Games

Luxor

Posted August 28, 2009 - 1:59pm by Craig Motlong
Luxor1Developer: MumboJumbo
Category: Games
Version: 1.0
Release Date: August 8, 2009
Size: 22.9 MB
Price: $2.99
Rating 9/10

Birdhouse

With the seemingly unlimited game options on the iPhone platform, it's getting harder and harder for games to maintain my interest. Gone are the days where Enigmo ruled the roost (although that's still a good one, IMHO); now games come so fast and furious that you really have to distinguish yourself with sound, design, elegance, and replayability. Personally, I download so many games that it's easy to tell which ones are capturing my attention: I keep tapping their icons.

Toobz

Posted August 26, 2009 - 9:16pm by Marc Peter
Toobz1Developer: Off Center Software
Category: Games
Version: 1.3
Release Date: July 1, 2009
Size: 1.0 MB
Price: $0.99
Rating: 9/10

Birdhouse

I have been suffering a little lull in addictive games the last few weeks. I topped out in Space Invaders Infinity (guess it's not REALLY infinity is it guys?), mastered all of my missions in iBomber, blasted away all the creeps in Geo-Defense, know every riff in my music library thanks to MusicIQ and schooled the iPhone routinely in 10Pin Shufffle. Toobz came along the other day and grabbed my attention pretty forcefully.

10 Pin Shuffle

Posted August 24, 2009 - 12:03pm by Marc Peter
10Pin1Developer: Digital Smoke
Category: Games
Version: 1.2
Release Date: August 12, 2009
Size: 6.7 MB
Price: $1.99
Rating 10/10

Buy It Now At App Store

Frosty brews, a bunch of friends, a dark corner of a pub and a shuffleboard table are key ingredients to a great evening. Shuffleboard is one of the most fun and addicting games available in any drinking establishment in the world. Usually when a game that's so great in real life is parlayed into an iPhone game it results in a near miss. This is not the case with 10 Pin Shuffle. It's been a few weeks since I have scored a truly addictive game, 10 Pin Shuffle just filled that void.

Civilization: Revolution

Posted August 20, 2009 - 5:40pm by Craig Motlong
Civi1Developer: 2K Games
Category: Games
Version: 1.0
Release Date: August 6, 2009
Size: 73.8 MB
Price: $9.99
Rating 10/10

Birdhouse

Strategy gamers get no respect. While the sexy games like Fallout and Bioshock take 90% of the press, strategy gamers tend to have to slog through obscure titles to find the right mix of challenge and fun. That's why the Civilization games are so addictive to me. They're fun to play, easy to learn, but get appropriately complex as your civilization builds. So when Civilization: Revolution was released for the iPhone, I regarded it with a healthy dose of skepticism. I could see the simple parts of the game translating well to the iPhone, but what about later in the game, when you have tanks, bombers and nukes?

Moon Drop

Posted August 18, 2009 - 5:59pm by Marc Peter
MoonDrop1Developer: NimbleBit
Category: Games
Version: 1.0.1
Release Date: August 1, 2009
Size: 2.2 MB
Price: $0.99
Rating 7/10

Buy It Now At App Store

Moon Drop is what you get when you pin the tail on the donkey's ass, chuck a dart while blindfolded, or as Craig says, whack the pinata. The $0.99 price point has become somewhat of a joke. Sometimes you get a game that you would willingly pay $5.00 or more for, sometimes you get a total piece of crap, and sometimes you get exactly what you would expect for a buck, a mildly entertaining, easy to master, fairly intriguing little  game that offers a quick distraction from the boredom at hand. Such is Moon Drop.

Wurdle

Posted August 10, 2009 - 6:39pm by Marc Peter
Wurdle1Developer: Critical Thought Games
Category: Games
Version: 2.1
Released Date: May 21, 2009
Size: 2.7 MB
Price: $1.99
Rating 9/10

Birdhouse

I love word games, it's the writer in me. Wurdle is an entirely different word game than I have ever seen before, and it's originality is impressive in a genre that can seem a little repetitive.

Wurdle's screen consists of five rows or five keyboard buttons, each with a random letter on it's face. Above the keyboard are the lines of the paper that your soon to be discovered words will be listed on. At the very top of the screen there is a timer, a tally of how many words you have found and how many possible words total are available for discovery. This is the mindblowing thing: there are usually between 250 and 375 words that can be found hiding in the 25 keys.

geoDefense

Posted August 10, 2009 - 5:17pm by Marc Peter
GeoDefense1Developer: Critical Thought Games
Category: Games
Version: 1.2
Release Date: February 15, 2009
Size: 2.7 MB
Price: $0.99
Rating 10/10

Birdhouse

geoDefense was recommended to me by a friend the other day. "Do you want the next app that you won't be able to put down?" he asked me, which I assured him I did, and he replied "geoDefense." He wasn't wrong. geoDefense is a tower defense game that stands out from all others in the genre.

geoDefense has some incredible vector graphics, it brings out the best from the iPhone screen. The explosions are incredible, the lasers and fireballs as cool and perfectly precise as a light-saber. The sound effects are great too.

Blast away at "creeps" as they move unceasingly around the track. Some are fast, some slow. Place any of four types of towers in strategic places to nail as many creeps as possible. The energy from the blasted creeps can be gathered in a Vortex, and in times of desperation you can let go with the big one. Upgrade the guns and make them more powerful as the game progresses.

Bliss

Posted August 5, 2009 - 1:19pm by Marc Peter
Bliss1Developer: GOSUB 60
Category: Games (Charity)
Version: 1.1.7
Release Date: July 7, 2009
Size: 5.3 MB
Price: $0.99
Rating: 100/100

Birdhouse

I have a very personal beef with breast cancer, as do millions of people worldwide.

I have bought every item of pink gear available whose proceeds go to cancer research. Baseball hats, beach towels, water bottles, dog leashes, t-shirts, tennis balls and on and on and on.

Now there's an app for it.

Bliss is a Tetris style game, it's fun, it costs $0.99 and everyone should buy it. Every time you play the game and win a pink ribbon code Mobile Deluxe donates $0.05 to the Beautiful Day Foundation.

Trivial Cribbage

Posted August 4, 2009 - 11:48am by Craig Motlong
Trivial Cribbage titleDeveloper: Trivial Technology
Category: Games
Version: 1.1
Release Date: December 29, 2008
Size: 4.7 MB
Price: $0.99
Rating 7/10

Birdhouse

 

Cribbage was the perfect game for the pre-iPhone era. It's a card game with pegs, which makes it not super-graphics-intensive, it requires a pretty simple mathematical formula for a decent AI, and it doesn't require too many controls: tap, swipe, drag. So what if you don't want to play Hero of Sparta or The Sims? What if you want to sit back and play a nice, simple game of cribbage?

You can. But, at least with Trivial Cribbage, it does feel like you're playing on a dumber phone.

Star Fusion

Posted August 3, 2009 - 4:14pm by Marc Peter
Star Fusion 1Developer: Christopher Waite
Category: Games
Version: 1.0
Release Date: July 26, 2009
Size: 3.0 MB
Price $0.99
Rating 8/10

Birdhouse

Star Fusion is one of those games that are just indie-developed-looking to the core. The developer, Christopher Waite, put the entire game together as a one man show; the graphics, the sounds and the accompanying music. It's simple, clean and straightforward.

Star fusion is a quick one to pick up and figure out, but a hard one to master. The stars are created randomly so no two games are the same in order or pace. One game can be extremely slow and rhythmic, the next fast and furious. The games last two minutes each, so there is a standardization in that aspect and scores are definitely comparable to each other.