Have you caught ’em all? No, not pocket monsters, don’t be a Jerry. We’re talking about all the Mortys in Pocket Mortys. You have? Cool. We’re hear to tell you that there are now more characters to search for and …
Bottle Cap Blitz is a specific kind of game. It's fast, friendly, and free of the bells and whistles and constraints seen in a glut of App Store releases. And without a gorgeous exterior or extraneous additions, it still manages to reel you in and hook you with simplistic, addictive gameplay that channels the likes of Paper Toss, while combining the nature of the hit Fruit Ninja.
Pandas have it rough. Not only do they have dietary complications and finicky reproductive cycles, they now have to contend with aerial acrobatics in their quest for true love. I can only hope that the female pandas find the scent of gunpowder deeply appealing. A prime example of animal cruelty in video games, Big Pixel Games' Land-a Panda will have you catapulting our hero from cannon to cannon in an attempt to reunite him with his beloved.
You'd be forgiven for mistaking Meow Meow Happy Fight for another of the App Store's generic twin-stick shooters. There's something about the device that seems perfectly wed to the genre, and it isn't the lack of sticks or tiny screen. But the point is moot. Meow Meow Happy Fight isn't really a twin-stick shooter, its control scheme excepted. The game's look aside, it really has more in common with a shooter like Quake than a shooter like Geometry Wars. This makes it a pretty fresh, if flawed, experience.
The cutest match-3 game on the App Store, Piyo Blocks, hardly needed a sequel. It seemed already complete, offering simple yet compulsive gameplay and a fully-formed aesthetic. Piyo Blocks 2 initially seems like an advertisement for Piyo Blocks 2 HD, the new iPad edition that features redone visuals and a simultaneous two-player mode. As it turns out, it's a valuable new expansion. Big Pixel has tweaked the game in small but significant ways.
Piyo Blocks makes no bones about its purpose. The game is match-3, and delightfully so. Rather than dress up the simple mechanic with role-playing elements or blockbuster production values, Piyo Blocks simply revels in the raw addictive properties of color-matching. Bejeweled aside, you won't find a purer game about moving blocks.