Futuridium EP [MixedBag Srl] - $1.99

3D/behind the back arcade-based shooters aren’t really a thriving genre in the AppStore. But when one does come along, it’s usually worth checking out as there’s not many poorly designed titles in this little ‘underground’ genre of video games. Fractal Combat, No Gravity, Awesome Saucer, After Burner, all of these are definitely showcase titles on the iDevice. Yet, for whatever reason, more developers are not tapping into this widespread player base like you’d expect them to. But the ones that do take on the challenge have shown that they’re incredibly talented, and the release of Futuridium EP by MixedBag is no exception. 

Futuridium brings back memories of games like Star Fox and Space Harrier but brings a sort of puzzle feeling to the whole game. Each stage puts you up against a different battleship and you’re tasked with taking out blue cubes, turrets and mines in each stage before the core of the battleship is revealed and ready to be destroyed. What makes the game so much more than just your average behind the back space shooter are the scoring and energy mechanics. While you play, your energy gauge will be constantly depleting. If you crash, a large chunk of energy is taken away. Linking together chains of destroyed cubes will raise your energy gauge as well as your score multiplier and, while using the game’s nifty 180 degree flipping mechanic, each stage’s cubes can be linked together in one continuous chain resulting in the possibility of some insane scores. 

Now, there are only 13 levels, but don’t let that dissuade you from taking the plunge here. There are 2 difficulties at first, Easy and Normal, but there are also 3 more locked difficulties which can be unlocked once you complete game on the previous difficulty. There’s also a catch with the difficulties. Each one ramps the speed of the gameplay up a notch, and with this also comes more points per object destroyed. So, the higher the difficulty, the higher your score could potentially be. There is also a single level mode where you can play levels that you’ve already reached in the Arcade Mode in order to practice. This does come in handy, especially since the game’s difficulty, even on Normal, is fairly high. But if you’re willing to put some time in, Futuridium EP really opens up as one of the most challenging yet satisfying arcade shooter experiences you’ll have on your mobile device. 

The graphics are retro, minimal, slick and chic and definitely draw you into the world of the game. The dubstep and electro tracks selected for the game’s soundtrack are full of energy and definitely fit the adrenaline packed gameplay. There are no power-ups, no shields, it’s basically just you and your reflexes up against the game. Another plus? There’s no IAP in sight, putting everyone on a level playing field right from the get-go. All of this ties in together to form an incredibly immersive, quick moving package that’s a total feast for the eyes, ears and all out twitch reflexes that so many of us wind up seeking out when trying to decide what game we want to play when we’re looking for a challenge. 

Priced at an incredibly reasonable $1.99, being Universal and including GameCenter support with leaderboards for Hi Score and Cubes Destroyed along with 35 hard to snag achievements and plenty of little Easter eggs for you completionist’s out there to try and find, I really have no qualms highly recommending Futuridium EP. It might just wind up on our end of the year ‘Best Of’ lists for 2013 and I wouldn’t be surprised if it ended up on more than a few other sites Game Of The Year lists. If you’re still not convinced, you can download the game for free from the developer’s website to play on your PC or MAC. If that doesn’t add to the drive to support MixedBag, I don’t know what will. I’m definitely excited to see what comes out of their studio next. If this is any indication of what’s to come, there’s a good chance it’ll blow many gamers away.

Read More

Crush! [RadianGames] - $0.99

We have a handful of favorite developers here at The App Shack. One of them is the insanely talented studio of RadianGames. With their previous titles; Super Crossfire, Ballistic SE, Fireball SE, Inferno+, Slydris, Bombcats and Gobs Of Fun reaching quite a few iOS gamers with some of which being named as the best of best in their respective genres, RadianGames seems to have decided to go more towards the puzzle genre as of late. Their most recent title, Crush!, fits in the same category as Slydris and their title before Crush!, Bombcats, is another puzzler, focusing more on physics than quick addictive gameplay. But even if you’re not into the puzzling genre, you should keep in mind how amazingly polished RadianGames previous shooter titles have been and know that that professionalism and same production value has been carried over to their puzzle titles. And Crush! is yet another prime example of this.

Crush!, like Slydris, is a block based puzzler, but of a different nature. Instead of trying to clear multiple lines by moving blocks around one at a time, you’re tasked with removing one of three different colored chunks of blocks from the full ‘stack‘. While the mechanics are far from original, RadianGames have taken the type of gameplay found in titles like Collapse, reMovem, Block Fall and others, and expanded on it quite a bit giving players 3 different game modes and 5 different power-ups as well as some other nifty little mechanics that keep the gameplay fresh and feeling original in an otherwise stale genre.

While playing and clearing out groups of blocks each tap that you make moves the whole stack of blocks down further. This, on top of the stack moves down at a constant rate. Both of these speeds increase as you get further into the game, with the speeds displayed on the bottom of the screen. So while you may start out with the stack moving down a couple of spaces every time you remove a group of blocks, it will quickly start moving down to 2 and a half spaces, then 3, and so on, also while speeding up the constant movement. 

This comes into play with each one of the 3 different gameplay modes. Think has a very slow constant drop speed while having the stack move down large distances with each tap that takes out a group of blocks. This gives you the time to actually think about which group of blocks you want to take out, but penalizes you for not making good decisions on a regular basis. With the next mode, React, the constant drop speed is fast, but the burst when removing a group of blocks is a lot shorter so that you can make a lot of quick decisions without pushing the stack of blocks into the bottom of the screen right away. Lastly, there’s Crush mode, which is a sort of mixture of the two with the stack moving at a medium constant speed and having a medium drop distance. All of this makes for some pretty varied gameplay across the modes. 

At the beginning of each game you’ll also be able to choose one of five power-ups. Remix mixes up every row of blocks and drops the whole stack of bricks down a bit. Slow briefly slows the stack down, Chop removes the lowest 25 blocks, Solo sets 3 rainbow blocks onto the stack. Rainbow blocks are blocks that can connect groups of blocks. Say you have a group of black blocks touching a rainbow block and on the other side of the rainbow block, a group of white blocks. Touching either the black or white group of blocks will remove all of the colors that are touching the rainbow block. Getting these pieces into the right position is a game opening skill that definitely comes in handy once you learn to work with them. The last two power=ups are Blast and Duet. Blast removes 1 color from the stack and Duet turns the most common color in the stack into the other two. Each power-up is activated once you reach a certain score and if you have a power-up stored, you can use it as a sort of ‘extra life’ that will clear the last couple rows off the stack if it hit’s the bottom. However, this also makes it so that you can not charge up the power-up again for the rest of your game. This is all made even more complex by having a unique ‘wrapping’ feature. This connects both edges of the stack to each other, allowing for more thought out and challenging gameplay. 

GameCenter support drives the gameplay with 5 leaderboards, one for the amount of blocks you can remove in Think Mode, another for how long you can survive in React Mode, both how long you can survive and how many blocks you can remove in Crush Mode and an experience board for how much experience you’ve earned throughout the whole time you’ve played the game. There are also 10 hard to unlock achievements for you achievement hunters out there. RadianGames have always put out quality games, and Crush! is no exception. Priced at $0.99, if you’re into the genre, this is definitely a game that will have a long life-span on your device. I can only hope that RadianGames will wind up putting out more of these addictive action puzzlers in the future. 

Read More

Little Luca [Glowingpine Studios] - $0.99

Physics puzzlers are one of a couple of genres that feel right at home on the mobile device’s touch screen. And while most of them have you using the environment to move objects around, there are a couple that take that sort of gameplay mechanic to another level. Games like Bumpy Road, Solipskier, Lazy Raiders, Night Sky and others do this in such a way that, even though some might not consider it incredibly original, they still do manage to feel fresh, unique and new while playing. And that’s where the new title from Glowingpine Studios, Little Luca, fits in. 

While looking out at the stars one night, Luca notices something strange happening. All of a sudden, the stars start falling out of the sky. Now it’s up to you to collect them all and restore the sky to it’s original beauty by collecting the 3 stars in each stage using the environment to maneuver a little ball around. As with most games, the beginning of the game acts as a soft intro to the gameplay mechanics, with only a couple of objects moving when you ‘activate’ them with the game’s simple one touch controls. As you progress further, more elements are added like whales, airstreams, gravity wells and more making the gameplay incredibly interesting as well as challenging. 

In each level there are certain objects that will activate when you touch the screen. Sometimes it’s a circle that will indent, launching the ball when you let go of the screen, other times it’s a platform that will move, knocking the ball into something else, slowing it’s momentum or even completely changing the direction of the ball. Some airstreams will always be active while others will be ‘dead’ until you touch the screen, activating them and some of them will even be rotating, requiring you to tap the screen at the precise moment to send the ball in the direction that it needs to in order to reach the end of level goal. Whales act as a sort of moving circle most of the time, swimming around in the water ready to launch the ball upward when the time is right. All of this put together has allowed the developers to come up with some incredibly inventive level designs, and even better, they’ve very clearly well thought-out level designs. I couldn’t help but be impressed throughout the game with how perfectly each and every level was put together. 

Graphically the game is a throwback to the days of retro gaming while still adding the sort of ‘modern retro’ graphics that iOS gamers have come to enjoy. It isn’t so retro that the pixels don’t have character and becoming attached to the little white ball is not hard to do. Throughout the 90 levels there are 3 different worlds, each with their own distinctive environments and while the graphics are inherently minimal because of the retro graphics used, they are also done incredibly well, adding a lot to the vibe throughout the game. 

On top of the challenge of collecting each of the 3 stars in every stage, there is also a nice scoring system that’s based on how many stars you collect and how quickly you do it. This is emphasized with GameCenter’s 4 leaderboards; one for your Total Score and a board for each individual world. And while there are no achievements, this adds to the drive of scoring better, and collecting every star while flying perfectly through each and every level. 

Priced at $0.99, being completely IAP free and not having one little negative thing that I can say about the game, it’s very easy to recommend Little Luca. It’s very clear that a lot of love, effort and time has gone into this incredibly polished physics puzzler. It also brings that ‘something special’ to the table, making it stand out in the sea of physics puzzlers that have infested the AppStore over the last couple of years. More levels are planned in the future, and I sincerely hope that the game sells well enough to make that possible, as finding a game like this, especially within it’s genre, is an insanely rare occurrence. 

Read More

Sporos [AppXplore] - $0.99

Last year, Bulkypix published quite a few really really good games. Many of which, I still have on both  my iPad and my iPhone. One of these titles was AppXplore’s Lightopus (if you don’t have it yet, you should definitely check it out). Since then, AppXplore has been had at work creating their most recent release, Sporos, a puzzler with a crazy amount of content, and this time, has decided to publish it on their own.

Now, puzzlers on the iOS are kind of hit a miss. There’s more than a few out there that are just way too while others can be frustratingly hard, and the amount of content can be minimal to overwhelming. Basically, there’s very few that really just hit the nail on the head in terms of difficulty and content. Sporos, even though there’s a whopping 500 levels, is one of the later. Levels can be solved fairly quickly in the beginning, but once you get into it, do take some thought, as well as experimentation, in order to solve. The added 3 star system helps to push gamers, but because you can take all the time you need solving a stage and then restart it and 3 star it in about 3 seconds does kind of take away from the drive to get it right the first time through. Having a special ‘first timers’ medal or something for those of us who are lucky enough to be able to 3 star stages on our first time through would have been a fantastic addition, but the lack of it kind of makes it feel like every other 3 star system puzzle game out there in that regard (which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, just something that quite a few gamers would like to see built upon every now and again). 

The goal of the game is to fill up a pattern of empty cells by using seeds known as sporos. These sporos are able to branch out and fill up cells based on the patterns that are imprinted on them. For instance, having a seed that has two horizontal lines found on it will fill up empty cells in a straight line to the left and right of wherever you place the seed. In each stage, you’re given a few seeds and will need to fill every empty cell with the bits that branch out of them. The quicker you do this, as well as how many times you move a seed, will result in your final star rating for the level. But as already stated, you can take all the time you need figuring out where to place the seeds, and then restart the stage and complete it earning you 3 stars in about 3 seconds. 

That’s not to say that it’s not a difficult game by any means. With the breaks in the pattern and seed branches able to jump across empty spaces, actually figuring out how to intertwine the seeds and their branches will take some thought, and is not something that can be figured out right off the bat just by glancing at a pattern and available seeds. There will be times when picking up a seed and moving it around the pattern, seeing what empty cells light up and would get blocked off before deciding what seeds to place where and when (as a seed can not be placed on top of another seeds branch) will become something that most players will wind up doing at the start of almost every stage. 

The stages are broken up into two different modes; Essential Labs and Experimental Labs. Essential Labs mode is like your typical puzzler, where levels start off easy, and grow increasingly difficult as you progress through the game. Experimental Labs can be a bit more tricky. In the Experimental levels, you’ll find cells with arrows in them. These cells act as extenders for the seeds branches. Once a branch hits the cell with an arrow, it will carry on in the direction that the arrow is pointing. What makes this more tricky is that the extentions caused by these special arrow cells are not highlighted when deciding where to place your seeds, so they do take a bit more thought (and experimentation) to figure out. 

Graphically, Sporos looks, and feels, a lot like AppXplore’s previous title, Lightopus. The neon colors and unit models look like they could have been pulled straight from Lightopus. This isn’t really a bad thing, especially if you enjoyed the look and feel of their previous title, and it also fits within the puzzle genre very well. Animations aren’t really too important in a game like this, but they’re very fitting, and compliment the gameplay. The background music is light and also fits the look and helps add to the feeling of the game. 

Sporos is Universal, has widescreen support for the iPhone/iPod 5, and includes GameCenter support with 19 achievements. There are no leaderboards and no stats to explore like total time played, total moves, ect, but that doesn’t really take much away from the game. iCloud support would have been a great plus, especially since Sporos is a Universal app. There is an IAP included, but this is for hints just in case you get stuck. You are given 3 hints to start with and a pack of 30 hints will cost you $0.99, but is definitely not required to complete the game. With Sporos priced at $0.99, it’s a great addition to the puzzle genre, even though some little extra touches here and there would have made it stand out more, it’s definitely worth checking out if you’re a puzzler fan. AppXplore has also said that more levels are set to come in future updates, so there should be plenty of content now, and in the future. There is also a free version that you can try out before deciding if you want to purchase the full, which is always a plus. 

Read More

Riven for iPad [Cyan Worlds] - $5.99

For those of you familiar with gaming in the 90’s, or if you’re just into old(ish)-school games on the AppStore, Myst is one of the most memorable games from it’s era. It was also the best selling PC game of the 90’s. For those of you who are unfamiliar with it, Myst is a Point & Click/Puzzle Adventure game that puts you in the roll of The Stranger, a person sent to the island of Myst where it’s your job to find various books by traveling to different Ages, or worlds, slowly revealing the back-story of the game. Cyan Worlds has ported Myst as well as the newer realMyst - which is exactly like the original Myst, only played in 3D and opening the world for you to explore every little nook and cranny - to the iOS, and following suit, also released Riven, the sequel to Myst, back in 2010. Cyan Worlds has been hard at work, and has just released an iPad build of Riven, allowing players to experience this touch screen version on the bigger screen. 

Riven, just like the iPhone version, is a perfect port as far as gameplay is concerned, giving gamers the opportunity to pick up right where Myst left off, thrusting them into the slowly decaying Age of Riven. As you might have guessed, Riven for iPad also has quite a few enhancements that, as you might imagine, could not have been an easy task to accomplish. The iPad version of Riven includes high resolution images, improved music and effects and updated movies and animations. It also runs on all iPad devices, including the original iPad 1. 

There are a few options that you can adjust and change at any point in the game. You can change the transition speed from slow to fast, or turn it completely off, allow hints and show or hide the interface buttons. While I do remember Riven’s animations being a bit quicker than they are on the iDevice, you are also able to tap in the upper right corner to skip the longer ones if you so desire. This does help move the game along at a quicker pace, especially if you know what you’re doing. There is also a ‘Help’ section that takes you to Cyanworld’s website to view a quick tutorial. The hint system, like in Myst, is done through an online walkthrough, and can be very helpful if you ever get stuck. 

The puzzles, like in Myst, are usually multi-screen puzzles, requiring you to do something in one area and then another before being able to move on to the next area. One of the most frequent complaints I hear when discussing Myst with friends or online is that the puzzles usually make no sense and ‘how are you really suppose to know how in the world to do that without looking for help somewhere?’. While this may be the case with some, others who are willing to search every area for hints in the form of pictures and experiment with buttons and levers, the game’s unique type of puzzles will grow on you. While this sort of puzzle solving is not for everyone, it has definitely withstood the last 15 or so years (longer for the original Myst), and is considered by many to be one of the top Point & Click Puzzlers even now. 

Control-wise, everything is done with taps and swipes, with the game being made up of thousands upon thousands of still photos, moving forward can be done by tapping in the center of the screen while turning around and looking up or down can be done either by swiping anywhere on the screen in the opposite direction (swipe down to look up, left to turn right, ect), or tapping the edge of the screen in the direction you want to turn. 

The music and sound effects are great, and are encoded at a decent quality, allowing for players to become totally immersed in the world of Riven, especially while using headphones. The graphics and animations are also great, and although the game does show it’s age, the slight pixilation that happens during animations does not take anything away from the game. Given the size that Riven was originally made in (around 640x480), the scaling to fit the iPad screen looks great, but if you were hoping for a full 2048x1536 iPad Retina resolution, chances are you’ll be pretty disappointed. But, some great news is that the text is all very clear, and easy to read, so if you’ve been playing the iPhone version of Riven on your iPad, aside from the clearer graphics, this is probably the biggest thing you’ll notice. 

With the great reception that RealMyst received, having Myst playable in a full 3D world and being able to explore every little nook and cranny of the game, here’s hoping that the same can be done for Riven in the future. But as it is now, very reasonably priced at $5.99 and with all the enhancements it contains, it’s a great buy, especially for fans of the original, the Myst series and Point & Click games in general. If you’ve yet to experience Riven, you’re in for a real treat, and so long as you don’t go in expecting a fully open 3D world and high-resolution retina graphics, you could very well fall in love and knock other P&C titles down a notch on your favorites lists after getting into it. Cyan Worlds has done such a great job porting Riven over to the iDevice, and it’s very clear that a lot of care and passion has gone into the conversion to the touch screen. It’s definitely an easy game to recommend, even after all these years. 

Read More

Review Rewind: Robo5

It's not very often that a game comes along and just completely blows us away, so much so that we're driven to stop everything until we 100% complete that game. Last year, Yuguosoft released such a title; Robo5. Not only did we sink an insane amount of time into this one, but we didn't stop until we completed every single level, unlocked every achievement and, at the time, had the #1 spot on each of the leaderboards. Better yet? It can still be found on both my iPod and iPad. For those of you who aren't familiar with Robo5, it's basically the AppStore's Catherine, minus the sexual innuendos and mature story line. Robo5 does contain a story, but it's more along the lines of 'who am I?' and 'what am I doing here?'. If you're looking for a top notch puzzler, Robo5 is definitely one game you NEED to check out.

**Note: This review was written after playing Version 1.0

Puzzle games have gone in all sorts of different directions since the iPod came out. The openness of the AppStore, coupled with the mind blowing amount of talented developers, and the range of possibilities that the touch screen brings to the table makes for some very interesting games. However, it kind of seems like puzzle games have hit a rough patch. Almost everything entering the AppStore these days is a physics based Angry Birds or Tiki Totems type game. So it was a real surprise when I started up Yuguosoft’s new action puzzler, Robo5. 

In the game, you’ll control a robot who’s trying to find out who he is, and why he is here. You’ll solve a series of box moving puzzles in order to move through the worlds. Each of the levels has 3 stars that you can earn, one for completing the level in a set amount of time, one for collecting all of the items, and one for having under a certain amount of box moves. Every time you earn 20 stars, a Diary, or challenge, level is unlocked. These give you more back-story on Robot Number 5, and the world he lives in, and when you complete the Diary levels, even more is revealed.

The controls in Robo5 are simple enough, tap and swipe. You’ll tap to move to a box, and swipe to grab and move boxes. You can also tap on the box you are already standing on to hang off of the side of it, enabling you to move around piles of boxes that might be in the way. You’ll need to move boxes around opening and creating pathways to get to the top of, and the exit, of the levels. In order for a box to stay in the air, or be held up, it needs to be touching another box on one of it’s 4 bottom edges. There are different types of boxes, expanding the puzzle element quite a bit. Along with the regular boxes, some will crumble after standing on them twice, some will start to count down from 5 and then explode after you step on them, some boxes can float in the air, some give off electricity shocks, and there are some which are shown with a big “?” on them, and these can turn into any type of box after you touch them, so you never really know what you’re going to get with them. Put all of these together, and there’s some pretty wild puzzles that you will need to get Robot Number 5 through in order to make it through the game.

The graphics are amazingly detailed, and some of the best I’ve seen in an iOS game. I would put them up to par with Unreal Engine graphics, even though they did not use Unreal to create the game. The atmospheres are very immersive, and along with the animations for movement, and the music within the game, it creates quite an amazing world. 

With Yuguosoft pricing both the iPod and iPad version at only $0.99, it’s an amazing buy. It’s taken me about 10 hours to get to the last level of the game, which I am currently stumped on, but I still need to go back and get 3 stars in about 25 of the 40 levels, not including the 7 out of 8 Diary levels I have yet to complete. GameCenter integration completes the game adding quite a bit of replay value, even for gamers who manage to get 3 stars on every level. 6 leader boards, one for a combined score in each world, and one for your highest world score, along with 32 achievements, some being very hard to snag. For a puzzle game, Robo5 goes above and beyond the expectations of gamers, and gives them an incredibly immersive, amazingly thoughtful and enriching gameplay experience. I really can not recommend Robo5 enough, to any and all gamers. The difficulty in the later levels is pretty high, but once you get to the end of the levels, the feeling you’ll have is more than enough of a reward. Yuguosoft has definitely created a contender for Game Of The Year, and over the last week has easily moved into my top 5 of 2011, and has set a new standard for action puzzle games of the future.

Read More

Ivy The Kiwi [Prope] - $4.99

Ports. The AppStore is full of em. LostWinds, ESPGaluda II, Metal Slug 3, Lunar Silver Star Story… well… too many to name. For a lot of iOS gamers, these are their first experiences with the titles, but for some others, they’re very well known and loved games from the past and other gaming platforms. This week, the DSWare/DS/Wii title, Ivy The Kiwi? has been brought over, ported and published by Prope (the studio founded by Yuji Naka, creator of Sonic), the studio that developed the original, and as you might have guessed from what consoles it was released on, it’s a nice fit for the touch screen. 

I should start this off by saying that I’ve had a previous experience with Ivy. My youngest has the DS version, so I pretty much knew what I was getting into when I bought the iOS port. Though I will say that I was pretty excited to check the game out on a touch screen as sensitive as the iDevice’s rather than the DS’s screen. Now, Ivy The Kiwi? tells the story of Ivy, a little kiwi who was separated from her family before she cracked out of her egg. You’ll follow her on her journey as she tries to make her way safely through 50 levels in a quest to be reunited with her mother.  

The best way I can describe Ivy The Kiwi? is as an auto-running puzzle platformer. There are no virtual buttons, and you’re given control over vines which can be created by touching and dragging your finger across the screen. These vines can be used as springboards, platforms, protective objects and slingshots for Ivy. You’re able to have up to 3 vines within the level at a time. With these, you’re able to lift Ivy up into higher sections of a level, stop her from hitting spikes that are planted all over the stages and flick Ivy into a spin that allows her to break through certain bricks and open up pathways. 

Control-wise, Ivy definitely shows that it’s been made for Nintendo consoles. Like LostWinds, Ivy The Kiwi was clearly made for using either a touch screen or the Wii remote and, like LostWinds, it’s transferred over beautifully to the iOS. Within the 50 levels, there isn’t much variety, and just about every level up until about the last 25% of the game can be completed in about 15-20 seconds, and even though every 5 levels is in it’s own environment, they’re all basically made up of the same 4 objects, eventually managing to change color; bricks, breakable bricks, spikes and rocks. You will eventually come across mice, birds and liquid that can drip onto Ivy, but all of the levels, even with the change in background images, seem to look the same, and become a mesh of a couple long levels throughout the game. With the amount of polish that’s clearly gone into the game, it’s kind of disappointing seeing so little work go into the variation of the level’s objects and look. 

Don't get me wrong, Ivy The Kiwi is a game with charm, and a challenge, if you’re willing to take it on. Within every level, there are 10 feathers which you’ll be able to try and find. While generally, they are no where to be found on the A to B path in each level, they are spread out along pathways and in hard to reach areas in each stage. Collecting all 10 and making it to the end of the level within the time limits, besting your scores is where the challenge and fun really come in. There are also Challenge Levels; 22 levels within the game that have their own GameCenter leaderboards. Each of these levels also has a special hidden coin, helping to maximize your score, and with each level’s score dependant on how quickly you can make it through as well as how many feathers you can collect, there’s always the possibility of bettering your score, if even just by a couple points. 

Along with the 22 boards, there are also 3 more leaderboards to be found in GameCenter; Trial Stages, which is your total combined score for the 5 tutorial levels, Main Game, which is your combined score for all 50 levels, and All Score, which combines your main game score with the extra game score. The Extra Game is the same 50 levels that the main game has, but with a ramped up difficulty, which, towards the end of the original 50 main levels, is already extremely high. This extra hard difficulty is available via IAP for $2.99. On top of the leaderboards, there are also 35 achievements which you can try and unlock, including achievements for the Extra Game.

The graphics are incredibly nice, with the whole game being laid out like a children’s storybook. The story sections are pages out of the story book, and the levels have a haze around the edges of them which helps add to the feeling that everything is happening within the storybook’s world. Unfortunately, this haze also takes up some very valuable space on the smaller iPhone and iPod screens, and combined with the space needed for your fingers to draw the vines, there’s very little room to see what lies ahead, which makes most moves jumps into darkness, pretty much just hoping that you won’t hit anything that can kill Ivy before your next big jump. This is diminished a little on the bigger iPad screen, but with the camera still being zoomed in a bit too close, there’s always the feeling of ‘I better go slow or else I could die and need to restart the level again’ when making your way through the stages, which can get very frustrating with the ramp up in difficulty in the 7th world. But there’s no denying that it looks very good. 

With it’s faults, Ivy the Kiwi will have a hard time finding it’s fan base in the AppStore just like it did on Nintendo’s consoles. Priced at $4.99, but currently on sale for $2.99, it’s definitely worth the purchase if you enjoyed the game on the Wii or DS, and would like to have it on the iOS as well.  I am a bit torn as to whether or not I should recommend this one. There are gamers out there that will just love it, I'm sure, and not mind it's faults because of how entertaining it is, and others who will just downright despise it. Good news is, if you’ve never had the chance to play around with Ivy before, there is a lite version that contains a full game unlock IAP available. I do recommend you check that out and see if the controls click with you. If they do, you're in for one incredibly charming and challenging game.

Read More