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Jack Lumber Review
What's the right course of action when a rampaging forest of murderous trees crush your dear sweet granny? Vengeance of course! You are Jack Lumber, an appropriate name for your profession, and thanks to your superhuman lumberjack abilities, those trees will be shaking in their roots. Jack Lumber plays like fruit ninja with bullet time. Chunks of wood are hurled into the air (most likely due to your indiscriminate hacking), and then once the screen is touched, time slows down, and you…
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The World Ends with You: Solo Remix for iPad iPad Review
You know a game has a grip on you when you say something like, "I'd have bought a Nintendo DS just to play it". The World Ends With You (TWEWY) was just such a game for me, and knowing that I'd get to play it again on the iOS platform immediately dredged up a host of happy memories spent lazily enjoying its Beat'em-up RPG-like gameplay. The reason I'm gushing from the outset is to establish a base-level of 'rose-tinted glasses' for our readers/viewers and perhaps to soften the blow of…
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Diskobolos Review
You know that famous Greek sculpture of the man hunched over, holding a discus? That's Discobolus. Go on, Google the name, you'll know it when you see it. So what does this game have to do with that statue? Well not much really, but you are shooting out digital discs at a series of encroaching insects for multipliers and high scores, and that's got to count for something right? Diskobolus is a lot of fun once you work out how it all comes together. You have a disc shooter at the botto…
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Michael Jackson The Experience Review
Michael Jackson the Experience is indeed a well made game. With that said, there's a litmus test that needs to be applied before purchase. Do you have fond memories of growing up with Michael Jackson's pop music? If the answer is yes, then chances are you will enjoy yourself. If you're not a fan of the music, despite this being a solid rhythm game with impeccable presentation, we would recommend you look elsewhere. The game begins with a tutorial that really doesn't explain how the ga…
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KooZac™ Review
[KooZac was featured as the Mini-Review for the Friday News Wrap-Up for the 24th of August, 2012] Square Enix have certainly been trying a new approach when it comes to the iOS platform - while their premium RPGs are certainly worthwhile, their casual titles often leave out something in their final release. Or rather something is left in that should be left out - a hand in your pocket. KooZac is a brain-tickling arcade puzzler that challenges players to throw down numbered blocks in…
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Tread of the Dead Review
Man has the zombie craze been played out by now. Regardless, we still see all these releases featuring the animated corpses of the recently deceased, and we have to admit, when a game like Tread of the Dead comes out that puts an interesting approach on the whole zombie slaughter kerfuffle, it's time to sit up and take notice. Not to say they knock their concept out of the park, but this game is novel and amusing enough to possibly crack the veneer of veteran zombie gamers everywhere.…
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Mikey Shorts Review
I almost feel sick of needing to make the point so often, but if you're going to make a platformer, you need to make the core gameplay (that is to say, running and jumping) feel good. In some cases it's a matter of responsiveness from the controls, and in others its anything from the physics to the character animations, but in Mikey Shorts by BeaverTap, none of these things are a problem. In fact you'd be forgiven for thinking someone from Rocketcat Games ran away with someone from Ra…
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Jump For Fish Review
Context is important. Without a good reason for playing the game either given to us by the developers or one we make ourselves, why should we be interested? That's not to say that narrative trumps mechanics, definitely not, but even the best made games without a goal or reason to play them end up just being soulless exercises. Jump for Fish was created to celebrate the birth of the developer's son, and its context for play reflects that. You are a father otter that has to go out to wor…
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Lost Cities Review
Reiner Knizia is no small fish in the world of board games. Titles such as the Lord of the Rings and Ingenious are enjoyed world wide, while Lost Cities, a 2-player 60-card game has even proven to be popular enough to warrant an XBLA remake. Having previously converted Carcassonne to the iOS platform, The Coding Monkeys have taken it upon themselves to restore Lost Cities to its original design, bolstering it with individually scaling AI opponents and multiple asynchronous online games…
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Sunshine Review
The battle between the forces of light and dark has been a long time favorite to base a game around, but until Sunshine, never did it seem to be taken so literally. The black holes are threatening to consume the universe into nothingness by taking over all the suns, and as a lowly photon, it's your job to stop them. How does a photon go up against a black hole? Well they don't, but by planet hopping and collecting stars, you can make the universe a safer place. Just beware, this task i…
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Bad Hotel Review
It takes a certain kind of mad clarity to sit there and take the genre of 'Tower Defense' as literally as Bad Hotel does. Conceptually Lucky Frame's game is the same as it ever was - drop blocks as defenses against an onslaught of creatures bent on destroying your base, but this time around you're actually building the eponymous hotel, adding rooms to accommodate tourists and shoot down sentient clouds. I may have lost you on that last point. See, your task is simple - build a profita…
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Flip’s Escape Review
Warioware introduced us to the idea of the micro arcade game, in that you only had a couple of seconds to work out what you needed to do, and then accomplish that task to the best of your ability. These games usually revolved around one very simple mechanic and once you got the hang of it, there were options to see how far you could get. I bring this up because at its heart, Flip's Escape is reminiscent of those micro arcade experiences, and really, it's only once you work out how the…
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Critter Escape Review
Isn't it always the way. You're some weird anthropomorphic creature minding your own business chasing butterflies in a field, when you're captured by scientists and probed for study, only to have to sneak and attack your way to freedom. Critter Escape is a line drawing sneak game, popularized by such titles as Spy Mouse, in which you must draw a line to move your critter around the guards and to the exit. What this title brings to the table are challenge based stars, a host of interest…
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Puzzle Craft Review
'Casual' match-three mechanics; timers that spit out the occasional bonus; resource management tied to tiers of resource management... surely this is a recipe for disaster? It's a mix we've seen slapped together in the 'freemium' model, but is it really such a bad thing at all? Ars Thanea Games and Chillingo prove that you can have your cake and eat it too, pairing all the addictive elements of a freemium title together with a well balanced and deep sense of progression that feels rewa…
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Horn™ Review
When Phosphor Games came out with The Dark Meadow they proved one thing in particular - they know how to craft a world from the ground up. Their latest release Horn comes to us care of casual gaming giant 'Zynga', but its a far cry from the time-sink cash grabs of the past, teleporting players to a world that melds adventuring classics like Zelda and Fable with the visual appeal of Team Ico's best, and ties it all together with Infinity Blade's slashing RPG-lite gameplay. In short, it'…
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