Home » Articles and Reviews by 'Christian Valentin'
Magibot follows a robotic sorcerer through a puzzle-platforming adventure
Exploring an unknown hostile alien world would usually be a brutal challenge. However, you're not usually in control of a magic-wielding robot. Magibot combines a sci-fi world with a magic-based puzzle platforming gameplay. To guide the titular Ilo, you place special nodes that dictate specific action, whether it's to create a mystical ramp or shoot fireball or dash forward. It's reminiscent of the classic game Lemmings, except you're only controlling a single character. Enemy, hazards, and time-sensitive danger forces you to precisely place nodes, considering timing and movement to succeed. Magibot promises 40 stages of puzzle platforming, with new nodes adding more intricacies and tacti…
MagibotZero/Sum combines b-movie storytelling with math puzzles when it releases on May 16th
"Sudoku meets Die Hard" is how developer Squeezebox sums up Zero/Sum, a new puzzler releasing later this month that blends FMV cutscenes and b-action movie narrative with math-based challenges. The good news is that Professor Claire Liddy finds the cure for cancer. The bad news is that she was killed by terrorists. The comedic framing for Zero/Sum's puzzles puts you in the shoes of one of Liddy's grad student, placing erased plus and minuses to complete equations and make them all equal zero. These puzzles start simply, with singular equations and simple math where each change to the equation dynamically adjusting the answer. But later challenges expand outward, creating a Sudoku-esque gr…
Hidden Gem of the Week: Swapperoo
From Fallen Tree Games, developer of the Quell games, Swapperoo evolves the traditional match-3 formula in interesting ways to deliver a surprisingly strategic puzzler. At its most basic concept, Swapperoo follows the same design principle of connecting three or more items on a grid, removing those matched items from the grid, but that is where the similarities end. Most importantly, you can only move specific triangular tiles on the grid, and can only move these triangular tiles in the direction they're pointing. This design choice makes each match a strategic affair, forcing the player to plan several moves ahead. Across handcrafted challenges, randomized stages, and an endless mode, t…
Create-a-world multiplayer text adventure Paradise could be coming to iOS
Originally revealed in 2015, Paradise is one of the latest games from developer Hundred Rabbits, known for their unusual puzzle games and apps such as Oquonie, Hiversaires, and Verreciel. Paradise continues that trend of weird and mysterious game design with a unique approach to the text adventure. While the classic text adventure uses its parser design to let you explore worlds, interact with items, talk with people, and so on, Paradise is more reminiscent of creative games such as Minecraft or Little Big Planet; with parser commands like create, become, enter, transmute, and program, you can construct places and objects piece-by-piece and action-by-action. Create a…
Silverfish DX brings updated neon arcade action to iOS later this year
Originally released in 2010, Silverfish was one of iOS's early and interesting dual stick arcade game, focusing on evasion rather than aggressive firepower. Eight years later, developer ChaoticBox is nearing release of their updated Silverfish DX, bringing a new and improved version of the neon-infused action to mobie. As the titular Silverfish, you must weave and flow through increasingly cluttered arenas, dodging hordes of enemies while activating bombs to destroy surrounded monsters. This simple concept was made thrilling through tight controls and visual spectacle as the vibrant enemies flooded the screen. The DX version will remake the game with HD graphics, larger arenas, new enemy…
A Steel Media round-up for the week of April 23rd
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 provides his impression of the beer empire business sim Brew Town, highlighting in particular the repetitive nature of the genre present in the game, the creative side of Brew Town in designing bottle icons and beer types, and the well-thought design of the sim gameplay. Over on Pocket Gamer, Harry Slater offers an satricial argument for the strength of the idle game subgenre, especially the wonderful fact that the endless ever-increasing nature of idle gaming means you'll have a legacy to leave behind. Finally, o…
Still Here is a charming adventure through a robotic world, available on iOS and Android
Still Here promises a jetapck-driven exploration-heavy adventure through its colorful mechanical kingdom, in a relaxed sci-fi platformer about uncovering what happened to mankind and discovering the robotic world left behind. With simple taps, you can hover and float through Still Here's various environments and stages, collecting collectibles and meeting robot inhabitants along the way. As a "pip", it's your goal to talk with these friendly automatons to learn about the secrets of humanity's fate, all while unlocking new outfits and items throughout your calm exploration. Simple yet resposnive controls lets you boost through the air with precision, using environmental element…
Hidden Gem of the Week: Blown Away
Blown Away: Secret of the Wind is a unique auto-running puzzle platformer from Black Pants Studio, that stabds out due to its vibrant art style and clever mechanics. Mother Nature has swept away Hendrik's home and hair; now he must travel a land of deadly gaps, monsters, and traps to retrieve them, using his pair of teleporting boots to leap past hazards Those boots provide the backbone for Blown Away's smartly-designed stages; your boots recharge their teleport with each step, and tapping on the screen teleports you to that location, even as you're falling to certain doom. The charging element is what turns a relatively simple mechanic into a puzzler. Your boots only charge w…
Quirky and challenging sledgehammer platformer Getting Over It is now available on Android
You might be familiar with developer Bennet Foddy, but you probably know his literal walking simulator QWOP, that humorously weird game about trying to walk and shuffle down a track. His latest game Getting Over It has just released on Android, after launching earlier this year on iOS, and its premise is just as unusual and as challenging. You're a guy stuck in cauldron wielding a sledgehammer and you need to climb a mountain. Climbing a mountain would be tough under normal circumstances, but Getting Over It's tricky, frustratingly physics-based movement and controls make it a relentless challenge, as you drag and hop and hook and flip and slide your way forward with your sledgehammer. A…
Spitkiss is a colorful slingshot platformer releasing this year on iOS and Android
The slingshot mechanic has been a staple for mobile games for years, with myriad games finding different and clever ways to use the touch-friendly control scheme. Spitkiss looks like it'll be a worthy addition to that group, going by the colorful platforming shown in its reveal trailer. In Spitkiss, means of showing affections between an alien couple is bouncing spit through spike-filled gauntlets, flinging the blob from wall to wall and around corners. Precision aim is a must to leap between safe spots, and slow motion slingshots lets you redirect in mid-air and allows for tricky stages filled with tight gaps, myriad spikes and hazards, and hard-to-reach collectibles to grab. The g…
Phantom Signal is a new sci-fi tower-defense strategy game available for iOS
In a mysterious star system, an unknown signal beckons. In Phantom Signal, you must build out a network of defenses and nodes as you travel through space to the source of the beacon. Across 24 levels, Phantom Signal presents the players with a more freeform, RTS-inspired approach to sci-fi tower-defense; each stage is a cluster of asteroids and waves of enemy ships are soon approaching, so deciding where to build laser and missile turrets or mining nodes and other tech is key to succeeding. With each node placed, you craft a spreading web of relays and generators and turrets, upgrading them as needed to repair damage and enhance their stats. As you progress, research points allow you to u…
Avernum 3: Ruined World brings old-school RPG action to iPad
Spiderweb Software and its library of hard-as-nails retro RPGs has been gracing the App Store since 2011. Avernum 3: Ruined World is the concluding chapter to the sprawling RPG adventure, exploring new realms and finishing the story of its titular subterranean prison. The Avernum games have revolved around a fantasy world beset by dark forces and ruthless authority, following the struggles and adventures of the prisons of the prison Avernum, a massive underground world of caverns and cities and secrets where criminals and other dissidents are sealed away magically. But with this third game, your band has escape, introducing a new surface world to explore alongside the undergro…
A Steel Media round-up for the week of April 16th
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 reviewed the gorgeous platformer Oddmar, praising the vibrant artstyle depicting its bosses and Norse environments, smooth controls, and polished presentation. Over on Pocket Gamer, Jon Mundy offers a list of recommendations for fans looking for more action after playing the new God of War. Infinity Blade III, Implosion, Godfire, and several others might scratch that itch for more hack-n-slash gameplay or more Norse-inspired stories. Luke Frater on Android Rundown presents an argument for enjoying retro games…
Fireproof's The Room: Old Sins is now available on Android
After releasing in January on iOS, Fireproof's latest tactile puzzler, The Room: Old Sins, has finally arrived on Android At a basic level, Old Sins retains the familiar aspects fans of the franchise have come to expect: puzzle boxes to interact with and unlock as they reveal hidden sections and compartments, tactile controls that let you push and prod and manipulate items through touch controls, and a Lovecraftian atmosphere and story framing the puzzle solving. Old Sins takes the improvements and expanded mechanics of the past games and expands on them even further; while The Room 3 introduced the concept of multi-room puzzles that can interact with eachother, Old Sins presents the play…
World of Demons is Platinum Game's artful action mobile debut, coming to iOS and Android this year
Platinum Games, known for the stylish and skillful action of games like Vanquish and Bayonetta, is bringing their signature style to mobile with World of Demons, a samurai hack-n-slash with a painting aesthetic reminscent of Okami. Building a roster of samurai, you battle gorgeously drawn demons and bosses, using simple controls to slash, dodge, parry, and unleash finishers. The complexity of combat is compounded through the use of Yokai minions, collected as you progress and level-up, that add special attacks, buffs, and other abilties to your repertoire. You'll need to use every skill available to survive World of Demons' battles, across a number of modes; single player Skirmi…
