Get ready for another blockbuster console port and some innovative gameplay mechanics that take you outside your iPhone in this week’s Game Friday.
Click through for our favourite new releases on the App Store …
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Greedy Dwarf
Crescent Moon Games is best known for their gigantic RPGs, Aralon and Ravensword, but it seems they’re keen to try new things as their latest outing — Greedy Dwarf — is a crazy runner of sorts featuring lots of gold.
In the 32 levels, you’ll play as a greedy dwarf escaping from a dragon. You stole his gold and he’s none too pleased about it. The game places you in a mine cart and sends you hurtling through interestingly designed underground areas, where you’ll have to make use of one of two different control schemes to keep your mine cart on the path, all the while snagging more coins.
The visuals are great, but what makes the game more interesting is the way that your perspective sometimes shifts from the familiar rear view to a side view that turns things into a side scrolling race. This is very well executed and keeps the levels feeling exciting. Whether you’re boosting, hanging upside-down or simply rocketing along through the caves, you’ll find Greedy Dwarf to be full of pleasant surprises.
Price: $0.99
Developer: Crescent Moon Games
Download: App Store
Limbo
We’ve seen a lot of monochromatic games show up on the App Store in the past couple of years, and they’ve all been paying homage to the wonderfully minimalistic horror platformer, Limbo. At long last, developer Playdead has now brought Limbo itself to iOS, where it continues to thrill.
Sagging under the weight of awards and accolades, Limbo hardly needs introducing. The game is a love letter to minimalism and demonstrates a particular genius for creating strong atmospheres with deft strokes of black and grey. It is quiet and eerie, and progresses just slowly enough to keep things accessible and tantalizing.
If you’ve somehow managed to not play Limbo yet, then you’re in for a rare treat: this is one of the finest games across any genre to be released recently, and you owe it to yourself to make time and play through it … preferably in a dark place with good headphones!
Smooth Operators!
It’s funny to think that, at some point, someone on the team at Bulkypix sat down one day and asked “why don’t we make a game about the most tedious job in the world?” However that conversation progressed, the end result is that Smooth Operators has been released, and it turns call centres into exciting places!
Like the various Kairosoft sims before it, Smooth Operators presents you with a management role over a situation — in this case, a call centre. You’ll be responsible for outfitting your building with different sorts of rooms, hiring employees, managing their resources and, of course, competing to become the most successful call centre in the world. Almost literally everything in the game is upgradeable in some way, either via training or unlocks, and the game thankfully omits any IAP madness so you can actually feel proud earning your success.
Balancing your time and leading your company to success may not sound like a lot of fun on paper, but then that’s the magic of these kinds of games — once you start, you can’t put them down.
Fightback
Making a surprise appearance in the App Store this week, Ninja Theory — purveyors of fine console titles like DmC, Enslaved, etc. — have released an old-school brawler called Fightback that’s packed with awesomeness.
The thin vengeance-related plot sets you up for more than 100 levels of beastly combat against armed thugs of all shapes and sizes. Your punches and kicks can be combined with weapons and strung together in devastating combos that obliterate your foes. You can choose to unlock tattoos and other augmentations that improve your stats, and you’ll definitely want to do so as the game’s difficulty ramps up.
The Unity engine shows its stuff as the game’s physics and graphics are both extremely impressive, offering an immersive and visceral vision of combat. The fact that the controls are entirely gesture based works well for the most part, and feels more at home on the iPhone than a virtual set of buttons would. While Fightback is free to play, there are a number of IAP available that allow you to speed up your progress if you’re in a hurry. Either way, it’s one of the best fighting games on iOS and will provide hours of fun for fans of the genre.
Price: Free
Developer: Ninja Theory
Download: App Store
Motion Tennis
We always like to see innovation, and this week we have the interesting opportunity to look at one of the most radical innovations in iOS gameplay we’ve ever seen. Motion Tennis is a game from Rolocule that really thinks outside the box — all the way outside your phone to include an Apple TV, in fact!
If you’ve ever played Wii Tennis from Nintendo, then you’ll understand exactly what Motion Tennis is all about. Instead of using the Wiimote, your iPhone becomes the “controller” and you swing it to swing the virtual racquet in the game. This is accomplished by using AirPlay to display the game itself on your TV while the iPhone’s sensors translate your movements into actions. There are several game modes, a robust multiplayer system, achievements and more to delve into once you get everything set up.
The most important caveat to mention is that you need an Apple TV to be able to play this game. The next is that, at this stage, this still feels like a bit of a proof of concept: the graphics aren’t particularly polished, and you’ll encounter some lag or choppiness depending on the strength of your network connection as you play. If you have the devices required to play though, then you’ll find Motion Tennis offers a truly new approach to cross-platform gaming in the Apple ecosystem.
Price: $7.99
Developer: Rolocule Games
Download: App Store
What Have You Been Playing?
Lots of different ways to have fun this week, so make sure you try out these titles and leave us a comment if you enjoy them!
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