Keeping an Eye on iOS (w/e Mar 17)

Each week, I’ll endeavour to trawl through a baker’s-dozen worth apps from my ever-growing backlog of iOS games that are, or have been, free. I’ll investigate and describe each game, and then decide what to deserves more playtime, and what warrants deletion.

Super Snake HD

In short: A modernised snake, with the iOS-typical three-stars-a-level scoring system to boot.

Here though, the stars at least have a purpose, beyond that of scoring. They can be used to continue snaking along even after you’ve hit a wall. So they act more like lives. Rather than continuing on endlessly like the Snake of old, the objective here is to eat X amount of eggs in each level to advance. Being used to really old Nokia 3310 snake, I found the controls (‘touch in the vague direction you want to go to initiate a turn’) annoying, but thankfully there are the also arrows at the bottom of the screen which offer a superior alternative. Other than that, it is what you’d expect from Snake. Sadly, there is no instant restart feature, which is a bummer, because Snake does have an addictive quality that could easily be enhanced by said feature. There is also a full local multiplayer mode, in which two players share the one screen and compete. I’m sure this could result in a few funtimes, but only on the larger screen of the iPad. There just isn’t enough room on the smaller iDevices. But you can give it a whirl on both, since this is a universal app. Visually, the old blocky Snake is gone, replaced with a new look. But it is one that remains suitably clean and simple.

Verdict: Worth a look as a causal bit of fun, especially if you like Snake already.

I’ll be keeping this around and maybe racking up a few achievements.

HUEBRIX

In short: A colourful and clever grid based puzzler.

In this puzzler, players are required to fill the on-screen grid with colour, from one or more starting squares of colour. Each square has a certain capacity: on a 2×5 grid, red may only fill 4, but blue can fill the remaining 6. Its a little tricky to explain, but if you give it a whirl, it makes perfect sense. As you progress, there are more specific obstacles in your way, such as colour only squares, or ones than force you to turn left upon passing through them. Officially, this game should be considered a freemium title, but its pretty bloody generous: There are 105 levels with the base game, ranging from easy to medium, and you can then buy more/harder level packs for 99c each (I think each buck nets you another 35 levels.) So you could sink quite a lot of money into Huebrix, but its entirely your call. Overall, this is an absolute delight to play. I love the look of this game for the same reason I loved Letterpress a few weeks back; simple, colourful, and square. The music has also a pleasant techno-chill vibe, like some of the music from the Bit.Trip series. Huebrix does have a distinctive look, so distinct in fact, that I’m sure I’ve seen it before: It really does riff off Puzzlejuice, which is itself an excellent game, and sort of cross between scrabble and Tetris. Its a shame that the look has been so blatantly copied, but at least the premise of the two remains totally different. Another little drawback to this title is the lack of Game Centre support, but I suppose that’s being picky for the amount of content on offer.

Verdict: Definitely check it out for free, and if it hits your sweet spot, you can buy into it.

I’ll be trying to finish the free levels at least.

Mickey Shorts Halloween

In short: A fairly standard platform with a Halloween theme.

This is typical platforming fare, jump and slide, collect stuff. Being a Halloween game, there’s gotta be something spooky! So you also need to ‘release’ ghosts from statues in order to complete each level. In reality though, this is just a thinly veiled checkpoint system. The game has a semi-retro look, again, rather generic. The coins collected in each level can be used to buy cosmetic upgrades, like rainbow-afro hair or moustaches. It is a shame that there are all these unlockables, but no Game Center achievements, as is it is a game that lends itself to that. But it is meant to only serve as an intro to the full Mickey Shorts game, so I guess it serves purpose.

Verdict: A funish free introduction to the original game.

I’ll be removing this.

Thor: Son of Asgard

In short: A 3D action brawler starring the god of thunder himself.

While it is pretty cool to take control of Thor and unleash his mighty powers, you will soon become tired of doing so. This is a pretty repetitive brawler, in both terms of enemy types and attacks. And also Thor’s cries, which are limited to “HUUH!” and “GRAH!”. Over and over and over. While you’re free to roam around wielding your hammer, you cannot control the camera. The camera, what shall I term it, the ‘dynamic camera’, moves by itself, constantly guiding you. In addition, attacks will automatically be targeted at the nearest enemy. This means that you only have the illusion of freedom. In reality, this game is just a tap-fest. Thor looks good without being outstanding. The models are nice, but overall the game lacks the lighting punch that the real iOS gaming benchmarks have now (titles like Shadowgun or Infinity Blade).

If you’re a fan of marvel though, you will probably enjoy this more than the average person: There are some very stylish comic-styled cut-scenes as well as character biographies and a gallery of cover arts from Thor comics from over the years. If you’re a fan of gaming but also want your Marvel kick, you might be better off grabbing Avengers Initiative which is a solid fighter in the vein of Infinity Blade, or Judge Dredd Zombies which is a pretty 3D top down shooter where you take down the undead hordes with Dredd.

Verdict: Probably only a must have for die hard fans at the asking price of $3.

I’ll be deleting it.

The Incident

In short: An endless… jumper.

This one is really very basic. The apocalypse, or something, (you have to play through until the end to find out exactly what), is upon us, and everything is falling from the sky. Your job, dear player, is to survive the falling stuff but constantly jumping higher and higher by touch, and by moving left and right via tilting. The only thing I enjoyed in this game was examining all the falling objects, which are highly varied and nicely detailed considering the pixellated style.

Verdict: Meh. Not a great deal of fun.

I’ll be removing this one.

Perfect Cell

In short: A 3D puzzle/maze game.

In the future, scientists made a perfect cell. You are now a big blob of perfect cell, and your job is to escape the lab, killing as many scientists as you wish along the way. The above screenshot isn’t much to look at, but this is a good looking game in motion. Yes, the scientists and soldiers present in the laboratories are noticeably two dimensional, but that is entirely made up for by the funecessary ragdoll physics: You can subject the bodies of these guys to the wrath of your dash attacks, which send them and their guts flying. Other than murdering these scientists, it is basically a follow-the-finger affair as you escape each room. Switches need to be pressed, deadly lasers avoided and so forth. The game is is also a lightning fast loader, and syncs up with Game Center. Lovely!

Verdict: A well made little game, certainly worth some time.

I’ll be finishing this.

Monsters Ate My Condo

In short: An endless matching game, with elements of Jenga.

Here I am with yet another quirky quality game from Adult Swim. This one is a vertical matching game. You match three or more blocks (condos, apparently) of the same colour to create a bronze condo, then match three bronze to make a silver (pictured) and so forth, with diamond being the ultimate type. You also need to keep matching the correct colours to keep the monsters (either red, yellow, blue or green) on either side of you happy, otherwise they’ll stomp about and destabilise your tower, hence, my reference to Jenga. You will need to throw condos aside, and the monsters will feed on these. But if you, for example, feed the red monster too many green condos, he will crack the shits, and try to topple your tower. But you can always appease monsters by feeding them shiny condos for bonuses. Handily, each time you make a match of three, the tower will straighten slightly, making it easier to continue. But eventually your tower will topple, and that spells game over. But you’ll be back, cause this is addictive, and in addition, there are also plenty of leaderboards and achievements to keep you hooked.

Verdict: Despite the weirdness, the mechanics are simple and addictive. A great timewaster.

I’ll be keeping this game, and climbing the leaderboards!

PITFALL!

In short: An endless runner that makes you feel like Indiana Jones.

Pitfall! incorporates every mechanic seen in endless runners today. Tilt to move, tap to whip and swipe to turn, slide and jump. It is a full finger workout! It also hybridises the the ‘left-to-right runner’ and the ‘forward runner’ genres by having a camera that shifts depending on the area you’re running through; be it a cliff side, cave or jungle. This gives the game just that little bit more variability and in some cases excitement, than many other fixed-perspective runners. Naturally, there are in game currencies to collect, and these can be used to purchase checkpoints (eg 2000m, 5000m) and also outfits for Harry. Visually, the game has a delightfully retro 3D look; everything is just slightly geometric. Sadly, there is no retina support, and yet the game doesn’t always run smoothly on my iPod 4. Another big talking point about this game as that it is apparently nothing like the Atari 2600 original. Even so, there is some cute fan service, even in the opening credits. But that whole issue doesn’t really bother youngsters like myself.

Verdict: Worth a look, as there is a lot to do and plenty of attention to detail compared to other endless runners.

I’ll be giving this a bit of a bash for a wee while.

Cytus

In short: An original rhythm game.

This one just crashes on me when I try to play at the moment. Menu music is catchy though…

EDIT: All up and running now!
This is the first rhythm game I’ve played on iOS since TapTap. Unlike that game, or the typical scrolling music games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band, the notes appear pretty much anywhere on screen. Notes need to be hit when the horizontal black line (which travels up and down constantly) touches them. Some notes need to be held, some are directly joined to others, and some are just plain solo notes. I find the game pretty hard myself, as the way that notes appear and slowly grow until its their hitting time disconcerts me: I am used to having my notes is a certain spot, again, like GH/RB. Hopefully with more play, I will improve and enjoy it more. Still, all the music is original, and very catchy (well, catchy in a JPop kind of way), even if it is a little at odds with the games presentation: Which seems like a mix of Final Fantasy and I Robot.

Verdict: Not everyone’s cup of tea I’m sure, but it’s nice to see original games in the genre.

I’ll be playing a little more to see if I can get the hang of it.

Apocalypse Max: Better Dead Than Undead

In short: Action, action, zombies: A 2D gunner and platformer.

This is something you see pretty often on the platform: Run along, kill guys, get a star rating of some sort for your performance, the end. Just to be even more generic, the primary enemies are good old zombies. At Max’s disposal, are the classic abilities of: shoot, jump, knife, and grenade. This all works as you’d expect, however the the knife is activated via swiping, which is really silly, as it takes you away from the on screen buttons, (L,R, JUMP, SHOOT), and it also has a really hard time detecting which way you want to stab. So half the time you’ll want to stab right, but instead it goes left and you get mauled by the undead. In its defense at least Apocalypse Max isn’t retro styled! I’ve only been doing this gig for a few weeks and already the words “2D”, “8 bit”, “retro” and “platformer” have reared their heads far too often in sentences. Here, we have lots of nice high-resolution assets that all animate very smoothly. A by-product of this however, is a very hefty size… The game also skimps out in a few areas; it lacks Game Centre achievements, and therefore much re-playability. As an aside, the game also appears to use the title font from Angry Birds (or something amazingly similar), in its loading screens and such, which is a bit poor.

Verdict: A fairly uninspired game, give it a miss.

I’ll be deleting it, and regaining some 400 MB!

Swipe the Deck

In short: A matching game with playing cards.

This game is pretty straightforward: The player is required to match poker hands (pairs, straights, flushes etcetera) on a 6×7 grid. Power-ups can also be used to add extra time to your 2 minute round, increase your multiplier, or swap two cards. By creating great poker hands, you score (measured in dollars) increases. There is a single player mode, as well as the ability to play against other in a best-of-three rounds match. Opponents can be found via Game Center, a user ID, or Facebook. One can also spend their money on IAPs that will give them a dramatic advantage over the competition, so this isn’t the fairest of games. There are 50 achievements to keep players interested, but even so, I think my interest will abate quickly.

Verdict: If people like poker, they’ll play poker. If they like matching games, then they’ll find better ones out there. This is not necessarily a thing that needs to exist.

I’ll be playing a little longer though.

Percepto

In short: A clever puzzler that combines 3D perspectives with 2D platforming.

The easiest way to explain how this puzzles work is thus: In each room, one must reach an exit through two methods; the movement of the camera in 3D space, and the movement of the character in 2D. Each of these are manipulated with a series of buttons. The puzzles get quite tricky, and despite the simple exterior, the game is quite immersive. There is no front-end as such; all the menus live only in the small buttons at the bottom of the screen.

Verdict: This is a very very clever little game and is definitely worth a look.

I’ll be playing through Percepto.

Draw & Roll

In short: A cutesy physics drawing puzzler.

In Draw & Roll, one must reunite the male ball-pig with the female ball-pig. The piggy, being spherical, will roll, so the player must help him reach his missus by drawing lines to direct both him, and other objects that might impede him. Players are rewarded (more three-star ratings) if they draw as few lines as possible. The puzzles here are pretty well done, and the game looks clean and fresh thanks to the pastel colour scheme. Be aware though, there are a few off-putting and amateurish issues with this game: It has issues with detecting device rotation, and when combined with menu banner ads, stuff disappears off screen. So it becomes a little hard to navigate at times.

Verdict: Something a little different for a crowded genre, but still very much in the middle of said crowd.

I’ll be deleting this.
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Until next time, farewell!