Home » Articles and Reviews by 'Christian Valentin'
A hands-on with new puzzler The Eyes of Ara [Video]
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The Eyes of AraFive tips for strategy puzzler Look, Your Loot! [Video]
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Solve tricky logic puzzles in The Sequence 2, releasing on iOS next month
The Sequence 2 is an abstract logic-based puzzler in the vein of games like SpaceChem and Perfect Paths, challenging you to construct elaborite Rube Goldberg-esque mechanisms that work in harmony to transport inputs to a waiting output. Your goal is simple: manuever a red circles across the hexagonal grid to an exit tile. But that's not so easy when you need to do so by synchronizing numerous nodes to work together to move those circles through the tight map, not just once but in repeatable cycles that don't stall mid-loop. The nodes you place have various functions, from pushing or pulling circles to rotating their position. Combining those functions allow you to methodically…
Guide an entire soccer club to success in the addictive New Star Soccer Manager [Review]
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Dead Island: Survivors offers a polished blend of tower defense and zombie smashing [Review]
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Grimvalor is an upcoming dark fantasy action platformer from the creators of Swordigo
Six years after the release of charming metroidvania Swordigo, developer Touch Foo has revealed a new game, a fast and detailed action platformer called Grimvalor. The brief teaser showcases a dark fantasy world stretching from snowing cliff paths to monster-infested ruins, as you agilely leap and slice through fierce foes. An acrobatic combat system lets you dash around and dodge over enemies while unleashes powerful special attacks, while equipment and leveling up upgrades your character with new skills. The hack-n-slash teases of the trailer and images promise challenging boss fights as well, testing your prowess with the game's evasive melee while mastering each boss' attack patterns…
Mayhem is a frenetic and functional multiplayer brawler for mobile [Review]
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A Steel Media round-up for the week of July 2nd
Here’s another weekly round-up of news, previews, and features from Pocket Gamer, 148Apps, and the rest of our sister sites. On our Youtube page, James Gilmour reviews Rally Legends, a challenging rally racer that puts your time trial skills to the test. Every second counts as you drift around corners and manage your handling over off-road courses. Over on Pocket Gamer, Emily Snowden provides details on the latest update for platformer Storm In A Teacup. This whimiscal platformer has been re-mastered with a new visual style and improved controls, while mainaining the charming adventure that charmed players back in 2011. Finally on 148Apps, Harry Slater lists some of…
Interlogic is a clever matching puzzler coming soon to iOS
The matching puzzler is one of the familiar on mobile, and yet every once in a while, a clever hybrid finds a unique approach for the mechanic, such as Swap Sword and Six Match. Interlogic offers its own twist on the formula, combining tile-matching with Sokoban-inspired block pushing. Controlling a tiny truck, you need to make matches in each level not through swiping tiles but by pushing them with your vehicle. This change turns matches into spatial challenge that forces you to consider how to move around a level, how to precisely push tiles, and when to make matches you can make space for your truck. Increasingly tight level design, barriers, and other mechanics add further complexity…
Every second counts in off-road arcade racer Rally Legends [Review]
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Hidden Gem of the Week: Hexa Turn
Hexa Turn is a minimalist logic puzzler, placing your barrier-construction abiltiies againsit a predictable AI and tricky level configurations. As a concept, Hexa Turn is quite simple: a triangle relentlessly travels the hexagon grid turn-by-turn, taking the shortest possible route towards squares on the grid. It's your job to prevent that by filling in hexagons to create barriers, blocking off the triangle's path and redirecting its approach, until you've trapped it with no viable moves forward. That's easier said than done when once Hexa Turn starts adding multiple squares to protect and larger grids for the triangle to move across. Even without the mechanics that come later, Hexa Turn…
Squirgle turns arithmetic into a hectic and hypnotic fast-paced puzzle game
When you think of a math puzzler, you're probably thinking of game revolving around adding, substracting, multiplying, or maybe constructing geometric shaoes. Squirgle's approach is both familiar and abstract: combining arithemtic with a kaleidoscopic aesthetic, number bases, color matching, and a ticking clock. Squirgle looks complex at the first glance - and it does have a number of mechanics to manage - but it's simpler to imagine the shapes along the bottoms of its screen instead as numbers. A point equals 1, a line has two points and so equals 2, a triangle has three points and equals 3, and so on until looping back to the point, depending on the number base you're playing with. Your…
Up Left Out is a minimalist new take on the block-sliding from the creator of Klocki and HOOK
Klocki, HOOK, and Push all played with their familiar genre elements to deliver uniquely minimalist puzzlers with clever mechanics and the new Up Left Out does the same for block sliding puzzle games. Each of Up Left Out’s 50 stages is a collection of blocks, most marked with lines to connect like circuits rather than matching colors or more traditional objectives. Those blocks are often linked to pegs, forcing you to not just slide blocks around the stage but first figure out to how to free blocks from their pegs. This additional challenge introducing a challenging extra step to Up Left Out’s colorful puzzles. Soon, you’re also dealing with buttons that activate barrie…
A Steel Media round-up for the week of June 25th
Here’s another weekly round-up of news, previews, and features from Pocket Gamer, 148Apps, and the rest of our sister sites. On our Youtube page, James Gilmour reviews the latest Bloons game, the long-running tower defense series. Bloons TD6 is described as your traditional TD-style game that, despite its colorful assortment of animal defenders and bright environments, doesn't do much to evolve or twist the family genre in interesting ways. Over on Pocket Gamer, Harry Slater provides useful hints for how to improve in the recently released Card Quest. The list of tips for this card-based RPG reminds players to make sure they understand the intricacies of their…
