David is a game, an arcade game, and David is a very unusual game. Our little polygon hero finds himself in a world of abstract shapes and giant evil beasts that are out to eviscerate him one angle at a time. His only powers are the ability to run away like a little yellow belly and fire slingshot-like blasts at his foes. Sometimes he feels powerful, sometimes victorious, but there's always nagging feelings of helplessness and hopelessness in this dangerous world that just wants David to go away.
Ready to die just a little bit more? Then you're ready for Cardinal Quest 2, the turn-based roguelike sequel to 2012's Cardinal Quest, brought to you by randomnine (maker of Fear is Vigilance and a consultant on the original Cardinal Quest game). You'll recognize the great pixel art and the procedurally generated maps of the first game, and appreciate the new complexity.
Detective work isn't known for its shallow learning curve. Or for being the kind of thing you can do while standing in line at the post office. With Noir Syndrome, however, solving crimes has become quite a bit more casual. This pick up and play adventure game gives you randomly generated murder mysteries to solve, all you have to do is gather the clues and make the arrest! Oh, and pick a few locks, shoot a few baddies, and have a few snacks. Detectives gotta eat too, you know.
Sail the skies and duke it out for supremacy in this colourful and engaging turn-based strategy RPG. With a fantastic steampunk vibe and easy to pick up combat, it's a fine addition to the genre you can even play on your mobile device.
Help Grimm rid the dungeons of baddies in this charming word game. Use the power of spelling (and your scythe) to attack creatures who retaliate in many different ways. Earn gems to upgrade your abilities before taking on the bosses. Will words win out? It's up to you!
Asteroid under attack! Aliens swarming the skies! Sisters in battle suits bullying land-based bipeds! That can only mean one thing: it's glorkian time! After a few years in the cooker, Pixeljam (yep, the Dino Run team) has finally released Glorkian Warrior: Trials of Glork. The creative arcade game draws inspiration from the best shooters of the olden days, all with a fantastic soundtrack and artwork by James Kochalka. It's a big win on so many levels!
Time to get digging. Mines of Mars is a wholly addicting mining and exploration game created by Crescent Moon Games. It plays a lot like the classic Motherload or the criminally underappreciated early iOS release iDigIt. Take your pickaxe and start pecking away at the soil, gathering metals and gems you can carry back to the surface to refine into useable materials. Then take those materials and upgrade your tools so you can dig even deeper!
When earth is invaded, it's military maths to the rescue! Calculords is a mathe-tactical game where you've got to add, subtract, and multiply digits to reach the summoning costs of your units. Collect the cards of your fallen enemies to build an army of numerical warriors and destroy your opponent's base for the victory!
Oquonie is one of those puzzle games that will befuddle you with its complex no-assistance design. Created by Hiversaires developer Aliceffekt and illustrated by Rekka Bellum, you must work your way through the innards of a twisty isometric megastructure as you "speak" to various characters to unlock "clues" that will apparently help you proceed. Or maybe you, as a player, are just going mad and the whole thing is really a flashlight app?
Somehow you've been cooped up inside the gen-kan, where some dangerous devices were placed. Now, can you avoid making the wrong move and escape from this place alive and intact? Since this room escape is by the inventively creative Kotorinosu, you know you can count on heaps of fun while trying.
Shay and Vella are two very different people. Shay lives aboard a ship where the AI loves him a bit too much. Vella is being forced to sacrifice literally everything for her village. Neither knows the other exists, but two extraordinary stories are about to come together in an unexpected way in this stunning point-and-click indie adventure from Double Fine.
The survival horror genre may be a touch overused in recent years, but In Fear I Trust knows how to take the psychologically unstable angle and leverage it into something interesting. You wake up in a prison cell with one thought on your mind: get out! But then you start seeing things, and soon you question what happened here as well as your part in the whole thing.
One of your mules has taken a sick day, but instead of staying home and recovering from whatever vague illness he claims to have, he simply wanders around town, getting into lots of adventures while leaving you in the lurch. If this sounds suspiciously like the plot of a rather well-known 80s movie it is, but it is also the basis of Glitch Games' marvelous new comedic mobile adventure, Ferris Mueller's Day Off!
Let's get dangerous! Fresh out the door from Hello Games, Joe Danger Infinity is a follow-up to the 2013 arcade game Joe Danger Touch. Holding the esteemed title of World's Most Determined Motorbike Stuntman, Joe finds himself shrunk down and racing through a series of tiny worlds packed with things to jump over, duck under, crash through and pick up. With a extra helping of collectibles to unlock, Joe Danger Infinity distills the formula presented by its predecessor into a still finer example of arcade racing bliss.
A murder has been committed at a tourist attraction deep in a swamp said to be home to a mysterious creature... but as the snarky detective in this gorgeous point-and-click mystery, you'll learn the truth is stranger than fiction!
Ever wanted a strategy game that was just complex enough to be interesting but straightforward enough to play on a coffee break? Hoplite has you covered. The casual strategy/roguelike game from Magma Fortress is built around turn-based movement on a hexagonal grid. Using just a few basic pieces of equipment, you'll venture through randomly generated worlds as you quest for epic loot ripped from the pages of Greek mythology. All without having to memorize an instruction manual beforehand!
Choice of the Deathless combines the rich, imaginative gameplay of the classic all text adventures of yesteryear and fuses them with the evocative and fully-realized world of Max Gladstone's novels.
It's Colossatron: Massive World Threat! The creators of Jetpack Joyride have unleashed a mechanical serpent from space on the planet, allowing it to snake its way from city to city as it destroys everything in its path. The best part is you get to participate in said destruction, all by grabbing floating power core segments and attaching them to your machine. It's crazy amounts of fun, but making an efficient robot of chaos will require a little more than wanton color matching.
The Room is back! After Fireproof Game's wildly successful 2012 mobile point-and-click puzzle game, the team got to work on a sequel. The Room Two is now ready to impress, taking just about everything that made the original so perfect and making it even better. Dozens of layered puzzles to solve, multiple boxes in each room, a spyglass to give you a new perspective on locations, and the same dark, haunting atmosphere that make the games so irresistible.
They've been knocking over piggie buildings for years. Isn't it about time those birds did something crazier? Rovio sure thinks so, and with Angry Birds Go!, the feathered flappers take to the hills in a wild racing game with karts a-plenty. It's got power-ups, a variety of modes, multiple vehicles to choose from and customize, and yeah, piggies to torment. All in the name of a first prize cake!
Escape from a very angry ghost and the scariest Captain America knock-off action figure ever seen in this haunting room escape sequel from Noprops.
100 Doors: Aliens Space is a mobile room escape game from Gipnetix Games, creator of 100 Doors 2013, 100 Doors of Revenge, and several other similar games. Instead of rooms with tables and chairs, this time you're thrown into outer space to contend with multi-stage doors, alien technology, glowing portals and mysterious artefact pieces. It's one of the more unique takes on the escape genre, and it's all the more entertaining because of it!
Icycle: On Thin Ice from Wonderputt creator Reece Millidge of Damp Gnat, is a sequel to the original Icycle browser game. You're put in control of a chap named Dennis riding his cycle across the frozen landscape, chasing after the lovely lady of his dreams. This takes him across all sorts of bizarre locations, from shifting caverns to the interior of his own dreams. It's a physics adventure made with the sort of unrestrained creativity that used to dominate the casual gaming market. Playing Icycle: On Thin Ice is like being a kid again, only so much better.
Kingdom Rush has returned! Ironhide Game Studio has released an official sequel to the tower defense game that stole our free time (and social lives) back in 2011. Kingdom Rush Frontiers is built on the same basic defense skeleton that made the first game so spectacular, only now there's more of it! It's Kingdom Rush, and you know it's going to be amazing, so get to playing!
The Stormglass Protocol: Room Escape! is a first person room escape game created by the Stormglass team. It pulls the genre out of its stationary roots and offers a full 3D experience that lets you walk around and investigate each chamber as you please. The puzzles will be familiar, but the interface adds a nice level of realism to the normally static experience.
Bolt Creative, the studio behind the strangely captivating Pocket God series, is up to something a bit different. Pocket God: Ooga Jump takes a turn from the previous sandbox games in the series, dropping the poking and prodding in exchange for a little tilt-based endless jumping. The same characters and moderately twisted sense of humor, only now you're helping the pygmies out instead of, you know, zapping them with lightning.
Fight your way to the orc city to defeat the army of evil lurking there. In this turn-based strategy game, slide rows and columns to position yours and your enemy's troops to prepare for battle. While you start with just two characters, you'll eventually end up with eight, each with different abilities and strategies to bring to the playing field. The king needs your help--don't fail him!
Vampire Volleyball is a simple player vs. player arcade game by Retro64 (the creator of Rune Raiders) that pits one vampire against another in the ancient sport of... volleyball! Utilizing a few special moves and a lot of smartly-timed jumps, you'll face off against AI foes or local human players as you spike and serve your way to the top. To the winner goes the spoils, and to the loser goes a hot blast of sunlight!
Tiny Games is a collection of quirky diversions aimed at getting you or a bunch of people to do strange things. It uses situational questions and commands and suggests activities based on your location, mood, etc. Think of it as the ultimate collection of road trip games, expanded to cover most of the real world. The "games" aren't games in and of themselves, but you'll be surprised how much fun a competitive "I'm crushing your head" can be.
Indigo Lake is a first person horror adventure created by 3 Cubes Research. You play the role of a paranormal investigator sent to check into the disappearance of Dr. Everett in an abandoned lake resort. Creepy, right? Armed with a simple pistol and a looming sense of fear, you'll explore a surprisingly large world, stocked with mysteries and puzzles around every deeply shadowed corner.
Have you ever wanted to punch a bear in the mouth? The answer is "yes", and the method is FIST OF AWESOME, a mobile game from I FIGHT BEARS that has as much punching, kicking, flannel references and badassery as the all-caps title hints at.
You'll either love it or hate it, but Ice-Pick Lodge's unique indie horror game is one of the most surreal and striking games the genre has seen in a long time. As a mysterious Lodger who's been having trouble sleeping, dawn seems to be taking forever... and it might never come if you can't figure out the rules to the chilling game of hide and seek you're playing with some uninvited guests, and unravel the mystery of your own past.
In a powerful flash and beam of light, Greg's girlfriend disappears right before his eyes. Set sometime in the near future, this sci-fi mystery adventure puts you in the middle of gorgeous 3D environments. A point-and-click style interface allows you to explore your surroundings, solve puzzles and converse with characters while the truths are slowly revealed in the unfolding story.
Angry Gran Run isn't your grandmother's endless running game. Even though it could star your grandmother, we're pretty sure most human beings aren't capable of running this far, this fast, or of leaping obstacles as high as our protagonist granny. Regardless, this third person arcade runner features all the unhinged action and coin collecting your heart desires. Just don't get too caught up tooling around with granny's crazy costume options.
Subway Surfers is a third person endless running game similar to Temple Run. The inspector and his dog are prowling the subway tracks, but you and your friends are bent on getting your graffiti on the walls. The fuzz inevitably stumbles across your artwork, kicking off an epic endless running scenario where you slide between trains, glide across power lines, duck beneath road blocks and fly your hoverboard across the tracks.
The Inner World is the sort of game you have to tackle with a relaxed disposition. Take your time and soak in the atmosphere. It's worth it. Studio Fizbin has assembled a fantastic adventure game, one worthy of a coveted position as a quick-click icon your computer's desktop. It's the perfect blend of humor and storytelling, puzzle solving and exploration.
The creators of Puzzle Quest bring us this match-3, turn-based RPG spin on the Marvel universe, and despite some frustrating free-to-play aspects and a slow start, Dark Reign offers surprisingly funny writing, and more challenging, strategic gameplay than you might first expect.
Waking up from a peaceful nap, King Trouserheart finds his trousers have been stolen. Where can they be? Venture out across the kingdoms, fighting blockolds, tentacles, derp kinghts, jelly cubes and other peculiar adversaries to find and reclaim the kidnapped pants. As you defeat foes, collect money and use it to upgrade your weapon, armor, shield and wallet in this hack'n'slash RPG adventure geared toward the casual player as well as the seasoned gamer.
When Francis Bacon famously said that knowledge is power, he probably didn't mean that knowing trivia answers would grant you magical powers. But that's how things work in Quiz RPG: World of Mystic Wiz, a trivia game for Android that blends elements of roleplaying and card games. Control a group of five spirits in your various quests as an apprentice wizard, and turn your trivia answers into bolts of lightning or jets of water or fireballs. With over 15,000 questions in the pool, there's enough variety to last even the most hardcore of us quite a while. And there's a talking cat who mews if you poke her, so that alone makes it worth a look.
Hexage delivers that rarest of beasts, the mobile action RPG that's as easy to pick up as it is hard to put down. With controls that are simple to learn and a myriad of attacks at your disposal, Reaper is a stunning game with addictive battling and a lot of gameplay to slash your way through.
Got your shiny iOS device charged up and ready to go? You're going to need a few hours and a lot of battery power to handle this game. Infinity Blade III from Chair Entertainment concludes the trilogy of combat games with some serious style. It keeps the nigh-on perfect basic formula the same, introducing a few bonuses, tweaking some inventory and item features, and dropping on a whole host of new foes to face off against. It's big, bad, and oh so pretty to look at, making Infinity Blade III feel like a full-fledged PC game packed into your iPhone.
Kitty Island was a haven for cats, until the Aquarium Alliance stole its catnip supply. Match tiles to organize the kitties' effort to take back their precious catnip in Combat Cats, whose quirky sense of humor and adorable artwork are second only to the engaging gameplay and balanced challenge. Where else can you play as Grumpy Cat flying a cardboard plane?
OrangePixel has done it again! The studio known for its nigh-on perfect retro recreations has crafted a top-down arcade RPG similar to the old Gauntlet series. Heroes of Loot puts you in the shoes of an adventurer fighting his way through dungeon floor after dungeon floor, dispatching enemies and grabbing loot left and right. It's just the sort of pick up and play experience that works well on mobile devices, and you'll find yourself quickly hooked by its creative blend of action and RPG elements.
Here's something you don't see every day: a mobile real-time strategy game that looks fantastic, isn't impossible to wrap your head around, and can provide instant entertainment. Robotic Planet from FearlessBits manages to squeeze all of the complexity and strategy of a full-blown RTS game into a surprisingly playable touch screen game that has the ability to hook even casual players.
With the Minecraft and Terraria and other sandbox games going strong, Junk Jack X from Pixbits arrives with a lot of great ideas in tow. It's a sequel to the 2011 Junk Jack release that adds a number of new features and improvements, including multiplayer support for both online and offline play, creative and adventure modes, Retina graphics, and thousands of items to find, treasures to uncover, and objects to be built. It's one of the most full-featured sandbox games on any mobile device and will easily keep you glued to your iOS device for hours on end.
With the Minecraft and Terraria and other sandbox games going strong, Junk Jack X from Pixbits arrives with a lot of great ideas in tow. It's a sequel to the 2011 Junk Jack release that adds a number of new features and improvements, including multiplayer support for both online and offline play, creative and adventure modes, Retina graphics, and thousands of items to find, treasures to uncover, and objects to be built. It's one of the most full-featured sandbox games on any mobile device and will easily keep you glued to your iOS device for hours on end.
Gather your tools and find a comfortable chair, Terraria has rolled onto iPhone and iPad! The universal app ported by 505 Games shrinks sandbox adventure world found in the PC/Mac downloadable version of the game, rearranging the menus and grafting a couple of virtual joysticks onto the screen. It looks, feels and plays just like the original, and even with its few missing features, it's a solid port of Terraria through and through.
It's tempting to fake redact half of this review, just to fit in with the theme of Blackbar. We'll resist the temptation, though, as this is a game that's worth talking about. Created by Nevan Mrgan, Blackbar is a word-based puzzle game where you sift through letters written to and from characters and try to figure out which words were blanked out by the Department of Communications. It's one part sci-fi story game, one part political statement, and three parts just plain awesome.
The Strongest from Laboratory is a game that has fun with itself. It can be described as a single-screen arcade punching game, complete with missions, unlockables, wacky pixel characters, and a helping or two of random events. The strange part is that even though the game is minimalistic in every way, you'll sit there punching villagers and thieves all night long.
There's been a murder at the Seafront Hotel, and it even has famous French detective Antoine Saint Germain stumped. That hasn't stopped him from gathering everyone together for one of his famous "someone in this room is the killer" monologues. Can you save Saint Germain's reputation as the detective who always closes the case? And oh yes, do try to accuse the right person.
From the prolific developer Gipnetix Games, creator of 100 Doors of Revenge and 100 Doors 2013, 100 Doors: RUNAWAY drizzles some new point-and-click room escape puzzles into your day, one locked door at a time. Featuring over 90 brand new levels, it's your job to solve a series of single screen puzzles by touching, swiping, pinching, shaking and tilting to manipulate on-screen objects so you can get the door open. 100 Doors of Revenge boasts a more relaxing set of puzzles than previous games, focusing more on local logic than math-based riddles. Get ready to do some mobile experimentation as you scratch your head over the new brain teasers!
Plants vs. Zombies 2: It's About Time has finally arrived. After a brief limited launch in Australia and New Zealand, PopCap and EA have unleashed the game in North America, closing the four year gap opened by the original Plants vs. Zombies. The sequel has some enormous expectations to live up to. Its predecessor won dozens of awards and has been praised as one of the most original and creative games in recent years. How do you follow something like that? By adding more plants, more zombies, and more levels. Oh, and by introducing tons of in-app purchases!
Playing as a woman reliving important memories from her life, you feel a subtle connection to her as you both survive the trials of an oppressive past returning to haunt the present. The main character runs on her own, all you have to do is tap the right side of the screen to jump. Leap over enemies and obstacles, hop across gaps, and try to stay alive until you reach the end of the stage.
When Ian Fell in the Machine is a simple endless falling arcade game from Bumpkin Brothers, creator of The Tribloos series as well as the puzzle game The Machine. This precision title asks you to help Ian survive his long fall by tilting/touching your mobile device back and forth, affecting his descent so he picks up coins instead of running face-first into a sawblade.
Want that refreshing RPG flavor with a slight twist? Deep Dungeons of Doom from MiniBoss has the formula down to a science. Fight monsters, gain experience, buy equipment and complete quests, all by tapping the sides of the screen. The adventure you'll undertake is as righteous as any "gotta save the world from evil" role playing game, but here you only have to worry about the exciting stuff!
A Ride into the Mountains is an artistic take on a retro arcade game created by Lee-Kuo Chen. You play as Zu, a young man who lives in a remote cabin whose only purpose is to protect an ancient relic from harm. When something happens to said relic one morning, Zu grabs his bow, hops on his horse and heads out to investigate.
Lums is the story of a bunch of Lums and a bunch of Vampires. It's a physics puzzle game that takes a unique angle on the Crush the Castle / Angry Birds formula of tossing things to destroy structures. Instead of pigs or snooty royalty, though, you get to shed a little light on some grumpy vampires. Watch 'em burn!
Brash, sassy, and punchy, Ittle Dew and her friend Tippsie want just one thing... adventure, and lots of it! Fortunately the island she's stranded on has that in spades, along with challenging puzzles, humour, and weight-lifting cacti. Ludosity serves up a knee-weakeningly adorable and funny indie action adventure that calls upon classic inspirations like Zelda and The Secret of Mana without ever losing its own style and creativity.
Arena Quest RPG is a demo of an upcoming action RPG hybrid by gfactoriser. It puts all the ingredients of an RPG into a big pot,then boils it until only the delicious concentrated broth remains. It's got combat, it's got characters, it's got experience points and equipment and skills. But it all takes place on an overworld map that lets you move from one battle arena to the next, cutting out everything except fighting and party management.
One part puzzle solving, one part snarky story, and one part riddles, Relentless Software's Blue Toad Murder Files: A Touch of Mystery is what you would get if you combined the Professor Layton series with You Don't Know Jack. Sounds like strange bedfellows for sure, but Blue Toad's wild narration and sense of humor keep the whodunit theme light and enjoyable while popping you from one mystery to the next. All without a single reference to Murder, She Wrote!
Ever wanted to combine Fruit Ninja with Space Invaders? P�caro Game Studio did, and so the team set to work to build Attack of the Spooklings, a game of endless fence protecting and enemy slashing. Attack of the Spooklings sends waves of enemies after you, and your only defense is to swipe like your life depended on it. Because it kinda does. Your virtual life, anyway.
Ever wanted to combine Fruit Ninja with Space Invaders? P�caro Game Studio did, and so the team set to work to build Attack of the Spooklings, a game of endless fence protecting and enemy slashing. Attack of the Spooklings sends waves of enemies after you, and your only defense is to swipe like your life depended on it. Because it kinda does. Your virtual life, anyway.
Maximus is the sidescrolling beat-em-up iOS device owners have always wanted. Taking pages from brawlers like Golden Axe and Castle Crashers, this humorous take on the genre from Mooff Games does the nearly impossible by making touch screen controls actually work for an action game. Sounds crazy, right? It's not, and after spending some time with Maximus beating things up and gaining a few levels, you'll probably want to hunt up the Mooff Games folks and be all like "Are you a wizard?".
Layton Brothers: Mystery Room is a crime solving mystery game from Level-5, the team behind the well-known Professor Layton series on Nintendo DS. While this incarnation may only bear passing ties to the prof's previous adventures, it's still a solid adventure game that will remind you of Phoenix Wright in some ways. Which is a good thing!
"Do the thing you fear most and the death of fear is certain." Creepy music? Concrete walls? Perspicacious quotes? Yes, your adventures in the asylum are nowhere near over in Glitch Games' latest adventure, Forever Lost: Episode 2. Last year's breakout point-and-click escape hit is back to continue the story, featuring more twists, chills, and lots of classic adventuring fun.
Super School Day is a quick-fire collection of mini-games from Second Impact Games. It shares a lot with titles like Wario Ware and the classic 4 Second series, though this game is out to make a mockery of them at every turn. Each round drops handfuls of extremely fast micro-games in your face, challenging you to complete them as best you can before you're whisked off to the next one. You will feel lost, you won't know what's going on, you will yell and you will fail. But you'll be laughing the whole time because hey, there's a sea urchin school uniform!
Want to take Mojang's wildly popular sandbox building simulation with you wherever you go? As long as you have an iOS or Android device you can! Though lacking a lot of the content from its desktop edition and multiplayer capability, Pocket Edition is a great way to get your diggy-diggy-hole on whenever you want, or just get your feet wet if you want to find out what all the fuss is about.
Bridgy Jones, which we promise has absolutely nothing to do with Helen Fielding or Renée Zellweger, is a physics puzzle/building game from Grow App. It's pretty much free from all that romance and stuff, but it's still tells a bit of a love story in its own way. The love between a dog and a chicken, a man and delicious fried eggs, and you and your ability to make bridges out of thin air, that is.
Inceptio is a novel take on the alchemy genre, where each level is an adventure of its own. Solve a murder mystery by combining clues, build the New Jedi Order, or combine magical elements until you find Merlin. There's even a level editor so you can create puzzles and elements of your very own.
Two childhood friends would never expect their destinies would grow to be so great... or to pull them in opposite directions. This iOS port of the beloved turn-based tactical RPG classic may suffer from some user interface problems, but with the challenging battles and deep narrative intact, it still remains a formidable, engrossing experience that deserves a place in any fan's library.
Were you alive and mostly aware of your surroundings in 1984? Good, this article is for you! Karateka Classic is a mobile re-release of the original combat game created by Prince of Persia guru Jordan Mechner. Akuma has kidnapped the princess and you're going to fight your way through every one of his minions until you get her back. Bam! The music, the floppy drive loading sounds, the scan lines... it's all there. With some more modern features to accommodate touch screen controls, of course. But apart from that, it's all retro.
Were you alive and mostly aware of your surroundings in 1984? Good, this article is for you! Karateka Classic is a mobile re-release of the original combat game created by Prince of Persia guru Jordan Mechner. Akuma has kidnapped the princess and you're going to fight your way through every one of his minions until you get her back. Bam! The music, the floppy drive loading sounds, the scan lines... it's all there. With some more modern features to accommodate touch screen controls, of course. But apart from that, it's all retro.
Here's a fantastic idea for a restaurant: have a competent waitress who does her job well, then hire a cook that periodically flips out and tries to kill the customers. That's the general idea behind Cafe Murder, a mobile time management game from Beaver Toad Software that emphasizes character and personality over speed. It's not a game about seeing how fast you can serve sandwiches, it's a game about keeping your shop tidy and pleasing the customers. And boy do customers love it when they're not murdered!
From the creator of the SQUIDS series comes a truly casual, but also truly addictive, casual brawler. Simply swipe to attack as you learn to chain together powerful abilities and combos to defeat your foes, earning upgrades to become even more powerful, in a game dripping with charm... and satire!
CastleMine from Mugshot Games combines tower defense with a little bit of old fashioned digging. Instead of mapping out mazes for creeps to crawl through or building balloon things on green green grass, you get to dig underground one block at a time. Uncover extra gold deposits, additional resources, or even nests of enemies as you attempt to defend your castle from the threat from below.
The woods are no place to be stranded in. You can lose your way; you can lose your mind; you can even lose yourself. Developed by Simulated Culture, Rootwork is a new strategic card game that drops you into the heart of the deepest, darkest forest and challenges you to make it out safely. However, a stray critter or a thorny bush are the least of your troubles here. These woods are full of dark forces and malevolent spirits, and at the center of the dark maelstrom is "She." Who is She? That's uncertain. But these are Her woods, and if She wants you to stay lost forever the odds are stacked against you.
You know what your average tug-of-war game needs? A table instead of a rope. At least that's what Otto Ojola thinks, and he's turned the idea into Tug the Table, a simple yet wonderful fighting game that manages to be reminiscent of Wrestle Jump while still being unique.
A lot of kids who grew up with RC cars turned into today's gamers. That's a dangerous blanket statement to make, but you can't argue there isn't some overlap. After all, isn't driving a radio controlled car around the living room kind of like a video game? And didn't playing with RC cars and video games make your parents mad? Looking to bring those two worlds together, Paladin Studios, the team behind Momonga Pinball Adventures, has released Nikko RC Racer, a wild and untamed arcade racing game that's about as close to driving the real thing as you can get.
Move fast! No, faster! No, even faster! Available in your browser or on your mobile device, Mini Dash is a challenging one-hit K-O platformer full of missiles, buzzsaws, daring jumps, and more that will test your mettle over and over.
Something has gone terribly, horribly awry at Don Eduardo's zoo. Flesh-seeking undead animals are on the loose and you, plucky boy or girl, are the last line of defense in Zoombies: Animales de la Muerte!, a mobile line-drawing defense game from High Voltage Software. Could this be the worst field trip ever?
New from inkle studios, the team that brought the interactive novel Frankenstein to iOS in 2012, Steve Jackson's Sorcery! is a digital re-imagining of the Fighting Fantasy roleplaying gamebooks. You don't have to be a fan of the classic series to enjoy Sorcery!, nor do you have to be an avid reader (or own a pair of dice). You just need a little bit of curiosity and a love of interactive stories.
Potato chips and a TV. What more could a human being possibly want? Apart from the fulfillment of hopes and dreams and all that stuff, of course. It's been several years since Dan Russell-Pinson's point-and-click adventure series Tipping Point has graced our screens. The iPad debut bundles together all four previously released chapters along with a brand new fifth chapter that resolves the little cliffhanger from chapter four. Tipping Point is some of the best point-and-click adventuring you'll find, and the story and setting make the game something truly special.
The most frightening things are often the ones you can't see. It stands to reason, then, that in a world where nothing is visible, just about everything is frightening. The Nightjar is an audio adventure from Papa Sangre that uses a rudimentary visual interface to allow you to explore a sci-fi horror adventure world. Every sound has a meaning, and every step moves you through a dark labyrinth of mental images. Now let's see if you can escape this ship you've been stranded on without getting eaten by one of those "complex, non-human" lifeforms!
To be a robot unicorn, galloping through the futuristic landscape straight from a prog album cover while feeling the wind in your luxurious mane, dashing recklessly through glittering stars and smashing into your component robot parts when you misjudge that one tricky jump... Robot Unicorn Attack 2 by PikPok and Adult Swim is a candy-coated cream puff of a game with a tough-as-nails center. In short, a new endless runner superstar.
Crabitron from Two Lives Left is a mobile arcade game that lets you live the life of a giant space crab. Using your giant space claws, crush vehicles and fend off space enemies as you turn space stuff into space lunch. There's nothing about those sentences that isn't awesome, and Crabitron goes out of its way to remind you that being a giant space crab is just that.
From Jesse Venbrux, whose name you might recognize from games like the Karoshi series or Focus, They Need to Be Fed 2 is a mobile sequel to a freeware downloadable game that's all about feeding helpless critters to chomping piranha plants. Neat, right? Don't worry, it's not all sad and evil. In fact, it's quite a cheerful mix of puzzle and platforming elements that works really well on touch screen devices.
It sounded like a simple heist... get into the old abandoned house, steal anything of value, and get out. But you're not alone in the dark, and something is very unhappy you've intruded. Explore an eerie house full of randomly generated treasure, grab what you need, and get out before you're caught, making use of ghostly eyes to see through the sight of the thing hunting you.
Which sounds worse: tennis or clowns? Ha, trick question! They're both equally creepy in their own way! 10tons totally gets that, which is why the team that brought us the physics puzzle game Tennis in the Face has released the follow-up Clowns in the Face. Now, instead of just smacking things in the face with tennis balls, you're smacking clowns in the face with tennis balls. Neat!
Slayin isn't a game, it's a time machine rocketing from an 8-bit past. Pixel Licker's deliciously compulsive mashup of old school action RPG and contemporary endless runner-style progression is so infused with retro spirit that you might forget you're playing it on a device that lacks buttons.
Fairune is an action-puzzle RPG adventure much like the world where it is set: a place where illusion is reality and three spirit icons have gone missing, unlocking an evil scourge that generates monsters all over the realms. It looks like something you've played before yet eliminates hack'n'slash style combat in favor of solving puzzles. Instead of fighting, just walk over monsters and make your way across a maze-like retro environment, gathering the items you need to open new pathways until your ultimate goal: a showdown with three powerful bosses that will either end in victory or crushing defeat.
What's the crucial element missing from most games nowadays? If you answered anything other than "goats," you're wrong! Jumping goats make anything better, and that's been proven. By science. Released by Llamasoft, Goatup 2 is the goatiest retro platformer you ever did see. A follow-up to the endless jumper Goatup, this sequel is slightly more traditional gameplay experience, if your idea of tradition involves minotaurs in rainbow sweaters, the Queen of England and angry toilets.
Magicka is back! And it's mobile! And Vlad's still not a vampire! Bringing with it everything that made the original game a hit, Magicka: Wizards of the Square Tablet takes a slightly more action-oriented approach to the spell slinging arcade game. You still combine elements to cast various bits of magic that can harm enemies, yourself, and your teammates, but thanks to shorter levels and a new camera angle, it's now all about speed and strategy.
You know the old clich� of the adventurer being chased by the giant boulder? It's a trope that has appeared in numerous movies and games, but we never get to see things from the boulder's point of view. Well, that's all about to change! Indiana Stone: The Brave and the Boulder is an arcade-styled action game from Twinsky Games in which you play the larger, rounder, rockier half of the oft-imitated duo. Your mission is to crush the unnamed (but curiously familiar) archaeologist who has stolen your precious golden idol with the intent of locking it up in a stuffy museum.
Ninjas have to have a place to live, just like the rest of us. They also have to have jobs and food and money and footpaths and cherry trees to look at. Fortunately, the simple life of a farmer ninja doesn't preclude raids on nearby towns, which is precisely why Kairosoft's mobile simulation game Ninja Village is so fantastic.
The 2010s are shaping up to be the decade of the Internet renegade, yet for those of us without the technical savvy necessary to participate in virtually sticking it to the man, BoxCat LLC offers us a tempting and significantly more legal alternative with Nameless: The Hackers, a mobile RPG with a lot of virtual bite.
It's a monster's life for you in this casual yet engaging indie simulation from Dejobaan Games! Going from a lowly morsel swimming in a vat of goop to (potentially) a respected elder that can influence the course of history, it's a whimsical, weird, and occasionally gross cross between a choose-your-own-adventure story and a visual novel that offers lots of replay value and laughs.
The king is dead. Dibs on his crown! Ascent of Kings is a platform adventure game by Nostatic Software that sends you on an epic quest to become the next king. Your brothers are out to do the same, but because nobody thinks you've got the guts to do it, you have something to prove! The road from your home to the Shrine of Kings is a twisted and treacherous path, but there are a few handy items you'll encounter along the way that help you traverse the land.
Dojo Danger from Kihon is the kind of game you can't wait to be good at. One part strategy and one part arcade physics, the setup is a bit reminiscent of the SQUIDS series, putting you in control of a group of heroes who can be shot around the screen in order to defeat the bad guys. This time around, though, you get to play as a band of ninjas ridding the world of a zombie invasion by smacking into them and knocking them into spike traps!
Block Fortress is Minecraft meets tower defense meets first person shooter, all squeezed down into a mobile game. Build a base in the middle of a blocky wilderness, place turrets and towers and power supplies to fortify your position, then send in the waves of enemies. Once combat begins, you shift from building mode to combat mode, taking a gun into battle and watching over your fort by blasting enemies by hand. It's incredibly exciting and also deeply rooted in upgrades and tactics, making it the sort of game you can play for months without truly mastering.
Fishing isn't exactly the wackiest sport. Tag it as Ridiculous Fishing, though, and suddenly everybody expects a certain level of, oh, ridiculousness. From Super Crate Box creator Vlambeer along with Greg Wohlwend of Mikengreg and Zach Gage of SpellTower fame, Ridiculous Fishing is a wholly upgraded version of the browser game Radical Fishing released in 2011. The premise? Fishing taken to a ridiculous level.
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