Pac-Man is a touchstone of gamer nostalgia, and Hipster Whale (the dynamic duo behind runaway hit Crossy Road) has created one of the best spin-offs yet: Pac-Man 256.
Better yet, it looks like the free-to-play endless runner cum dot muncher is now available on your high-def living room screen via the Apple TV itself.
With over 1 billion downloads, Temple Run and it’s sequel, Temple Run 2, are the very definition of mobile gaming success.
It’s even better that husband and wife developers and co-founders Keith Shepherd and Natalia Luckyanova are such incredibly nice people. Their startup, Imangi Studios, has found the gold at the end of the rainbow, and they’ve no intention of stopping.
“Frozen Shadows” is the latest (and largest) free update to the franchise yet, giving you new characters like Guy Dangerous and Scarlett Fox to run through a brand-spanking-new ice world. You’ll also get new artifacts, winter costumes, and an absolutely terrifying new demon monkey to run from. Yikes!
“We’re really trying to expand the Temple Run universe,” Shepherd told us on the phone, “in much the same way as a novelist or storyteller would.”
We’ve seen so-called “working” iPhones created in Minecraft before, but they pale in comparison to this one, created by Verizon: It’s a towering, skyscraper-size smartphone that allows you to make video calls and even browse the web!
You had me at “ruined continent.”
Overland is an upcoming 3D survival tactics game from the creator of Canabalt, Adam Saltzman. Its beautiful, chillingly-chromatic art style has me itching to play it, as does the cool way the team has created an approachable rogue-like set in a post-apocalyptic wasteland without dumbing it down.
Check out the video below, with Saltzman’s narration.
Apple TV’s killer feature is the App Store. And with an App Store comes games.
I don’t care what near-sighted gaming sites are saying. Sure, Apple’s new box doesn’t have a whole lot of gaming content yet, but it has some great offerings if you poke around a bit. I’m finding games for the new Apple TV that never grabbed my attention when they were on my iPhone or iPad, but seeing them up on the big screen pulled me right in.
Which are the best games for the Apple TV to check out right now, though? Here are our five favorites, in no particular order. Note that the links below will take you to the iTunes App Store. If you purchase them with the same iTunes ID you have set up on your Apple TV, they’ll appear in the “Purchased” tab of the little black puck’s App Store. Alternately, you can search for the game name directly from your TV.
The age of virtual reality is here, and you’re probably closer to taking part in this exciting new form of interaction and storytelling than you think. If you’ve got a smart phone, you’ve got most of what you need to drop into virtual reality today — the only other thing you’ll need is something like the Homido VR Headset. Simply slide your smartphone into the headset’s receiver and you’re on your way to another reality, all for $69.95 at Cult of Mac Deals.
Every month, the App Store fills up with countless iOS games of varying quality. You want to have something to do on your iPhone or iPad while you’re on the bus or enjoying the quiet solitude of your bathroom. But who has time to figure out which titles are worth your valuable time?
Apparently, we do. So if you’re searching for the best iOS gaming treats from the past month, look no further than Cult of Mac as we find the 10 best that you should be playing right now — no tricks.
Here they are, in no particular order.
At a strategic briefing for investors today in Tokyo, Nintendo CEO Tatsumi Kimishima took to the podium to talk about the game-maker’s plans for the near future, including, we hope, information on the venerable company’s foray into mobile gaming on iPhones, iPads, and possibly Android devices.
The new service — blandly called “Nintendo Account” — will connect console, PC, and smart device users in a way that has never been seen before in Nintendo’s history.
I just leveled up while I was driving to pick my kid up from school. I set up a digital battle using my iPhone while sitting in my driveway, hit “Go,” and then just put my iPhone down on my dashboard while I drove to get him.
I’ve been calling these types of games “auto-battlers” for their central feature: letting you skip tedious, grinding gameplay that tends to be a feature of traditional role-playing games. I don’t have time to micromanage my iPhone; chances are neither do most people, which explains the rise of casual gaming over the past five years or so.
Here are three fun mobile games that let you experience more depth than a typical Flappy Bird clone, but still don’t require too much input to enjoy.
If you’ve been having trouble with Apple’s Game Center after upgrading to iOS 9, you’re not alone.
Read Apple’s discussion forums and you’ll find 14 pages of comments from disgruntled gamers complaining about — and trying to solve — this rather massive issue.
ROBLOX, the popular user-generated online gaming platform, introduces kids to game building and even helps them earn a few bucks in the process. Some ROBLOX game developers have earned enough money to pay for college.
Now some of the more successful developers will raise their gaming cred even higher as ROBLOX launches a free app for Xbox featuring 20 of its top games.
Dave Justus is no stranger to writing video games, having written both Telltale’s The Wolf Among Us adventure game for Mac, PC and console, as well as the original Lifeline, a text-based story game that brought the epic struggles of an astronaut named Taylor to our wrists.
With the help of 3 Minute Games’ lead game designer Mars Jokela, Justus has created another massive adventure that still fits inside your Apple Watch. This time, however, you’ll have a conversation with Arika, a young woman with magical powers who needs your help to escape mortal danger.
Lifeline 2: Bloodline is a funny, moving, and above all human story that really plays to the strengths of the Apple Watch; it’s like having a text conversation (with a cheeky magician) from your wrist.
“We’ve built Lifeline 2 to be a bigger and richer experience,” says Jokela via email, “[but] the story is still focused on a likable, relatable character who desperately needs your help.”
One of the biggest video gaming companies ever has just affirmed its support for the new Apple TV, itself just revealed this week by Apple.
Activision wrote a blog post detailing the games it will bring Skylanders SuperChargers, Guitar Hero Live, and Geometry Wars 3: Dimensions Evolved to Apple TV, which shows a confidence in Apple’s ability to create yet another fantastic home for gaming as it did with iOS.
These aren’t casual like Crossy Road (though those types of games will do well on the big screen, too), but full console versions of popular titles.
Most games you’ll get on the new Apple TV will likely take advantage of the new Apple TV remote, with its accelerometer, gyroscope, voice, and touch controls.
But if you want to play more hardcore games, you’ll want a more hardcore controller like this new SteelSeries Nimbus, a full-on gaming controller that looks and feels a lot more like the kind of controller you’d hook up to your living room console.
We’ve been waiting years for Apple to wow us with a new Apple TV that embraces gaming, controls the home and is super-easy to use — and that appears to be just what we’re going to get.
Thanks to a steady stream of leaks from the rumor mill, we already have a pretty solid idea what Apple will show us next week when it finally unveils the new Apple TV. It’s been years in the making — here’s what to expect.
Playing Dungeons and Dragons as a youngster is a watershed moment of a modern adult’s formative nerd experience. Grownups, however, don’t necessarily have time to draw up characters or roll dice for strength and charisma stats, let alone spend weekends huddled around a table full of charts, oddly shaped dice and Cheetos.
Knights of Pen & Paper 2 is a less-time-intensive way to recapture the dungeons (and dragons!) of yore in a cheeky, fun, self-aware way, all from the relative safety of your iPad, iPhone or select Android devices.
And now there’s an expansion for the mobile game, called Fist of +1 Fury, available as an in-app purchase for $1.99. Check out the trailer below for all the retro nerd fun.
Seriously, try not to starve. That’s the entire point of Klei Entertainment’s runaway hit game Don’t Starve, a test of survival set in a darkly humorous, Edward Gorey-esque world filled with vicious hounds, creeping spiders, herds of stampeding Beefalo and slimy fish men.
Now you can get in on the action on iPhone, as the desktop game just became a universal app called Don’t Starve: Pocket Edition.
A new report gives us our best insight yet into the radically improved Apple TV expected to be launched next month, including the fact that it will ship with a motion-sensitive controller similar to the Nintendo Wiimote — but a hell of a lot sleeker. And that’s just to start.
Hey, check it out — another free-to-play game with typical energy mechanics and city building aspects that will be familiar to anyone who’s played a similar build and battle game in the last year or so.
Unlike the other games, however, this one is set in Robert Kirkman’s award-winning comic book series. Titled The Walking Dead: Road to Survival, it’s set in the fortified town of Woodbury just prior to The Governor’s arrival. Fans of the story might enjoy messing about in the universe, especially with the fantastic, comic book-style art that infuses this whole project with an authentic zombie-apocalypes feel.
Check out the gameplay video below to see what I mean.
I’m anxiously awaiting Lara Croft’s next outing on consoles this fall with Rise of the Tomb Raider, but in the meantime, developer Square Enix is tiding us over with Lara Croft Go, a miniaturized adventure starring the iconic graverobber and dinosaur fighter. It’s out now for iPhone and iPad (reviewed version), and like its predecessor, Hitman Go, it’s more about strategy than all-out action.
This game diverts slightly from Hitman, however, doing away with the board game/diorama theme and just sticking our hero into an ancient, turn-based ruin. But that doesn’t diminish its charm or fun at all.
Indie favorite Shovel Knight is getting a new, free update based on a popular bad guy from the first release.
Called Shovel Knight: Plague of Shadows, the new expansion will include a whole new way to play in the Shovel Knight universe with new levels, music, art, and platforming. The villainous Plague Knight, master of alchemy, is the star of this new addition, which will come along with the original game, Shovel Knight, and as a free update to owners of the original game, which won over 70 Game of the Year awards in 2014.
Check out the video below to see all the chaos of this action-packed expansion.
It’s a bit late in the game, but YouTube has the resources and brand-name cache to take on video game streaming juggernaut, Twitch, as it turns on the lights of its much anticipated game streaming service Wednesday.
YouTube Gaming is the new portal, separate from the Google-owned video giant’s regular video website, that will aim to capture the flags, hearts and minds of gaming’s streaming technorati, some of whom can make upwards of $8,000 per month just letting people watch them play video games.
Twitch is the 800-pound gorilla of the video game streaming world; in fact, YouTube tried to buy the service sometime before Amazon snapped it up. Will YouTube bring in both current customers as well as crushing Twitch in the process?
Even if this upcoming game from indie studio Heart Machine wasn’t already so hotly anticipated, I’d be caught up in its gorgeous art style.
Hyper Light Drifter seems to channel the 8- to 16-bit visual look of games like Sword & Sworcery while also connecting classic Legend of Zelda-type environmental puzzles and Diablo-style action RPG fun together in an awesome mashup that’s sure to get my attention and money when it releases next year.
Check out the second official trailer below for a better taste of what this game is promising.
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Pixeljam is no stranger to making iPhone and Mac games, but now the studio is taking on another challenge: transforming the way crowdfunding works to make it better for game developers and other creative types.
Company co-founder Miles Tillman describes the crowdfunding project as an “experiment” that’s an alternative to popular services like Indiegogo and Kickstarter. Pixeljam’s new platform lets backers donate money just like the others, but prioritizes transparent communication, instant gratification and actually making the game ahead of crowdfunding staples like producing slick videos and stressing out over fundraising goals and deadlines.
Bethesda’s runaway hit game Fallout Shelter is getting a well-needed dose of new stuff today, including several balance fixes, some new threats to your vault, and a handy robot assistant who can help you collect resources and scour the wasteland for you.
