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TUAW's Daily App: Captain Puzzle
Captain Puzzle is a colorful puzzle game in the vein of Bust a Move (which itself is on the App Store, by the way) and Snood (ditto). As Captain Puzzle, you throw little colored balls at similarly colored villains; when you are able to get three of the same color touching, they'll disappear and give you points. The 50 levels are set up Angry Birds-style, with each level requiring you to chase down three stars, challenging you to collect them all as you play along. The game offers both OpenFeint and Game Center integration, but unfortunately, there's just the one mode to play through; it'd be nice to see an endless mode or even a multiplayer mode added in eventually. But the basic gameplay is there, with some fun objective-based twists on the old Snood gameplay. The superhero theme makes for some fun graphics and nice music. Captain Puzzle is available on the App Store now, on the iPhone for US$0.99.
TUAW's Daily App: Moon Drop
NimbleBit, the company behind Pocket Frogs (which is still one of my favorite games on the App Store), has decided to change all of its titles on the store to the low, low price of free, so if you've never picked up Dizzypad, Sky Burger or this cute little physics-based arcade game, in which you need to safely land as many colonists on the moon as possible, now is the time. The game's quite simple, but just like all of NimbleBit's titles, the polish and charm keep it interesting. No, it's not a vast title (and while there is Plus integration, there's not a lot to do other than try to beat your own score), but NimbleBit has decided to give away all of its titles for the foreseeable future simply because "free is more fun," so you might as well jump in and check them out. I'll be curious to see what's next from these guys -- they've certainly learned a lot from their previous success with Pocket Frogs, and they're clearly taking those lessons to heart.
TUAW's Daily App: Battleheart
There are tons of great RPG apps out lately, and I'm not sure why that is -- something about the way the App Store has developed. At any rate, here's another one. Battleheart is just out this week, and it's really amazing. The game is a real-time RPG battler. There's not a lot of story or extras to this one, but the core system, in which you choose a group of heroes and send them out to battle oncoming hordes in various settings, is designed and executed very well. There are the usual RPG trappings of extra skills and better equipment, but the bonus here is the control scheme -- the cute little heroes are super easy to drag around, set up as healers or drop spells as a magic user. The graphics are polished, the sounds and music are great, and the variety of classes and their various abilities is really awesome. Unfortunately, there's not a ton of content -- the main battle mode is all there is, and while it takes a while to play through (probably more than enough for most casual players), there's no multiplayer, survival mode or any other gameplay to check out. There's no Game Center integration at all, either. Some users have reported crashes as well, and on that your mileage may vary. But all of those things can (and probably will) be patched in later. The core game is available right now for US $2.99, and it's worth every penny.
TUAW's Daily App: Archer's Quest
I would describe Archer's Quest as "Angry Birds for real gamers." The game shares some core components of the popular iPhone hit, namely that to play, you pull back on a projectile and fire it at your opponents. But while Angry Birds was fun and cartoony, Archer's Quest is a little more serious ... but only a little. The game is very loosely based around the story of Archer William Tell, and your goal as the player is simply to get involved in a series of archery duels. You and your opponent take shots at each other, with you determining the angle and power of each of your shots, and you need to hit him more than he hits you. The story adds a little role-playing, as you can upgrade your equipment and even choose shots as you roll along. Hitting your opponent in various places on his body means you do more or less damage, so not only do you need to hit him, but where you hit him matters a lot; it also makes for some sometimes gory and often well-rendered deaths. There is Game Center integration included, but no multiplayer; hopefully we'll see that in an update, maybe along with a survival mode. Even without those extras, Archer's Quest is a lot of fun. The full version is a bargain at US$0.99, and there's a lite version to try if you don't want to plunk down the buck just yet.
TUAW's Daily App: Legendary Wars
I got to see Legendary Wars at Macworld last week, and it's a fun title. It has a good mix of many different game genres and a lot of solid game content to explore. At its core, Legendary Wars is a fantasy-based real-time strategy game, but there's a Plants vs. Zombies feel to it as you summon various fantasy creatures and send them off to fight against the bad guys. That's the core gameplay, but there are lots and lots of different variants on it, from a tower defense spin-off to some more action-based levels, and even a Canabalt-style running level. This is developer Orian Livnat's first game; he and his family and friends are responsible for the Liv Games company. Legendary Wars shows that he and his fellow developers took a lot of pride in what they did, because the title is bursting with polish and care. With no shortage of things to do and a lot of fun to be had through a few different game modes (and an update with Game Center integration on the way), Legendary Wars is an excellent title on the iPhone for US$2.99.
TUAW's Daily App: Cashish
Whenever we TUAW bloggers all get together, we tend to pass around our favorite iPhone apps of late, and this week at Macworld has been no exception. Last year at WWDC, Victor Agreda recommended Taxi Magic, and this year at Macworld, our own Mike Rose told me about Cashish, a financial app with about as narrow a purview as they come. The idea of Cashish is that it tracks your available cash, as simply and as quickly as possible. You may think it's not too necessary to use a whole app to keep track of what's in your pocket, but Cashish not only tracks what's there, but what goes out and where it goes to as well. Every time you spend some cash, you can track how much it was (the app wisely doesn't get involved in the details and just sticks to whole dollars), assign it to a category, and the app will help you monitor your spending over the last week or month. If you (like me) often pull out money and then wonder just where it goes off to, Cashish will help you figure that out -- and maybe even make sure you stay a little more judicious when dropping the dollars. Plus, it's completely free, so you won't have to drop even a single penny on it. Excellent little app -- it's very focused on just the one task, but it does that one task quite well.
Updated TUAW application now available on the App Store
Update: We're getting feedback that the app is not working on the iPad, and we're saying the same problem here -- our development team is aware of the issue and they're working on correcting it ASAP. If you haven't emptied your Trash yet, the older version of the app (1.0.1.7) is still there -- you can pull it out to the desktop, delete the 2.0 version in iTunes, and drag the 1.0 .ipa file into your iTunes library to downgrade. You can't have one version for your iPhone and another for your iPad, unfortunately, unless you sync them on different machines. We'll advise as soon as we have a fixed version in the store. Also note that the new version of the app uses a different mechanism for saving posts than the older version did and the saved posts do not migrate to the new app, so please jot down your saved articles before updating so you can find them again. --- It's here! The iPhone update all faithful TUAW readers have been asking about (and asking about...) is now available on the App Store. Although it's not universal for the iPad (sorry!), it does up the ante with many notable improvements including support for Retina Display resolutions. The app also lets you share news, photos, videos and other tech stories via Twitter, Facebook and email. For those of you that like to organize and store your content, we even added the ability to save articles for offline reading in-app or to Evernote, Instapaper or ReaditLater. A few UI enhancements make it easier to navigate within the app, and an integrated mini-browser lets you view content without leaving the app. Overall, we think it's a much improved experience, and we hope you like it as much as we do. The TUAW app is available on the App Store for free. Grab the latest version and let us know what you think in the comments (or leave reviews on the store, too). Enjoy!
TUAW's Daily App: Dead Space
Dead Space is already known as a high-quality title on both consoles and PC, and the sequel just arrived this week to play through. (Though I'm a fan of the series and was even able to play a few preview builds of the game, I haven't had time to play the actual game because of Macworld Expo this week.) But along with the full title, EA has also had its Iron Monkey Studio create and release a Dead Space iOS tie-in, and it's a pretty solid experience. Rather than just rehash the console series, the game is an all-new experience in the Dead Space universe, sporting a pretty impressive recreation of the original game's limb-severing mechanics and horror-based sci-fi setting. You play as a character named "Vandal," a member of the freaky Church of Unitology in the series, who is working on a little sabotage when things go horribly wrong and the series trademark Necromorph baddies start to appear. Just like the full game, the controls are excellent, and while the graphics don't quite scale to the same resolution, they're more than serviceable. The iOS game does a really amazing job of recreating the feel of the full experience. It's not quite as inventive or polished as the full release, but the story especially does a nice job of carrying you right through the game. The game sells for US$6.99 on the iPhone and $9.99 on the iPad, which is quite cheap when you consider what the console versions cost. I should probably say as well that this is definitely a mature game -- while the player death animations aren't quite as gory or detailed as what I've seen in the full title, there are still lots of limbs everywhere and scary moments to experience. The game also offers some microtransactions for power-up items, though the experience is still full-featured without them. And sadly, there's no Game Center integration at all -- this is very much a standalone title. Still, it's an excellent download for fans of the series, and even those who haven't played Dead Space but are still interested in the horror genre should get a kick out of it.
TUAW's Daily App: iMacworld
The Unofficial Apple Weblog is live here in San Francisco, ready for Macworld 2011. There are some pre-show activities happening today (along with a few offsite meetings we're working on), and then tomorrow the real fun begins, with the show floor opening (it's much larger this year than last) and our full video livestream running straight from the floor all day long. If you're around Moscone this week, the official Macworld app is a must-download -- it's got all the information you'll need about where to find exhibitors (we'll be in booth #1012), conference sessions or certain products, as well as information about local resources and even a community board running during the show. If you're not here at the show, the app isn't all that useful. You'll probably be able to glean some news out of it, but even better, you can just keep your browser pointed at TUAW all week long, since we'll have lots of interviews, hands-on demonstrations and plenty of other news from and insight on the conference. It's mid-January, and Macworld is here again -- it's going to be great!
TUAW's Daily App: Dungeon Raid
I am a sucker for both puzzle games and RPGs, so Dungeon Raid is right up my alley. It's a puzzle game where you have to match up various icons on a grid, as you can see above, but the real draw here is that all of those icons map to various RPG abilities that then let you level and grind out a sword-and-sorcery style character. Matching up swords and skulls, for example, lets you attack monsters, while matching coins piles up gold to spend on items later on. Leveling up grants various abilities and spells that affect combat, and as you play the puzzle game, you're also building up a character and casting spells at the same time. It's a great mix of the two genres, done in a pretty original way, and the game moves quickly enough that it's easy to summon up that "just one more turn" feeling as you play along. The game's polished and runs great, full Game Center and OpenFeint integration provides leaderboards, and there are four difficulty levels to play with and lots of random items to pick up as you play. Dungeon Raid is currently US$2.99 on the App Store.
TUAW's Daily App: Inspector Gadget's MAD Dash
I would say that this Canabalt-like game is good for kids (and it is), but I don't suppose there are too many kids around nowadays who remember the early days of Inspector Gadget like I did in my generation. We 80s babies can fondly look back on Gadget, Penny, Brain and the mysterious Dr. Claw with nostalgia, so while this one is more or less a licensed tie-in game, it's still good to see the old gang kicking around. Actually, just calling it a tie-in game isn't quite right -- there are some new elements here, in the form of coins to collect as you run and a few interesting new sequences (including some hook-jumping and a train for Gadget to dodge). But it basically plays like a running game; Gadget constantly skates forward, and a touch on the screen let's you jump up to safety. It's just as fun, too -- while it doesn't have Canabalt's cool flavor, it does have the Gadget theme, sounds from the series and everything else you'd expect from a licensed title. It also has a nice curve of replayability -- you're not only scored as you play, you're also granted Gadget Coins, which you can use to unlock extras both in-game and out (there's a digital comic and a sound board, both of which are nice meaty add-ons). Plus, the game is half price right now at just US 99 cents ($2.99 for the iPad version). If you've got kids who like Canabalt, or if you just remember being a kid that liked Inspector Gadget, give it a shot.
TUAW's Daily App: Shibuya
We're finishing up our week of minimal game experiences with an app that's probably the "most game" of the lot. Shibuya is actually a puzzle game, but it's also pretty trippy. The idea is that you must organize colors into stripes as they drop down the screen, and whenever two stripes of the same color touch, they get cleared off the board. The difficulty is that you aren't given the colors in the same order, so as the spikes drop, it's up to you to lay them all out correctly so that two like colors actually touch. It's a little tough to explain, but just playing it will allow you to figure it out. You basically have to think ahead about how you lay the colors out before they drop down to match themselves up. It's really fun, and the music is a nice bonus -- it's very well done. There are two gameplay modes to play around with, and there are tons of achievements to earn with Game Center integration, as well as leaderboards to compete on. The game is US$1.99 on the App Store, and those two bucks will give you plenty to do as you try to master this fun and eclectic title.
TUAW's Daily App: Strange Rain
We've been doing a week of experimental indie games in this space, and here comes Strange Rain today, from the creator of previous iOS indie title Ruben & Lullaby. Like the other games featured, Strange Rain is really more of an experimental art piece than an actual game. Rain falls on your iDevice's screen as the app plays, and it's really just an opportunity to sit, relax and experience things as they happen. There are some extras and secrets to go through -- a mode called Whispers Mode adds some words to the mix, and a Story Mode actually tells a story as you interact with the screen. What's fascinating about the app is that while it starts out as a rain simulation, following through with the experience turns things a bit, well...strange, and it's up to you, the player, to discover and find what meaning you want. Like the other experimental games, this means that the experience is a little more open-ended than just earning points (though there is Game Center integration in this one -- that's a fun bit). It's up to you to figure out how you'll react to a "game" like this, and for some players, that can end up being very fun as well. Strange Rain is US$1.99 for the universal version on the App Store.
TUAW's Daily App: Today I Die Again
I seem to have started off the week with some quality experimental gaming on the iPhone, so let's continue that trend with this great title called Today I Die Again from indie developer Daniel Benmergui. I met Daniel at IndieCade 2009 in Culver City, CA, and this is one of a few "games" he's brought to life. I put quotes around "games" because they're more like interactive stories. Benmergui's apps combine sometimes absurd graphics with words and sounds to create vignettes of experience, sometimes uplifting and witty, and sometimes sad and thoughtful. As of this writing the app is a free download, though I'm not sure how long it will stay that way given that it's being featured as a Free App a Day. But even if the price has gone back up, you can play through the game in its entirety for free online, then go buy the app if you want to support Benmergui and his terrific work. Make sure to play some of his other titles, too. I especially like I Wish I Were the Moon and Storyteller, but they're all good. Benmergui was doing his work even before Apple's platform was publicly available, but the App Store has been and continues to be a great breeding ground for very independent developers. Maybe we'll do a whole week here of interesting experimental games like these.
TUAW's Daily App: Hunters' Moon
Hunters' Moon is more of an experience than anything. It's a very beautiful app in a lot of ways, and it does have some game elements, but really it's a chance to sit and enjoy a piece of software that evokes a mood and an atmosphere. It was more or less inspired by a talk given by Brandon Boyer at last year's IndieCade conference; I did go to that show, but I didn't see Boyer's talk, unfortunately. Hunters' Moon is a great example of how personal and how simply beautiful video games can be. As the app's description says, it's "an interactive illustration and a drawing that shares an idea through game mechanics. It is best heard with headphones and played patiently." We get so caught up in the give and take of the business of software and the functionality of what we download and use that sometimes we neglect to see how powerful just sitting and enjoying these games can be. Give Hunters' Moon a try if that sounds intriguing. This iPad-only game is US$1.99 on the App Store.
TUAW's Daily App: Movie Triangles
Movie Triangles is a fun Java game where you connect movie stars and their films in a Sierpinski triangle-style grid. Developer Jim Blackler originally had the idea to create a trivia game made up of information straight from Wikipedia, and Movie Triangles is what that idea eventually became. It's also available for iOS now as a free universal app, so if you're a movie buff (or just know one), you can test your knowledge of movie casts right now on the iPhone and the iPad. Unfortunately, since the app started off outside of the iOS platform, it's not super flashy. You're basically just dragging triangles with text on them around, and a little bit of extra color or flash (a timer? another mode?) might have gone a long way. But the game is surprisingly addictive, as you can tell by playing it online, especially if you happen to know quite a bit about recent movies and movie stars. For film buffs, rearranging the triangles to try and remember who's in which movie is a lot of fun. The app is free, so there's really no reason to complain. Give it a look if you're into playing a little movie trivia on your iOS device.
TUAW's Daily App: Brutal Fantasy
Brutal Fantasy: The Orcs of Undermountain is an interesting mashup of action and role playing. The actual gameplay is a beat-em-up like the old Golden Axe and Double Dragon games. You play as a knight battling through all kinds of different minions and bad guys, using a virtual D-pad and action buttons to hack, slash and cast various spells along the way. But the game is also an RPG -- there's a story to play through, which is drawn comic book style, and you can level up stats, get new loot and upgrade as you see fit. The art style is pretty distinctive -- it's all done by Joel "Drakxxx" Rose, and while it might take a little getting used to, everything is very detailed and stylistic. One word of warning: when the title says "brutal," it ain't kidding around. You'll see lots of blood and limbs spraying around in this one. The full game is US$1.99, and it comes with Game Center integration and universal compatibility, with enhanced graphics on the iPad. That's a pretty good deal already, but if you're not yet sold you can play through the Prologue version of the game for free. It's short, and it has ads, but it should give you a good idea of just how much fun the full game is.
TUAW's Daily App: Push Panic
Appular released Push Panic last November, and it got somewhat lost in the midst of big iOS releases. At its core, it's a Tetris-style falling block game, though it has elements of the old Same Game, too. Blocks fall from the top of the screen, and you have to tap and target same-colored blocks to delete as many as possible before the screen fills up. The action goes from simple to frenzied, and four different modes have you race to delete a certain number of blocks, chase scores and combos, or try to delete as many blocks as possible within a time limit. Push Panic version 1.1.1 is quite polished, with complete integration on both Game Center and OpenFeint for achievements and leaderboards. It also has an excellent soundtrack. Appular has told TUAW that the app is free to download today, so don't miss this chance to pick it up and play for free.
TUAW's Daily App: Gravity Wars
Last week while we were at CES, I asked our editor-in-chief, Victor Agreda, for one of his favorite iPhone games, and he told me one that I'd never heard of: Gravity Wars. It's a very retro affair -- the idea is that you control a pixelated ship and fire, given an angle and speed, at another ship on a starfield. Your lines are drawn out as you fire on the screen, and the goal is to navigate the complicated gravity to hit the opposing ship. It's simple, but very interesting -- you end up calculating some really complicated shots as you try to take the other ship down. There's a free and a paid version of the app, but there's no difference between them -- the idea is that if you like the game, you'll buy it from the author for just 99 cents. Note that the app's settings are unfortunately stored in the Settings app on your iPhone or iPod touch, since this is an old school title. And, of course, there's no Game Center integration or any other bells or whistles. This one's still fun, but it's retro in both graphics and iOS features.
TUAW's Daily App: ArtRage
ArtRage is a very slick drawing and painting app, originally for Windows and Mac, but now also found on the iPad. The app is extremely realistic. You can use any number of various brushes and paints, and the colors will even blend and warp on the canvas as you lay them down, just as they would on a real surface. The iPad app even allows for unlimited layers and blending, and it can export files out with a sync or send them straight to email for the Photo library. ArtRage is an excellent app for the iPad, and just for the CES 2011 show, it's been discounted to just US$1.99. If you're interested in a serious art app for the iPad, that's a bargain at even twice the price. We got to meet Ambient Design at CES just last evening here at the show in Las Vegas, and in addition to chatting about the iPad app and the sale, we asked the representative if ArtRage would find its way onto the Mac App Store as well, since the original program is still available for OS X. But we were told that it wouldn't. There was an issue with the way that ArtRage opens certain file formats in layers, and the company rep told us that because Apple was leery of malware and locking down the way certain apps opened certain files, ArtRage as it exists wouldn't be allowed in the store. That's too bad. Hopefully as the Mac App Store develops, Apple will find a way for developers like Ambient Design to do what they want to do.
