iPhone games - page 13

Dark and light should probably sit down someplace and talk. They’re always fighting.

Their senseless war continues in Darklings, a new endless survival game from developer MildMania. You play as Lum, a being of light going up against the Darklings, evil beings who have stolen all the stars from the sky in a plan to plunge the world into darkness. Because that’s how the dark operates in these things.

Lum is alone against endless waves of evil beings, and only your quick shape-drawing powers can help it prevail.

It’s a day for giving thanks, here in the US, and a ton of iOS developers have decided to thank us all by putting their fantastic games on sale for the iOS platform. We’ve slogged through the sales out there for this weekend and put together a list of the best deals and sales on games we could find.

We’ll keep updating this post as we get more great gaming deals to send your way.

Crescent Moon Games, the studio behind quite a few amazing mobile iOS games (Siegecraft, Pocket RPG, Paper Monsters), has just released its latest: Space Chicks.

Ignoring the obvious “damsel in distress” trope, this game plays like a spectacular mashup of games like Little Galaxy, Tiny Wings, and Jetpack Joyride, with gravity-affected planet hopping, coin collecting, and space-girl saving that will keep you playing long into the evening.

There’s something here for every one, and it’s all of $0.99.

The Shivah starts with a joke:

“A goy came up to Rabbi Moishe to ask, ‘Why do rabbis always answer with a question?’

To which Rabbi Moise replied, ‘Why not?'”

First released in 2006, The Shivah is a noirish, murder-mystery adventure game centered around a money-deficient New York synagogue. Its hero, Russell Stone, is not a hardbitten private investigator or a disgraced former police officer like the genre typically demands. He’s a cynical rabbi with a heavy conscience who stumbles into the investigation completely by accident. It sounds odd, and it is, but it also totally works.

Now, developer Wadjet Eye Games has released The Shivah: Kosher Edition, an updated iOS and PC version of the original game with all-new graphics and music. If you’ve never played the original and you’re a fan of adventure games and (well-meaning) Jewish humor, it’s a great take on the well-trod genre.

I mentioned high-concept games with evocative titles earlier this week when I reviewed Tilt to Live 2, and here’s another one.

Don’t Shoot Yourself! is a quick, often frustrating little game in which the name says it all. You control a little ship (I guess) trapped inside of a series of shapes. Your main goal is to keep moving for until a number on the right side of the screen counts down to zero, and all the while your little guy is firing bullets all hither and thither. Your secondary goal is not to fly into any of those bullets.

If it sounds daunting, that’s because it is. But it’s still a game worth trying if only to see if you’re up to the challenge.

Tilt to Live is one of those high-concept games with a name that says it all. Kind of like Press X to Jason, but not quite as flippant or mocking.

And it was popular, so a sequel was inevitable. And so we have Tilt to Live 2: Redonkulous, which came out last week for iOS devices and delivers on its name almost immediately.

It’s kind of hard to explain until you’ve played it, though, and you should definitely play it.

Its title may sound like a Star Wars-based mockbuster by The Asylum (the studio that brought us Sharknado and Atlantic Rim), but Stellar Wars, a new iOS title out now from developer Liv Games, is actually the followup to 2011’s megapopular Legendary Wars. Only this one takes place in space and stars a bunch of cute robots.

So it’s off to a promising start from that alone.

Once you get over the cute overload from those little guys, though, Stellar Wars reveals itself to be a complex, surprisingly deep melange of a bunch of different game styles that shouldn’t work together, but then they totally do.

Just expect to have to work for it.

First-person shooters are tough to pull off in mobile. You have to manage two virtual joysticks if you want the flexibility of their console and PC cousins, and you also have to figure out how to make shooting work on a platform with no buttons. And thirdly, you have to compensate for the fact that the player’s thumbs must, by necessity, cover up part of the screen.

Neon Shadow is a new first-person shooter for iOS devices from developer Tasty Poison Games that aims to capture the bare-bones, “You are trapped in a cramped space with things that will kill you unless you kill them first” experience of classic FPSes, and it succeeds. It even does a callback to the original Doom games by having a picture of your character’s face that gets more bloodied and beat-up as you take damage.

Plus, you start with the shotgun, and the game gets an extra star just for that.

I’ve always loved the Lego suite of licensed games more than most people do. They’ve always been the perfect storm for me: a unique combination of geekiness, humor, and obsessive collection and completion. Every time I pick one up, I don’t stop playing it until I’ve unlocked every character, found every collectible, and beat every secret level.

Needless to say, I am a fan.

The iOS version of developer Traveler’s Tales sweded version of the Lord of the Rings film trilogy is out now; the epic 1.3-gig game contains Lego recaps of all three Lord of the Rings films, over 90 characters, and all the soon-to-be-dead orcs, goblins, and Uruk-Hai you can tap. And while the game is every bit as cute and collectastic as the other ones I’ve played, its easily confused controls bog it down a little.

That’s not to say that it’s unplayable, but you’ll have to muster all of your fandom and patience to really enjoy it.

Blocky Roads is kind of a weird game. It has block-based voxel graphics like Minecraft or the lesser-known Zelda clone 3D Dot Game Heroes, but rather than being an open-world construction title or a sword-and-shield adventure, it’s a game about driving cars in a 2.5D environment and picking up coins and treasure chests.

And once you’ve picked up enough coins, you can upgrade your cars to get better at driving around the 2.5D environment and picking up coins and treasure chests. Or you can use those same coins to unlock a new level full of even more coins and treasure chests. And so on.

And all of this is to save your character’s farm.

No, really. It’s a weird game.

I don’t need a game to constantly encourage me and tell me how well I’m doing or how good I am at playing it. I don’t need a game to take me by the hand and lead me along through its twists and turns. And I definitely don’t need a game to take pity on me if I’m not good at it right away.

And that’s a good thing because Octagon, a new twitchy arcade title by (mean) developer Lukas Korba, isn’t interested in doing any of that. Octagon wants to hurt you. It wants you to feel terrible and incompetent, and I have reason to believe that it’s actively trying to get me to break my phone.

Don’t get me wrong; it’s still fun. But holy crap, is it difficult.

It’s been a little while since I reviewed a fantasy game with a branching plot, so I picked up Sorcery! 2, a new title from developer Inkle Studios and designer Steve Jackson, co-founder of Lionhead Studios (maker of the Fable series of role-playing games for Xbox and Xbox 360 consoles) and writer of the gamebooks on which this franchise is based. Not the Steve Jackson who created the GURPS tabletop RPG platform, but that’s an amazing coincidence.

Sorcery! 2 is the second (duh) in what will be a four-part adventure series, and it’s equal parts visual novel, RPG, and gamebook. And it all takes place in a beautiful, hand-drawn world with multiple paths and interesting old men to talk to. I mean, I don’t think you only talk to old men, but I spent about an hour with the game, and I did talk to some old men of varying crotchetiness. And a restauranteur who may or may not have been a star-spawn of Cthulhu.

Why haven’t you downloaded this yet?

I’m sad to say that if you clicked on this review hoping that Girl Washing was a soon-to-be-removed “sexy” game for iOS that you’re in for some hot…laundry washing action. Yep. Girl Washing is all about a cute girl doing chores instead of you washing some totally objectified anime chick (thankfully).

Anyway, Girl Washing is a weird take on a matching game. Rather than swiping to move clothes into lines, you’re actually assembling the game pieces on a grid, trying to match five items together. When you do, the clothes end up in a washing queue that you then have to drag into the washing machine. Soon, all the laundry starts piling up and matching five pairs gets incredibly difficult. I’ve spent a few hours beating my head against the seemingly automatic fail state Girl Washing pushed on you if you put even a sock out of place.

I’ve played and reviewed my share of endless runners, but Ooga Jump, a new game from Bolt Creative, takes endlessness to that other axis.

If you thought I was going to say “to new heights,” shame on you.

Ooga Jump is an “endless jumper” that was originally a minigame in Bolt’s earlier title, Pocket God. You control a Pygmy who for some reason or another is taking an infinite voyage upward via a series of platforms and collectible goodies. On his way, he encounters deadly statues, spiders, meteors, and wind, all of which want to cut his trip short by making him really, really dead.

Maybe I’m just a sucker for a dramatic Blade Runner-style soundtrack, but this new shooter from publisher Crescent Moon Studios and developer Tasty Poison Games (Pocket RPG) looks pretty darn exciting.

First person shooters are hard to do well on iOS, especially with a lack of physical buttons, but if anyone can do it right, these folks can. Of course, with the possibility of a physical controller due to Apple’s new controller code in iOS 7, things can only get better.

Check out the trailer to see the game in action.

I’m a big fan of physics-based puzzles, but the trouble is most of them relate to altering an object’s trajectory as it falls rather than manipulating things.

Drei by Etter Studio GmbH does away with falling oranges and rolling balls and offers instead increasingly difficult building block puzzles that require you to balance objects, shapes, and negotiate with other players.

Developer Gaijin Games’ Bit.Trip Presents Runner 2: Future Legend of Rhythm Alien quickly became one of my favorite games this year when it launched for consoles and PC back in February. It had a lot of personality, precise gameplay, and was just challenging enough to keep you on your toes but not enough to be frustrating.

The iOS port, Bit.Trip Run!, keeps the original’s levels, fantastic graphics, and entertaining narration from voice actor Charles Martinet (the voice of Nintendo’s Mario). So it’s mostly the same game. But it drops the necessarily accurate button controls in favor of taps and swipes for the mobile platform, and that really cuts the game down a few notches. I’d almost say that it makes it unplayable, but that’s not quite the case.

But it does take a great deal of patience to play well.

Who doesn’t love bugs? Kids of all ages love them, of course, and in new educational app, Grandma Loves Bugs, they’ll get a chance to explore the wonderful world of the many legged creatures with ten super fun mini games and eight instructional bug videos for young kids.

The mini games include Spot the Difference, Magic Coloring, Letter Match, bug Spelling, Counting Fireflies, and more. The live action nature videos are fully narrated and teach kids all about the wonderful world of bugs, too. The artwork and pedagogy are spot-on, as well, so parents can feel comfortable releasing their tiny bundles of joy onto their iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch.

Check out this adorable video to see what we mean:

Yesterday, I reviewed the first part of The Hunting, an interactive zombie film for iOS devices. I had some issues with its actual interactivity, which mostly amounted to swiping to put on pants and a meaningless choice between leaving a house through a window or a door.

Part 2 is out now, and unlike the first installment, it costs money. But it’s longer, has more interesting decision points, and is scary as hell.

So basically, remember the problems I had with the first one? Forget them.

https://youtu.be/HsQqY0O8Qcc

Majesco Entertainment contacted us Wednesday with its launch trailer for upcoming game, Romans from Mars, an endless-wave castle defense game that will be out on the App Store this Thursday.

The game places you behind an upgradable ballista, which is the only thing keeping the armies of Mars (the god of War, thank you very much) from conquering the Earth itself. Jupiter, who likes to get back at Mars, gives you a little extra power, as well, including the elemental powers of Fire, Ice, Earth, and Lightning. You know, just in case that crossbow isn’t quite upgraded enough.

Romans from Mars will be free to play, with in-app purchases to speed up your progress. It is available in the App Store (as well as Google Play) starting tomorrow. For now, enjoy the trailer above.

Think you’ve seen the last of The Walking Dead on your Mac or iOS device? Think again.

Telltale Games, the award-winning developer of recent hit games The Walking Dead: Season One and Fables: The Wolf Among Us, announced Tuesday the coming premiere of the second season of The Walking Dead video game series for Mac, iOS, PC, and home game consoles later this year.

The Walking Dead: Season Two is available for pre-order right now from Steam and the Telltale Games Online store.

If that headline reads like the tag for a family-friendly animated film — possibly one released during the holiday season — it’s because Mimpi, an adorable platformer from developers Crescent Moon Games and Silicon Jelly, has all the charm of those movies. The good ones, I mean. The bad ones aren’t charming at all.

But a cute visual style isn’t enough, so Mimpi also has puzzles, hidden items, and items to unlock. And it all happens across eight big levels, each with their own visual and play styles.

In short, it’s a cute game and plenty of it.

The BAFTA-nominated games studio behind award-winning Great Big War Game, Rubicon Development, just released its latest mobile game: Combat Monsters. It’s available now on Google Play, the App Store, Windows, and will be coming soon to the Mac.

Note: This article originally appeared in the Cult of Mac Newsstand issue, Game On!. Grab yourself a copy or subscribe today.

It still surprises me when someone says, “I don’t play video games.”

Games are a touchstone of cultural relevance these days. With the advent of the iOS platform, with its ready availability of a wide variety of video games for all types of players, it’s hard to not see their influence. Not playing video games is like not reading novels or not watching television: sure, some folks choose that, but they’re missing out on a common cultural heritage and discussion.

That said, video games can seem intimidating. Or feel like a waste of valuable productivity time. I won’t bore you with statistics and studies that say otherwise, but trust me on this: video games can be a viable leisure time activity for all of us.

So how do we get you playing games? In the case of my girlfriend, it was finding the games that made sense to her. For my dad? He still won’t play them. So this list is as much for him as it is for you. You’re welcome.

Here at Cult of Mac, we’re just starting our coverage of iOS and Mac games, as our fearless leader Leander told you in the publisher’s letter for the inaugural edition of our Newsstand magazine.

Since we’re just starting up, it’s pretty easy to get our attention when it comes to promotional emails and review requests. While we can’t review all the games we’re sent, we do read all the promotional emails that you’re sending our way.

Even still, we’d be lucky to review even a minuscule percentage of games we get requests for, so there are a few things that you can do to guarantee that we’ll take a closer look. There are a few more than you can do to make sure we don’t look much closer, too.

Here’s a list of both extremes, to help guide you on your way to getting coverage on Cult of Mac.