iOS games - page 12

New on the App Store today from Lucky Frame is a fantastic musical adventure called Wave Trip. And what a trip it is: a trip into amazing.

Lucky Frame today announced the immediate availability of Wave Trip for iPhone and iPad. This is a music-focused, arcade-style game for iPhone and iPad in which players control a geometric astronaut, helping her travel through worlds of gorgeous artwork and dangerous enemies. She’s got to save her friends, and she needs you to help.

Move over, Mojang! The Blockheads, inspired by such open-world exploration games as Mojang’s certified hit, Minecraft, is the best implementation of the genre yet, out Minecrafting even the official Minecraft game released for iOS some time ago.

You start the game as either a single or 2 player experience. The two player game promises online multiplayer with voice chat via Game Center, while the single player is what I’ve spent my afternoon messing with on both my iPhone and iPad mini. It’s seriously sticky, with all the kinds of things that made me sink hundreds of hours into the Mac version of Minecraft a couple of years ago. There’s crafting and mining, day and night cycles, sleep, a huge open world to explore, and more.

Games! They’re awesome. There are a ton of them released every year, making best of lists like this one fairly difficult. In the interest of our space and your time, we’ve narrowed the field down to ten, with what we feel are the best of the best games out there for Mac as well as for iOS. All of these games were released this year, and while all of them may not be blockbusters you’ve seen on other end of year roundups (this is on purpose), they’re all of them worth your time and money.

So, sit back, relax, and enjoy the following top ten games for iOS and Mac.

Madfinger Games announced on its Facebook page today an update to multiplayer FPS game, Shadowgun: Deadzone on both Google Play and the iTunes App Store. The update includes two new maps, new weapon upgrades, a chat feature in the main menu, a new way to play with groups of friends called Gangs, new hats, Rewards for finishing Zone Control or DeathMatch, and an increase to max player ranks (up to 50).

Poor Negative Nimbus. He’s so sad, and so full of water, it’s a challenge to sail across the sky without drenching the happy hot dogs and caterpillars out for a picnic lunch, while still watering the happy flowers along the way. What’s a depressed cloud to do?

Apparently, the answer is to launch on Android, via the Google Play store and the Amazon Marketplace. That’s just what CloudKid’s fantastic game, Negative Nimbus, has done for the holiday season.

Penny Arcade The Game: Gamers vs. Evil is a deck-building card game published by Cryptozoic Entertainment. Today, the company announced that a stand alone iOS game app based on the deck-building game becomes available tomorrow, December 19. It features characters from the Penny Arcade comic, including Gabe and Tycho, and will launch at a $4.99 price point. The iOS game was developed by PlayDek Games.

Tower offense game, Anomaly Korea, will be out in time for Christmas, says developer 11bitstudios. The sequel to Anomaly Warzone: Earth will feature new weapons, new levels, and new game styles, as well as the dynamic tower offense game play of the original game.

The aliens are back, and this time, they’re fighting in Korea. You’ll get to command a squad of troops and use tactical planning touch controls to lead them through 12 new missions against the new alien enemies.

Calling GODUS “a delightful reinvention of the god game from 22cans and Peter Molyneux,” the game’s Kickstarter page has some new details on the project, the second from Curiosity’s 22cans games studio. With nine days left to go and about half of its funding goal met, Project GODUS just may be worth a look. Originally set to release on iOS, Android, and PC, the game will also be available on the Mac platform: welcome news indeed for those of us firmly in the Mac camp of gaming.

Games Workshop announced today a Space Hulk game for Mac, iOS, and (yes) PC. It’s scheduled for release in 2013, and is based on the Warhammer 40,000 franchise board game of the same name. The current digital version is planned to be a 3D turn-based strategy game with both single player and co-op modes of play, not to mention cross-platform multiplayer across iOS, Mac, and PC.

Rayman Jungle Run got an update today, adding ten more levels within a brand-new world for the holidays. The app description mentions, “10 new levels, including a snowy jungle, waterfalls, interactive environments, and a new crazy Land of The Dead challenge.”

There is also an updated character pack available for $0.99 as an in-app purchase, as well. It includes new character Globox, and two new Rayman costumes to use in-game.

If you haven’t gotten enough of Robert Kirkman’s uber-popular Walking Dead series, you’ll love this. On his Twitter feed today, Kirkman posted a link to the the website for new, also episodic, iOS game, The Walking Dead: Assault.

It looks much more like the comic than the recently finished season one of Telltale’s The Walking Dead game, and allows you to play as one of the characters from the original series of Eisner Award-winning comic books, published by Image Comics.

“Clementine, are you alright? Where are you!?”

These whispered words, uttered by series protagonist Lee Everett to his lost young friend, Clementine, begin the trailer for the final episode of Walking Dead The Game, available for iOS and Mac starting tomorrow. Of course, if you’re a PlayStation Network member, you can get the game today.

Lucky Frame made one of my favorite games on iOS ever, Pugs Luv Beats. It’s no surprise, given the game’s focus on my favorite dogs of all time and a wicked-cool beat-making mechanic, adorable graphics, and a spin-off app, Pug Synth. They put out Bad Hotel, next, a quirky and innovative take on the castle defense genre that has the games studio’s signature graphic style and musical theme.

Now they’re taking a similar electronica vibe and marrying it with a two-button, arcade-style side-scrolling game on iOS called Wave Trip. And it looks a beaut.

Mike Schramm writes about technology and games for Joystiq and TUAW during the week. He’s also a pretty decent guy. He also finds it fun to code on the weekends. I know, it makes no sense to me, either.

Schramm has just released his second iOS game to the iTunes app store, and it’s called Benediction. Actually, the full name is Benediction – a game by Mike Schramm, a name most likely necessitated by the many other apps out there with a version of the word ‘benediction’ in the title.

Benediction has three things going for it. Those three things got me to download the game, then play the game, then continue playing the game until I was forced to set my iPhone down and actually do some work. This is a great game, and you’ll be sad if you don’t check it out for yourself.

The developers at Pangalore have released a new game for iOS and Facebook that combines an action RPG with a city building sim. The hybrid game is free to download and play on iOS, and it connects with the Facebook game of the same name.

It’s good looking, plays well, and scratches that free-to-play city building/simulation itch we all seem to have these days. You can build your own fantasy medieval kindgom, cultivate crops, craft items and engage in quests. You can play via your web browser on your Mac via Facebook, and then on your iPad 2 or newer, including the iPad mini, iPhone 4 or newer, or iPod touch 4th Generation device. It’ll be coming to Android soon, as well.

You only have to use Facebook if you want to be able to play on the web; there are Game Center and single player options as well.

Atari’s released a remake of its 1978 home console classic, Outlaw, which actually saw first life as a light gun game in arcades as early as 1976. Well, Flying Wisdom Studios has developed a new version for the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad that looks a whole lot better than the original.

Released just last week, the new iOS version of Outlaw eschews the “pong-with-cowboys” style of gaming for a new art style that actually looks like, well, art. It’s still a 2D affair, with various denizens of the wild west sliding across the screen in a virtual shooting gallery.

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.

You’ve got a bit under six days left to get your grubby little Temple Run mitts on the first issue of the new Temple Run comic book, published by Ape Entertainment and Imangi Studios. This limited collector’s edition is only available for a limited time and is print to order only, which means that come November 5th, you’ll no longer be able to order it again.

Unless you buy it from someone who ordered it now, of course.

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.

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?

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.

If you’ve played any of the MapleStory games on the web or iOS, you know Nexon. They’re an established developer of free-to-play online games for iOS, the web, and PC. Today the company announced the launch of another free-to-play iOS game, Space Tanks, for the iPad and iPhone. It’s Nexon’s 27th mobile title this year. Wow.

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.

If you’ve been itching to get your hands on Infinity Blade for your Android device, you’re out of luck. However, if you’re good with playing a Infinity Blade-style game, Glu Mobile just may have the answer for you. The San Francisco-based company has just released a trailer for a new game, Death Dome, that looks a whole lot like Infinity Blade with a heaping serving of Borderlands 2 thrown in for good measure. Check it out.