iOS game of the week

Monument Valley Is Our iOS Game Of The Week [Editor’s Pick]

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monument valley
Relax into this stunningly beautiful game.

Princess Ida needs to find herself, and she’s doing so with a quest across an unpredictable and shifting landscape that takes inspiration from perspective-bending Escher art and hit indie game Fez.

You’ll need to tap on the screen to get Ida moving to her end goal, swiping and rotating dozens of different mechanical gadgets to make sure she can continue on her way. The puzzles aren’t super difficult, but they do require a bit of thought, and plenty of them are downright ingenious. You’ll feel pretty darn intelligent when you finally get that “aha!” moment.

Check out our play-through video below to get a sense of how lush and calming Monument Valley really is.

Exquisitely Lush Tengami Is Our iOS Game Of The Week [Editor’s Pick]

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tengami

We’ve been excited about Tengami ever since we saw it at a gaming conference a couple of years back. The long development time has paid off for developer Nyamyam, as Tengami is by far one of the best games of its type we’ve seen on any platform.

It came out for iOS just this week, and we’ve lost ourselves (and our sense of time) playing through the lushly illustrated pop-up book. The story is told without dialogue, tasking us with moving from one beautiful environment to the next, solving puzzles along the way to keep the journey going.

Here’s a video of some of our play through of the game.

Spell Quest: Grimm’s Journey Is Our iOS Game Of The Week [Editor’s Pick]

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Spell Quest

Mark Smith’s Spell Quest: Grimm’s Journey is this week’s iOS Game of the Week, and it’s a fun one.

You’ll need to spell words to move Grimm from left to right, with longer words causing more damage to the baddies you encounter. You’ll pull letter tiles from a grid below, and some tiles will give you power ups, others will poison you. It’s a fun mix.

Check out our video below for some gameplay footage.

The Room Two Is Our iOS Game Of The Week [Editor’s Pick]

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So pretty, and scary, too!
So pretty, and scary, too!

Sure, The Room Two is a sequel to Fireproof Games’ original effort, The Room, but more of the same, with bigger and better puzzles is most definitely not the worst thing in the world.

Check out our video of the tutorial level of The Room Two below to get a sense of the game, and decide whether you’ll want to purchase the game right away.

Wait, what am I saying? Of course you’re going to want to.

Bit.Trip Run! Is Our iOS Game Of The Week [Editor’s Pick]

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bit.tripRun

The fine folks at Gaijin Games released the sequel to their hit Bit.Trip Runner game on Thursday and we can’t seem to put it down.

Originally set to be called Bit.Trip Runner2: Legend of Rhythm Alien, Bit.Trip Run! is a super fun romp through the whimsical environments as Commander Video, the Bit.Trip mascot, of sorts. If you play long enough, you’ll unlock seven other characters, including a pickle, along with 40 different costumes to run with.

Here’s a quick video we recorded to show you the fun.

Tower of Fortune 2 Is Our iOS Game Of The Week [Editor’s Pick]

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It's all chance, innit?
It's all chance, innit?

Have you ever realized just how much random chance is involved in your favorite video games?

Consider dashing through Diablo III dungeons, mashing buttons and watching your little avatar cut through swathes of demon enemies. Each of those hits is managed by a vast mathematical model in the background, deciding how many hit points each swing of your sword or blast of your magic will take off of each monster in your path.

Tower of Fortune 2, like it’s predecessor, seems like an indie meditation on the RPG genre itself by exposing the mechanics in the background of typical RPGs with the biggest symbol of luck ever: the slot machine.

Myst-like The Room Is Our iOS Game Of The Week [Editor’s Pick]

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The Room

Evan loved it, which made us want to try it. And try The Room we did, finding it to be a gorgeous, brain-engaging, Myst-like exploration of the puzzle genre, with some amazing 3D mind-benders to solve.

Here’s our video showing us solving the third chapter; we’ve condensed it a bit so that you’ll still have to do your own puzzle solving, though.

Terraria Is Our iOS Game Of The Week [Editor’s Pick]

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Be sure to try that Tutorial; it's a life saver.
Be sure to try that Tutorial; it's a life saver.

It’s finally here! Terraria for iOS brings the 2D Minecraft-inspired crafting, mining, and fighting open-world game to your iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch, and boy is it fun!

Developer 505 Games spent a ton of time making this work well on the touchscreen, and it shows, with controls that, while they take some getting used to, work really well to bring the complexity of a game like Terraria to our favorite gaming devices. Here’s a video of a bit of the tutorial, so you can see for yourself.

Blackbar Is Our iOS Game Of The Week [Editor’s Pick]

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But, but...where are the explodey bits?
But, but...where are the explodey bits?

If you like dystopian science fiction novels, Blackbar is for you. If you like innovative gaming experiences with solid fiction writing and a simple yet engaging mechanic, Blackbar is also for you.

If, however, you prefer your gaming to have lots of explosions and tons of hoorah military sentiment, Blackbar might not be for you. But you should try it anyway.

Little Galaxy Is Our iOS Game Of The Week [Editor’s Pick]

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Little Galaxy iOS Game of the Week

This one caught me off guard this week as I played through the new offerings on the iOS app store, looking for choice games to show off to you.

Little Galaxy is surprisingly captivating, encouraging yet another try to beat my previous high scores, or–in a recent round of the game on the couch with my daughter–trying to beat each other’s score.

Needless to say, she won.

‘Rymdkapsel’ Is Our iOS Game Of The Week [Editor’s Pick]

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rymdkapsel build

Take a moment and breathe. That’s what new, meditative space building sim rymdkapsel wants us to do. The concept here is to create and expand a space station (rymdkapsel means “space capsule” in Swedish), defending against waves of ever tougher alien spaceships. The goal is to survive as long as possible, reaching up to four monolith structures.

The game itself–originally released on Sony’s PlayStation Vita handheld–is hypnotic, slow-paced, and calming. There’s a strange sense of joy and peace that descends as players build their space station using Tetris-shaped block pieces, sending Pong-shaped minions to build new corridors, gather resources, research the monoliths, and take up arms to defend against the incoming waves of alien shooter ships.