Home » Articles and Reviews by 'Christian Valentin'
Throwing a ball into a box becomes an surreal challenge in puzzler sequel Trick Shot 2
Trick Shot was 2015's clever physics-based puzzler, created by the lead designer of Monument Valley and revolving a simple premise of launching a ball into a box. This sequel gives that challenge a stylish upgrade, with both a uniquely surreal modern art aesthetic and imagining new mechanics to wring from that seemingly simple concept. Trick Shot 2 is both a familiar and different prospect; mechanically, the gameplay remains the same as you drag on the screen to slingshot a ball across each stage, bouncing and rolling into a difficult-to-reach box. Early stages may require merely some precision and a graceful arc, but soon bank shots off barriers, bounches through portals and off trampoli…
Trick Shot 2Hidden Gem of the Week: Prune
Prune is one of those games that can easily stand alongside titles like Monument Valley, The Room, Framed, as unique puzzle games designed both to be accessible withoit being too easy and to be feel well-suited as an experience on mobile througn clever touch controls. Prune's core concept is an appealing one: grow a tree, lead it to the light and watch its flowers bloom. Swiping on the screen lets you perform the titular action, slicing away branches to steer the growing tree towards the sunlight, within narrow passages, and around obstacles. Prune's simple to grasp design doesn't preclude it from challenge though. Red spheres threaten to infect your tree, powerful winds blend branches, g…
Minimalist puzzler Bloki brings spatial challenges to iOS and Android when it releases next month
Blocki looks to be an intriguing absract puzzle game slated for release on mobile in May, presenting block stacking and molding mechanics in its recent teaser trailer. Your goal is to build a structure from different colored blocks, twisting and turning, shrink and expanding the shape to create a design that connects with a formation of like-colored prisms. Flipping into position and then shifting blocks around looks to be a unique challenge compared to similar games, and future stages will add to the difficulty with color-switching tiles and obstactles to deal with. While the mechanics look like they might be tricky to grasp, Blocki promises to be a game in the zen pacing category of puz…
Guide a trio of critters through forest puzzles in Woodways, available on iOS and Android
A duck, fox, and buffalo meet in the forest...that isn't the start of a joke but the concept of new puzzler Woodways, currently offering cutesy yet challenging spatial brainteasers on iOS and Android. Mechanically, Woodways will feel familiar if you've played games like Quell, Yankai's Peak, and other Sokoban-inspired games; here, you manuever an animal trio with swipes, all three moving in sync in an attempt to reach waiting exit tiles. That alone would allow for cleverly-designed challenges as you navigate past teleporting wormholes, slippery ice patches, and boulder barriers, but Woodways adds another mechanic into the mix: each animal has a unique attribute that affects where and how…
Charming puzzle adventure Ittle Dew 2 is headed to iOS and Android
2013's Ittle Dew brought a whimscal puzzle-focused approach to a Zelda-style formula, and now, through a recent Twitter post, developer Ludosity has revealed that its sequel is finally coming soon to mobile. Ittle Dew 2 retains the same exploration and puzzle focus of the first game, but drops the titular Ittle on a new island with new mechanics, challenges, and secrets to uncover. Aggressive enemies and bosses test your combat skills, while your weapons double as puzzle solving tools in the game's many dungeons and puzzle rooms. As you solve its trick brain teasers and travel between the island's regions, Ittle Dew 2's story of escape unfolds through quirky inhabitants an…
A Steel Media round-up for the week of March 26th
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 some hands-on impressions of the recently released Candleman, particularly praising its atmospheric visuals and somewhat eerie world, clever design, and unique concept. Over on Pocket Gamer, the staff interviews developer Pablo León-Asuero about his unusual matching-action hybrid Evergrow, discussing the origins of he game's design, the process of developing Evergrow, and the new Zen mode and mini-game challenges coming to the game in the 1.2 update. And finally, Campbell Bird on 148Apps…
Graffiti puzzler Vandals imagines tagging as turn-based challenges when it releases on April 12th
Vandals, Cosmografik's follow-up to the puzzle platformer Type:Rider, promises a puzzler revolving around turn-based movement and carefully-planned traversal along grids of enemies, hazards, and power-ups, in the vein of the Go games. But rather than hitmen, AI defenders, or monsters, Vandals is themed around tagging urban settings with graffiti. Featuring levels in cities ranging from Paris to New York and Berlin, you travel long a grid of paths, each movement causing police and other dangers to move in turn. Guards, dogs, cameras, and alaram systems all stand between you, tagging, and escape, and success will require planning ahead, timing movements to evade security, an…
Devolver Digital's colorful new puzzler Umiro releases on iOS and Android
New Devolver-published puzzler Umiro was once called Recolor, and you can see why from screenshots and footage. Not only is it a game of vibrantly colorful isometric stages, its dual character gameplay pits your heroes against roaming colorless orbs in a quest to bring back color to the world. Each stage of Umiro places you control of Huey and Satura, challenging you to draw paths for both toward red and blue crystals through gauntlets of gates, switches, and black spheres. Once you press play, both characters will follow their paths automatically, so figuring out the order of their movements, when they need to pause for a moment or activates switches at the right time, is key to sol…
Hidden Gem of the Week: Blackbox
Blackbox's unassuming first impressions presents the player with a black background and colored squares, but as you begin to explore its puzzles, Blackbox reveals itself to be something unique special: a puzzle games where none of its challenges are solved by interacting with the screen, but instead with every other sensor and function on your phone.. Other games like The Room have used touch controls to let player tactilely manipulate with items and puzzle boxes, but this game's clever twist turns the phone itself into a puzzle box, where experimenting with its different switches and features is how you discover solutions. Rotating your device, interacting with volume buttons…
Guide a flame through darkness and puzzles in Candleman, now available on iOS and Android
Candleman is one of those games with a very apt title: it's a new puzzler about guiding a sentient candlestick, with legs and all, through a dangerous world. Recently released on iOS and Android, this puzzle game promises both a compelling atmosphere and a unique mechanic of being a fluttering flame in the dark. At its core, Candleman revolves around a simple mechanic, where your light only lasts ten seconds at a time. Any longer and your wax body melts, and you lose a life. With that ability, you can traverse the shadowed halls of a fairy tale world, where books and pages form paths and platforms and colorful lillies provide ambient illumination. But Candleman quickly introduces addition…
Griblers combines charming city building with board game tactics, out now on iOS and Android
Digital board games have their own thriving little niche on mobile, from Catan to Through The Ages. Griblers takes the hex grid and board management of the genre and combines it with single player RPG and city building elements, in a new RPG released on iOS and Android. Placing you in control of a mushroom troll civilization staking their claim in the Everwoods, Griblers challenges you to build your town while handling random events, leveling up your warriors, and expanding your control of the board. As you explore the surrounding landscapes, new materials and resources allow your town to flourish and craft equipment to increase your group's power and stats. Potions and better weapons can…
Homo Machina is an artful industrial puzzler in development for iOS and Android
Inspired by the art of Fritz Kahn, Homo Machina is an upcoming puzzle game that takes players on a journey through the body; not an organic Fantasy Voyage vision of the body but an mechanical automata, where mouth, nose, ears, heart, and other senses and parts of the anatomy are represented as industrial machinery. In the recently released trailer (Vimeo), Homo Machina presents its version of the body as a factory, where workers control machines that act as the pumping heart, as nasal ducts, as incisor blades and molar grinders. Each chapter revolves a different section and function of the body, with simple mechanics bringing each bodily function to life along with charming animations.…
A Steel Media round-up for the week of March 19th
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 the recently released Construction Simulator 2, showing off the involved machinery handling and construction-based challenges. from digging foundations with an excavator to loading flatbeds with mechanical arms. Over on Pocket Gamer, Harry Slater provides several tips and tricks for card-based battler Lost In The Dungeon, that can help you master the game's challenging encounters and survive longer by prioritizing, knowing when to retreat, and more Tre Lawrence on Android Rundown reviews th…
Drive with style in minimalist arcade racer Absolute Drift, coming to iOS and Android this year
In the vein of games like Jet Car Stunts, Absolute Drift doesn't pit you against other racers but rather your own skills and challenging tracks. As the name suggests, it's all about drifting: duration, smoothness, chaining them together, and pulling off stunts in a minimalist playground of routes and jumps. Absolute Drift starts out simply, easing you into drift-based gameplay. Simply shaving seconds off time trails isn't enough; for the best scores, you'll need to pull off fluid elegant drifts, painting the white roads and environments with the curving streaks of your tires. Modulating the speed and angle of your car is paramount to mastering drifting, especially when you shift from race…
Artistic platformer Ovivo leaps onto the App Store on March 28th
Slated for release next week, Ovivo blends art game and challenging platformer as you gracefully leap through mysterious monochromatic environments. As an agile orb, your goal is to slide and leap through black-and-white levels, each one a winding gauntlet that zooms out to reveal your path was part of a larger tapestry. In this way, Ovivo is part mystery and part precision platformer, as you uncover more of the artwork with each jump and movement. With a tap of the screen, you pass through the ground, swapping colors and conserving momentum; this mechanic lets gracefully swoop and dive across its stages. As levels grow more complex, introducing moving platforming, copious spikes, swining…
