Home » Articles and Reviews by 'Dave Flodine'
Frutorious' Felt Fun Hitting the App Store Late Next Month
Finding a unique and catching art style when designing your game is certainly a challenge. When Kirby's Epic Yarn came out a couple years ago, its use of felt and yarn was refreshing and whimsical and reminded some of us of the claymation games of the 16-bit era. Frutorious combines felt and clay in what looks to be a high score jumping game with plenty of charisma. Have a look at the trailer... No definitive release date has been set, but the developers are anticipating late September. We'll let you know when it happens.…
Heroes' Call Undergoes an Update
Some of you may remember our review of Heroes' Call. In summary it's a decent enough hack and slash RPG that was dragged down by designing its systems around the worst aspects of the freemium model. Since then based on reviews and user feedback, the dev team has been working to fix some of these issues, and we're happy to advertise that their first update has hit the app store. Here are the changes... * The in-app purchase currency of gems has been removed entirely (and any gems held by players have now been turned into gold). * The shadow assassin class has become playable for all. * Hard Mode characters available. * Replaying missions warrants more gold and better gear. * Story miss…
Jack Lumber Review
What's the right course of action when a rampaging forest of murderous trees crush your dear sweet granny? Vengeance of course! You are Jack Lumber, an appropriate name for your profession, and thanks to your superhuman lumberjack abilities, those trees will be shaking in their roots. Jack Lumber plays like fruit ninja with bullet time. Chunks of wood are hurled into the air (most likely due to your indiscriminate hacking), and then once the screen is touched, time slows down, and you…
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Gallivanting Granny Unveiling this Thursday
You never want to let your Grandmother go unsupervised while wearing roller skates. Who knows what mayhem will result. Just look at this trailer for Granny Smith being released this Thursday for instance! Ah well, as long as she's having a good time? Am i right?…
Surfing Never Looked so Cruisy
Phantom surfboard aside, in the next couple weeks Infinite Surf will be released for $0.99. The presentation is what is most striking, with the great surf music combined with the picturesque waves (that never move as you travel up and down them). Have a look at the trailer to see what i mean. It certainly looks less complicated and safer than grabbing a board and hitting the waves yourself (though perhaps not as fun or rewarding).…
Diskobolos Review
You know that famous Greek sculpture of the man hunched over, holding a discus? That's Discobolus. Go on, Google the name, you'll know it when you see it. So what does this game have to do with that statue? Well not much really, but you are shooting out digital discs at a series of encroaching insects for multipliers and high scores, and that's got to count for something right? Diskobolus is a lot of fun once you work out how it all comes together. You have a disc shooter at the botto…
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Michael Jackson The Experience Review
Michael Jackson the Experience is indeed a well made game. With that said, there's a litmus test that needs to be applied before purchase. Do you have fond memories of growing up with Michael Jackson's pop music? If the answer is yes, then chances are you will enjoy yourself. If you're not a fan of the music, despite this being a solid rhythm game with impeccable presentation, we would recommend you look elsewhere. The game begins with a tutorial that really doesn't explain how the ga…
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Big Square Enix Port Released over the Weekend
The rumours of the release were leaked late last week, but we wanted to wait for confimation, and now we have it. Square Enix are porting a version of The World Ends With You to iOS devices. It's titled Solo remix, and is available for iPhone 4 and iPad 2 users. It will set you back about $18 - $20 depending on version and region. The original DS version is one of my favourite RPGs of the last 10 years so it's nice to see a mobile port. I wonder how they designed around the single screen of the iPhone and iPad, as it was the duel screen combat that made the game so unique and memorable. We'll find out when our review of this title goes up sometime this week
Man has the zombie craze been played out by now. Regardless, we still see all these releases featuring the animated corpses of the recently deceased, and we have to admit, when a game like Tread of the Dead comes out that puts an interesting approach on the whole zombie slaughter kerfuffle, it's time to sit up and take notice. Not to say they knock their concept out of the park, but this game is novel and amusing enough to possibly crack the veneer of veteran zombie gamers everywhere.…
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Infinite Warrior Out in the App Store September 6th
In the film world, one way to pitch an idea is by combining two existing movies and mushing them together. This way of looking at new properties is useful when it comes to games as well, and the best way to describe Infinite Warrior is mixing the endless runner genre with Infinity Blade. Have a look at the trailer. The game is out at the start of next month.[Empty Flask Games]…
Grabbity Hopping out in Early September
September is shaping up to have some interesting releases and heavy hitters. What else do you expect as we're moving into the 4th quarter? Grabbity caught our eye by being a platformer based entirely around tilt. Have a look at the trailer and see what we mean. This looks like it'll be a lot of fun, and it's got great presentation to boot. It will be out September 6th.…
Jump For Fish Review
Context is important. Without a good reason for playing the game either given to us by the developers or one we make ourselves, why should we be interested? That's not to say that narrative trumps mechanics, definitely not, but even the best made games without a goal or reason to play them end up just being soulless exercises. Jump for Fish was created to celebrate the birth of the developer's son, and its context for play reflects that. You are a father otter that has to go out to wor…
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Sunshine Review
The battle between the forces of light and dark has been a long time favorite to base a game around, but until Sunshine, never did it seem to be taken so literally. The black holes are threatening to consume the universe into nothingness by taking over all the suns, and as a lowly photon, it's your job to stop them. How does a photon go up against a black hole? Well they don't, but by planet hopping and collecting stars, you can make the universe a safer place. Just beware, this task i…
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App Wrap Up (Midweek Edition, 22nd August 2012)
How's it going Appspy readers? It's time for yet another App Wrap Up installment! As always we're gonna post and comment on some trailers of games that look interesting, but of course all we haven't tried them ourselves. That's for our readers to do if they see anything they like (and do please tell us about it in the comments). Let's start things off! Window Warrior (Gambit) Kind of like Fruit Ninja with planks of wood, and instead of slicing, boarding up windows. Ok, so it's not really like Fruit Ninja. Board the windows from encroaching monsters by hammering planks across them. There's even a nail shotgun![App Store Link] Missile Storm (Vjenceslav Nadinic) Yes it's…
Flip’s Escape Review
Warioware introduced us to the idea of the micro arcade game, in that you only had a couple of seconds to work out what you needed to do, and then accomplish that task to the best of your ability. These games usually revolved around one very simple mechanic and once you got the hang of it, there were options to see how far you could get. I bring this up because at its heart, Flip's Escape is reminiscent of those micro arcade experiences, and really, it's only once you work out how the…
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