iOS games - page 9

SEATTLE, PAX 2013 – As I sit here on the 10th floor of Seattle’s public library, I’m trying to make some sense of the last four days of gaming conference, the Penny Arcade Expo.

It’s not like gaming is as important as, say, the current crisis in Syria, or attempts to fight poverty and homelessness, or even the inability of spaces like PAX to provide a safe place for women or people who are trangendered.

On the other hand, gaming is a massive cultural phenomenon. PAX’s founders, webcomic writers Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik, wanted to create a convention that would focus on gamers, whether they play tabletop games, video games, or card games. That there is a massive interest in this convergence of different kinds of gamers, from D&D nerds to arcade geeks, is an understatement, as evidenced by quickly sold-out tickets months in advance of the conference as well as by the huge herds of human beings of all stripe who I saw traipsing from one booth to another this weekend in the Washington State Convention Center.

Ever feel like submitting your will, nay, your sanity, to an Elder God? iOS game Ball of Cthulhu aims to make your dream a reality, with a narrative right out of the pulp magazines of the Lovecraftian era to pull you from one Peggle-styled level to the next.

SEATTLE, PAX 2013 – We spoke a bit with indie studio, Gaijin Games, at the Penny Arcade Expo (PAX) this weekend in Seattle, about the upcoming release of Runner 2 to iOS (and Sony’s PS Vita). Runner2, aka Bit.Trip Presents Runner2: Future Legend of Rhythm Alien, is a side-scrolling platform game with heavy rhythm elements that’s already out on console and Steam for Mac.

The team wanted to publish Runner2 on iOS on its own, in contrast to the console versions, which were published by Aksys Games. The Bit.Trip series has been a critical and consumer success, selling well on a variety of platforms since it began with Bit.Trip Beat in 2009.

SEATTLE, PAX 2013 – Wizards of the Coast is at the Penny Arcade Epo (PAX) this year to show off the most recent digital version of its digital card battler, Magic the Gathering 2014: Duels of the Planeswalkers, available for iPad, PC, select Android devices, and gaming consoles. This is the first expansion set for the game, which was originally released this past June.

We sat down with Mark Purvis, a brand manager for the Washington-based gaming company, to talk about the new expansion and some cool connections between the digital game and the paper one the company also produces.

SEATTLE, PAX 2013 – We stopped by the booth for interactive radio drama with voices that most gamers here at the Penny Arcade Expo (PAX) in Seattle this weekend will know, including Rob Wiethoff (Red Dead Redemption), Logan Cunningham (Bastion), Sarah Elmaleh (Skills of the Shogun), and Chris Ciulla (Fallout: New Vegas).

We got to sample the prologue and first episode of the game today at the PAX booth on the show floor in the convention center, where we spoke with Jonathan Myers about the innovative game. As you can hear in the launch trailer above, the voice work and the music bring you right into the action.

SEATTLE, PAX 2013 – We spoke with Josh Glazer, CTO of Naked Sky Entertainment, about the company’s upcoming turn-based tactical game, Backyard Battles. The game, coming to iOS, Android, and the web later this year, pits two teams of children against each other, wielding cardboard tubes, spell books, and their imaginations.

“It’s what kids raised on video games do when they play outside,” said Glazer.

SEATTLE, PAX 2013 – We dropped by the 2K booth today to chat with Jessica, one of the 2K reps in attendance at the Penny Arcade Expo (PAX) this year in Seattle. She showed off 2K Drive, an upcoming free-to-play racing game very much in the vein of EA’s Real Racing 3, with hyper-realistic, licensed car racing. Here’s a little Vine video of our hands-on time with the game.

If you like dystopian science fiction novels, Blackbar is for you. If you like innovative gaming experiences with solid fiction writing and a simple yet engaging mechanic, Blackbar is also for you.

If, however, you prefer your gaming to have lots of explosions and tons of hoorah military sentiment, Blackbar might not be for you. But you should try it anyway.

There are a huge amount of video games out on iOS for kids, from educational games to adventure games and more. Sure, you can get reviews of these games by adults, sometimes even from parents of kids who use them.

We thought it’d be fun, though, to ask the kids themselves.

Welcome to Kid APProved, a series of videos in which we ask our own children what they think of video games on the App Store that they’re playing.

This week, it’s Big Fish’s brilliant adventure/platforming game, Fetch – A Boy and his Dog.

The Penny Arcade Expo, or PAX, for the initiated, is an annual gaming conference held in Seattle. It was created in 2004 by the authors of the Penny Arcade webcomic, Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik, who wanted to go to a gaming show that focused on their own passions: console games, computer games, and tabletop games.

PAX got big, fast. Billed as a celebration of gamer culture, PAX, and spin-off conference PAX East, is more of a giant nerd gathering, contrasting nicely with the hard-pounding media-fest of the Electronics Entertainment Expo (E3) or the academic and developer focus of the Games Developer Conference (GDC). PAX is for gamers, by gamers, of all stripe and affiliation.

If you’re a fan of famous action director John Woo, you’ll be as excited as we were when we heard that he’s working on an iOS game, Bloodstroke, in development with Moonshark Games (Stan Lee’s Verticus, Neil Gaiman’s Wayward Manor) and to be published by Chillingo.

AppAdvice reports that the game will be an on-rails top-down action game that tasks players with protecting and escorting their in-game employer through hazardous level after level.

Glu Games (Gun Bros, Contract Killer, Death Dome) has a certain reputation for violent free to play games, but the San Francisco-based developer has quite a variety of game genres to its credit, including fantasy and city-building games.

Zombies Ate My Friends is another free to play game, sure, but it has a charm about it that helps cynics like me look the other way when it comes to the typical mechanics associated with the business model. The artwork is pleasing to the eye and there is a sense of whimsy to every aspect of the game, from dialog to undead-smashing weaponry (there’s a ukulele!), that elevates Zombies Ate My Friends from “yet another cash grab” to “worth a download and your valuable time.”

This one caught me off guard this week as I played through the new offerings on the iOS app store, looking for choice games to show off to you.

Little Galaxy is surprisingly captivating, encouraging yet another try to beat my previous high scores, or–in a recent round of the game on the couch with my daughter–trying to beat each other’s score.

Needless to say, she won.

Rovio just released two new videos on YouTube. Above is the actual teaser trailer for the upcoming Angry Birds Star Wars II, itself revealed last month.

In the trailer, the dark side Emperor pig is seen making a recruiting video of sorts for all the young piggies who need new weaponry to fight those upstart Jedi birds. It doesn’t go as well as planned, of course; this is Rovio in the director’s chair, not George Lucas.

The cool thing here is that the Emperor is voiced by none other than Ian McDiarmid himself, the actor who plays the Emperor in the real Star Wars films.

Apple highlights a new iOS app each week: the iTunes App Store App of the Week. Last week, it was a frustratingly compelling puzzle game, Doodle Fit 2, that Apple chose to spotlight.

This week, it’s another game, this time a beautiful dogfighting flight sim called Sky Gamblers: Storm Raiders from Atypical Games. It’s the first of the two games Atypical has developed for the Sky Gamblers series, with the follow up, Cold War, recently released on the App Store as well.

Sky Gamblers: Storm Raiders is free for a limited time to celebrate the honor.

Let’s be clear: I love tower defense games. I’ve been a fan since the first time I played Desktop Tower Defense on Kongregate, I fell hard for Gem Keeper and Fieldrunners, and I carry a torch for Kingdom Rush.

These are tough waters to compete in, especially with a free-to-play business model that needs to encourage players to spend real money to help fund the game itself. There’s a delicate balance in tower defense games, between too easy and too difficult.

Does Super Hippo Studios Limited’s Pirate Legends TD bring enough to the table, then, to stand next to these others?

https://youtu.be/jRAwf_pLgjg

After releasing on Android this past July, Battle Dragons from Spacetime Games has been doing pretty well, but interested iOS gamers have been out of luck.

Today that changes, as the free-to-play build and battle game comes to iPhone, iPad and iPod touch in the App store. It does look quite a bit like Clash of Clans, another highly successful free-to-play game from Supercell, but Gary Gattis, CEO of Spacetime Games, says that may just be an artifact of the trailer.

Gold Diggers is a new take on the endless runner theme, the vertical runner. In it, players are placed at the head of a three-car mining train that actually digs straight down into the earth, picking up gold nuggets and avoiding things like flaming platforms, giant sand worms, and the more run-of-the-mill rocks and walls.

Players move the endlessly descending drilling mine train back and forth across the screen by dragging a finger left or right along the bottom of the screen, where a virtual button sits. The action occurs primarily through avoiding obstacles and chasing down gold nuggets — which can be spent in the game’s store for upgrades and better equipment — as well as power ups that add extra time, distance, or guns to the front of the player’s mine train.

Dungeons and Dragons, the venerable tabletop role playing game that arguably started it all, is changing. Currently owned and operated by Wizards of the Coast, the entire game universe is transitioning from the 4th Edition rule sets to what they’re calling D&D Next, a holy grail of streamlined gameplay rules and mechanics that the publisher hopes to spread to all current media, including video games.

It’s with that bit of background that DeNA/Mobage announced the first teaser trailer for a mobile version of Dungeons and Dragons called “Arena of War.” Check it out.

Rubicon, the developer behind successful iOS game, Great Big War Game, announced its latest game in development, Combat Monsters, an interesting mix of tactical, 3D monster battles with deck building card game mechanics.

The game is coming to iOS, Android, Mac, PC, and (what?) Blackberry fairly soon, so we thought it would be a good time to catch up with the Rubicon development team. We chatted with Paul Johnson, managing director and co-founder of Rubicon, about Combat Monsters. Here’s what he had to say.

Champs Battlegrounds is an odd mashup of strategy board gaming and multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) mechanics. Quark Games has created something compelling, though, with this free-to-play iOS game, available on your iPad or iPhone.

Apple spotlights a new iOS app each week as a special pick: the App of the Week. Last week, it was a gorgeously designed alarm clock, Rise, that caught Apple’s editorial fancy.

This week, it’s Namco Bandai’s Doodle Fit 2: Around the World, a delightfully drawn puzzle game that’s sure to keep you frustrated yet coming back for more with its maddeningly simple concept.

Baldurs Gate fans, rejoice, as the classic role playing game, recently ported to iPad in Enhanced Edition, is back on the App Store after a couple of months.

The developers at Beamdog pulled the game in June after some sort of contractual dispute. That was a sad day, as Beamdog are true believers, and were planning to port Baldur’s Gate II to the iPad, while maybe even developing a Baldur’s Gate III if the second game were a success.

You’ve been waiting for months and months, and it’s finally time. Plants vs. Zombies 2 is finally available in the U.S. App Store after a soft launch last month in Australia and New Zealand.

The download is free, but there are in-app purchases for certain upgrades and power-ups. But it’s not the annoying kind of freemium like Real Racing; you can play through the whole game just fine without having to buy anything. We’ll have a full review up soon.

So what are you waiting for? The sequel to one of the best iOS games in history just came out. Get downloading!

Source: App Store

Here’s an interesting little iOS game for you: Rock Paper Missiles is an evolved version of the classic Rock, Paper, Scissors hand game played by millions of kids across the globe. This game, though, is different in two ways. One, it’s a universal app on iOS, which means you can play it on your iPhone, iPod touch or iPad.

Two, it’s got missiles, flamethrowers and grenades.

Rock Paper Missiles is also gorgeously designed, with a monochromatic red-and-white color scheme that really complements the stark and confusing nature of the gameplay.