Steve Jackson (not the designer of Munchkin card games, sorry) started out writing an adventure gamebook for Penguin back in 1983. As it’s coming up on the 30th anniversary of his four-book Sorcery! series, Jackson decided to bring the proto-RPG to the modern age by teaming up with development studio Inkle and releasing four new iOS gamebook apps for iPhone and iPad.
With Halloween almost upon us, what better way to celebrate than to scare yourself silly with some of the most terrifying games the App Store has to offer? We’ve put together a selection of the best horror titles that will have you watching your back this October 31, with some big hits like Walking Dead, Rage HD, Dead Space, and more.
Halloween, or All Hallows’ Eve, has a tradition stretching back to the 15th century and earlier, though it is currently a more secular holiday, with children and the young at heart dressing up as everything from scary ghouls and monsters to the more tame video game characters or that bane of every feminist out there, the “sexy” nurse/librarian/pikachu/what have you.
Regardless of how you celebrate, though, we thought you’d enjoy this list of the scariest Mac games we could think of, each available to play on current (and some older) Macs just in time for the next couple of creepy weeks.
EA’s much-anticipated Need for Speed Most Wanted makes its debut on iOS today, and it’s an instant purchase if you’re into arcade racing games. It features some of the hottest super cars money can buy, which you’ll use to outrun the cops in some of the most dangerous Need for Speed pursuits you’ve every experienced. All while enjoying console-quality visuals that will blow you away.
Square Enix has revealed that it may reconsider its pricing structure for mobile games following critical feedback from users in Western countries. While the Japanese developer is well-known among iOS users for its awesome RPGs, such as Final Fantasy and Chaos Rings, it’s also famous for its hefty price tags, which can often be as much as $18 per title.
When console-quality games are going for less then $5 these days, those prices are a big problem for some.
After we reported on Steam’s new Big Picture beta coming to the Mac, we got a reader question that I figured it’d be good to write a tip on.
Playing games on your Mac is great fun of course, and all of them use the keyboard and/or mouse to control the games being played. However, with AirPlay mirroring, HDMI cable support, and a bunch of new games showing up for the Mac platform along their Windows brethren, there are times when a console style controller is a better alternative. Being able to sit on the couch and play our favorite Mac games has a lot to recommend it, and using an Xbox controller is fairly easy to set up.
Here’s how.
Ah, the ’80s — back when a Tab was something to drink, not deride, and Members Only wasn’t exactly an exclusive club. Reliving (or living, for those born after 1979) those days is as easy as tracking down a six-pack of Tab on the Internet, or purchasing this purple number.
Those who’d rather not deal with their friends’ hysterical laughter or horribly wilted taste buds can simply download a faithful recreation of DONKEY.BAS, probably the best thing Bill Gates ever made, onto their iPad or iPhone.
The iMpulse Game controller, now with eight days left in its Kickstarter campaign, was already planned to be a sleek little keychain-sized physical game controller. Compatible with iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, and various Android devices, the iMpulse is getting an update to make it 20% thinner, as well as adding shoulder buttons on the bottom of the device.
For a pledge of $25 plus shipping, you can get one of these cute, sleek gaming controllers with a serious d-pad and shoulder buttons sent to your address. There are other levels of reward, as well, including a T-Shirt, dual controllers, fancy metal plating, and the like.
Iceberg Interactive and Kukouri Entertainment announced today an update to adorable little war game, Tiny Troopers, in the guise of a zombie apocalypse. The update comes via Steam to the Mac and PC version, bringing endless waves of brain munching zombies and undead chickens. There will be special air-drops of new special zombie-killing weaponry dropped to lay waste to the zombie hordes, and special forces troopers to take the undead down. There’ll even be special zombies, in case the normal ones just aren’t scary enough.
It’s not a whole lot to go by, but this image surfaced on the Dead Trigger Facebook page, teasing the existence of a Halloween update for the Android and iOS zombie shooter, Dead Trigger. Will you be fighting pumpkin-head zombies?
Apple Head of Marketing, Phil Schiller, took the stage today and asked a very important question. “What does the iPad mini do that the iPad doesn’t already do?” he wondered aloud.
His answer was only half as good – “It can fit in one hand.” Here at Cult of Mac, however, we think that’s only part of the story. The fact is that Apple’s newest, smallest, thinnest iPad makes a perfect gaming controller.
Fieldrunners 2 is one of my favorite iOS games, hands down. Developer Subatomic Studios has taken the tower defense genere to a new level with this sequel to their popular and multi-platform game, Fieldrunners. This second game was released in July of this year, almost 4 years after the first iteration came out on iOS, then Mac.
Today, the studio announced that they’ve added in-app purchasing to the game, something many games come with from the start. Those games, however, typically come at no up-front cost. Fieldrunners 2 was released as a premium, paid game, at $2.99 for the iPhone and $7.99 for the iPad version. Why did they add this freemium-style in-app purchasing system to a game that’s already doing well as a paid app?
The fans of the game wanted it.
Kicking off this week’s must-have iOS app is the 1997 violent driving sensation that is Carmageddon. It finally makes its debut on iOS, and it’s an exact port of the original. It’s accompanied by Sonic Jump, Sega’s latest release; Mikey Shorts Halloween, and True Skate.
Telltale Games announced today that iOS users can now download Episode Three of The Walking Dead: The Game, entitled “Long Road Ahead,” to their iPhone or iPad. It’s the third of five episodes in the critically acclaimed series based on Robert Kirkman’s zombie drama, The Walking Dead, which started as an award-winning comic book, then made its way to become a critically-acclaimed television series on AMC.
Although I’ve used a Mac exclusively since 2005, before that, I was a PC guy, which means I have lots of gauzy memories of halcyon days well-spent in front of a menagerie of beige boxes falling backwards in time through a decade of classic PC gaming, starting with the old 8-bit Ultima games and Nethack under DOS and continuing well into the Windows era with games like Grim Fandango, Half-Life, Planescape: Torment and System Shock 2.
I love the Mac, but the one thing I miss about having a PC is easily playing classic PC games without loading them up in Boot Camp or Parallels. Luckily, it looks like that’s about to change, as GOG.com — a digital distributor of classic PC games updated to work on modern machines and distributed without DRM — is now releasing their titles to work on Mac.
Days of Wonder have decorated their so-addictive-you-can’t-stop-playing-to-eat iPad train game, Ticket to Ride, with a new Halloween-themed update. As if I don’t lose enough time to this damn game.
EA’s free Theme Park game for iOS broke down yesterday, and gamers were unable to access the parks they’d spent time building. The company managed to get everything working again, but once the game was back online, users found that all of their progress had been wiped.
The parks they’d build, the achievements they’d earned, and worse, the items they’d bought using in-app purchases were gone.
Negative Nimbus is a cloud with a sad disposition. Why is he so sad? We’re not sure, but it might have something to do with being fairly unable to control his rain.
See, Negative Nimbus is a raincloud, and in this amazingly cute and unexpectedly creative iPad game, you’ll need to help him rain on the flowers and avoid his buddies, Ketchup Bottle, Marshmallow Roasting Hot Dog, and Apple. You’ll also get some help from Bill the Umbrella. Every time Nimbus rains on someone he’s not supposed to, he apologizes in a sad-sack Eeyore-esque voice, saying things like, “Sorry, buddies,” and “Excuse me!”
The violent driving sensation that is Carmageddon makes its debut on iOS today, 15 years after it was first released — and subsequently banned for its twisted mix of automotive killing machines — on Mac and PC. It’s available to download right away from the App Store, and it’s free for today only — so grab it quick.
Sega has turned its hand to vertical jumping games with a brand new title called Sonic Jump that’s coming to the App Store tomorrow. The title looks a lot like Doodle Jump, only it features Sega’s beloved blue hedgehog instead, and rather than being just an endless jumper, you’ll have to beat new and familiar stages in pursuit of the infamous Dr. Eggman.
So, I hopped onto Steam last night to see what was new, and noticed something amazing in my list of Mac games for the service. Borderlands 2 is in the list of the Mac games on Steam. Woah!
It took me a minute to even register this fact, as I’m used to only seeing it on my gaming PC. In fact, that I own the game already on Steam is probably why I even see it on my Mac at all.
This is great news for all Mac gamers, of course. But the details are thin on the ground.
This week’s must-have apps roundup includes two classic console games that have been reborn on iOS, including Sega’s hugely enjoyable Crazy Taxi, and Acclaim’s 1999 classic Re-Volt — both of which first made their debut on the Dreamcast. It also includes a great little action platformer called Ivy The Kiwi?, a wonderful puzzle game called Girls Like Robots, and more.
It’s the weekend, and if you’re looking for a cute little romp through the monster-battling arena for some down time, Mo’ Monsters just went live. It’s a free to play game from Rumpus, a development studio out of San Francisco, and it’s fairly typical tap-tap-tap fare, with some cute characters and fun monster capturing mechanics in addition to the standard battling.
If you’ve been wanting to play The Witcher, CD Projekt’s well-regarded RPG based on the book series by Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski, now might be a great time to do so. The game has just been patched with support for Lion and Mountain Lion, letting more modern Macs join in the fun.
The fourth installment of the five episode game series, The Walking Dead, is available now for your Mac on Steam. The group of survivors head into Savannah to find a boat to escape from the horror around them. Not only must they avoid the undead, but the human threat as well. The survivors are getting more and more skittish, even paranoid, and Lee must figure out a way to deal with them while protecting his young friend, Clementine.