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iPhone It In: Soul Trapper
When people are surprised by how excited I am for the iPhone as a platform, Soul Trapper is the kind of game that I bring up. It's odd and it appeals, I imagine, to a pretty small sliver of the market, but if you want a game like this, you're not going to find it anywhere else.Think of the game as an interactive radio play. You take the role of Kane Pryce, who has two edgy names, so you can imagine the kind of edge we're talking about here. Extreme-itude aside, Kane has one other quirk: A magic box (the titular Soul Trapper) than can suck up ghosts and allow Kane to interview them, or even send them over to the Other Side.
iPhone It In: Top Gun
Listen, as the writer of Joystiq's only iPhone-related column, I do my fair share of playing licensed garbage. For example, I played a Land of the Lost-themed game that makes "Punch the Monkey" look like The Orange Box. I'm not even going to link to it, for fear that you'll play it. Seriously, it was the game equivalent of watching my immediate family die in a house fire.You can imagine my confusion then when I say that Top Gun is shockingly good. No, don't laugh, it's true.%Gallery-63256%
iPhone It In: Mafia Wars
We're a little embarrassed at how much time we've sunk into the iPhone port of Facebook favorite Mafia Wars. At its heart, it's not really much of a game. But damn it if we can keep from compulsively tapping the thing every 15 minutes or so.As a low-rent thug, you'll work your way up the ladder by completing jobs and then buying new weapons with the cash you earn. There is, however, no risk.
iPhone It In: Catcha Mouse
We put a lot of focus on iPhone games that are complete and rich enough to fit on handheld consoles like the PSP and DS. But this week, we thought we'd look at the sort of small, quickplay game that the platform already does better than any other. Because this week, we're addicted to Catcha Mouse.Yeah, OK, stop snickering, it sounds kind of silly. And the game's premise is goofy enough to match: As a mouse tries to escape through holes in your floor, you have to lay out traps to stop it.
iPhone It In: Word Scramble
This is the sort of game that makes writing about the iPhone platform daunting, but exciting. Just a week after I heaped praise on Word Fu, I discovered Word Scramble, a game with a similar premise that I actually enjoyed a lot more.Just like in Word Fu, you're given a selection of letters (this time a standard grid rather than cubes) and you have to make as many words out of them as you can in a few minutes. It lacks the power-ups of Word Fu, which robs a little bit of excitement, but it also makes you feel like you only have yourself to blame for low scores.
iPhone It In: geoDefense
I'm not proud of the fact that if you saw me madly poking my iPhone during GDC, I probably wasn't communicating hawt scoops to the homebase. No, I was probably playing geoDefense, the bastard love child of Geometry Wars and tower defense that my productivity wishes had never seen the light of day.As in most TD games, you'll fend off an ever-increasing army of creeps by strategically placing different towers to defend your homebase. Your towers have a range of attacks from a standard shot to a missile with splash damage, and you'll have to pick the right one to deal with the range of enemies, which vary in strength and speed.%Gallery-48925%
iPhone It In: iDracula
I'll be the very first to admit that iDracula is a really, really bad name for a game. It's bad in a fun way that makes me laugh to myself when I turn it on, but still, bad. It would require a Herculean effort of diversion to get me to recommend a game with a name like "iDracula," and that's exactly what you're going to find here.iDracula is a twin stick shooter, or maybe "twin dial" would be more appropriate. By rotating the left dial with your thumb, you're able to turn and move in that direction -- ditto for the right dial and shooting. I know, I know, it sounds insane, but it works better than it has any right to.%Gallery-47794%
iPhone It In: Word Fu
It may seem like Word Fu is just a cute name to accompany the martial arts trappings of this word creation game, but it's a surprisingly accurate descriptor. For one, it requires concentration the likes of which most iPhone games never approach, and many of its techniques don't reveal themselves without a lot of study. Also, when you do have a really good game, you feel like you could put your fist through a pile of bricks without much trouble.You'll begin by receiving a selection of nine letters printed on cubes that you can either completely replace or roll individually in an attempt to get a better selection. After a few seconds of rejiggering, you'll have 45 seconds to make as many words as you can, with less common letters and longer words netting you extra points.
iPhone It In: Zen Bound
Within moments of starting Zen Bound, I was completely embarrassed we hadn't yet featured it on "iPhone It In." No discussion of the iPhone as a platform that omits this soothing, beautiful puzzle game can really call itself complete. Hell, in terms of making use of the iPhone's specific strengths, Zen Bound is the discussion. It is, as developer Secret Exit says simply in its iTunes Store description, a game about wrapping wooden sculptures with rope. %Gallery-46237%
iPhone It In: Rolando
Anyone who's ever played LocoRoco has been guilty of it. You just can't help but tip your PSP to the left or right, trying for that extra smidgen of incline to get your gelatinous balls of goo rolling, even though you know it has no real effect. But in ngmoco's Rolando, the controls are all about the angle of your system, and it makes for some of the most fun you can have on your iPhone.
iPhone It In: LightBike
Tron's deadly glowing discs are an object of no small amount of fascination for those who went through their geek pupa stage in the '80s. But to focus solely on the disc is to discount the deep veins of awesome within the film's high speed suicidemobile: the Light Cycle. The iPhone's LightBike manages to serve not only as fan service to those who've dreamed of strapping into one, but a darn fine game in its own right.%Gallery-44907%
iPhone It In: Silent Hill: The Escape
Hey, welcome to our brand new iPhone feature, "iPhone It In." We're going to start off with a discussion of a new iPhone game, but stick around afterward to see how you can win a super-sexy, Joystiq-branded iPhone case from our friends at Element! [Update: Congrats to Baby Sea Tuna, a winner is you!]Let's give credit where it's due: As a proof of concept, Silent Hill: The Escape works. If someone at Konami wanted to prove that they could create a creepy atmosphere that boasted the series' trademark look and sound on a phone, they should consider this a success.%Gallery-44164%
