The problem with breaking windows is that you can only do it once. The second your projectile hits the pane with its shattering kiss, you have to cheese it or else risk getting caught by cops, guard dogs, or some guy that keeps his gun handy. There's never enough time to admire your handiwork.Smash Hit by Mediocre is a first-person shooting / throwing game that really lets you absorb the sights, sounds, and sheer pleasure of shattering glass. You can do it over and over - in fact, you must do it over and over if you want to survive - and the sensation never gets old."As soon as you hit "Start," you automatically glide down a series of crystalline hallways. You have but one mission: Wreck everything.
Mines of Mars is a genre-bending journey to the Red Planet that starts off like a cross between Minecraft and Metroid, but slowly morphs into something far more intriguing. It could stand a little more polish, but even with the occasional bump in the road, it's the kind of thing I can see myself playing for a long, long time to come.Mines of Mars describes itself as a "procedural atmospheric mining game" inspired by games like Metroid and Motherload. It actually gives off a rather dark sci-fi adventure vibe at first, as the cinematic opening follows a grizzled miner forced to take work on Mars for reasons unknown. But things take a turn for the lighter following a rough landing on the planet, as he - that is, you - makes contact with the oddball commander of the Mars mining installation and a peppy robot who's eager to please.It's an unexpected and rather sharp turn in direction, although it has very little impact on the gameplay, which very quickly struck me as a sort of 2D Minecraft - although in hindsight a comparison with Rust might be just as apt. You take a portal from the base to the mines below the surface, excavate dirt, minerals and gems, bring them up top, use the resources to craft better equipment and weapons, then head back down to do it all again.
"Pay-to-win": it's hardly a death knell for most mobile games, as it's quite easy to find people with more money than time and a poor sense of where to spend either one.Deadlings certainly isn't the most egregious such game, but it hardly gets a pass.Death (as in the Grim Reaper) is unsurprisingly lonely. After seeing potential friendship in the equally unwanted zombies of the world, he tries to win their companionship by running them through a gantlet of deadly traps, platforms and obstacles at his new business, Deadlings, Inc.The elevator pitch is something like Jetpack Joyride meets Lemmings. You play as Death, guiding different classes of endlessly running zombies through test chambers, collecting brains and making for the exit.
There's something to be said for the classics. Actually, there's a lot to be said for them, or they wouldn't get to be classics in the first place. Brave Frontier definitely has its sights set on giving mobile gamers nostalgic feelings of the JRPGs of bygone days, with some collectible card game bits sprinkled in for good measure. That's a sound strategy, and the result is fun enough to be worth the free download.Every good RPG needs a land to save, and in the case of Brave Frontier, it's called Grand Gaia. This magical locale is home to hidden power for those who can vanquish its strange creatures, but it's been sealed off by some fallen gods.That's where you come in. As a Summoner with immense promise, you've been granted access to Grand Gaia via Lucius' Gate. With a guide named Tilith to introduce you to core concepts like summoning units, fusing them together to make them more powerful, and leading them into combat, it doesn't take long to get started on setting things right.
Bridge Constructor by HeadUp Games is a bridge-building mobile game that lets you exercise your physics prowess. It also offers a strong, important reminder: Not everyone is cut out for building bridges. It's OK for a bridge to fall apart on your screen, but in real life, smiling sheepishly and shrugging while cars plummet into ravines simply isn't acceptable.So, if you don't know anything about engineering, is it still worth giving Bridge Constructor a go? Sure it is. The game challenges you to build serviceable bridges. There's no need for them to pass any hoity-toity government inspections. If the whole shebang collapses but the cars driving across manage to outrun the destruction, the point's still yours. No jail time!"Each level of Bridge Constructor offers up a gap that must be bridged (it turns out an earthquake has shaken all the world's previous bridges to dust). Your supplies include concrete gates, girders, cables, and plain old wood.
A couple of years ago, Russian game publisher Game Insight brought us the prehistoric village-builder The Tribez. In it, we took on the role of an adventurous scientist who helps a primitive tribe rebuild their village. In the new sequel to that game, The Tribez and Castlez, we once again don the scientist's lab coat, this time setting our sights on saving a medieval kingdom. Unfortunately, that change in scope is more or less the only way to differentiate the two games, which means Tribez veterans have little in the way of new experiences to enjoy in the sequel.The Tribez and Castlez begins with the first game's mad scientist (at least I think it's him; he seems to have grown some hair since then) and his pretty tribal sidekick Aurora touching down in the middle of a medieval kingdom. Actually, they don't just touch down—they crash land Dorothy-in-Oz-like on top of a magical crystal. In one way, this helps the Prince of the realm since it sends a marauding army of greenskins running. In another, it causes problems for him since he then needs a significant portion of his kingdom rebuilt.Being magically transformed from a scientist to a mage, you set out to help the Prince and his subjects by building structures, clearing land and collecting resources. This is where, if you've played The Tribez, deja vu is likely to set in.
Game Insight's Cloud Raiders: Sky Conquest is a Clash of Clans-style combat sim that takes place in the breezy world of islands floating in the sky. It feeds you a handful of diamonds then sets you free to transform your tiny village into a well-defended stronghold that can fight off pirates as well as attack other sky villages. Oh, and did we mention this takes place on floating islands?!Your hunk of rock in the sky is where most of the action in Cloud Raiders will take place. Here you'll place buildings, train troops, manage your resources and get everything spruced up to defend against an attack. It's both a home base as well as a loot generation stronghold, so the more time you spend working on the layout and fortifications the better."
I've not felt the draw of a Puzzle Quest game since the first one. The novelty of RPG mechanics met with match-three gameplay wore out for me quickly as I realized even the developers behind them weren't sure what made those games great.Now I have Block Legend. It's full of obligatory pixel art and chiptunes and the super deformed character design you expect from an indie dev. What it's not is a Puzzle Quest game -- it's not even a match-three game. It is, however, a blend of puzzle and turn-based RPG."Your character (more on those later) moves from left to right automatically, running into enemies while you match blocks below, a la 10000000. Rather than switching blocks about to match, any number of identical tiles can match at once.