1st Impressions

Ancient Tomb is a maze adventure. It reminds me a lot of a graphical version of the mazes in the old Infocom text adventures. As you find the way into the maze, you find articles that can be used on your quest. The game has two control modes. You can use swipe gestures or button overlays like what is displayed in the screen shot. In case you are like me and find the gesture controls to be opposite of what you expect, you can reverse them. The goal of the game us to locate the burial chamber. Three levels of difficulty impact the game via the watchfulness of the guards. At $1.99, the game offers a limited amount of game play though. As such, it is probably not going to last too long on my iPhone.

Besieged is a $1.99 castle defense game.  You control a group of archers defending the castle.  As you are attacked by skeletons, you use your archers to take them out.  There is a time lag between when you launch your arrow(s) and when they arrive though, so you have to time your shots based on the speed of the attackers.

While the game works, I found it a bit limited.  Other games in this price range (or even less, like Defender Chronicles on sale now for $0.99) offer a lot more in the way of defenses.  I hate to give bad reviews, but there is really no comparison between the depth of this game and something on the order of Defender Chronicles.

Allied Aces: Stunt Pilot is a fun little $0.99 game.  Your goal is to fly your place through the hoops that are somehow hanging in the sky.  Control is simple.  You swipe up and down on the left side of the screen to increase or decrease speed.  Doing the same on the right side of the screen adjusts your direction.  If you flip all the way around, the plane flies in the other direction.  There are also stars that you can collect by flying into them.  Be careful not to fly into the edges of the hoop though.  If you do, you crash and burn.

For a buck, it is a fun little game, but it only kept my interest for a short period of time.  I’m just not that good at the arcade types of games.  The developer is working on other flying games, but I wish that instead of different games, this one would get some more depth.  Perhaps some different planes or different types of missions or something.

Farm Frenzy is a fun little time/resource management game.  You test your management skills at managing a farm.  This could be anything from collecting a certain number of geese or eggs, to protecting your animals from bears, to building a cheese dairy.  A total of 45 challenging levels including several types of animals, buildings, and things to sell await you.

While Farm Frenzy is $4.99, a free light version is available.  If you are a fan of time/resource management games, I’d suggest checking out the free version.  Don’t be surprised if you find the challenge worth the price of the full product.

Polly’s Popping Parrots Reloaded is not your typical “match three or more” game.  Available for $1.99 in the app store, the game features, you guessed it, parrots that you have to “pop” instead of the traditional gems.  What makes the game different though is that you are playing against a chosen computer opponent or against a friend over bluetooth.  If you are not faster than they are, you get your lights turned out and/or your birds “scared” and they fly around and slow you down. If you are able to pop eight or more parrots at a time, you get to do the same thing to them.

While the game has these additional features for a unique twist, I would have been much happier with this game at a $0.99 price point unless you going to take advantage of the multi-player aspect of the game.  There is just too much competition in the “match the colors”  solo-player games to justify the higher cost.  I’d also love to see a more relaxed “endless mode” or something where you didn’t have to compete against something that thinks a lot faster than I do.

Block Drop was a great surprise to me.  It is a great little game and is currently on sale for $0.99 in the app store.  Controls are very simple.  The arrows on the right control direction.  Holding down the “button” on the left allows you to jump your “gem” two places.  It is kinda like a cross between Time Box or Nintaii and one of those peg-jumping games.  Instead of rolling a block around to get it to land on a particular place, the object is to jump from square to square, making them disappear as you leave them, until just the one with a checkerboard is left. Makes for a very unique take on an old classic.  Since you can get multiple blocks stacked up in the same location, some squares will have to be jumped on more than once to make them all disappear.  In case these “stacks” obstruct your view, a small “map” appears in the top right corner of the screen.  If you get stuck, there is a great option to show the solution.

This map and the solution gets critical as you go to higher and higher levels.  Every level that you play is completely randomly generated.   Level 1 starts with 5 blocks.  Each subsequent level contains one more block than the previous one. Level 21 has 25 blocks and so on up to level 999 which contains 1004 blocks.  When you choose a level, you are basically choosing a difficulty level.  Ultimately, this means that you have an unlimited number of “levels” with 999 levels of difficulty.

Not only are the graphics stunning on the 999 levels, but the computer generated sound score is very relaxing and, unexpectedly to me, really adds a lot to the game.  One thing I could possibly would suggest for this title is an “undo” feature and/or a button to reset the level.  Block Drop is $0.99 in the app store for just a short period of time though, so get this while it is on sale.  It is the perfect addition to any puzzle-lover’s collection and makes my Must-Have list.  If you like puzzles, you won’t regret it.  This title is quickly becoming a favorite and I can’t recommend it highly enough.

CS One, or Circuit Strike One, is a game release by Chillingo.  I’ve reviewed a lot of their games in the past, but even with Chillingo, not all games are equal.  This one didn’t quite do it for me.  As is expected with their games, the graphics are wonderful. The game not only offers the ability to listen to your iPod library (an option I really like), but also different controller options, ship styles, and online stats and leader boards.

My suggestions for the game are few.  I found the text on the buttons to be hard to read.  The font could be a bit easier to understand.  Second, I’d love for there to be some in-game instructions.   While I could fly around and eventually hit “asteroids” and blow myself up, I don’t really think that was the object of the game.  I did it real well though! LOL

CS One is only $0.99 in the iTunes store.  If you are into arcade style games it’s definitely worth the buck to check it out.  It has great reviews by those into arcade style gaming.  I’m just not that guy though.

4 Bugs is a nice puzzle game.  At $1.99, it offers 500 different photos that you have to compare and locate the four differences between them.  They are often very subtle.  Between the two photos is a lit fuse that is burning down that indicates your time left in the level.  I generally don’t like playing against a timer.  It causes me stress.  While the game offers both single player and dual player modes, I really wish that there was a mode that was not timed so that you could relax a bit with the game.  I also wish that, upon the conclusion of the round, that there was a better and slower indication of the places/differences that you miss.  Right now, it places a mark over a difference, which covers the actual difference, and then the screen goes back to the menu so quickly that you can’t really see what you missed.

Overall, I would give this game a passing score.  It is well implemented.  It’s just not my particular cup of tea.

Warped Space is a perfect little $0.99 game.  Simple to learn, and frustrating to master.  The goal is simple.  You need to launch from one blue planet to another without hitting any other planets on the way, but using their gravitational force to your advantage.  You are scored based on the level of force you use on launch, the level of difficulty, and the length of your trip.  By choosing a high level of difficulty, the lowest possible initial force, and the longest flight – possibly involving ever-larger orbits around planets on the way – you can hopefully set a high score on the leader board.  With 13 levels (including the 2 simple tutorial ones) and 4 levels of difficulty, the game promises a lot of entertainment.

Game controls are simple.  Using the little grey circle at the bottom of the screen or your initial planet as a guide, position your finger (or the white dot) in the direction you want to go and indicate the initial thrust by positioning it closer or further from the center of the grey area or the planet you are launching from.   As you move your “aim” around, a line shows up on the screen to indicate the projected path.  Since I have big fingers, I find using the entire screen as it relates to the initial planet to give me much more control over things.  Once the trajectory is what you want, just tap the fire icon.  It’s really that simple.  A full tutorial and video showing game play are available on the developer’s web site if you need more.

The game comes with no background music.  You can supply your own with your iTunes library.  I prefer that.  I hate it when a nice game has a repetitive soundtrack that I cannot replace with my preferred style of music or audio book.  The developers wanted a real critical review and honesty.  If the game sucked, they wanted to know.  So I’ll come right out with it.  No holding back.  If you like a fun little physics game at a great price, you owe it to yourself to check this little game out.  Make sure you reset your device after installing it though.  I received a graphically mixed up “first time playing” message the first time I launched the game.  It’s never happened since though, and since I didn’t do my normal reset after adding new stuff, I can’t say that it wasn’t my own fault.

My suggestion for the games would include the option to always submit your top score for each level, showing the top score from the leaderboard for each level/difficulty combination at the top of the screen (instead of the author), and the addition of a “next level” option beside the button to replay the current one.

Sneezies is a $0.99 release from Chillingo.  It falls into that “casual arcade” kind of category that is perfect for those times when you don’t want a huge mental challenge.  The premise is simple.  You have these little cute critters floating around in bubbles.  Your goal is to touch the screen in the single place that makes a puff of sneezing poweder that not only pops the bubbles, but causes the little dudes to sneeze…thereby popping more bubbles.  To get past each level, you have to pop a required number of bubbles and “release” the little critters that float down on parachutes.

The game offers an easy mode, a classic mode (45 levels), and a challenge mode (15 levels).  Your score be uploaded for rankings against others.  The game is responsive, and the graphics and sound are of high quality.  I really liked the option to adjust the volume level of the music and sound effects separately and not just turn them on and off.   Overall, it is a fun, cheap little game and another quality release from Chillingo.