Boson X is essentially the spiritual sequel to glorious hair-pulling action game Super Hexagon. Cylindrically-shaped levels? Check. Fast-paced, randomly-generated action that keeps you on your toes every single moment of play? Check. A base difficulty so severe that you may accidentally smash your iPhone to pieces after you die for the umpteenth time? Oh yes, it's all there.But this rotational runner is far from just another Super Hexagon, as the game offers a massively unique take on the endless runner genre. The variety on show here is simply wonderful, and the difficulty factor coupled with the online leaderboards means that we'll no doubt be coming back for more again and again.You are a professor who has become caught in a massive particle accelerator. By jumping from platform to platform you can keep him safe from the high-energy particles dancing around him, and hopefully build up enough energy that you'll manage to discover some new particles along the way.
Life is like a hurricane. It slowly turns in a large circular motion, eventually leading all things back to where they started. There's no better explanation for the recent resurgence of DuckTales, a series which—after lying dormant for about two decades—has seen two new games within the past two months. Unlike its older sibling, DuckTales Remastered, DuckTales: Scrooge's Loot is a brand new title with a vastly different approach: a team-based shooter.Scrooge's Loot starts off with a cutscene of Scrooge McDuck writing a letter to his nephews. Suddenly, he realizes his money vault is being attacked by his greatest villains. That's the extent of the story, for the most part. The voice acting in the initial cutscene is covered by the original cast, which is a nice touch, but that's as far as the nostalgia blast is willing to go.Scrooge's Loot is DuckTales in name only. After the initial cutscene, you'll be given a generic, customizable character who will battle other generic, customizable characters. The only carryover from the source is Launchpad running the tutorial and commenting on your deaths. This lack of involvement with the rest of the series makes the main menu's version of the theme song feel like a lie. The game lacks the charm and character even DuckTales Remastered manages to implement.
Rovio has released Angry Birds Star Wars II for mobile phones and tablets. We all knew it was going to happen. It was as inexorable as the final struggle between Luke and Darth Vader. After all, Rovio's first attempt at fitting Jedi and Sith into suits made of feathers and pigskin proved extremely successful.So will you enjoy a second go-around with an Angry Birds/Star Wars hybrid? Yes, provided you meet two requirements: one, you're not thoroughly sick of Angry Birds; and two, you've not taken an oath to destroy everything that references the Star Wars prequels. Whereas the first Angry Birds Star Wars revolves around Episodes IV, V, and VI, Angry Birds Star Wars II plucks from Episodes I, II, and III. That means you'll be goofing off with the likes of Anakin Skywalker and Jar Jar Binks. Sorry.Don't let it get you down, though. True to Angry Birds tradition, none of the characters in Angry Birds Star Wars II actually talk. That alone puts the game miles above Episode I. When you get right down to it, Angry Birds Star Wars II dishes out tons of fun and humor.
There's a real helplessness to the entire ordeal that is Once Upon An Apocalypse. It's the sort of feeling that you might hope to expect from a game that bears such a title, but the bleakness isn't really of an end-of-the-worldly nature - rather, this is a moody, all-hope-is-lost experience simply because it never really feels like you're given the appropriate tools to survive.Oh, there is a way to survive Once Upon An Apocalypse with all your camp-mates intact, make no mistake - but it all feels so random and closed in that making any sense out of your actions is essentially a case of repeating the game over and over again in a trial-and-error fashion. This is an adventure game, then, which is less adventure, and more touching random things until the helicopter comes to take you away."It's all about zombies, of course - the undead who have ravaged the land and eaten anyone in their path. You are "Skinny," a ruffled man in a shirt and tie who is just one of a handful of survivors. You've set up camp in a safe-ish spot, and somehow managed to nominate yourself as the leader of the group. No one appears to have a problem with that.
Cavemania is the long-awaited result of what happens when developer BonusXP partners up with publisher Yodo1 to release Yodo1's very first global game: and let me tell you, this thing is more exciting than the discovery of fire. The bulk of Cavemania is played out on a simple match-three game board, which is filled in from top to bottom with colorful items that cavemen would normally find out in the wild and harvest for their precious resources: apples and carrots; leafy trees and pine trees; rocks and gold ore. Matching three or more of each item will net you a nice share of their respective resource, which you'll need for reaching the goal in some levels, or to put towards building things in others.But now here's the big twist that sets Cavemania apart from other match-three adventures just like it: your Chieftan character also occupies a space on this changing game board, and you'll need to utilize his position in order to do battle or protect delicate structures from meeting their end in the harsh realities of nature. What's cool about this is that you're always able to make any move on the board that you want, and permanently swap any two items regardless of whether they make a match or not.This heightens the overall strategy of the game to exciting new levels: for instance, you might opt out of farming new resources for a few moves, if the current situation calls for you to move you Chieftan into fighting position with the deadly beasts and wildlife that also populate the game board from time to time; or conversely, you might want to move an injured Chieftan away from any harm until you can better gather your bearings. Your characters will automatically attack an enemy whenever they are in close range (one square away, either adjacent or diagonally), but be careful because the enemies will also be able to do exactly the same! Luckily, matching four or more like-items in a single move will reward you with a rare blue crystal, which can then be used at will to unleash a particularly devastating attack on your unsuspecting foes.
In the deep reaches of space, no one can hear your spacecraft explode. Unless you're playing SimpleRockets: then it makes a very satisfying "bwoosh!" sound. Developer Andrew Garrison, of SimplePhysics, made this choice intentionally to improve the gameplay experience of his new space exploration sandbox game. Small details like this, coupled with smooth physics and an extremely accessible interface, make SimpleRockets an easy choice for aeronautical enthusiasts and anyone looking to dabble in rocket-building from the safety of their couch.If you've played Kerbal Space Program or Space Agency, the mechanics of SimpleRockets should be familiar: from construction to crash landing, you are in charge of launching rockets into space. On most stages, your first goal will be building a rocket from scratch using a variety of amply available parts. While the only thing each rocket technically needs is a command pod, to actually go anywhere you'll need to strap on fuel tanks, engines, and any extras—like a parachute—needed for your launch goals. Construction is managed on a very simple blueprint screen, where adding a section is as easy as dragging it from the parts list onto your in-progress ship. Once your rocket is pieced together, you'll need to assign stages to its active parts, known as gizmos. Gizmos include any part that can be activated during flight, such as engines, landing gear, or detachers. On the same blueprint screen, you can drag gizmos between stages to alter their order of operation. During a simple flight, for instance, you might place the starting engines in stage one, the detachment of those engines in stage two, and the secondary, orbiting engines in stage three. Although stages are often reordered randomly if changes are made to your rocket, the staging system in SimpleRockets is otherwise exceptionally player-friendly and makes planning out a multi-stage flight ridiculously easy.
While the original CastleVille fits snuggly in the history of Zynga's Ville games as the spiritual successor to The Pioneer Trail, CastleVille Legends sets out to be something ambitiously new. Designed from the ground up for mobile, Legends is more a game of trading and economics than it is a medieval life simulator.If that description scares you off, don't worry - much of Legends will feel like a familiar experience to the Zynga faithful. The nuts and bolts that bring the game together (crafting, quests, etc) are things that you're already doing in other games. The trick, though, is that these elements come together in Legends in a way that creates something we haven't seen before in a Zynga title.If we were to break CastleVille Legends down to its base mechanics, it would probably look something like this: creating resources, crafting those resources into products, and selling those products for fun and profit.On paper, I admit it sounds a little like FarmVille 2. But the execution here feels markedly different.
Everybody loves Puzzle & Dragons. So much so, that everybody else has tried their hand at making something similar. In Kabam's case, it's Puzzle Trooper: the same match-3 puzzle game/pseudo CCG hybrid, but with fewer dragons and a lot more burly soldiers. And tanks; can't forget the tanks. Although as derivative as it may be, it's still an incredibly fun system that works well. Heck, this time around it even feels less punishing to non-paying players!Just in case anyone isn't familiar with the formula, it goes like this: players have a small group of characters (in this case, soldiers) that can belong to a number of different colors. Below them is a grid of colored circles/spheres/gems that, naturally, match the different unit colors. By sliding one of these colorful doohickeys around and creating groups of three or more, they can power up their soldiers and allow them to attack.The bigger the group and the more combos (i.e. groups cleared in one turn), the higher the damage. After enough turns pass, a unit's special ability - including changing one color to another or doing direct damage - will become available. As the platoon charges through missions, and by extension enemies, more characters can be acquired for beefing up the ranks or simply upgrading favorites.