One day, I will release an iPhone game. It will be a game about writing articles about iPhone games. You'll have to play a ton of games, try to manage your rage when yet another burp/bikini/fart app appears, and cry tears of joy when something original appears. After selecting your games, you'll sit down and compose an article complete with gorgeous screenshots and flowery prose as an introduction paragraph. When you're finished, you can make a game about writing iPhone game articles in the game and start the process anew. It will be the greatest, most infinite iPhone game ever!
Game Dev Story - Oh, now this is meta! Game Dev Story is a casual simulation game that puts you in charge of a fledgling game development company. Manage artists, designers, coders and more as you try to create and release successful video games over the course of two decades. Advertising, conventions, and your fans are also a part of the picture, making this a realistic (and hilarious) look at creating and releasing a video game. Warning: there are so many "in" references in this game, you'll feel like a geek after playing.
Stoneship: The Curse of a Thousand Islands - From the studio behind Myst comes a grand 2D exploration game featuring pirates, sea monsters, treasure, and more of the above! Stoneship is a tile-based casual strategy game much like the PC game Oasis (or a greatly-simplified Civilization). Tap on map squares to uncover their contents. As you slowly work your way across the map, you'll find a lot of empty sea, some shorelines, treasures, port cities, and a few surprises or two. You have 50 turns to do everything you can on each map, then the pirates attack. Move your troops into the right cities to strengthen them, then prepare to take on the baddies! A great casual strategy-like game with a lovely visual presentation.
Cut the Rope - Well, cut it, why don't you? A piece of candy hangs from a rope (or several ropes!) somewhere on the screen. Swipe your finger and slice it, allowing the candy to drop (hopefully into the waiting mouth of the frog below). Make strategic movements to gather all the stars on the screen, and watch for crazy contraptions like bubbles, air vents, and rope spawners that will drastically change how you play the game. A vividly animated environment makes this game an absolute treat to play, and the physics-based gameplay couldn't be more well-tuned. The free Cut the Rope Lite is also available.
shibuya - A stylish puzzle game that's deceptively simple. Wide, rectangular blocks slowly fall from the top of the screen. To the left a row of colored blocks sits, the bottommost highlighted for easy viewing. Tap a rectangle to turn it the color of the indicated square, then watch it fall to the bottom of the screen. Line up two or more like-colored rectangles and you can tap them to clear them away, earning points based on the number of blocks in a match. The description sounds simple and maybe even a bit dull, but the minute you play the game you see how strategic decisions quickly come into play, making this one of the most basic but most challenging puzzle games we've seen in some time.
NOTE: Games listed may not be available outside of North America. Prices are subject to change and are therefore unlisted. Please see the individual game pages for purchasing info.
Those first two games look really interesting and makes me sad that I don't have an iphone or an ianything! But I guess I shouldn't be too sad, since there's also really cool looking games I can't play for consoles I will never have, and I don't feel as bad about that.
It is NOT a frog. It's a little monster and it's name is Om Nom.
Om nom is too cute. You can't help but want to feed him candy. That sad face he makes when you cut the wrong rope and the candy falls or you don't cut it in time and the spider runs away with it is almost heartrending...
Game Dev. Story is amazing.
I know this has never been done, I don't think, but it needs its own seperate review.
I am in love.
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