iOS
Let’s Eat Sweets!
How do you choose a game from the baffling variety on offer on the App Store? When it’s only 69p at stake, the name is as good a reason as any to splash the pennies. Let’s Eat Sweets! – that’s Temporal Games’ exclamation mark, but I like it – definitely falls into the ‘good name, …
On Party Rings, Haribo & Hotel Chocolat
I’ve been playing Don’t Run With A Plasma Sword recently. It’s been hard to put my finger on why it’s not entirely satisfactory, but I’ve got there: it’s a packet of Party Rings. It’s unarguably a great name for a game. The sense of humour is carried through to the loading screens, where you’re given …
Crow
I can’t imagine why I’ve never been asked to contribute to Thought For The Day on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. I’d totally base one around iPhone game Crow. It’s got moral choices, you see. Really unsophisticated ones, which do little but switch the game into hard mode if you try to be good. I …
A matter of life and 774 Deaths
I imagine that, after playing Square-Enix’s 774 Deaths, most people would be comfortably able to describe it in one word. Not necessarily the same word, mind. In my case, that word is BRUTAL. The difficulty is brutal. Each death, usually on a blood-splattered blade, is brutal. The graphics and sound are brutally retro – though …
Beat Sneak Bandit, ZiGGURAT
Interesting tales at both ends of the App Store this week. Angry Birds Space achieved 10 million downloads in three days, a story so important that literally every site on the internet reported it. At the other extreme, one-man developer Mr Qwak had his well-received iOS game Retro Racing removed from the App Store for …
Angry Birds Space
They say that there are five stages of grief. Well, in my experience, there are three stages of Angry Birds Space. 1. Anticipation Fuelled by the NASA association, endless tie-ins and ceaseless media attention, the impression that this is a Big Deal built and built. With it came an assumption that it must be a …
Gluddle
It’s hard to predict what’s going to make something stand out on the App Store. In the case of Gluddle, it was the screenshot above faintly recalling some Lemon Jelly album artwork. It’s quite the stylish game, to my eye. It’s more physics-based fun, in this case launching bouncy balls (‘Gluddle’) to knock into targets …
Beat Hazard Ultra
Beat Hazard Ultra looks fantastic, with its neon explosions and swirling backgrounds, and sounds – well, it sounds as good as your iTunes library. Which in my case is excellent, I’ll have you know. Here’s the twist: the soundtrack you choose is used to generate the on-screen action. More going on aurally means more going …
The mobile invasion at BAFTA
The nominations for March’s BAFTA Games Awards were announced yesterday, and the portable category makes interesting reading. What was previously referred to as the Handheld award is now Mobile & Handheld, which neatly reflects the shift that seems to have occurred. In 2009 and 2010 it was all PSP and DS. In 2011, one mobile …
Sir Benfro, Triple Town, LostWinds
Some games are dangerous. There was no mobile round-up last week, because Triple Town monopolised my time to the point that I’d not played the rest of the games I was intending to write about. Actually, that’s not quite true, because I did get around to writing about Kimi Raikkonen ICEONE Racing elsewhere. (It’s not …
Epic Astro Story, Paper Monsters & Gnomes
Though it was released quite a few months ago, Temple Run is the game dominating the App Store today – yes it’s free, but it’s also high up in the Top Grossing chart, thanks to the sheer volume of downloads and in-app purchases. Tiny Tower developers NimbleBit rightly had a pop at Zynga this week, …
Run Roo Run, Woody Woodpecker, Vanessa
Everyone’s talking about The Artist – the awards-tipped nearly-silent movie starring Channel 5’s The Hotel Inspector and the bad psychic from Phoenix Nights. That’s partly because the film’s very good, but also in no small part because it uses technology no longer common in mainstream cinema – silent film, black and white, 4:3 aspect ratio. …
Dimensions & Race Against Time
The App Store charts look quite familiar at the start of 2012, with Angry Birds, Fruit Ninja, Bejeweled and so on all taking the top spots in an effort to make all other mobile game developers feel a little hopeless. At least Catchphrase is high in the charts, which should please Roy Walker. Nintendo might …
Star Sky, Dizzy & festive freebies
There do seem to be a lot of conversions swimming around the mobile gaming pond at the moment, and the big fish in that pond is of course Grand Theft Auto III: 10 Year Anniversary Edition. It’s been interesting to watch the reviews roll in – overwhelmingly positive with the odd notable exceptions, such as …