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Daily iPhone App: Alien Hive might help evolve your brain
I am not sure whether I like Alien Hive or not, and I'll explain why in just a second. But last week at GDC, whenever I had a free moment to play games on my iPhone, I found myself pulling out Alien Hive and playing yet again. So I think that's more than enough reason to recommend it to you here. The game was described to me as a match-3, and I guess it kind of is, in only that you need to match three items of a certain type to earn points. But in practice, it's much more like Triple Town than Bejeweled. This is a slower-paced, thinking man's game, where you need to make your moves more carefully. You get a board with various tiles on it and one empty space, and you can slide tiles horizontally or vertically, trying to make a match to evolve your tiles up into the next type. Tiles fall into the categories of plants or aliens, and matching up plant tiles earns you more moves, which allows you to keep your gaming going along. I'm not sure I like Alien Hive yet because apparently I'm not very good at it. The aliens on the board start out as little eggs, and matching them together evolves them up into more and more complex creatures, with you eventually unlocking a full hatchery of different alien types. But despite all of my playtime, I haven't unlocked a single higher-level alien. I do feel like I'm progressing in terms of finding matches and lining them up, but apparently I haven't even really started up the game's progression curve. Part of the problem is probably that the game involves "boosts," where you can spend a certain amount of earned currency to give you items or abilities that help you move things along. But I hate boosts as a player, so I really haven't spent any money on them, and that could be what's holding me back. At any rate, despite my issues with boosts as a mechanic and despite my inability to actually evolve any aliens, I'm enjoying Alien Hive -- I like that the game requires some thought despite the relatively simple mechanics. Hopefully sooner or later here I'll figure out the trick to evolving my aliens (and hopefully it won't just be to spend more money on boosts). If you want to join me, Alien Hive is available for free.
Daily iPad App: Letz: The Story of Zed does match 3 right
Letz is a game that doesn't necessarily excel in its mechanics -- it's a match 3 game, basically, though there is a fun addition in the form of a word-making challenge as well. But where Letz really shines is in the icing. The sounds and graphics on this one are just pure sugary pleasure -- the kind of great bleeps and bloops that you hear on the floor of a casino when everyone around you is winning lots of money. Ok, so maybe it's not for everyone, but I am completely charmed by Letz's cotton candy graphics and all the sounds the game makes. Match 3 isn't that complicated a game form, obviously, and that's what you're doing here (though you can collect letters as you match tiles, and then match those letters up into words, including one story word per stage in the campaign as you play through it). But despite the simplicity, the game's big board allows you to chain tiles and shapes to your heart's content, sometimes getting up to a minute or two of dings, rings and rewards for just the right match. An XP system with plenty of objectives also keeps the action interesting, and the whole package is just excellently charming throughout the game's huge amount of content. Letz (full title, The Story of Zed) is a bargain for just US$1.99 on the iPad. It's a very well-polished game that's almost excessively rewarding, and match 3 aficionados especially will have a great time with it. If you've yet to be convinced, there's a lite version to try out as well.
Daily iPhone App: Cruel Jewels is pure match-3 bliss
As anyone who regularly reads these Daily App posts probably knows, I am a grade A sucker for the match-3 genre. From Bejeweled to Puzzle Quest to Call of Atlantis, if it lets you match three of a kind, I'm in. So Cruel Jewels won me over from the first screenshot. It's a pure match-3 title, featuring gems of various colors that need to be matched up in at least three of a kind to be cleared off the board and score points. But even beyond its genre, Cruel Jewels is well done. The graphics are clear and crisp, and the whole title has a retro, almost steampunk vibe that works really well. The game is essentially endless, but at least in the game's basic mode, you play through a series of stages with various objectives, from scoring a certain amount within a time limit, to fighting a foe (whose hand eerily comes on screen during its matching turn), to just a pure score attack. There are also modes for each of those objectives directly, so there's lots here to play. If you're absolutely fed up with match-3 titles, this one is not for you. But as an example of the match-3 genre, Cruel Jewels is very well constructed. It doesn't add anything super new, but it's smoothly polished, and completely free to check out. There are ads in game that are only slightly distracting, but you can remove them for an in-app purchase of US$1.99 if you like.
Daily iPhone App: Elenints matches Triple Town's planning with a few new tricks
Red Fly Studio is the group behind last year's great Inertia: Escape Velocity. Its latest title, Elenints, is more abstract. The name "Elenints" might come from a combination of the words "elements" and "integers". It's is a puzzle game where you place pieces on a board, trying to match up three of a kind and combine those into increasingly complex elements. The gameplay is similar to Triple Town, which I love. Both games require you to carefully plan how you'll place pieces to make combos. But while Triple Town simply blocks off space the more you play, Elenints is more dynamic. As "creepers" spawn, you can block them with an Elenint, which means that if you can change up your plan in time, you can prevent bears from ever showing up. That innovation alone makes Elenints worth a look, and there's also a sort of tutorial/puzzle mode that offers a nice twist on Triple Town's gameplay. Elenints is available for free on the App Store right now.
TUAW's Daily iPhone App: Legacy: Mystery Mansion
It's been a while since we've covered a solid match-three game in this space, and Legacy: Mystery Mansion is exactly that. It's similar to Puzzle Quest in that it puts an overarching storyline in the form of a match-three puzzle title, but it's a little tougher than the more casual entries in the genre, putting a hard time limit on each of 25 stages and taking you through recovering missing antiques in a haunted mansion. I was a big fan of Call of Atlantis' match-three mayhem, and Legacy seems very much in that vein, if just a little more difficult. At any rate, it seems like an excellent match-three puzzler, and at US 99 cents, the price is just right. It'd be nice to have Game Center integration for leaderboards and achievements, but a free zen mode will have to do for now. Legacy: Mystery Mansion is well worth a try for fans of this very traditional puzzle genre.
TUAW's Daily App: Liqua Pop
EA's latest game on the App Store is called Liqua Pop. It's an original puzzle game that has you popping liquid bubbles of the same color in order to send a little toad on the side of the screen to the top. The presentation in this one is very well done -- the music is cool and clear, and the graphics are shiny and very (wait for it...) fluid. The bubbles show up quickly, and eventually bugs appear in the bubbles and add a little complication to the mix. But overall, the gameplay is pretty simple, and you get into a nice rhythm of building up bubbles and shaking the device to pop them. Unfortunately, the game's thin on content -- there's just one mode, and while there are plenty of levels to play through, it'd be nice to see a little variety to the gameplay. More of an issue is that there's no Game Center integration at all. You can share scores via Facebook, but really, especially with EA publishing, developers iChromo should have taken the time to include Game Center. Hopefully that and the other omissions will be fixed in a future update. Liqua Pop is US$1.99 on the App Store right now, and I can recommend you check it out at that price, though I wouldn't blame you for waiting for the next EA sale to see if it drops down to a buck. If you're good on games for now, that might be your best bet.
