Home » Articles and Reviews by 'Christian Valentin'
Hidden Gem of the Week: Euclidea
Math-based puzzlers tend to revolve around computation and sums, but Euclidea isn't like most games in that niche; rather than numbers, geometry is the focus, constructing figures and shapes with minimalist tools and within a minimalist aesthetic. Euclidea starts out simple, easing you into its collection of geometric brainteasers by teaching how to create line segments, select points, draw circles. And then gradually, the challenge begins to increase, as you use intersecting circles to create equilateral triangles and perfectly bisect lines. But the game isn't completely merciless. As you master the simpler tasks like deducing parallet lines, Euclidea provides tools that automatica…
EuclideaBrew Town is a build-your-own-brewery simulator, heading to iOS and Android in March
Management sims have always been a thriving little niche on mobile, between entries such as Game Dev Story and Motorsport Manager. Coming next month, Brew Town promises an unique premise for the genre, letting you start and expand a brewery empire. From small beginnings, you’ll be able to unlock dozens of structures and beer flavors, using your business’ earnings to grow into a sprawling compound encompassing bars, manufacturing, and shipment. With success comes new receipes to widen your brewery‘s assortment of beers, as missions and leaderships to test your management prowess. For creative players, Brew Town even lets you create and customize your beer bottles and log…
Smash, slice, and blast your way through heavy metal hell in vertical platformer Hellbreaker
Tower Fortress fans looking for more upward-driven action may want to keep an eye on Hellbreaker, a new vertical roguelike platformer headed to iOS and Android this year. Placing you in the demon-killing shoes (and mutated arm) of the warrior Arok, Hellbreaker challenges you to escape a randomly generared hell, navigating vertically through a gauntlet of beasts, traps, and bosses. Obliterating your way through this eldritch prison may be harder, but doing so while chaining together combos and avoiding damage is the true test; as you progress upward, selected perks let you modify Arok‘s abilities as well as unlock the power of your projectile-firing demonic form, all to a back drop o…
Florence promises a touching tale of love and relationship, coming to iOS on February 14th
Mobile has seen a steady resurgence of the interactive fiction genre, from the myriad classic text adventures to the interesting evolutions such as Sorcery and Lone Wolf. Florence, the upcoming game from Monument Valley lead designer Ken Wong, looks to be another evolution of the genre, blending subtly animated illustrations and gameplay vignettes to tell a story of love. Described as a slice of life narrative and interactive storybook, the game takes the player through the intimate slices of titular Florence Yeoh’s first love, the highs and lows, the struggle and feeling stuck and the slow process of falling for a person. Scene by scene, interaction by interaction - brushing t…
A Steel Media round-up for the week of January 29th
AppSpy is only one facet of the larger network that makes up Steel Media, and all manner of interesting and informative articles made their way to pages of our sister sites. This weekly features highlights some of those stories. Over on our YouTube page, you can find a helpful tips video for the recently released card game-roguelike hybrid Meteorfall; keep that advice in mind and you’ll be a monster-slayer master in no time at all. Emily Snowden on Pocket Gamer shined a light on the isometric puzzler Valleys Between, a game about carefullly molding and managing life in an gradually expanding world. Meanwhile on Android Rundown, the adventure game Broken Sword received a retrospect…
Ayo: A Rain Tale is a platformer adventure across sub-saharan Africa, for iOS and Android
Platformers is a genre that has had its fair share of engaging and varied releases on mobile, from Leo’s Fortune to ports such as Inside. Ayo: A Rain Tale is another entry to comsider, bringing a narrative-driven design and a unique cultural perpsective to iOS and Android. As the titular Ayo, you must endure a daily journey through the harsh landscapes of sub-saharan Africa to bring clean water back to your village, a journey that pits Ayo against increasingly deadly hazards as the game progresses. From sandstorms to dangerous wildlife, your path is fraught with peril, and puzzle platforming challenges. Sun and sand may be early threats, but soon stages become complicated, ta…
Rearrange a charming sci-fi adventure in Alike Studio's new puzzle game Bring You Home, out now on iOS
The autorunner is often a game of reaction and reflexes, timing your actions in sync with the character's forward movement. But Alike's newest iOS game Bring You Home turns the forward progress of the autorunner on its head, by tying it not to reflexes but to the cause and effect of an adventure game. Another cute and whimiscal sci-fi adventure, with a similar colorful aesthetic as its predecessor Love You To Bits, this game puts in the shoes of Polo, on a quest to rescue your kidnapped alien pet as you leap between portals in pursuit. But beween portals lies each stage of odd extraterrestial vignettes and other silly characters and interactions, that often end in your demise. Rewind, try…
Hidden Gem of the Week: Good Fences
Good Fences is an unasssuming little gem of a puzzler for iOS and Android, the kind you might not give a thought at a glance due to its simple aesthetic and mechanic that are hard to get across in screenshots. This geometric brain-teaser takes a very simple concept and wrings over a hundred challenges of shape placing and rotating out of that central mechanic. Take a look at that screenshot below, that is Good Fences at its simplest. Every stage presents you with a shape, and it's your job to surround it with copies of that same shape. It's such a basic seed of a puzzle concept, where even a less-complex shape can prove to be a tricky prospect to surround due to how corners and sides might…
Gunslugs 3: Rogue Tactics promises slower but still hectic side-scrolling action on iOS and Android
The Gunslugs series has offered some of the most hectic 2D action on mobile, packing tons of bullets and explosions into a small slice of run-n-gun chaos. While the second game ratcheted the speed to be more frenetic levels, the third game looks to slow the action down a tad...and adding some extra tactical elements to the explosion-heavy gameplay. After choosing from a pool of characters - each with unique perks that range from faster movement to a minigun as a secondary weapon - Gunslugs 3 unleashes you in larger levels that combine vertical combat through towers with hectic evasion as you travel between towers. Weapons found throughout stages can alter your loadout with pla…
iOS and Android releases are likely for dual stick shooter roguelite Tesla Vs Lovecraft
10tons‘ mobile library is one of fast and furious shooters, from the alien-splattering Crimsonland to the recent Jydge, and the developers revealed they have plans to bring their newest game, Tesla Vs Lovecraft, to mobile as well. As one might infer from the title, the game is a battle of high tech scientific weaponry against hordes of eldritch horrors; with Tesla’s arsenal of energy and lightning guns, you must annihilate Lovecraft’s monsters across gothic cemeteries and victorian streets. Powerful perks that multiple bullets or bounce them off surfaces augment your rifles, shotguns, and other guns, but your most powerful weapon is the limited-use Tesla-Mech. This hulki…
Track and field gets a ballistic twist in Run Gun Sports, releasing on iOS this week
Sprinting a 50m dash may prove a tad challenging when you have guns for feet, in Run Gun Sports, the wacky sports game headed to the App Store on February 1st. Reminiscent of other sports hybrids like Wrestle Jump or QWOP, Run Gun Sports combines classic track-and-field events - hurdes, long jumps, and more - with the physics-based twist of being robot with bullet-firing legs. Recoil is your means of acceleration and balancing, forcing you to time your shots to modulate movement and rotations. Ranging from shotguns to flamethrowers, your arsenal of leg guns each have their own effects to master as you compete for high scores across dozens of events and daily challenges. Run Gun Sports w…
Unique metroidvania Dandara is headed to iOS and Android on February 6th
Dandara takes the classic platforming of the metroidvania and turns it on its head, literally. This gravity-twisting entry to the genre is slated to release in early February, bringing rapid-fire action and wall-hopping acrobatics to mobile. As ths titular warrior, awakened in time of need, you must fight against the forces oppressing the people of Salt; that‘s no task when that enemy consists of powerful bosses across various regions. Slingshotting from walls to floor to ceiling lets you evade traps and attacks with precision, while your upgradable arsenal arms you with different projectiles and means to reach previously-inaccessible areas. From bullet hell waves of bullets and foe…
Slime Pizza takes a gloopy approach to iOS platforming
Being a collaboration between Nitrome and Neutronized, you might have certain expectations for Slime Pizza: a colorful and charming artstyle, simple yet challenging gameplay, short bite-sized gauntlets. And you would be right; this new iOS game features all of those in its particularly gooey take on the mobile platformer. As an amorphous delivery boy for the titular pizza service, it’s your job to hop and cling across rooms to recover the slices scattered by a crash landing. Doing so is as simple as dragging on the screen to slingshot in a wobbly arc, sticking to the surfaces you touch. As you travel from room to room and planet to planet, collecting pizza becomes increasingly chall…
Hidden Gem of the Week: Ending
Aaron Steed's Ending is a minimalist roguelike stripped of all the fluff and filler, exposing a challenging game of life and death decisions and strategic planning, where one wrong move can destroy you. Inspired by chess and board games, Ending casts you as a lowly @ sign, in a maze of dangerous ruthless enemies. Each symbol moves in a specific way or has a special purpose, from moving two spaces in a turn to only being able to attack from a certain direction or firing projectiles. When you move, they move, and one hit is enough to destroy you...or for you to end them. There in lies Ending's strategic gameplay: it's a game where every move must be considered, where you need to think five…
Thumper: Pocket Edition unleashes its unique brand of rhythm violence upon the App Store
iOS is no stranger to music games, from Cytus to Dropchord, but Thumper is unlike any of them. A weird, unrelenting, and lightning-fast entry to the genre, the game has made its way to mobile, currently available on the App Store. From the first section of its nine levels to its last hellish stage, Thumper: Pocket Edition hurls you into a kaleidoscopic tempest, your chrome beetle racing along twisting tracks and claustrophobic tunnels as eldritch beings of light and metal twist and unfurl within the void. Imagine those classic inputs of a Guitar Hero or Rock Band - tap and hold to the beat at the right time - and you can grasp Thumper: thump down on markers, turn and grind against t…
