gaming - page 33

Two guys named Mike met up on the TouchArcade forums a few years back and bonded over their love of retro platform games with a hook. A literal hook, to be specific.

Mike Meade and Mike Gaughen competed with each other to see who was the best Hook Champ player, moving on to challenge each other over Super QuickHook. When those speed runs came to an end, the two Mikes decided to make their own hooking endless runner, and Mikey Shorts, an App Store Best of 2012, was born.

On Thursday, August 8, the long-awaited sequel is set to release in the App Store. Mikey Hooks aims to be everything Mikey Shorts was and more, with a host of new ideas and features to keep us all jumping and hooking our way to joy.

Released last month, Kingdom Rush: Frontiers is the followup to the critically-acclaimed Kingdom Rush, one of my personal favorites in the Tower Defense genre, what with its cute little hand-drawn characters, wacky sense of humor, and some of the most finely-tuned tower defense levels I’ve ever played.

Kindgom Rush: Frontiers, then, just got a marine-flavored update today with six new nautical-themed creeps to defend against, two new heroes to deploy when things get rough, and some extra maps and achievements to keep you entertained far beyond the already stellar gameplay of the original release.

Video games are often praised right out of the gate due to their amazing graphical fidelity and smooth animation. A less visible but equally important feature of any game, especially in the realm of first-person shooters, is the control scheme.

DeNA / Mobage’s The Drowning, out today as a universal iOS app, has seemingly nailed both of these things in a game that’s taking the iOS gaming world by storm. And perhaps shotgun.

The developer behind incredibly successful free to play iOS game, Puzzles & Dragons, is back with a new free to play title called Freak Tower.

Launching the game for the first time allows prospective tower builders to walk through a tutorial that gives a decent overview of the game. The idea here is to build a tower, one floor up at a time, and fight off various monsters that climb said tower to steal the food that’s dubiously placed on the roof.

Id Software’s seminal first-person shooter franchise, Doom, came to the iOS platform back in 2009, with Doom Classic. It debuted as a $6.99 game, and we were all willing to pay for admission to a game that stole our hearts (and our free time) as young gamers.

About a year later, Doom II RPG showed up on the App Store at $3.99. It’s the sequel to 2005’s Doom RPG, a turn-based, more strategic take on the Doom universe.

Both titles are a part of gaming history, and they’re both available for $0.99 on the app store today. How long will they stay at this low price? Who knows? Not us.

Rovio’s point and click puzzler, Tiny Thief, has just dropped in price from $2.99 to $0.99. That’s not a bad discount, and it’s happening right now for we don’t know how long.

It just might be time to jump on this one, then, as Tiny Thief is a great game.

This story-based science fiction game for the iPad comes from Giant Spacekat is looking really good, what with its Mass Effect-style choice-making, all female cast, and real-time combat system. The team is so excited, in fact, that they’ve started up a Kickstarter project to polish it up as well as bring it to Mac and PC. [UPDATE: The Revolution 60 folks emailed us to say that the initial funds will go to porting to PC, while a $10,000 will help ensure a Mac version. They apologize for any confusion.]

With 29 days left to go, the project has already raised over $2,700 toward the $5,000 goal, so chances are good for success.

Elevens is a solitaire card game in which players lay down cards, face-up and in a grid of 3X3. They then remove the cards in groups when they add up to eleven, and go until they can go no more.

Cassandra’s 11 is based on this game, in that you must tap cards from a grid when they add up to eleven. Tap a Nine and Two card, for example, or a Five, a Four, and a Two. What takes this universal app from developer Plexonic to the next level is the puzzle aspect.

If you haven’t gotten enough zombie survival horror action on your iPhone or iPad, here’s some great news for you: 2013 Infected Wars is a new entry to the genre, and it uses Epic’s gorgeous Unreal Engine for mobile to bring you what looks to be a solid 3D third-person zombie shooter with all the trimmings.

In what may be a first for a mobile game, 2013 Infected Wars developer, Action Mobile Games, is promising co-op multiplayer for the full story campaign, which could be a great way to get with your sisters and bros and just mow down the reanimated undead.

Check out the gameplay trailer below to see what we mean.

This frantic, wacky 2D endless runner from Illinois-based development studio High Voltage Games (Zoombies, The Conduit HD) has just been chosen as the iTunes App Store’s Free App of the Week. To celebrate, Le Vamp is now completely free to download and try out for the next few days.

Hurry, though, the special offer only lasts through August 1 at 11 pm Central US time.

I’ve just spent the last several hours knee-deep in the drek of post-magic Seattle, mixing and fighting with dwarves, trolls, mages, and deckers, and I’m here to tell you it’s utterly wiz.

Shadowrun Returns is out now on Steam for Mac and PC and should be headed to iPad and Android soon, as well. In my short time with the game, I’ve got to say that I’m deeply impressed.

Every written line, all the dialogue, the visuals, are pure Shadowrun, down to the totem poles on the corners of downtown Seattle and the angry patois of the citizen characters running in the shadows beneath the megacorps who care only about nuyen, the currency of the age.

The music and the visuals are fantastic, conveying a sense of dread and decay in every environment, but, honestly, Shadowrun Returns shines due to its fictional setting and attention to storytelling.

I’m hooked, and can’t wait to find out what happens next.

Out today, TurtleStrike brings iOS and Android gamers a new, turn-based strategy game with over 80,000 combinations of weaponized, armored turtle warfare. You’ll get Tesla coils and kamikaze turtles, a missile named Big Bertha, and the chance to compete in tournaments that have real monetary rewards.

Sound like fun? You bet your shell it does.

You may know that Starbucks, perhaps the most ubiquitous coffee shop in the US and beyond, gives out free iTunes stuff each week. Sometimes it’s songs, sometimes TV show episodes, and sometimes Apps.

This week, Starbucks is giving away Cyto’s Puzzle Adventure, a cute little regularly $0.99 game that sees you flinging a little cell-like organism around a beautiful, organic-looking playing field to recover his memories.

Room 8, the game’s developer, sent us an email to let us know.

KING Art and Nordic Games just released a brand new, gorgeous point and click adventure game, The Raven – Legacy of a Master Thief to Mac, PC, and Linux via the Steam or Nordic Games shop in both Standard and Deluxe editions. The game will also come to PlayStation Network and Xbox Live Arcade later this summer.

The first of three chapters, The Eye of the Sphinx, is now ready for download on either distribution platform, and is even 10 percent off as a launch special through the 30th of July.

Auroch Digital just announced the development of a digital version of a classic Games Workshop board game from 1987, Chainsaw Warrior, coming to iPad and Android soon.

The original board game is one of the only single-player board games I know of, putting you in the role of the only hope for humanity as scary creatures come flooding through a dimensional rift in the heart of Manhattan, circa 2032. Of course, you’re the guy that must come out of retirement to battle the evil monsters, which have already destroyed the world’s bravest and brightest. It’s up to you to chainsaw your way through wave after wave the evil hordes. Wait, that sounds like a video game, doesn’t it?

Back in 1989, I was a young punk in college who read science fiction voraciously and had a history of playing Dungeons and Dragons. I know, slow down ladies, what a catch.

Anyway, it was with unreserved glee that I started playing Shadowrun in those days, a table top role-playing game in the vein of D&D that included computers, hacking, and all sorts of megacorps, like a William Gibson novel gone magical.

Flash forward to now, and–after a hugely successful Kickstarter campaign–Shadowrun Returns is headed to iOS, Mac, Android and PC. There’s a sweet launch trailer that just came out today, and a release date of just one week from now, on July 25th. Holy smoking dragon hackers!

If you like flight simulators, especially those of the more arcade variety, the Sky Gamblers series is a great place to start.

Originally published by Namco Bandai Games, the last couple of installments have come directly from California-based developer Atypical Games. Sky Gamblers: Cold War is, appropriately enough, set in the 1980s with all the weaponry and aircraft that implies. Your task will be to learn how to fly a Cold War-era fighter plane, head out on covert and not-so-covert ops, and blow stuff up. Sounds fun, right?

New Zealand-based games developer Ninja Kiwi just released Bloons TD Battles to the iOS App Store. It’s a faster, more multiplayer take on popular Bloons TD, a single-player fixed path tower defense game with loads of depth, with wacky monkeys that stand in for towers as well.

The new, free Bloons TD Battles lets you go head to head against other random or known opponents on the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad, while using ninja monkeys, sniper monkeys, and helicopters (among other equally bizarre characters and items) to keep your enemy’s “bloons” from making their way to your base.

The fine folks at Lucky Frame are at it again, this time with an iPad-only multiplayer dueling game, Gentlemen!. It’s a bit of a departure for the team that brought us music-based games like Pugs Love Beatz, Bad Hotel, and Wave Trip, but it’s intriguing nonetheless.

Not satisfied with the 100 million download whooping it laid down on the App Store and Google Play, Rovio is taking Angry Birds Star Wars to almost every major gaming console for a scheduled launch of October 29th, 2013.

You’ll be able to flick lightsaber-wielding birds across your HDTV’s screen to your heart’s delight on Playstation 3, Playstation Vita, Xbox 360, Wii U, Wii, and the Nintendo 3DS. Rovio is adding 20 exclusive levels to the game, along with some cooperative and competitive multiplayer modes, to make things a little extra special for those wanting to conquer the galaxy again.

Here’s the trailer:

As the fifth and penultimate game in the indie-darling Bit.Trip series, Bit.Trip Fate has a lot to live up to. Originally released on Nintendo’s WiiWare platform and still part of Bit.Trip collections on the Wii and the 3DS, Bit.Trip Fate has finally, err, tripped its way over to the Mac App Store to join the other four games in the series already there on our favorite platform.

And we’re pretty darn happy about that.

An extreme departure from the look and feel of its first iOS game, Lili, BitMonster’s upcoming Gunner Z is a gritty, scary delight. The developer just released a launch trailer with a stunningly gorgeous bit of the old ultraviolence in this scifi-themed shooter, soon to release on iOS.

The trailer is dark, gritty, and full of awesome night vision battle scenes, showing off the amazing scenery, the scary undead armies, and a host of armored vehicles ready to take on the hordes.

Launched today into the App store, A Thug In Time promises dual-stick shooter action on the go across 65 levels, 35 weapon types, 20 unique enemies, and eight mini-bosses to blast through.

You’ll need to survive through various times in history, including the Wild West, 1930s Chicago, and the Viking Age, decapitating, freezing, burning, and riddling with bullets all who get in your way. There are in-game power ups, including the fire bomb, the freeze bomb, and the cutter blades to slice and dice the way to victory.

So, if you haven’t played Anomaly 2, yet, now is the time to check it out, as it’s a brilliant and fun real-time tower defense and offense game with gorgeous graphics and delightful head-to-head multiplayer action.
You can grab the new update for free, or–if you haven’t gotten the game, yet–grab a copy for only $7.49 on Steam right now. Seriously, a game this good for under eight bucks? Why are you still here?

Yesterday, we told you about Eidos and Square Enix’s decision to not let jailbroken iOS devices–something that’s completely legal–play the game.

Today, however, after an apparent onslaught of media and customer complaint, Square Enix has reversed it’s choice.