What's the crucial element missing from most games nowadays? If you answered anything other than "goats," you're wrong! Jumping goats make anything better, and that's been proven. By science. Released by Llamasoft, Goatup 2 is the goatiest retro platformer you ever did see. A follow-up to the endless jumper Goatup, this sequel is slightly more traditional gameplay experience, if your idea of tradition involves minotaurs in rainbow sweaters, the Queen of England and angry toilets.
Alien Hive, a game by Appxplore is a blend of match 3, sliding block puzzles, and resource management with some alien breeding mixed in. It's all a bit reminiscent of Triple Town, where you shuffle items around to fill in gaps and help tiles evolve to be all that they can possibly be.
Magicka is back! And it's mobile! And Vlad's still not a vampire! Bringing with it everything that made the original game a hit, Magicka: Wizards of the Square Tablet takes a slightly more action-oriented approach to the spell slinging arcade game. You still combine elements to cast various bits of magic that can harm enemies, yourself, and your teammates, but thanks to shorter levels and a new camera angle, it's now all about speed and strategy.
Stack Overload is a mobile puzzle game from Bonus Level that feels like a cross between WarGames: WOPR and a memory game. It's your job to crash a series of increasingly complex programs by causing memory overloads one block at a time. This isn't as complicated as it sounds, as all you have to do is match pairs of tiles by turning them over one at a time. Overload the stack and you'll move on to the next level!
You know the old clich� of the adventurer being chased by the giant boulder? It's a trope that has appeared in numerous movies and games, but we never get to see things from the boulder's point of view. Well, that's all about to change! Indiana Stone: The Brave and the Boulder is an arcade-styled action game from Twinsky Games in which you play the larger, rounder, rockier half of the oft-imitated duo. Your mission is to crush the unnamed (but curiously familiar) archaeologist who has stolen your precious golden idol with the intent of locking it up in a stuffy museum.
Fetch is the story of a boy, his dog, and a bunch of arcade games living in a futuristic sci-fi world where robots and mega-corporations rule. A point-and-click adventure at its heart, Fetch is littered with so much gorgeous artwork and creative elements that its world springs to life, making it feel almost like a free-to-roam sandbox game.
The latest release from Pocket Planes developer NimbleBit, Nimble Quest drops the simulation formula in favor of a good old fashioned arcade game. And we're not kidding when we say "old fashioned". Nimble Quest is essentially the 40 year old game of Snake with a layer of RPG elements and free to play features draped on top. It's a very different experience than, say, Tiny Tower, but it's got that same level of simple charm we've come to expect from the studio.
Ninjas have to have a place to live, just like the rest of us. They also have to have jobs and food and money and footpaths and cherry trees to look at. Fortunately, the simple life of a farmer ninja doesn't preclude raids on nearby towns, which is precisely why Kairosoft's mobile simulation game Ninja Village is so fantastic.
The 2010s are shaping up to be the decade of the Internet renegade, yet for those of us without the technical savvy necessary to participate in virtually sticking it to the man, BoxCat LLC offers us a tempting and significantly more legal alternative with Nameless: The Hackers, a mobile RPG with a lot of virtual bite.
Solitaire Blitz is a fast paced addictive card game for your iOS device. It comes with all of the charm and atmosphere you've come to expect from PopCap. Challenge the clock and your friends as you try to clear all the cards within 60 seconds. Earn silver as you play, then spend it on boosts to help you up your score and unlock achievements.
It's a monster's life for you in this casual yet engaging indie simulation from Dejobaan Games! Going from a lowly morsel swimming in a vat of goop to (potentially) a respected elder that can influence the course of history, it's a whimsical, weird, and occasionally gross cross between a choose-your-own-adventure story and a visual novel that offers lots of replay value and laughs.
Bobbing is a fast-paced, finger-twitching, reflex-hounding action platformer from Little Bobby Games. You play as a little eskimo creature whose only ambition in life is to run endlessly through a circular labyrinth filled with twists, traps and lots and lots of fire.
Totems puts a simpler spin on the classic Risk (or Galcon) style of strategy game. Handing you a fistful of animal totems and placing you on a map, it's your job to outwit your opponent as you take turns dropping pieces on the board, claiming territories and fighting for control over the largest chunk of land.
The king is dead. Dibs on his crown! Ascent of Kings is a platform adventure game by Nostatic Software that sends you on an epic quest to become the next king. Your brothers are out to do the same, but because nobody thinks you've got the guts to do it, you have something to prove! The road from your home to the Shrine of Kings is a twisted and treacherous path, but there are a few handy items you'll encounter along the way that help you traverse the land.
Golf is, well, not traditionally the most exciting sport in the world. The clothing alone should tip you off to that fact. That's why everyone should play Super Stickman Golf 2 instead. The basic goal is the same: knock a little white ball into a hole somewhere on the green. Getting from start to finish means traversing some of the most impossibly mixed-up terrain ever seen. Laser beams, teleporters and sticky surfaces should have been part of golf from day one.
Dojo Danger from Kihon is the kind of game you can't wait to be good at. One part strategy and one part arcade physics, the setup is a bit reminiscent of the SQUIDS series, putting you in control of a group of heroes who can be shot around the screen in order to defeat the bad guys. This time around, though, you get to play as a band of ninjas ridding the world of a zombie invasion by smacking into them and knocking them into spike traps!
Block Fortress is Minecraft meets tower defense meets first person shooter, all squeezed down into a mobile game. Build a base in the middle of a blocky wilderness, place turrets and towers and power supplies to fortify your position, then send in the waves of enemies. Once combat begins, you shift from building mode to combat mode, taking a gun into battle and watching over your fort by blasting enemies by hand. It's incredibly exciting and also deeply rooted in upgrades and tactics, making it the sort of game you can play for months without truly mastering.
Last Train to Timbuktu is a puzzle game by Green Eyed Games that plays like a sliding block puzzle fused with a Rubik's cube. A grid of tiles sits before you, each decorated with some grass, maybe a bit of water or some bushes, and a section of track. Simply shift the grid around so the track pieces line up, allowing the train to get from Point A to Point B unimpeded!
Fishing isn't exactly the wackiest sport. Tag it as Ridiculous Fishing, though, and suddenly everybody expects a certain level of, oh, ridiculousness. From Super Crate Box creator Vlambeer along with Greg Wohlwend of Mikengreg and Zach Gage of SpellTower fame, Ridiculous Fishing is a wholly upgraded version of the browser game Radical Fishing released in 2011. The premise? Fishing taken to a ridiculous level.
Minesweeper is the kind of game everyone's played at least once in their life. Or 57 times simply because, hey, it's there. When you combine zombies and the very familiar logic puzzle you get Zombie Minesweeper, a game from Frogtoss Games that is exactly what it sounds like: minesweeper with zombies chasing after you. Your job is to carefully move across the minefield, planting flags to mark dangerous tiles while you aim for the detonator at the end. Reach it and it won't be your brains splattered across the place.
As the saying goes, there's no use crying over spilled milk. Or in Yuri's case, a toppled bucket of water that has unleashed monsters that inhabit the lab where he works. The only real option available in Monster Meltdown, a new puzzle platform game from Ambient Studios, is to put on a spiffy suit that will allow him to teleport around the lab and find those creatures as quickly as possible.
Run, Commander Video, Run! Runner2: Future Legend of Rhythm Alien is the next chapter in the BIT.TRIP series by Gaijin Games. You've got to jump, slide, kick, and glide your way to all of the gold bars while avoiding getting bonked by a ton of enemies. Sporting a wonderfully wacky atmosphere and fantastically catchy soundtrack, Runner2 is definitely a game you'll want to make a dash for.
Dungeon Plunder is one of those mobile games whose name says it all. Created by Dominic Duchesne, this randomly generated roguelike ditches most of the story and gives you precisely what you want in an RPG: looting, equipment, stuff to fight, and experience to gain. The best part is that combat is handled not with a menu system but with a good old fashioned slot machine!
From Dumb and Fat Games, creator of Phantasmaburbia, Sling It! is a quick-fire arcade game perfectly suited for satisfying your urge to break things while ridding the world of smoke-belching machines. It uses a simple-style difficulty progression that throws enemy after enemy in your face, challenging you to chip their metallic bodies apart and use the debris as a weapon. A bit of poetic justice, maybe?
The only thing that could make Plexus Puzzles better is more... and that's just what you get in Plexis: Together Till The End. Four times the jigsaws mean four times the fun, and with a cool chalk-art aesthetic and added animations between each puzzle, it definitely makes the most of its expanded ambitions.
Created by a studio called, of all things, Taco Graveyard, Penumbear combines light-based puzzles and a platform adventure game into a very good-looking mobile experience. Playing as the aforementioned bear, you find yourself awakened by a color-changing firefly who leads you out of the dark castle where you dwell. Getting from dank cellar to sunny field is going to be quite a feat, though, but luckily you have a very special ability involving lights!
When I first ran across Vampire's Fall from Krime Media, I was on a quest for a new mobile RPG—any new mobile RPG—because, I admit it, I have an addiction. I really only downloaded the game because it was free, and for the first few rounds I wasn't really hooked. But then I started noticing the details. And trust me, there are a lot of details.
The Silent Age: Episode One from House on Fire is built like a classic point-and-click adventure game. It goes to extreme lengths to keep everything as crisp and minimalist as possible, reducing the controls to quick taps and pouring on massive amounts of attention-getting atmospheric details using just a few sound effects and some subtle gradients. But it's that stark simplicity that makes The Silent Age such a fetching game, one that will have you eagerly awaiting future installments!
The dead walk!... and it's you! In this wonderfully bizarre hybrid of slot machine and RPG, take control of a zombie king and his undead army as they rampage across the country through a series of graphic novel-styled adventures, doing battle over the reels and amassing enough loot to buy more units and weapons to expand your arsenal. Simple, fun, and immediately addictive, with a great sense of surreal ghoulish charm.
And if 2013 is the Year of the Snake, well, then there's absolutely no reason why it can't be the year of the Shadow Snake 3, the new arcade game from Play Panic, also as a free download for iOS and Android. Snake gameplay is as familiar as it is difficult to mess up, but this is a very soothing and fun interpretation.
New in the line of mobile room escape games with "100" in their name ("door exit" games, if you will), 100 Crypts takes a bit of a darker tone with its series of point-and-click puzzles. Dropped off in a series of one screen rooms, your goal is to find a way to unlock the door, unseal the tomb, open the port hole, or do whatever it takes to leave the area, usually so you can find yourself in the exact same situation when you reach the other side!
Briquid is a physics puzzle game from Gamious that quite neatly combines brick removal, brick creation, and flowing liquids. With a few simple taps it's your job to shift all of the water on the screen to the designated zones, all while staying under your movement limit and without wasting a drop of the precious stuff. It's a bit of an extreme brain bender at times, but it's just accessible enough to work!
Art restoration is a tricky business. Make one false move, and you turn a beautiful fresco into a bowl of mashed potatoes. You can try your hand and bringing pictures back to life with Puzzle Restorer by Gavina Games. Mix and smear the paint around the grid, and try to match the target image. Your paints and brushstrokes are limited, so make every move count!
Color Sheep from Trinket Studios is an intense arcade game about a sheep that can change colors and shoot lasers. Wolves have escaped the Wolfcano and are stealing colors from the world. Sir Woolson, the Knight of Light (that's you), can change the color of his fleece to defend against the dark minions. But wolves don't adopt one or two basic shades. Instead, they sport almost two dozen different colors, meaning you got a lotta mixing to do and not a lot of time to do it!
Puzzle game plus farming plus mega-mustachioed man equals Sprinkfield, a logic-based game from Webstar Works that's as simple as watering the lawn. Well, not that simple, but it starts out with that basic direction and adds a little extra complexity from there. It's also a mighty handsome looking game, which is always a nice plus!
The original zombie-defending gardening sensation may be a few years old, but Plants vs. Zombies lives strong as it makes its way to more and more devices. The killer PopCap app hasn't changed much from its original incarnation, it's just been optimized for touch-based controls and smaller screens. It's just as wacky and fun as ever, though, so if you've never given it a try, now's your chance! It's Apple's Free App of the Week!
It's not often one can look at a racing game and say "Wow, that appeals to a wide audience!" Cubed Rally Redline is one of those games. Created by No Can Win, this pixel art racing game has more in common with mission-based arcade games like Jetpack Joyride than your average racer. Hit the track, jump a few ponds, dodge some cows, and see how far you can go without crashing.
The world needs a QuestLord, and you're just the lucky person to do it! In QuestLord by Eric Kinkead, you play the only hero in a retro-styled, turn-based, first person RPG. Also, it's your job to save the Shattered Realm from destruction! You start with little more than a basic set of adventuring equipment and head into the wilderness ready to face skeletons, giant rats, living trees, and most frightening of all, greedy shopkeepers!
Explore a surreal, magical world inhabited by unusual monsters and other oddities, helping a little girl recover her stolen teddy bear in this point-and-tap adventure from Storybird. Solve conventional adventure game puzzles as well as tone-based riddles to progress through three beautiful chapters, unlock remarkable artwork in the gallery, and enjoy a lovely narrative-free story so charming that it will capture your heart and make you its everlasting friend.
Pixel Dungeon is a free dungeon crawling RPG that aims to be a roguelike anyone can play, all without stripping itself of everything that makes crawling through randomly generated sewers an entertaining event. All you need to do is tap the screen to move across the tiles, wiping away the darkness to reveal walls, doors, items, treasure, and an enemy or three (teeth gnashing, be careful!).
Back in the olden days the life of our earliest ancestors was one of struggle and strife. Vegans and pescetarians hadn't found their chance to emerge yet and instead life was sustained through the efforts of hunters and gatherers. In Feast or Famine, a brilliant new action platform game by X4 Games, you will play the role of the hunter chasing after birds and bison while dodging an assortment of cranky creatures and environmental hazards. Shown through art inspired by caveman paintings this game is good enough for caveman and a throwback treat for us modern folk.
The clock is ticking, the fuse is burning, and the stakes are high... You're the only bomb technician in town who can defuse the logic puzzles in ShellBlast Forever, a mobile version of the Minesweeper-esque downloadable game by Vertigo Gaming. As you slide the SDUs around the grid, can you tell which tiles are deadly triggers from the numerical clues provided?
Broom attack! Also, you might be trapped in a dream. Or some other sort of subconscious realm. It's tough to tell, but judging from the strange sights and the cryptic "as legend has foretold" messages from sages and statues, there's definitely something odd going on here. Anodyne from Sean Hogan and Jonathan Kittaka is an adventure through a melancholy world that plays out like a classic 16-bit RPG. It borrows some of the best micro-concepts from games like The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening, Yume Nikki, and even Earthbound, creating a world that's as innocent as it is moving and as dangerous as it is surreal.
Everything's better with a buddy, and this vibrant iOS physics puzzler wants you to reunite two of them with the help of some very weird but very friendly critters. Though a familiar concept, Be Together shines with an exceptional amount of polish in everything from its design to its gameplay to be the sort of casual mobile game you can enjoy at any age.
Vampires, man. They're jerks! But admittedly if you decide to live right underneath the most notorious one of them all, you probably deserve whatever's coming to you. Still, when a pack of demon's abduct Luke's pregnant wife Grace in the middle of the night, he sets out to bring her home in this somewhat clunky but gloriously cheesy and fun classic point-and-click adventure for download or iOS.
With a title that practically demands a dramatic pause before the final word, 100 Doors of Revenge is a new single-screen room escape game from Gipnetix Games, creator of 100 Doors 2013 and 100 Escapers. Once again, you find yourself faced with a series of locked doors, and the only logical course of action is to start solving your way forward!
Sometimes a puzzle game comes along that's so smart and so well-made, you wonder why it wasn't created like a billion years ago or something. Puzzle Retreat from The Voxel Agents is one such game, combining elements from sokoban and a sliding block puzzle to create an impressively challenging game that is almost completely void of frustration. You just sit, stare, and play, all while marveling at the beautiful visuals before your eyes.
DungeonDiary by Windbell is an RPG mixed with a programming game. It sounds like an unusual combination, but the minute you get your hands on it you'll see the enormous potential it has. After your family suffered through a natural disaster, you're left with a massive debt and no way to pay it off. Except by going on adventures! Not a bad way to survive, until you realize that in order to get paid you'll collect more grasses and mushrooms than you knew existed, fight off hordes of bees and "sexy cats", and escort helpless citizens through the wilderness.
Cognition: An Erica Reed Thriller is a planned series of four point-and-click mystery adventure games by Phoenix Online Studios, makers of The Silver Lining. Starting with The Hangman and continuing with the early 2013 release of The Wise Monkey, the series puts you in the role of FBI agent Erica Reed as she investigates a series of horrific murders, continuing the story across releases to keep the suspense as palpable as possible.
Calling all heroes! It's up to you to defend the castles of the kingdom in Wild Heroes. In this tower defense game you must place your heroes wisely to keep the enemy at bay. Upgrade them to wild status to really do some damage. Show the monsters what a hero is really capable of!
It's the end of the world, but turn that frown upside down, because the apocalypse has never been so cheerful! In this free iOS simulation, you're in charge of rebuilding a utopian society in space... by yourself. Fortunately for you, you've got an endless supply of incoming clones, and a bunch of genetic material to mix and match to create more jobs and more buildings. A vibrant pixel style and cheeky sense of humour make this one light, addictive casual sim that's hard to put down.
Kairosoft's latest free simulation for your Android device might have a weird idea of just what being a landlord entails, but darned if it isn't addictive. Build your apartment complex from the ground up, enticing new tenants and enriching their lives to help them grow and succeed. See your people become successful from the cradle to old age and compete in a variety of categories to have the best apartment around in this colourful, casual sim.
Ever had a tennis ball delivered to your face? Not in the gentle way your local postal service worker might deliver a package (*snicker*), the kind of delivery where a professional aims for your head and gives it a good shot? We're glad you answered "no", because if it were true, you might end up like the villains in Tennis in the Face, a game of precision physics from 10tons. A little bit of aiming and a whole lot of ricocheting can go a long way. It's time to take down the corporate machine!
Rise of the Blobs is a colorful, creative, and fruity puzzle matching game from Robot Invader, the studio behind Wind-up Knight. In a world where marshmallows talk and pieces of fruit are weapons, you have the honor of saving the corn syrupy folk in an endless arcade game that isn't afraid to crank up the speed. In a welcome change from the norm, you must manage a three dimensional puzzle board that rotates at the touch of your finger, meaning you won't always be able to see what those pesky blobs are up to!
What's inside the Cave, DoubleFine's latest platforming puzzle adventure? For seven very unusual and very different heroes, that answer is quite personal indeed. But no matter which three you set off to solve the mysteries of the depths with, you can be sure you'll encounter hilarity, challenging puzzles, memorable characters, stunning visuals, and more than a few secrets of the bizarre and personal sort.
Puzzle and Dragons is a fusion of puzzle gameplay and Pokemon-like monster hunting, training and collecting. From the safety of your mobile device you get to manage a team of tiny elemental creatures who can be fused and evolved to become more powerful fighting machines. When your crew is ready to roll, head into the dungeon where you'll battle enemies by swapping gems on a Bejeweled-like grid. It's an almost perfect blend of puzzle matching and role playing, streamlined to be casual friendly without removing too much of the team management bits we love to obsess over.
Riven, the 1997 sequel to Myst, has finally made its way to iPad! Ported to iOS back in 2010, the team at Cyan had some graphics issues to deal with before a large screen release would be possible. After lots of tinkering it finally happened, and the result is the lush and intriguing Age of Riven staring you in the face, complete with a refined interface and full touch screen controls.
Dolls are suspicious. We all know it. They're little, creepy, and just packed with possession potential. But we've never really had proof before now, when your niece comes under the thrall of one seriously nasty specimen whose history is much darker and more mysterious than you might suspect. In this iOS exclusive horror hidden-object adventure, meet bizarre characters and track a sinister plot back to its origins in one strange town.
Pinball may be just a decade or two from its 100th anniversary, but the genre is far from a fading memory. Momonga Pinball Adventures from Paladin Studios takes the familiar concept and wraps an adventure around it, allowing you to explore a world packed with secrets by guiding characters around with pinball flippers. Take all of that, add a heartfelt storyline and charming artwork and you've got a dangerously attractive arcade game that can capture just about anyone's interest.
Inverse Universe from FireRabbit, the creator of the Stalker Room Escape series, is a lovely 3D rendered escape game crafted especially for mobile devices. Instead of the usual single room to bust your way out of, Inverse Universe employs a more traditional layout with a dozen or so areas to explore, each with items and clues you'll put to use elsewhere in the game. It's a nice set-up with some good puzzles and a light sense of humor, making it an excellent and extremely mobile-friendly diversion!
In this short, logical escape from GamezHero, you wake to find yourself trapped in a room with only a few poor, departed souls for company. You'll need to click around to find a way out, and with some superbly creepy atmosphere and straight-forward puzzling, this is a simple but tidy little escape to keep you entertained. Also available free on iOS and Android!
What are you doing? Protect those plant seeds! When zombies get it in their heads they'd rather eat seeds than brains, the plant kingdom rallies together to form the Vegendary Heroes, a group of fearsome warriors dedicated to fighting off the invading undead. I Am Vegend: Zombiegeddon is the tale of this epic struggle, taking a tongue-in-cheek setting and sense of humor from games like Plants vs. Zombies and setting it in a two dimensional defense world.
Gunslugs from Orange Pixel is an arcade game. It's an arcade game with guns and shooting and enemies, helicopters jetpacks and tanks. There's lots of destruction, lots of replayability, unlockable characters, and plenty of weapons with which you can cause said destruction. Basically, it's everything you could ask for from a rampaging action game, all packed up in a neat little mobile release with ample amounts of retro-style visuals, music and secrets.
The Tribloos 2 from Bumpkin Brothers is a sequel to the 2011 simulation/time management game The Tribloos. Set in a 2D world starring energetic and eternally optimistic creatures, you'll guide the fuzzballs on a quest to discover the origins of some troubling storms looming near the island. What they find beyond the clouds, however, isn't quite what they expected!
Imangi Studios resurrects their smash-hit iOS arcade game with this bigger, badder, and altogether better installment that keeps all the action you loved and buffs it up with an improved look and more. Once again, you've stolen a forbidden idol from a dangerous temple and have to run for your life, but with new locales, obstacles, power-ups, abilities, and much more in your way (including one very big, very angry monkey) you have your work cut out for you.
Asteroids have long been the nemesis of creatures living on Earth. Just ask the dinosaurs. Or the makers of that gem of an arcade game, Asteroids. Or the NASA researchers who were trying to figure out if we'd get smacked with a big chunk of space rock in a few decades (spoiler: we won't). Crumble Zone from Rebel Twins understands that ancient fear and it capitalizes on it by letting you save the world over and over again by tossing little missiles towards the sky. With satisfying sound effects, a soundtrack that actually rocks, and plenty of things to unlock, it's quite possibly the most exciting asteroid defense "simulation" around!
Remember pinball? Not the the massive stand-up tables you'd feed with quarters at the arcade while your friends foolishly played Mortal Kombat. We're talking about the handheld versions with simple boards and inexplicably infinite replay value! Sauce Digital looks to recreate that world of tiny metal pellets and plastic flippers with Pinball Kid, a small and simple arcade game for iOS devices. It looks retro, it plays retro, and with board names like Rocktopus, Zombeaver and Antdroid, it's almost impossible to resist.
Noble Nutlings is a physics racing game by Boomlagoon, a studio formed by several members of the original Angry Birds team. Don't expect slingshots and piggies, though, as this one's a very different sort of ride. Using a combination of tilt controls and good old fashioned upgrades, you'll pilot a trio of squirrels through different landscapes as they collect acorns and try to make it through the countryside in one piece. Also, the squirrels are the cutest creatures in any mobile game, especially the grumpy brown one. You can quote us on that!
Sometimes you just wanna jump on a trampoline. And turn three sets of reversing flips while in the air and land without smacking your face! Bouncy from monogames is an impressively illustrated arcade game that is essentially an upgradeable stunt trampoline for your iOS device. It's better than risking your cranial integrity on a real life trampoline, and you get to fight for higher scores and upgrade your equipment in the process. Plus, buck-toothed bunny!
The world of creativity games continues to expand, but this time it's on mobile devices! Growtopia, a combined effort from Robot Wants developer Hamumu and Dungeon Scroll creator Robinson Technologies, strips out a lot of the complexities often found in creativity games like Minecraft or Terraria, allowing you to build and decorate your own little world that goes wherever your mobile device goes. Bored on the bus? Growtopia! Don't wanna listen to your boss droning on? Growtopia! Entire evening free? GROWTOPIA!
Hide and seek can be a very serious past time, but it loses som`e of its appeal when bad things start to happen as a result of an innocent game. Escape: The Ruby of Judgment is a point and click escape game from the talented folks at IDAC, the mobile division of Gotmail. Featuring lovely stylized visuals and an impressive battery of puzzles, this somber but entertaining release proves you don't need a mouse to craft a good escape game!
Joe Danger is kind of a big deal. Not only is he the World's Most Determined Stuntman, he can also leap across shark-infested pools, dodge giant mousetraps, evade threatening speed bumps, and apparently hover atop giant fans. Pretty sweet deal, right? After Joe's initial outing as a console download, the fearless stunt driver has landed on iOS devices with Joe Danger Touch, a fantastic arcade game from Happy Games with tons of things to unlock and plenty of wild rides to pursue. Great mobile racing game, or the greatest mobile racing game?
Kitty minions, go forth and fight! In Battle Cats from PONOS, you control legions of tall cats, chubby cats, flying cats, cows (which aren't cats), and plenty of other cute warriors whose sole purpose is to defend their base from legions of tiny stickmen, hippos, snakes and other bad guys. It's a familiar combat-oriented defense set-up we've seen before, but there's so much lovable style poured into this game, you can't help but to play until the wee hours of the morning, pitting cartoon cat against cartoon cat.
Blizz is a mobile matching puzzle game from Hex3d set in a futuristic world where ice is a bit of a problem. Hexagon tiles on a hexagon grid form your playing field, and all you have to do is drag things around to make matches and shut down the reactor. It's familiar enough concept to rope you in from the start, but the shifted focus from making matches to freeing up frozen cells that need to be matched creates an endless cycle of preparing and setting off chain reactions, one of the most satisfying parts of any puzzle game. Do your job well and you just might save the world!
More mobile Conceptis puzzles, hooray! The team that practically invented the online presence of pen and paper logic puzzles has released an iOS conversion of one of its browser-based offerings. This time it's Conceptis Nurikabe, a touch screen friendly incarnation of Nurikabe Light. It has a very similar interface to the browser games, offering an easy way to work on hundreds of puzzles on the go without having to sharpen a single pencil.
Duncan and Katy is a mobile action/arcade game by Francisco David Moreno Pérez. Featuring two young heroes, a nutty scientist, and swarms of invading aliens, you get to run around a series of small islands picking up things like swords, crossbows, guitars, chocolate bars and springboards to stave off the attack. Keep knocking those baddies around and the professor will provide you with a weapon that can chase them away, but don't think for a second that defeating aliens will be that easy!
The pixel is mightier than the sword, if only because a sword can only be used for stabbin' and the pixels in Social Titans' addictive iOS match-3 defense game can be used to summon vampires. Create matches on a battlefield to summon and merge new warriors and classes in order to protect your VIP, who is SUCH a VIP that they can afford to wander around said battlefield without actually lifting a finger to do anything useful. Sigh.
From the creator of 100 Doors 2013, Gipnetix Games, comes 100 Escapers, a game that strides a little closer to traditional room escape territory than the usual lot of mobile escape games. You're still trapped in rooms, of course, but instead of having a single screen to bust out of, you've got a little big of wiggle room to walk around, open drawers, examine things, and fashion a way to get that door open so you can continue forwards.
The world is crumbling beneath everyone's feet, and there's only one hope for survival: rockets to the moon! In Handy Game's puzzle release Rocket Island, your job is to develop hexagons of land into functional rockets as quickly as you can. Start with the sea, build solid ground, prop up a platform, then make a rocket. All you have to do is keep everyone alive as you frantically swipe between meteors and volcanic eruptions!
Squishy and malleable, colorful and in great peril. That pretty much sums up the creatures in Clay Jam, an arcade game from Fat Pebble that lets you save a world of clay creatures from the clay nemeses that are gobbling them up like tasty appetizers. You've got the power of physics on your side, however, rolling down hills, squishing small monsters to gain mass and make a mad leap from the island to knock the big bad guys away. Heroic!
Pangolin from Feed Tank is a physics-based arcade game that does a fantastic job straddling genres to create a very different, very entertaining sort of game. You indirectly control a bouncing orange critter by creating temporary trampoline platforms on the screen, guiding the little guy through some crazy stages filled with bumpers, tunnels, portals and more. Pangolin is almost like a game of vertical mini-golf. Except not. And it's way better!
What's the last thing that happens before Christmas? You go to sleep! That is, you would if there weren't so much going on in your house. A follow-up to Quiet, Please!, Nostatic Software has released Quiet Christmas, a sidescrolling puzzle adventure game that's all about getting a bit of rest before Santa arrives. The sooner you get your brother to chill out, fix the tree, get rid of the neighbor's annoying decorations, and find a way to warm up the house, you're good to go!
This iPad-only puzzle is a mystery wrapped in a conundrum wrapped in an enigma. And jump scares. Claiming to be a faithful digital recreation of an actual, physical puzzle box with an unsettling history, the game is a series of mechanized puzzles where figuring out the goals and controls for each one is part of the challenge. And it's definitely a big challenge at that. Unlock more of the Box's history as you proceed, and play somewhere nice and dark with the sound turned up.
Swampy still needs a bath, and Perry is still trying to solve a mystery. Who has time for celebrations? These guys do, apparently, as they've managed to squeeze in a little Christmas cheer in Where's My Holiday?, a free release from Disney Mobile that turns the Where's My Water? and Where's My Perry? games into something special for the holidays.
Paper Galaxy from Liquid Entertainment is an arcade game that's just about as charming as a game can be. Once upon a time there was a happy little blue-eyed moon named Luna. While momma Earth was snoozing, Luna caught sight of a beautiful space butterfly. As she followed it, she encountered some space dust that gave her a terrible case of the sneezies, propelling her off into the wild yonder. Now, lost in the cold blackness of space and far from her home, Luna needs to find her way back, navigating an array of planets, black holes, comets and other obstacles using little more than the power of her own sneezes.
Choice of Games and Alana Joli Abbott deliver a gorgeously detailed and immersive text adventure for iOS and Android set against the backdrop of mystical ancient China. Outwit or succumb to mischievous fox spirits, challenge or support the emperor, become a student or one day a teacher of an ancient art, and craft a legacy that will stand the test of time.
The Puddings need your help! Without legs or traction, they're helpless against the selfish humans willing to ignore their pleading eyes and chow down on them, so they need you to help them slide around and combine into more formidable monsters! With different flavours of Puddings with different abilities and a whole bunch of levels, ZeptoLabs brings another gorgeously high-quality puzzle game to your iOS.
Graduation time at Spellwood Academy! Biggles the bespectacled bunny wizard is ready for finals, but unlike most school exams, these happen to be quite entertaining. Spellwood from Three Rings (creator of Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates) drops you in a cheery fantasy world of one-on-one word battles, allowing you to face off against opponents in turn-based tile combat. Think of it as Scrabble meets Puzzle Quest with wands and anthropomorphic animals and you'll have a good idea what to expect!
Such an easy concept, but such a challenging game. Zyl is a one button arcade release from DevilishGames (whose work you might recognize from Cube Droid Saves the Galaxy) that's all about patience and timing. It looks so calm and peaceful on the surface, but once the game gets going, you'll quickly realize it's in your best interest to leave nervous anticipation in the other room.
Man, those ancient pharaohs had it rough. Keeping cobras out of the marketplace. Trying to collect stamps by fulfilling citizen requests. Dealing with the Pyramid Association. And how'd they ever decide where to build their hammer shop?! Kairosoft, makers of Kairobotica, Beastie Bay, and the Story series of games, has recreated a slice of the ancient world with The Pyraplex, a mobile simulation that will steal massive chunks of your time and refuse to let go until you're the pharaoh of all the pharaohs.
Choose your hero and embark upon a dungeon crawl in Dungelot. In this roguelike you'll face a myriad of monsters as you fight your way deeper into the dungeon. Collect items to increase your stats as you find the key needed to exit each level. How deep can you delve?
The smash-hit comic series invades your iOS in this gorgeous real-time strategy game. Following officer Rick Grimes as he regains consciousness in a hospital some time after the zombie apocalypse has already begun, the game takes you through a series of iconic locations and allows you to recruit and upgrade all your favourite characters, each with their own unique abilities, to assemble your zombie-hunting dream team. Learn how to make the best of your heroes on the fly, working both solo and as a team, and activate distractions in your environment in order to stay alive and complete bonus challenges.
There's no need to bother with crazy cryptic clues when you solve a Gryptics puzzle, because they're all about finding the twelve words that fit perfectly in each mini-crossword. There's only one perfect solution, but there may be plenty of red herrings waiting to trip you up. Fire up your vocabulary box and see what words you can come up with in this intriguing minimalist word puzzle.
Double Fine Productions knows the spreadsheet is mightier than the death ray, but only when it has some serious super power to back it up! Hire, train, and manage a squad of elite superheroes from the ground up as they handle the day-to-day task of fighting crime and more in this fun and funny free simulation for iOS.
It's been a while since we've seen serious activity from Kloonigames' Crayon Physics games. From its debut as an experimental project in 2007 to the release of Crayon Physics Deluxe a few years later, the crayon-drawing physics/puzzle game went from being a neat-o toy to OMG WANT MORE. And now, not too long after its initial mobile release, the game has fully grown up and is ready for its HD iPad debut, sporting a few nice extras along with the visual upgrade.
So, this exists: PlantPot's Finger Hoola, a simple arcade game where you do exactly what the title suggests! It's not code for nose picking or anything strange, you just place a finger on the screen and play a game of two dimensional hula hoop. Weird, right? Strangely fun, and with a nice ambient score and abstract backdrop to soothe your eyes and ears. Who knew drawing tiny little circles on the screen would translate into such a great game?
Color Alchemy is a sparsely-styled mobile puzzle game from Element Modulus that challenges your ability to mix, split and alter beams of color. By dragging paths and adding special tiles to manipulate colors, you'll create some complex scenes that look like a truck carrying rainbows crashed into a Skittles factory. Just, you know, not as tragic. And with loads of levels and some painfully mind-bending puzzles, you've definitely got your work cut out for you.
Last Day of Work loves virtual sims. I mean seriously loves them, at least according to their lead designer. And, well, their product line, which includes the massively popular Virtual Villagers series. For those of us who love messing with the lives of little virtual people without all that faffing about on an island, Last Day of Work created Virtual Families, a game which featured the animated people without the exploding volcanoes. Now they've come out with the sequel to that fabulous game, Virtual Families 2: Our Dream House, which deepens the gameplay of the original in new and interesting ways, and all for your handy portable iOS device!
Looking for a little extra adventure in your mobile gaming life? 3D Methods has released another casual point and click title that follows the layout of Forever Lost, The Haunt, and the game's own spiritual companion, Cryptic Kingdoms. Instead of rattling about in a surreal fantasy world, though, Cryptic Caverns drops you in a dark and dreary island filled with an intriguing backstory and more than a few ancient mysteries to stumble across.
Ever wondered where baby bunnies come from? The cuddly protagonist in La Ventanita's Bunny Cannon does, too, but since everyone tells him a different story, he need to straighten things out. Luckily this involves nothing more playing a game of pachinko where bunnies fired from cannons multiply as soon as they come in contact with the opposite gender. It's a lot like Peggle or Coin Drop!, only so much cuter and with so many more rabbits.
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