If you've got an iPod touch or a non-3G iPad, the apps are totally worth downloading if you find yourself getting in to them.
Just like the other interactive fiction we've posted about, these works are completely independent of each other and reading one isn't required to enjoy the rest:
Choice of the Vampire, $1.99 Begin your two-hundred year journey as a vampire in New Orleans, 1814; choose whether you will seek love, power or redemption as you negotiate the growing-pains of the young Republic.
Choice of Romance, $1.99 Play as a young courtier who catches the monarch’s eye. Will you find true love? Gain a crown? Lose your head? A text-based multiple-choice game of romance, deception and court intrigue.
Choice of Broadsides, Free Multiple-choice swashbuckling naval adventure, in the spirit of C. S. Forester’s Hornblower or Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey/Maturin books, with a dash of Jane Austen.
Choice of the Dragon, Free Play as a fire-breathing dragon who sleeps on gold and kidnaps princesses for fun. Dominate the local kingdom, loot and pillage, and inspire terror in the hearts of your enemies!
Paranoia, Free By Kie Brooks. When you think your doctor may be trying to kill you, life gets complicated. Survive this multiple-choice game if you can.
What Happened Last Night?, Free By Kie Brooks. “What Happened Last Night?” is a dark but occasionally humorous action murder mystery multiple-choice text-based game.
The Nightmare Maze, Free By Alex Livingston. “The Nightmare Maze” is the story of a 19th-century Bostonian plagued by strange nightmares. Lose yourself in the depths of a tormented psyche and try to find the logic to the night terrors in this haunting text-based multiple-choice game.
Popcorn, Soda … Murder?, Free By Pauzle. “Popcorn, Soda … Murder?” is a thrilling text-based multiple-choice murder mystery. Can you find all the clues at the murder scene and piece together who must have done it and how?
‘Final Freeway’ Review – A Fun Homage to ‘OutRun’ for iPhone and iPad
‘Final Freeway’ Review – A Fun Homage to ‘OutRun’ for iPhone and iPad is a post from: Best Iphone Apps Review Website
The 1986 arcade classic OutRun, with its easy to pick up gameplay and simplistic mechanics, seems like it would be a perfect fit for the iPhone. It's strange then, given the wealth of racing games on the App Store, that no one has taken a serious stab at an OutRun-inspired game yet. Now, developer Oyatsukai.com has risen to this challenge with their first iPhone game Final Freeway, and delivered in fairly impressive fashion. Final Freeway does an excellent job at capturing the feel of the original OutRun, while offering tight controls with multiple configurations and a terrific sense of speed that runs well even on older devices.
Just as in OutRun, Final Freeway is a point-to-point racing game, where instead of trying to beat other cars to the finish you're trying to reach each checkpoint in the given amount of time until finally reaching the end. In total there are six different sections to race through, each with their own unique scenery, but unfortunately there aren't the branching paths at the end of each section as in OutRun. The racing is simple and arcadey, with the focus being to race each leg of the track as fast as possible while avoiding traffic and staying on the track. You don't crash in the game, but will slow down a lot if you hit another car or go off track. If time runs out before you reach the end of the track segment, it's game over.
In another nod to OutRun, you can choose one of three different tunes to listen to while you're racing in Final Freeway. Also, your ride looks suspiciously like a Ferrari, which is the staple car in the OutRun series. The graphics in Final Freeway are very nice, with added support for the higher resolution iPhone 4 and iPad displays. The framerate is ultra smooth, even on my iPod touch 2G, and makes for a blazingly fast sense of speed. There are touch and tilt control options, with various other configurations of onscreen button placement. Either control option works well, but I found myself preferring the touch controls. There isn't the option for auto-accelerate, only separate gas and brake buttons, but this actually benefits the game as it can pay to merely let off the gas when approaching turns rather than slamming on the brakes.
Really, the only fault of Final Freeway is that there just isn't that much of it. The six track locations are decent, and can be played on a normal or expert setting, but I would love to see more. It sounds like that just might happen too, as the developer is active in our forums and has hinted that more levels are on their way, as well as taking note of other suggestions from our forum members for future updates. With a few updates, Final Freeway could evolve into something truly special, although what is here already is quite competent for the price. The bottom line is that Final Freeway is fun, plays extremely well, looks great, and will scratch that OutRun itch whenever you need it to.
App Store Link: Final Freeway, $0.99 (Universal)
Dropbox: Harnessing the magical cloud
Dropbox: Harnessing the magical cloud is a post from: Best Iphone Apps Review Website
Cloud storage has felt, to me, like a load of hooey. Things never seemed to sync as seamlessly as I wanted, there were long and cumbersome upload and download processes and the whole thing was too much trouble than it was worth.Wait. Nevermind. Dropbox is here. And with it comes truly seamless syncing between devices, background uploads/downloads, drag-and-drop file sharing and even public folders and automatic link generators…meaning I can share a file with people who don’t even have Dropbox.
And with Dropbox’s free iPhone app, I can now get all my documents right on my phone. It’s pretty damn cool.
You can get it HERE
‘Guns’n’Glory’ Review – I’m Sure This Will Offend Someone
‘Battle Bears -1′ – 1.2 Update Adds New Content and Universal iPad Support
‘So Long, Oregon!’ Review – Another Masterpiece From the Creators of ‘Enviro-Bear 2010′
‘So Long, Oregon!’ Review – Another Masterpiece From the Creators of ‘Enviro-Bear 2010′ is a post from: Best Iphone Apps Review Website
If you weren't around for the great Enviro-Bear 2010 [99¢] fiasco of, well, 2009, here's what you missed- Imagine you're a bear, driving a car, and you have five minutes to fatten yourself up as much as possible before finally driving your car in to your bear cave. The ridiculousness of the game's premise was matched only by the terrible controls and even worse pixel art which in our review we dubbed the best bear driving simulator on the App Store. (A worthy title.) I invoke the unholy name of Enviro-Bear because it's from those same fiery depths of hell that So Long, Oregon! [$1.99] was forged in.
So Long, Oregon! is "A fun new game about American history" according to the developers, where you pilot (I say pilot because you spend most of the game airborne) a Conestoga wagon from Independence, Missouri to El Dorado– The legendary city of gold. Much like the original Oregon Trail, you'll need to cross rivers, travel the countryside, murder swaths of helpless animals, become afflicted with various diseases, and lose your loved ones in the process of searching for said ancient gold.
Unlike the the original Oregon Trail, you don't make it to El Dorado through intense simulation, ration management, profession selection, caulking and/or floating the wagon across rivers, or anything else. Instead you just hold down the left arrow and go flipping over hills, and tapping the screen to let out a barrage of bullets to kill anything in your path to then collect its meat for your food stores. The hills and mountains are tall, and will often send you flipping end to end or just flat out landing upside down forcing you to wait until your wagon rights itself.
Along the way you'll find various settlements such as indian camps that give you food, disease, or flat out curse your wagon. There are also trading posts that you can trade for food, bullets, or sometimes even see a doctor. There are other surprises along the trail, but I won't spoil them.
The novelty value of So Long, Oregon! is out of this world, especially if you have fond memories of the original Oregon Trail. But, much like Enviro-Bear 2010, both the controls and gameplay seem to be intentionally bad so if you're looking for something serious So Long, Oregon! is not what you need. If you do like these kinds of silly games, there's a lot to love about So Long, Oregon! such as multiple ridiculous game modes with tons of wagons to race, tons of animals to shoot, a case of the super-measles to deal with, and others. There's also all kinds of Open Feint achievements and online leaderboards.
The windows version of the game can be downloaded for free and likely will provide more So Long, Oregon! than one person would ever need in their life. If you need more, download the iOS version which also happens to be universal and is equally weird regardless of which device you're playing it on.
App Store Link: So Long, Oregon!, $1.99 (Universal)
‘The Incident’ Review – Beware: Falling Junk
‘The Incident’ Review – Beware: Falling Junk is a post from: Best Iphone Apps Review Website
Big Bucket Software's The Incident [$1.99] which we featured in yesterday's upcoming games roundup was approved mere moments ago and is now available for download on the App Store. The Incident takes the basic vertical jumping game premise that has become wildly popular on the iPhone and adds a new twist to it, and that twist amounts to massive piles of junk falling from the sky. The variety of objects that fall from the sky is astounding, ranging from boulders to crates to electric guitars and even Smart cars.
The game is controlled by tilting your device right or left to move, and tapping on the screen to jump. You're able to move objects around by walking in to them, and sometimes you can flip falling junk around with a well timed jump underneath whatever you're trying to move. Seven levels are included in the game, starting with the street and ending in space. Each level consists of its own height goal, and you just need to stay on top of the falling pile of junk to climb upwards. This sounds simple enough, and the first few levels are fairly easy, but it doesn't take long until things are falling so fast that you will have your fingers crossed that a health powerup spawns or a checkpoint is near.
The Incident is host to some excellent chiptune music, power ups, power downs, fantastic pixel art retro graphics, some odd achievements, and it's even universal. I tend to be preferring the game on my iPhone, but that's more just because holding and tilting the iPad for extended periods of time can be tiresome. I'd love to see some kind of onscreen control option, at least for the iPad, but as is the game is still fun to play on either device.
According to The Incident's web site, the developers are already hard at work on updates to add even more levels and gameplay. Hopefully somewhere along the way they add in some kind of online scoring and achievement tracking, because only having local scores is a huge bummer for a game like this. I'd love to see how I rank globally on things like how long it takes me to climb, how many coins I've collected, how many times I've been crushed by a couch, and a ton of other things.
Even without online scoring, The Incident has quite a few things I like to see in iPhone games. It saves at each checkpoint, so you can either play for a few minutes at a time or even longer, the controls work well, the graphics look cool, it's universal from the get go, and I really dig the whole concept behind the game. Forum members in The Incident's thread are enjoying it a lot, and I really can't wait to see what Big Bucket Software has planned via updates.
App Store Link: The Incident, $1.99 (Universal)
‘Pocket God Comics’ Now Available, Plus an Avalanche of New ‘Pocket God’ Info
‘Pocket God Comics’ Now Available, Plus an Avalanche of New ‘Pocket God’ Info is a post from: Best Iphone Apps Review Website
The long awaited comic app for the iPhone sensation Pocket God [99¢], which we previewed way back in February, has just been released on the App Store. Titled Pocket God Comics [99¢], it follows the hilarious (and often destructive) antics of the pygmies from the Pocket God universe. It's a universal app, and has been designed with higher resolution artwork for running on the iPad, although it looks quite sharp and colorful on the iPhone. The initial app purchase comes with the first issue of the comic, which was created by Ape Entertainment, that runs inside of a reader shell that was developed by publisher iVerse Media. This allows future issues to be bought directly from inside the app, and the shell even features a GPS comic book shop locator to find your nearest local retail outlet for purchasing the physical version of Pocket God Comics.
Also forthcoming is the latest episode to the Pocket God game titled “A Pygmy a Day Keeps the Ape Away”. This 33rd episode was inspired by the comic content creators Ape Entertainment, and features a mountain top with an altar where you can sacrifice pygmies to a gigantic ape, as well as a number of other interactive elements. There is also a new skin pack available in this new update, which developer Dave Castelnuovo has detailed in our forums. The update has been timed to (sort of) coincide with the launch of Pocket God Comics, and should be available sometime this morning or early afternoon.
The iPad version of the game, titled Pocket God: Journey to Uranus, is a much different game than the iPhone version, most notably by partially taking place in an outer space environment. We previewed the game in early July, but Dave has also dropped some new info on us regarding some of the mini-games planned for the release. The first is called Volcano Blast and takes place on the new high def version of the original Pocket God island, and is an expanded take on the “flick pygmies into the volcano” mechanic. Multiple volcanoes will be present and you must flick as many pygmies into them as you can without missing. A retooled flick mechanic and brand new wind element make the task at hand more challenging this time around. As Dave puts it, “think Paper Toss with burnt pygmies”. Sounds good to us.
Here's a new screenshot from Pocket God: Journey to Uranus (click to enlarge):
The other mini-game mentioned hasn't received a final name yet, but takes place in outer space and is an homage to the Atari Jaguar title Tempest 2000 (which was a personal favorite of mine as well). Expect to be shooting pygmies at enemies as they advance up different styles of wormholes from the middle of the screen. Pocket God: Journey to Uranus doesn't have a firm release date set yet, but should be available sometime this year and you can follow along in the forum thread for the latest information.
Pocket God Comics is available now, and the printed versions will be arriving in comic book shops in September. The physical books will also contain 4 page mini stories that won't be available in the digital versions, and if you happen to be attending the Wizard World comic convention in Chicago August 19th-22nd then you'll have a chance to meet Pocket God creators Dave and Allan and possibly score a limited edition of the Pocket God comic book. They will also be running a contest for $1000 Apple gift card starting today, which is detailed on the Pocket God Blog.
App Store Links: Pocket God Comics, $0.99 (Universal) – Pocket God, $0.99
‘Graveyard Shift’ Review – A Fun Physics Puzzler with Great Style
‘Graveyard Shift’ Review – A Fun Physics Puzzler with Great Style is a post from: Best Iphone Apps Review Website
Graveyard Shift [$2.99/Lite] is a new physics puzzle game where you are literally working a graveyard shift in a graveyard putting back skeletons that have inexplicably decided to pop out of their coffins. It features a charming art style that's Retina Display ready, a multitude of levels, and best of all some great level designs that are hard not to appreciate. It also doesn't hurt that the game is universal, and there's a lite to try before you buy. If you like games like Saving Private Sheep, Angry Birds, and Ragdoll Blaster, then Graveyard Shift should be right up your alley.
The premise is that you're a boy looking for a job to earn some extra cash, and you come to find that the local graveyard is hiring. For some odd reason, the skeletons from the graves have popped out of their coffins and perched themselves precariously amongst objects throughout the graveyard. It's your job to use the different properties of these objects and the physics in the game to get the skeleton back into their coffin homes. Some blocks can be touched to make them disappear, some must be touched by the same type block to eliminate them, and some just can't be removed from the level at all. There are also boxes of TNT that can be used to launch objects or the skeletons themselves to aid the task of getting them back to their eternal resting place.
The graphics in Graveyard Shift are nice, with lovely hand drawn backgrounds and crisp in-game elements that look especially great on the iPhone 4. The music is also very catchy and fitting, but the thing that really stands out about the game is the excellent level designs. Some levels are very straightforward, with the skeleton on top of stacks of blocks that must simply be cleared in order for him to fall into the coffin. But others are more complex, and almost Rube Goldberg-esque in their execution. For example, you may pop a box of dynamite that sends a ball rolling down an incline, that will then cause a latch that is holding back a giant pendulum to disappear. Gravity will then cause the pendulum to swing, and once it hits it's apex another box of dynamite is used to blast the pendulum further upwards into a platform where the skeleton resides, catapulting him into the nearby coffin. There's plenty of examples of situations like these during the game's 72 levels, and I certainly had my fair share of laugh out loud moments as I stared in amazement while the level played out.
As much as I enjoyed playing through Graveyard Shift, it's not without a couple problems. The biggest issue is the extremely finicky physics system. While it does create for some hilarious moments with the ragdoll skeleton, it can also cause objects in the game to behave wildly different from one play to the next. As a result, some of the levels can be frustratingly hard as you try to get things to do what you want them to, and completing each one is more luck than anything else. Somehow this doesn't really hinder the enjoyment though, and levels are easy to instantly replay at any moment, which you'll be doing often. The other issues with the game are very minor glitches where sometimes graphics don't display properly or levels load without any objects. These are easily fixed by simply reloading a level, and the developer is already working on an update to iron out these kinks.
Minor issues aside, I had a ton of fun with Graveyard Shift. The moments of figuring out how a level should work and then executing it, all while the ragdoll skeleton is flailing about the screen, brought a smile to my face every time. As an added challenge each level has a par for completion time and taps used, so beyond just completing each one you can also shoot for these goals. Unfortunately there's no sort of social network like OpenFeint to tie these accomplishments together, but at the very least it still adds replay to the game. If you are a fan of these physics games you should definitely try out the lite version of Graveyard Shift, and join in on the forum discussion for further player impressions and developer responses.
App Store Links: Graveyard Shift, $2.99 (Universal) – Graveyard Shift Lite, Free (Universal)
‘Gravity Hook HD’ Review – A Great Universal Game From the Makers of ‘Canabalt’
‘Gravity Hook HD’ Review – A Great Universal Game From the Makers of ‘Canabalt’ is a post from: Best Iphone Apps Review Website
Semi Secret Software seem to be making a name for themselves as developers of games with great pixel art graphics, fantastic music, and high-score centric gameplay that in the case of Canabalt [$2.99] has kept me coming back for just one more try for the better part of a year now. Gravity Hook HD [$2.99] hit the App Store tonight, and provides much of what I loved about Canabalt, only in a vertical climb instead of a side scrolling run. In the game you play as a lovable little robot with a grappling hook who ascends to, well, wherever he's climbing to, by grabbing on to a randomized series of orbs, reeling himself in, then flinging to the next one. Unlike Canabalt which you could hand to anyone with it running on your phone and say "tap the screen to jump," Gravity Hook HD has a bit of a learning curve as you get used to the physics of the game.
The different orbs you can latch on to have different properties, ranging from the green orbs which you can touch without issue, grey orbs which are chained together and fall if you hold on to them too long, and blue orbs which turn in to bombs and explode if you get near them. You're also able to kick off the wall if you can swing your robot towards one, and mastering wall jumping as well as how to handle the different orb types are all required to get very far in Gravity Hook HD.
Just like Canabalt, Gravity Hook HD is playable in its entirety online for free in any browser with the Flash plugin. We've even embedded it below, just make sure you either have your speakers muted or are in an area where you can play sounds before clicking:
Gravity Hook HD is universal, and looks great on both the iPhone and iPad, although I've found myself leaning towards preferring it on the bigger screen. Scores are tracked online via Semi Secret's proprietary system which breaks scores out in to top daily, weekly, and monthly submissions as well as the best scores of all time. Gravity Hook HD translates very well to touch controls, and while you can play the whole game for free with a mouse, it really is a much better experience with your finger.
App Store Link: Gravity Hook HD, $2.99 (Universal)