Happy Friday, everyone!
This weekend, we’re all set to play with parasites and bisons, wage vegetarian war against monsters, protect a child and even perform some crazy stunts. Sounds like fun, right? Come on in and see what this week’s App Store selections are all about.
Tentacles: Enter the Dolphin
In an unprecedented crossover situation, one of the finest games on Windows Phone is now available on the iOS App Store as well; a Microsoft-published title called Tentacles: Enter the Dolphin.
For such a high profile game, Tentacles is actually a bit creepy. In it, you play as a failed science experiment — a parasitic tentacled bacterium (named Lemmy) that eats eyeballs. After your creator sees you and accidentally ingests you during a fit of horror, you’re left inside his body fending off enemies and avoiding the hazards of the game’s organic levels. Pegged as a top-down platformer, the game’s tap-based controls are intuitive and appropriately unobtrusive, allowing you to focus on the challenging process of surviving the levels.
There’s an easy mode for beginners, but the spectacular boss fights are worth experiencing in their full glory to get the game’s full effect. While slightly disturbing, the level design is gorgeous and gooey, convincingly depicting a scientist’s innards (we assume) and providing a colourful environment for Lemmy to explore. Tentacles: Enter the Dolphin is a fantastic game, and one that features enough challenges and achievements to keep you coming back for more.
Burrito Bison
Burrito Bison is another example of a Flash game being ported to iOS, this time by the experts at Ravenous Games (who brought us the League of Evil series and Random Heroes).
To play Burrito Bison is to struggle against gravity and inertia in an effort to blast the titular character out of Candy Land. He hates candy, you see. Bouncing off of gummy bears (except cop gummies), using various power-ups and timing your taps properly will allow you to bash your way out.
So far, none of the original game’s extensive add-ons have been included, but presumably those will roll out as updates to the iOS port over the coming weeks. Either way, Burrito Bison is an entertaining game that offers simple joy and a faithful mobile reproduction of the Flash classic.
Price: $0.99
Developer: Ravenous Games, Inc.
Download: App Store
Grow Away!
Cross Angry Birds with Plants vs. Zombies and what do you get? Something like Grow Away!
When a band of monsters invades — seeking some healthy meals after pigging out on junk food — it’s up to you and your vegetable army to fend them off. By combining numerous types of veggies with cool power-ups, your catapult becomes a versatile defensive weapon, keeping you safe across four different environments.
While IAP make an appearance, Grow Away! doesn’t force you to resort to them. While it may not convince you to eat your veggies, it sure will make you adamant about the monsters not getting to them either!
Sugar Kid
From the title, you might expect Sugar Kid, from A Crowd of Monsters, to be a cutesy game … and it mostly is. Except for the part where there’s a lot of gore.
See, the guys at A Crowd of Monsters have a funny sense of humour, so they’ve taken this game about helping a sugary kid escape the wrath of an evil lemon that wants to melt him, and they’ve added in a bit of (optional) gruesomeness to spice things up. Nothing like blood to give you an incentive to protect Sugar Kid, right? Thus, while you’re drawing protective platforms and engaging various power-ups to save him from the streams of water and corrosive juice, you’re also avoiding “Sweetality” moments where poor Sugar Kid succumbs in amusingly graphic ways.
With the gore turned off, you still end up with a very engaging title that offers simple gameplay wrapped in an excellent art style, with more than 90 levels of content and three game modes to keep you busy.
Price: $0.99
Developer: A Crowd of Monsters
Download: App Store
Stunt Star: The Hollywood Years
If you’ve always dreamed of being a famous Hollywood stunt driver, then Stunt Star: The Hollywood Years may be the perfect game for your iPhone.
In an effort to please a testy movie director, you’ll have to perform incredibly dangerous stunts with one of 16 unlockable vehicles, making sure to land them properly. For each challenge, you need to align your ramp and handle your air time in such a way as to allow you to land safely between the designated flags. As things heat up, it becomes very challenging, but the failures tend to be spectacular and hilarious, and the wealth of different add-ons and vehicle combinations ensure that you’ll keep coming back.
Not only that, but the iCloud support and a universal build means you can play wherever you are, and once you make it through the 70 levels (for now) and unlock everything, you can return to previous levels with your new abilities to find cool new ways of landing those jumps. It’s a lot of fun, and we can’t wait to watch this game’s ongoing development.
Price: $2.99
Developer: Three Phase Interactive Pty Ltd
Download: App Store
What Have You Been Playing?
Those should give you lots of play time this week, but if you have other cool games you’re playing then drop us a line in the comments!