You may or may not know this, but both of Valve's hugely popular Portal games were based on ideas from students at DigiPen, a college based in Redmond, Washington that seems to churn out the most incredible video game designers annually. The original Portal was based on a student game called Narbacular Drop, while the second title was inspired by another DigiPen game called Tag: The Power of Paint.
Jell-O has been many things for me over the course of my life: comfort food when I'm sick, a dessert at parties and after dinner; even a staple to subsist on during university. Easily its most fun role, however, is its recent turn as gelatinous antagonist in developer Robot Invader's Rise of the Blobs. Fair warning, however: attempts to eat through the screen will prove unsuccessful.
In the world of Antichamber, nothing is as it seems. Rooms rearrange themselves at will, staircases can loop into infinity, and doors may open only once you look away. Although you will encounter concrete geometrical shapes, the world around you is far from a mathematical truth or constant.
War is a horrifying and bitter experience even in its most base form—that is, two walls of armed human beings throwing themselves at one another. But war is really hair-raising when it becomes subtle, shadowy, and sneaky. Infestor is a compelling, if straightforward, platforming/puzzle game that demonstrates how the loud work of an army can be done with a single, silent germ.
I know little about zen training, Buddhism, meditation, or eastern philosophies/practices in general. When I need to relax, I tend to hug my cat and tick off the seconds until she turns from a stone-faced sourpuss into a slashing, yelling maelstrom. All that said, there's nothing really "zen" about Zen Training for iOS. It's not even particularly engaging or challenging, and it's definitely not relaxing in the least.
Have you ever composed a list of the top ten superpowers you wished you possessed? Of course you have. Everyone has. And on a majority of those lists, I'd wager, the ability to stick to (and subsequently climb) stuff probably showed up. Well, that's never going to happen. But the next best thing, far as I can tell, is to enjoy the vicarious thrills that come from playing Stick to It, a game that's all about—drum roll—sticking to stuff.
It's hard to expect any sort of real innovation in match-3 games nowadays. You'll either get a game that sticks with a tried-and-true match-3 formula, or a match-3 game that's mashed-up with another genre. Fresh thinking, like we saw in last year's PC release Atlantis: Pearls of the Deep is the exception rather than the rule. We're pleased to report that 7 Elements is another one of those rare exceptions.
Amazing Ants reminds us a bit of the game Lemmings: You tap the ants on the screen to get them moving, and they don't stop until they reach their goal. Along the way, you can use different items, obstacles, and abilities to help see them through their goal of collecting all the fruit in each area and proceeding to the exit in an orderly fashion.