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Daily iPhone App: Wave Trip flies through a musical world
Wave Trip is the newest title from developer Lucky Frame, probably best known for the underrated rhythm-meets-tower defense game Bad Hotel. In the same way that Bad Hotel is a tower defense game, Wave Trip is sort of a Jetpack Joyride-style platformer, in that you're navigating around the screen trying to collect coins of a sort. You can hold down a finger on the right side of the screen to move a little ship up or down, and then holding down a finger on the left side gives you a temporary shield, which you can use to knock away obstacles as you go. Hitting obstacles or collecting coins makes a musical noise when you do it, and that's how each level's "song" is constructed, with you earning multiplied points for interacting the right way with each type of object. Unfortunately, while Wave Trip's songs are plenty rhythmic and interesting, I personally didn't think they were all that great or catchy. Plus, the game can be very hard, especially if you're trying to nail down a really high score (the game tells you the global best at the beginning of each level, which is usually a tough bar to try and top). Still, as a sort of experimental music platformer, Wave Trip is a wild little ride, and the ability to both create your own levels and play others' means there's no shortage of content. The game's available as a universal app now for $1.99.
Daily iPhone App: Bad Hotel combines hotel building with music
Bad Hotel is a great game that you may have missed on the App Store earlier this year. I certainly missed it, though since it arrived (back around August), I believe, it's come up a few times in various game design and game reviewer circles. It's a weird mix of music and gameplay that is definitely easy to recommend, but hard to actually describe. The best way for you to see how the game works is just to go play it, so throw 99 cents down and go grab this one for yourself. Still here because you don't want to spend a buck without knowing what it's for? Fine then. Bad Hotel is probably best described as a weird sort of tower defense game, where you drag and drop various sacrificial additions onto a hotel tower, trying to defend it from incoming attackers (mostly birds, though I hear things get mixed up later on). But that core mechanic isn't the only thing happening. Bad Hotel is also a sort of musical instrument. Each room you drag onto the hotel pulses with a musical noise, and as you put more and more rooms out (and more rooms get destroyed by attackers), the music changes and warps as you play. It's really fascinating -- it's hard to explain just why this mechanic is attached to the music so strongly (you don't get points for matching up with the music or hitting anything in time, as in a normal music game), but again, the best way to see how well it all works is just to play it and explore for yourself. A recent update for the game opened up all of the levels completely, so now anyone jumping in to play has more options than ever for what they want to see. Bad Hotel is definitely a weird title, but a great one. If, like me, you missed it during the release, don't make the same mistake now.
