iOS games - page 5

You can usually tell when a game has been well-crafted. A great game will include excellent graphic design, playability, a captivating story and, of course — the soundtrack. A soundtrack can turn a great game into an extraordinary game, captivating the player and immersing them into a world they’ve only dreamt about.

A compelling soundtrack will have amazing melodies, epic chord changes that make you feel something, and sounds that are perfectly tailored to the atmosphere of the game. Below, check out four great iOS games that have amazing soundtracks. I caught up with a few of the soundtrack creators who make these beautiful soundscapes, and their answers to my questions give a ton of insight into how special this music really is.

Up until recently, I almost always accepted Game Center invites from whoever. I like playing games on my iPhone and iPad and always welcome a worthy opponent. However, there are a lot of people out there cheating and faking scores. While I handled some of this by just deleting them, I also realized that there is a way to report these accounts via Game Center.

Endless runner games have done exceptionally well on the App Store for a long time. I was introduced to the concept when I played Mirror’s Edge on the PlayStation, and have been hooked on this type of game ever since.

Endless runners leave you little time to make decisions, and that makes these games exciting — and sometimes frustrating!

If you’re in the (presumably small) subset of people who are both looking forward to the upcoming Batman vs. Superman film and still playing the Injustice: Gods Among Us iOS game, you’ll be excited to know that a new update has tossed the two properties together like some kind of super salad.

The film’s release is still three weeks away, but the clash of heroes could be happening in your iPhone or iPad right now if you don’t mind putting in some work. Check out the new characters in action in the trailer below.

Stellar Wanderer gets right into the action with space battles from the very first mission, which takes place in the full 360 degrees of your spaceship viewport.

You’ll take to the vastness of interstellar space, populated by huge space stations, rugged traders, and (obviously) hordes of space pirates to complete missions given to you by mysterious individuals and then taking the reward money to upgrade your craft and piloting skills.

There’s a lot of space in space, and you’ll feel every kilometer of it when you drop into Stellar Wanderer on your iPhone or iPad.

Check out the gorgeous launch trailer below.

If you can look Atomi‘s super-cute robot hero in his single, perfectly round eye and say that you don’t want to help him get home, then you may be a monster. I’m sorry you had to hear it from me.

Atomi needs to gather atoms to repair his busted spaceship, but he has a few things in his way. Specifically, he can’t climb or jump, and some of those things he needs are on very tall platforms. But that’s where you come in. And the time you spend getting the little ‘bot where he needs to be is both fun and charming as it sounds.

You aren’t just any agent. You’re a rogue agent. And you’re trying to escape before the enemy agents find you. That’s the plot behind — you guessed it — Rogue Agent, a thrilling new puzzle game on iOS.

With 52 different worlds, several mini-games and a few power-ups, the spy game makes you constantly try to escape without getting caught. Don’t worry about whether there’s a concrete reason for that because, trust me, you’ll get hooked anyway.

You’d be forgiven if you took one look at Abantus Saga 2 and confused it for yet another tedious match-three game. But if you can get over your prejudice, you’re in for hours of enjoyment. And some frustration. But mostly enjoyment.

The puzzle title, which is out now for free in the iOS App Store, has you sliding around colored and patterned “cubes” (they’re squares, but the on-screen text calls them cubes) to complete full rows and columns. And that’s it — that’s the only mechanic. But what the developer does with it will have you playing and replaying Abantus Saga 2 for hours on end.

I’d imagine it’s difficult to bring a beloved tabletop card game to iOS without losing something in the translation, but Exploding Kittens has found the trick.

Created by gaming veterans Elan Lee and Shane Small, and illustrated by internet cartoonist The Oatmeal (Matthew Inman), Exploding Kittens is like Russian Roulette, only with detonating felines. The game is fairly simple, but it has something not many gaming apps include these days: you’ll play with other people in the same room as you.

Even better, the devs have made all the in-app purchases (extra decks, new avatars) free as a launch special over the next four days. You don’t want to miss out on all the extra fun now, do you?

If you’ve been waiting for the ultimate make-out game experience on your iPhone, keep waiting. This one looks gross.

Smooth Operator will be out just in time for Valentine’s Day, and it looks like exactly the thing to bring your festivities to a halt. It’s a co-op kissing title that is all about you and your partner following on-screen cues to make sure that your avatars keep their waggling tongues moving and … interacting.

We really can’t overstate how unsettling this thing looks, but if you want to see it in action, check out the trailer below.

The more our phones become a platform for high quality gaming, the less adequate the touch screen feels for keeping up. With the Phonejoy GamePad 2, your phone gains the precision and range of a full-fledged game controller. It’s an instant upgrade the way you interact with your phone, powered by Bluetooth and available for $59.99 at Cult of Mac Deals.

It’s an age of abundance in the iOS gaming scene, with everyone from Apple to indie enthusiast blogs weighing in on what the best games are for our beloved iOS platform.

We’re here to focus on the best mobile games we have actually played and loved, rather than just the blockbusters everyone’s already heard of. If we kept a game on our iPhone for more than a few days and dug right in on a regular basis, it’s on the list.

Here are Cult of Mac staffers’ choices for the 10 best iOS games of 2015.

It’s hard to find the best games out there. Every month, there’s a list as long as, well, a really long list of games on iOS that you might like but might actually suck.

Even the sheer volume of the vaunted Editor’s Choice picks can get overwhelming.

That’s why we’re here — to give you a leg up in finding just the right number of the very best new iOS games you can find on the App Store, without all the weeding you’d need to do just to find them on your own.

Here are our five favorite games from the month of November.

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.”

It’s finally here! The Apple TV we’ve all been waiting for should be arriving in homes across the world today. We’ve got our review of the cute little black box, plus a ton more, including the biggest takeaways from Apple’s recent earnings call, how Google is facing its own Bendgate issues, 10 delightful new iOS games from the month of October, and how to get those gorgeous Apple TV screensavers right on your Mac.

All that, plus the usual plethora of news, reveiws, and how-tos, and you’ve got yourself a hot new free issue of Cult of Mac Magazine. Be sure to download our fantastic app today.

Here’s the rundown of the top stories this week:

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.

You’ll need to have rock-star money to afford new iOS rhythm game Guitar Hero Live.

That’s because, in a break from previous titles in the hard-rocking series, this one features a $49.99 in-app purchase for the full version, which includes well over 40 tracks.

Yep, to paraphrase This Is Spinal Tap, this price goes to 11!

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.

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.

Another year, another massive operating system update to learn and master. If you design games for mobile, you’ll soon have to reckon with the sweeping changes in the upcoming iOS9 update. Here’s your chance to get ahead of the curve with a comprehensive bundle of 8 game-building lessons for just $49 at Cult of Mac Deals.

Making games can be as fun as playing them, and the key to mastering both is practice. After working through this bundle of lessons, you’ll be ready for the iOS game-making equivalent of Carnegie Hall. Covering the how-tos with over 20 games in four different genres, this package from StackSkills usually goes for over $2,000. But right now the whole thing is just $20 at Cult of Mac Deals.

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.

I like strategy games as much as the next person, but they’re all missing something. Like maybe they could use a pink bunny that tickles opposing pieces to death, or a little, blue, tentacled … thing that can distract enemies with its soothing singing voice. And for good measure, maybe they could throw in a green guy who can fire deadly shots out of his head and an orange monster that eats lightning and fireballs.

Picorama has all those things, and it’s as weird, silly and fun as it sounds. But the iOS game’s innocent art and adorable characters belie a title that will quickly test your strategic and problem-solving skills and have you staring at your iPhone or iPad trying to plan your next move.

Around four years ago, developers Almost Human released The Legend of Grimrock, a throwback to the first-person dungeon crawlers from the 1980s (Dungeon Master, The Bard’s Tale and even the first Phantasy Star game for the Sega Master System) for Mac.

They claimed it was was coming to iPad “by the end of the year.” It actually took three. I assumed, after all that time, it would never come to iPhone, though… but as it turns out, I was wrong.