I don’t play a lot of games on my iPhone, or anywhere, for that matter. I do enjoy them, but just find myself going other directions for entertainment most of the time. I know the iPhone is a great device for gaming so I thought I should probably check out this world a little more.

I decided to explore one of those retro-style game that I’ve been hearing so much about. I love the style and felt like a little mindless iPhone fun so why not. There are many in this space, but I decided to take Bit-1 for a spin. The screenshots looked impressive and the community seemed to enjoy it, so I picked up a copy to check it out for myself. My thoughts after the jump.

Style

As you have probably already figured out given the name of this game it has a bit-like, retro feel throughout. Everything from the environments to the controls to the menus is consistent in this style.

There have been a lot of games that have gone this route and I can’t speak for all of them, but I can say that Bit-1 has found a really cool place. The game has what I’d call an updated, retro feel to it. Visually, the game looks like something you would have played in an arcade in 1990, but there are small touches that make it still feel new. One of these is the gameplay controls. They’re touch buttons that sit on top of the environment you’re playing through, that make your iPhone feel like an old Nintendo controller.

The audio elements definitely play a part in this for me as well. The gameplay produces sounds like you would imagine from an old arcade game, but the music falls right into that old, yet new space. It’s a little tricky to explain, but I’ll say that it’s a really enjoyable feeling especially if you’re someone that remembers playing those old school games.

Gameplay

The game is fairly simple in concept in that it is a standard platformer. It isn’t overly complicated, which to me, makes it more fun and an easy game to play to kill a few minutes here and there.

You play a little robot type character and attempt to lead him through each level. These aren’t all that long and feel almost puzzle-like. The first time through is typically a bit of a shot in the dark at how best to pass it, but after a time or two you’ll start to see some of the things you need to do to complete the level.

The obstacles adhere to patterns, giving it a puzzle feel. There are a few creatures that you’ll face that do have a mind of their own, but they still act in predictable ways. So you essentially pay attention to what creatures you need to get past and discover ways to deal with them as you move forward in the game.

Weapons

You’re armed with a gun that has an endless amount of ammo. Along the way you’ll be presented opportunities to change your gun. There are several different options that are better for various parts of the game, but the cool (and partially frustrating) thing is that in many situations you won’t know what you gun will change to until after you’ve walked over the badge.

There are definitely certain situations where one gun helps out much more than the others and with the randomness of new gun drops (except after killing an enemy) there is an element of luck involved. You can actually hurt your chances by changing to a different gun when you had the one you needed, as well. It’s a fun element to the game. That said, there are also places within levels where a gun drop will be available without killing an enemy.

Energy-Up

Killing enemies will sometimes result in different guns as I just mentioned, but it will also present you with energy-up opportunities as well. Your energy gets knocked by about half for most enemy strikes (although some take off about one-third) and an energy-up will make up that difference, so you can take a hit and then recover enough to take another one as you move through a level. Some enemies, however, will strike with enough force to kill you with one blow.

The different strengths of the enemies combined with the energy-ups provide another element to a game. Sometimes an opportune energy-up can completely save your game. As they are randomly dropped when you take care of a foe, you just never know when you’re going to get that helping hand.

Foes

There is a wide variety of enemies to tackle throughout the game, and new ones appear fairly regularly as you move through the levels. Some are your basic adversaries and are easy to deal with — pattern shooting and only a couple shots of your gun to take out — while others are considerably tougher. Some merely take more shots to kill, others shoot their weapons in more difficult to manage patterns, and others still are able to fly around. There are some along the way that would be more closely related to a boss as well. They are much larger and require much more effort to knock off.

The mix of characters to battle combined with your weapons possibilities make for some really interesting battles. The type of weapon you currently wield could play a big difference in how you handle a particular foe and can make a normally simple situation into a tricky one.

Scoring

Coins are scattered throughout and can be gathered to increase your overall score., as will taking out your enemies. Killing a boss for example, will drop a whole pile of coins. That said, it is possible to complete levels without even paying attention to coins; you may want to try for higher scores down the line to better your last level passing, or compare yourselves with others through the Game Center.

Environments

The environments are bit-beautiful. The game is meant to feel retro and it does an amazing job at that. You’re able to pick from two different chapters of levels to work through: The Princess Paradox and the Bloody Castle at the time of this review. Each has its own feel and its own set of characters, yet they definitely do still feel part of the same game.

The background imagery is quite impressive and adds a serious distracting element to the game. There may be birds flying through the screen or even huge rocket ships while you’re trying to make a jump onto a moving platform while shooting some flying enemies coming right at you. Sometimes they are subtle, and other times you need to make a conscious effort to block them out. This is a little thing that makes the game more challenging (at least to me).

Really, the environments feel like works of art. While still maintaining that bit feel to them, they are extremely detailed and well crafted. It’s a joy to make your way through this world. Playing the game I always had this feeling of anticipation waiting for what the next level (or ever part of a level) would look like.

I talked a bit about the music earlier, but it’s worth mentioning again. The soundtrack is just awesome and adds so much to the overall environment. Do yourself a favor and play with the sound on.

Final Thoughts

As I mentioned, I’m not a huge gamer. There’s a good chance I wasn’t using the proper terms you’re used to seeing in a game review. With that in mind, I felt compelled to do a review of Bit-1.

I completely love the retro feel, and the gameplay is just flat out fun. It’s challenging enough to make me seriously frustrated at times, but conversely exhilarated when making it through a tricky level. From the music and audio to the visual elements it all combines for a wonderful experience.

Games are meant to be fun, entertaining and allow you some reprieve from your life for a small chunk of time. Bit-1 creates that experience with the iPhone dead on.

We all want to get the very best out of our devices! Who doesn’t love finding out a new trick or shortcut?

Over the last month every AppStorm site has published an extensive roundup of features and shortcuts aimed at helping you get the most out of your devices! Each post comprises more than 40 entries, I’m pretty confident you’ll find something you didn’t already know about…

What are you waiting for?

• Mac.AppStorm: 40+ Super Secret OS X Lion Features and Shortcuts
• Web.AppStorm: 40+ Tips to Get the Most Out of Web Apps
• iPhone.AppStorm: 40 Secret iPhone Features and Shortcuts
• iPad.AppStorm: 40+ Super Secret iPad Features and Shortcuts
• Android.AppStorm: 40+ Tips and Tricks to Get the Most Out of Android
• Windows.AppStorm: 40+ Tips and Tricks to Get the Most Out of Windows

There are so many new social networks out there that it gets daunting just to keep up. Between Facebook, Twitter, Path, Oink, Tumblr and everything else, who has time to actually get anything done? That’s why, for me, it takes an awful lot to decide to come onboard a new system.

But then Pinterest happened. At first, I wasn’t really sure if I liked it — it did seem a bit girly for my taste — and I wasn’t quite sure how it would fit into my life. But then I got the iPhone app, and a new perspective came up that I hadn’t really considered before: could I be social while still being unsocial? 

Breaking Down the Pinterest Beast

OK, so you’ve never heard of Pinterest. Here’s the deets: You know how you wander the web all day and find these cool pictures that you then IM, email or text message to all of your friends so they can see how awesome said image is? Maybe you found the perfect sweater to match those pants you love, or there’s a car with the exact rims you want. Whatever it is, you have to manually send off this information to everyone, and that can get tedious. Pinterest solves that problem.

Think of it like a virtual pinboard (hence the name). You’ve got this board on a wall that everyone can see, and on the board are varying categories for your particular interests: cool cars, fashion sense, books, whatever. In those categories are images and a short description of said image (collectively called a Pin). But how is all this a social activity?

Like most of these new social networks, you can tie Pinterest into your Facebook or Twitter accounts, and post your pins right there. Friends then follow you on the site, and can either repin your image to their boards, Like a pin or comment on it accordingly. It’s social, but not with the required commentary that you’d find on Facebook or Twitter. It’s not about conversation, it’s about imagery.

Pinterest on the iPhone

I really didn’t find the concept that fascinating, but I was keeping tabs on it because it seems like in today’s world you have to either be on the train or not, and if you’re not, you could be losing business. Then the iPhone app came out, and I took a look just in case it would be a good review for the site. Turns out that, like with many social networks, the iPhone changes the game.

Once signed in and all that, you’re greeted with a very Instagram-esque screen, complete with a Photo button in the middle, and a feed to the far left. This is what made Pinterest click with me. On the web, you’re bombarded with thousands of images at one time, making it almost impossible to weed out the good stuff or even take a closer look at some of the bad. The iPhone narrows your focus, allowing you to flip through the feed as you would your Twitter or Facebook versions, but because you’re only looking at pictures, it can go a lot faster. It’s more fun as a result.

Exploring and Using

Using Pinterest is more of a web thing than an iPhone thing, so at first, it seems like the app would be a waste of time. Without installing a bookmarklet on your iPhone (which I couldn’t find an option for in the app), there’s no way for you to pin a photo that you like when you’re shuffling about the web. So what’s the point of an app?

It’s all about consumption and unique content. As mentioned before, you start with a view that allows you to flip up and down through your feed, also repinning or liking things along the way. This view has a pretty innovative move worked in as well. When scrolling up, the navigation bar disappears and you’re left with full-screen images as well as the usual Repin, Like and More buttons. Scroll down however, and the navigation reappears, ready for you to switch sections. It’s very slick to use, and when integrated with the now standard “pull to refresh” option, it becomes very user friendly.

As for unique content, since you can’t pin existing things on the web, you can take your own pictures and pin them yourself. Now it’s no Instagram, but what’s nice is that you can use this as a personal pinboard for your own life. Imagine having a board for your child’s sporting events, or to capture those odd things you see on a trip across the country. It’s a way to put your photos into categories, without the drudgery of making photo albums since it’s quick and easy and social.

Should You Get Onboard?

Although I’m not quite an avid Pinterest user yet, I do love the added functionality that the iPhone brings to the table, which makes it a much more useful app for me to use in my day-to-day life. Ultimately, that’s the goal of any social network: be indispensable.

So is it for you? Take a peek at their site and see what you think. But if you like it, make sure to get the iPhone app as well, because it takes what is a useful service and polishes it up nicely.

Going old school seems to be a common trend with games nowadays. The charming 8- or 16-bit  artwork, music and play style of the 90s is not only nostalgic fun for those who played the NES and similar game consoles back in the day, but provides a fresh and different experience for the recent generation of gamers.

One iOS game that does a remarkably good job of bringing the retro feel to the masses is Super Crate Box. It’s a frantic, fast-paced, and quite fantastic game that embodies the comeback of arcade age.

Starting Up

From the very beginning, Super Crate Box looks different when compared to other iOS games. They’ve purposefully made the graphics pixelated in a way that replicates the art style of the 90′s games, and it’s beautiful indeed. Sometimes going the simpler route is better, and this is certainly one of those cases.

The options page allows you to turn the music and sound on or off as well as tweak the controls. There’s also the ability to completely delete all player data if you want a fresh start.

 Level Select

The level selection screen is simple and allows you to quickly start a game. There are three different levels, and three different game types. Of these, the latter two of both need to be unlocked as they aren’t available from the start. Depending on which level and game type you select, games ranges from difficult to oh-gosh-this-is-impossible.

Normal mode is hard enough as it is, but they offer two other modes of increasing difficulty: SMFT, which if my opinion is just about twice as hard as normal, and Assault, which is just about close to impossible. But in Super Crate Box, hard isn’t necessarily a bad thing. In fact, it’s good. Real good.

Gameplay

The gameplay of Super Crate Box consists of running around collecting crates while avoiding and destroying all monsters you come across. The twist is this: you don’t gain points from killing baddies, but from collecting crates, and each crate you collect randomly changes the weapon you have, whether for better or worse. In addition, every monster you don’t kill will fall into the flames at the bottom of the screen, which causes that monster to reappear at the top of the screen, enraged. It’ll move twice as fast and is therefore twice as deadly.

This may sound complicated, but it isn’t; you only need to play a few rounds to get the concept. Simply put, any monster that you don’t kill will result in a much worse monster later on.

Now why is this game so hard? First, touching any monster will kill you, instantly. Game over. Secondly, since the point of the game isn’t killing monsters, you can’t just collect crates until you get a super powerful weapon, such as the minigun, then sit in a corner and blast baddies. Continually collecting crates means continually switching weapons, and some of the weapons are much trickier to use than others.

The katana allows you to slash enemies in half, but can only be used at close range. The grenade launcher fires a small explosive that can blast apart multiple monsters, but you have to take in account how the grenade will bounce to aim properly. And the all-hated disc gun fires a projectile that will bounce off whatever wall you fire it toward, killing you just as often as it kills enemies.

You’ll certainly have favorites, since some weapons are more pleasant to use than others, but during gameplay you can’t pick and choose; you need to be a master at each and every one of the weapons to survive.

Unlockables

As you play, you’ll often receive a message at the end of a level indicating that you’ve unlocked a new weapon, level or character. If you go to the Stats option on the main menu, you can flip through to the Unlocks page. From here, you can see exactly what you’ve unlocked and what you haven’t.

As you can see, there are quite a few weapons and character unlocks. From my experience,  you can unlock all the weapons in a short time, while the characters take quite a bit longer. By default, characters switch randomly each time you start a game, but if you have a favorite, you can select it from this screen and it’ll be used every game.

The Story Behind Super Crate Box

Super Crate Box is the result of a collaboration between Vlambeer and Halfbot, both of which are brilliant game developers. The game was originally a freeware PC game created by Vlambeer (which you can still download) that then was ported to iOS by Halfbot. However, unlike so many ported games nowadays, the iOS version feels completely native; controls are intuitive, gameplay is smooth and I haven’t come across any bugs in my many sessions of playing.

Conclusion

I can’t get enough of Super Crate Box. Despite having little depth, it’s an amazingly executed game that’s not has its own funky style, but brings in elements from the good old days of Super Mario Bros, Metroid, and Donkey Kong. The controls are tight and familiar, the chip-tune music fits the feel of the game nicely and the overall polish is superb.

Yes, it’s hard as any game you’ll ever play, but in the best way possible.