Hi, game fans!
Welcome back to another week’s worth of App Store selections. As your cheerful dealers in gaming addiction, we’d like to take a moment to thank you for all the feedback and suggestions for titles — keep them coming! And now, without further ado, here are the titles we’ve been enjoying this week…
Burn the Rope
Burn the Rope
Sound familiar? Well despite the obvious title homage in place here, Burn the Rope is actually a very unique game that brings its own excellent mechanic to the table and wraps it in an excellent presentation.
As a small ember, your job is to ignite a piece of rope by touching it, and then keep the flame burning until the entire rope has been burned away. The catch is that your flames will only burn upward, so you need to make use of the accelerometer by turning your device to keep burning the right way up. It’s not so tough near the start where you’re only worrying about one flame, but as you progress they’ll split into multiple embers and then it becomes quite the puzzler.
Burn the Rope is a pick-up-and-play puzzle game and it’s one of the better ones that have come out. Grab it while it’s still on sale (until the next update!)
Price: $0.99 (On sale until next update)
Developer: Big Blue Bubble
Download: App Store
Banzai Blowfish
Banzai Blowfish!
Red Piston’s new venture is a physics puzzle game with a great aesthetic and well polished gameplay revolving around the adventures of a cute blowfish.
Playing the game is a matter of manipulating the various switches, levers, and other devices that control mechanisms throughout the levels that will help get the little blowfish to its destination. The goal is to reach the hanging cage where another blowfish is being held captive and break through it. There is a bit of a learning curve since you don’t actually control the blowfish directly, and there isn’t a tutorial as such (there’s a small help button on the main page, but it would have been nice to learn those controls in context).
Regardless, it’s an addictive title once you get the hang of it, and it doesn’t hurt that it channels the cartoony vibe of Angry Birds in its visuals. 40 levels and Game Center support provide plenty of replay value, and frequent level updates are promised.
Price: $1.99
Developer: Red Piston
Download: App Store
Cave Bowling
Cave Bowling
We previously featured Urban Ninja by Donut Games, and now we’re mentioning their latest iOS title, Cave Bowling, because it continues to demonstrate that they’re among the few developers that frequently and consistently put out extremely well-polished, quality titles with a great deal of charm and individual appeal.
The premise of Cave Bowling is encapsulated in its title; you’re a caveman and you’re bowling. Luckily, the experience is far more engrossing than its simplistic setup. Each level presents you with a number of bowling pins and floating bones. Your goal is, obviously, to topple them, but how you go about it can often involve some elaborate bouncing and navigation of widgets like wheels and rotating platforms that respond to the weight or impact of your bowling ball. Controls are as intuitive as can be: touch and drag to alter the direction of launch, and drag on a slider to precisely select the strength.
There are also wacky spectators that you have to avoid hitting, and the three-star level ranking system (kind of like Angry Birds) and online highscore table will keep you coming back. It’s worth paying attention to just how smoothly everything looks and feels. The gameplay and art elements are all perfectly tuned and the almost 8-bit inspired look from previous titles is back here as well. Overall this is a wonderful game that you shouldn’t miss.
Price: $0.99
Developer: Donut Games
Download: App Store
Empire Online
Empire Online
If there’s one gaming genre that hasn’t become as strongly represented on the iOS systems as the rest, it’s the MMO. Lakoo has sought to remedy this relative gap by introducing us to Empire Online. Two years in the making, Empire Online definitely shows its depth, and for novices willing to invest some time into learning their way around, Empire can be richly rewarding.
The game’s world is remarkably large, featuring more than 1000 quests to be completed over 300 maps with 5000 items. It can seem overwhelming at first, but MMO fans won’t be daunted by the scope. Gameplay is a familiar system of walking around, talking to NPCs, getting quests, and making your way through the world to complete them. Of course, being an MMO, you will come across many of the 5 million purported other players and be able to chat and interact with them. There is also a setting to hide them from view if you’re not interested in having them around.
It remains to be seen how successful Empire Online will ultimately be, and by extension how successful MMOs in general will be on the iOS devices, but as a pioneering title, Empire Online is an ambitious, attractive, and broad offering that has much to reveal to dedicated travellers.
iRequiem
iRequiem
To end off this week’s picks, here’s another fun survival horror game. iRequiem is not just your average zombie shooter though. This game plunges you into hell, where you must fight your way through hordes of enemies in a uniquely gothic interpretation of the environment where modern weapons and technology clash with medieval ones for an intriguing anachronistic blend.
There is a lot of variety to the gameplay, more than one might expect from a game of this genre. Not only do all the weapons have their own specific characteristics, but beyond the guns and crossbows, you’ll also gain magical powers, special abilities called kill skills, you’ll be able to control vehicles, and even transform into a powerful alternate form. A lot of attention was also paid to the voiceovers and visuals, both of which are successful in drawing you into the surprisingly involved storyline.
It all comes together to form a game worth checking out. Perhaps the biggest point in its favour is that there really is a great deal of content and variety to be had for the price — and there’s even a free lite version to start you off. The 55 levels are full of unlockable achievements, and there are two separate game modes to keep you busy — the second of which, survival, has unlimited levels. It may just become your go-to survival horror fix!
Price: $1.99
Developer: Rapid Turtle Games
Download: App Store
What Have You Been Playing?
It was tough to pick this week, and no doubt there are plenty of other fun games that didn’t make the listing. If they’ve been keeping you busy then make sure to pop into the comments and tell us about them.
Have a great weekend!