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TUAW's Daily iOS App: Candy Train
As expected, the second game from PopCap's sub-studio 4th and Battery hit the App Store last week, and I like it a lot more than I did Unpleasant Horse. Candy Train is actually an older PopCap title that was originally posted online, and it's been brought back as a free universal app for iOS. It's an interesting if simple puzzle game -- the idea is that there's a train rolling down a track, and you have to tap tiles to line them up so that the train has somewhere to go. Along the way, the train can pick up candy cars, and if you collect enough of those and a caboose, there's a station that you can pull into to clear the chain and "level up" into the next score bracket. It's the kind of game that starts out pretty slowly and gets frantic fast, but there's just enough depth to it to keep you coming back to try again and keep that train going further. Yes, you can see why this isn't a full PopCap title (instead, it's just a 4th and Battery experimental game), but it's fun nevertheless. And while there's sadly no Game Center integration or any extras to speak of (there's just one mode, on two different difficulty levels), the price is right at the cost of free. Definitely give this one a download.
4th and Battery's second game is Candy Train
All right, so maybe Unpleasant Horse wasn't quite the success that 4th and Battery would have liked to kick the new PopCap sub-studio off with, but that's kind of the point -- the idea of 4th and Battery is for the company to experiment a little more, rather than having every single game they release live up to the PopCap reputation. And that means faster releases as well. The company's second game is due out on the App Store this week, and it's called Candy Train. This is actually an older game -- it was originally released as a Flash title on PopCap's website and pulled soon after, to players' chagrin. But a few developers decided to revamp it for iOS, and it's coming to the App Store as a free download. The idea, as you can see above, is that you need to rotate small pieces of track to keep a train running, and it seems fun enough. 4th and Battery also has a third game on tap, which will also be free, and we're supposed to see it later on this summer. Exciting!
TUAW's Daily iOS App: Unpleasant Horse
Unpleasant Horse is the first iOS game put together by a division of the developer PopCap Games, the folks behind hits like Bejeweled and Plants vs. Zombies. The app was originally rejected due to some violent content, but it's back on the App Store, rated appropriately and ready for a free download right now. The game was put together in a 24-hour game jam session, and as much as it pains me to say this about a game essentially put together by PopCap developers, this rushed development schedule shows in Unpleasant Horse. You play a horse jumping through the clouds with a few wrinkles in gameplay, like "pleasant horses" that you need to drag down as far as possible to earn points, or birds that give you an extra mid-air jump. It's all pretty straightforward -- you jump from cloud to cloud for as long as you can. I'd like to say the game feels like Tiny Wings, but it's not quite that elegant, despite some colorful art. There are no real extras either, with no other game modes and no Game Center integration. Still, PopCap started 4th & Battery because it wanted to experiment with some edgier ideas, and since the game is being given away as a universal version for free, I can't really complain too much. Here's hoping PopCap finds what it set out to find with 4th & Battery, and then gets back to making the well-crafted games that it's known for.
