Home » Articles and Reviews by 'Christian Valentin'
Take flight and dodge traps in physics-based vehicle platformer Animal Super Squad
Animal Super Squad is a new vehicle platformer taking cues from the absurd physics and big ramps of the Trials series, swapping helmeted rider with reckless animals in slapdash machines on wheels. There's no motorcylce to master here; instead you choose between a daring fish, chicken, or sloth and then race along arcadey tracks in different vehicles, each with their own style to learn. The hover truck and the toilet on wheels are going to control differently enough, but either way, Animal Super Squad has you boosting and flipping through gravity deftying tracks, activating switches to destroy or change parts of the upcoming roadway. Of course, you might also be launched out of…
Animal Super SquadHidden Gem of the Week: Telepaint
Combining easy controls with tricky space-bending puzzles, Telepaint's format is simple: you're a paint bucket trying to reach a waiting brush, auto-walking between portals that you can link to teleport around levels. Activating these portals are the core of Telepaint's puzzles, requiring timing and planning to survive hazards and tricky puzzle elements. While the automatic movement may sound like more of a hectic element, Telepaint lets you pause the time and manipulate portal while stopped, giving you as much time is needed to consider what direction you'll exit portals, how that direction will make you bump off walls, how you'll interact with certain obstacles. Early levels only requir…
Narrative-driven puzzler G30 tells the story of a fading memory through clever challenges
G30 might seem obtuse at glance, but its colorful artful aesthetic is the backdrop for an ambitious and clever puzzle game that uses its mechanics to deliever a human tale. Colored lines connect with jigsaw pieces, switching between various design as you drag on the line. With drag, you piece together a shape, and with each correct shape, G30's story unfolds on the screen. It's a narrative about a fading memory, about remembering and consciousness, and your puzzle solving brings new context to the text. Its minimalst art style and piecemeal story structure is designed with intent, attempting to represent the nature of remembering fragments of memories, snapping into place and revealing th…
Q-Games' Eden Obscura is swinging onto iOS on May 18th
The artistically abstract and arcade-y agile Eden Obscura is releasing soon on mobile, bringing Q-Games' unique Pixeljunk style and satisfying swinging to iOS later this week, according to the developers on Twitter. Eden Obscura is an enhanced and updated successor Q-Games' Pixeljunk Eden, designed with mobile in mind; the floral landscapes and graceful swinging remains, now with a useful double jump and a unique feaure that uses your phone's camera to create dynamic and atmosphere backgrounds to navigate through. With each gossamer grapple and planted seed, your agile movement through the world brings it to life with growing structures to swing even higher in your quest to collect specia…
Scalak is an unorthodox cubic puzzler from the developer of Zenge and Art of Gravity, releasing this month on iOS and Android
Developer Michal Pawlowski's roster of puzzle games all share the traits of being visually unique and relaxingly paced, and the upcoming Scalak looks like a welcome addition among past titles like Zenge and Push. At its most basic, Scalak look reminiscent of a 3D jigsaw puzzle, challenging you to fit oddly-shaped pieces onto cubic structures. In the trailer, a wide variety of puzzle types are shown, each one building upon that concept in different ways: filling in gaps on surfaces with shaped tiles, rotating sections of cubic levels so special tiles will fit with the correct orientation, and even placing girder-like construction across a structure's vertices. And like his past games, Scal…
Golfing receives a quirky alternative in upcoming arcade sports game What The Golf
Golfing seems relative simple game-wise, Whether it's a realistic course or full of mini-golf obstacles, you're still hitting a ball with a club to a hole. But What The Golf laughs at the notion, instead promising a much weirder and wackier take on the sport when it releases on mobile later this year. Technically, you're still dragging on the screen to aim and set the power of your launch towards a waiting goal, but What The Golf's similarities to actual golf end there. Across its various courses, you'll need to lauch everything from a house to a pile of clubs, from a horse to an egg through physics-based gauntlets; some stages won't even be typical courses but instead have you flicking a…
A Steel Media round-up for the week of May 7th
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 ".io" style game Axe.IO, and praises it as a surprisingly addictive and featured multiplayer experience, including different classes with various skills, diverse game modes including a 50-player Battle Royale, and simply yet enjoyable mechanics that lets you deftly dodge axes and collect upgrades mid-combat. Over on Pocket Gamer, Susan Arendt writes about the recent puzzler Dissembler and how its vibrant style and relaxed pace, without pressure or punishment for wrong moves, might provide on…
Flash game remake Sierra 7 is a tactical on-rails shooter in development for iOS and Android
Originally released as a flash game in 2011, Sierra 7 is being developed as an expanded remake for mobile, bringing an updated art style, more weapons, levels, and other additions and improvements to iOS and Android. The concept is a tactical rails shooter, putting you in the shoes of special operative engaging in classified missions around the globe. Each mission takes you through its levels on rails, letting you focus on aiming, weapon choice, and reloading. While the original game had a stick figure-themed art style, the new version has you fighting fully-illustrated mercenaries with a much wider arsenal of guns and a contextual cover system reminiscent of the classic Time Crisis arcad…
Kontrast turns minimalist drawings into short intriguing puzzles
Kontrast is a short and unusual puzzle game available now on iOS and Android, eschewing traditional design to present you with stylish illustrations and simple challenges focused on playful experimentation. Each of Kontrast's seven stages is a monochrome abstract illustration, moving in a subtle rhythm; a light fixture swings to and fro, cloaking areas in shadow, a geometric constructure rotates and tumbles, among other elements. Your goal is to guide a ball through these odd drawings, but the challenge is figuring out how to actually accomplish that goal; tapping and dragging on parts of each drawing reveals parts that can be moved and manipulated to create a path. Discovering the secret…
Valve announces official Steam Link app for iOS and Android
Valve - game developer, publisher, and company behind the huge PC gaming site Steam - introduced Steam Link in 2015 as a means to stream games played on a PC to televisions. Now, the company has announced a Steam Link app headed to iOS and Android, allowing you to play games from Steam library on your preferred mobile device. In the announcement, Valve stated tha devices will be able to stream through a 5Ghz network connection or Ethernet cable from their PC or Mac, with support for Steam Controller, MFI controllers, and other similiar devices for playing on an iOS and Android device. Along with the Steam Link app, Valve is also releasing a Steam Video app for iOS and Andr…
Hidden Gem of the Week: Imbroglio
Michael Brough is known for delivering odd abstract roguelikes and puzzle games that seem simple but reveal a hidden depth and complexit, like the block-pushing Corrypt, or the virus-destorying 868-Hack. But Imbroglio is perhaps his most defining release in recent years, blending elements of roguelikes, RPGs card games, and board games. If you've played 868-Hack, Imbroglio will feel somewhat familiar; similar elements and mechanics link the two: randomly spawning enemies, a level layout that changes upon performing a certain action, enemies that move when you move, and so on. But despite those similarities, Imbroglio is its own game, offering a number of different classes (more if you've…
Stylish brawler Justice Royale arrives on iOS later this month
The stylizied aesthetic and flashy attacks of Justice Royale will be releasing worldwide on May 30th, after a soft launch period for the Philippines, New Zealand, and Australia. The mean streets of Justice Royale are filled with enemies to pummel and evade, as you use simple touch controls to unleash powerful combos. Tapes and swipes result in juggles and charged blows, with more abilities and moves unlocked as you progress through the story mode. The stick figure aesthetic injects sidescrolling beat-em-up action with a jagged messy style that compliments the fighting and animations well; well your character is a simple stick person, Justice Royale will have a number of customi…
Tiny Bubbles turns popping bubbles into a brain-teasing color-matching challenge
At first glance, Tiny Bubbles might seem like a predictable game: bright colors, bubbles to pop, matches to make. But don't be fooled by that cute and colorful presentation; Tiny Bubbles offers cleverly-designed challenges and surprisingly nuanced mechanics, available now on iOS. Built on a foundation of accurate soap-bubble physics, Tiny Bubbles presents you with a number of objectives revolving around careful matches through precise pops. Some stages take you with shrinking bubble structures to fit within a specific areas, others ask you to remove all bubbles from the screen or match a certain number of same-colored bubbles, but all require you to understand the nuance of its simple cen…
Levelhead is the upcoming level-creating platformer from developer Butterscotch Shenanigans
Butterscotch Shenanigans' library of games have always been diverse and distinct, linked only by a quirky sense of humor and colorful aesthetic. Crashlands was a base-building crafting adventure, Quadropus Rampage was an isometric hectic arcade brawler, Towelfight 2 was an animal-firing dual stick shooter. And now their next game, Levelhead, will add 2D platformer and robust level editor to their line-up of games. Framed as testing for robot AI, Levelhead gives you the means to construct a wide variety of platforming-based levels, from box-pushing and switch-pressing puzzles and cannon-blasting arenas to sawblade-filled hard-as-nails gauntlets. A large toolset lets you pre…
A Steel Media round-up for the week of April 30th
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 goes hands-on with MMX Hill Dash 2, the sequel to the monster truck-driving, hill-climbing arcade racer. Inspired by the wild tracks of the Trial series, the hands-on showcases the general gameplay loop, truck upgrading, and several challenges. Over on Pocket Gamer, Jon Mundy recommends a number of notable Star Wars games to play in honor of May 4th, aka Star Wars Day. Knights of the Old Republic, LEGO Star Wars, and several others make the list, each touching on classic Star Wars aspects in different ways. Luke F…
