NEWS - The CheeseMan Cometh.

Recently, the AppStore has seen it's fair share of Super Meat Boy influenced platformers. But Hicham Allaoui's upcoming game, CheeseMan, is the first to add something all of us SMB fans have been begging developers to add for months; VIRTUAL CONTROLS. This slight, but seemingly very important addition to the game, should be what we've all been wanting in a Super Meat Boy clone. The graphics and gameplay looks surprisingly polished as well. At the end of this month, The App Shack will, very proudly, be able to have a first look at how CheeseMan plays. And we're going to be telling you all about it. How it controls, how the physics work, if the level design is up to par, or beyond, and just in general, if you really should be as excited as you think you should be about this up-coming game.

Keep checking back around the end of August, and beginning of September when we will be the first review website to proudly present -

THE SUPER CHEESEMAN PREVIEW+REVIEW!!!

If you would like to stay upto speed with this game and news from the developer, you can follow Hicham Allaoui on Facebook and Twitter, and also be sure to check out his website.

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Cado HD- 2.99 (ClearCut Games)

Cado HD [$2.99 (iPad Only)] by ClearCut Games is the latest physics-based game to hit the App Store. The first thing you'll notice when playing the game is that the graphics in the game look pretty nifty. They look like they were hand drawn by a sharpie. That's actually really cool if you think about! In this game you guide Cado, a ball shaped character with an eye to it's destination which is the portal. Guiding Cado is actually very simple. All you have to do is use the 2 touch controls in the game to rotate left or right. There's no option for tilt controls which is actually good. This game takes a lot of precise movements which you couldn't do if you were tilting the device. As you progress through the 40 levels (20 more to come in a future update) you

start to notice sharper turns and spikes that make you restart if you run into them. That's why precision is key in completing the levels. Throughout each level you can collect the star that's hanging around. It's not required to collect it to move on, but it does give you a reason to come back to the game and try to get it. In the later levels there's a key that you must collect. The portal is usually inaccessible because it's locked until you retrieve the key. Thankfully this game does not have a time limit because I would always lose. You really need to take your time and be patient especially later in the levels. I really like the part in the main menu where it gives you your Cado game playing stats. It will tell you things such as how many times you've died, rotated to the right, rotated to the left, total wins, and how to get rich quick. Well not the last part, I wish though! I actually got the privilege to test Cado while it was in beta. I sucked at it! I only collected about 20 of the 40 stars in the levels. That's probably do to the fact that I tested it on an iPod Touch. Playing it on the iPad was a completely different story. I'm actually great at it on the iPad! I completed the entire game with the star for each level in just under

an hour. The game definitely needs that update with the 20 levels pronto! Also, Game Center support really needs to be included to make the game feel complete. Overall the levels were very well designed and the game provides a fun experience that I couldn't put down until I completed everything there was to complete. My final rating is 4 out of 5 stars. You can check out Cado HD for iPad for only $2.99 by ClearCut Games here. Don't have an iPad? Well don't worry then! Cado for $0.99 is available for iPhone/iPod Touch here. Happy rotating!

Gameplay: 

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Alien Space Retro-FREE(OwensGames)

Vector graphics are one of my favorite types of graphics you can see in a game.  Though I was not born anywhere near the 80's when they were most popular I still appreciate the beautifully minimalistic design.  Alien Space combines that with a unique blend of dual stick shooters to make this a very intriguing game.

This game is actually the second iteration of another app released by the same developer except with a change of graphics. 

It is not clear what the main story of the game is but thats where you let your imagination think something up. Besides you cant just daydream about the cute girls at your high school 24/7!  The game comes packed with 30 levels and a nice survival mode.  You have the option of buying 4 new weapons and a extra game mode called Lost In Space.  The extra game mode is particuluarly interesting as there or no enemies or weapons and you have a extremely damaged ship that even the slightest collision will cause it to blow up.  You are located in the worst possible place to be with a damaged ship;a asteriod field.  Your energy is constantly depleting causing you to search through the field to find life giving crystals in order to stay alive.  

The gameplay is usually fast and frantic and perfectly fits into that 5 minutes of rest time before being bugged by a idiotic coworker. You are always on the move either blasting enemies into smithereens or dodging asteriods when escaping from your opponents.  Asteriods can be broken for credits and health so its always beneficial to try to hit them as well.  The controls are very tight and responsive and dont hinder the gameplay. A feature I especially liked was the fact that you can choose one light weapon(faster firing/light damage) and one heavy weapon(slow firing/heavy damage) before each level.  Currently there are 6 weapons with various levels of upgrades that affect the look of the weapons fire.  In the level you can then choose which one to use and switching between the two of them in mid-battle is a cinch.  Another nifty option is that you can change the games color scheme from the option menu.

Overall this is definitely a steal for only 0.99 and definitely eats up the time that you could be doing something productive with.  Next time you are looking for another quick 0.99 fix this should be on the top of your list.

Link :http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/alien-space/id447275812?mt=8&uo=4

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SqueezeBastard - 0.99 (Zxh Games)

SqueezeBastard is a new action-puzzle game from the relatively young studio of Kxh Games (Zombie Revenge, Doodle Rush, Mini Rocket). You play as a girl who needs to save herkidnapped pet from monsters that have taken it hoping for a ransom. But what-do-ya-know, you're broke! Now it's your job to squish monsters by pushing blocks at them in order to save your cute little pet from the hungry monsters who are dying to eat it.

The controls in SqueezeBastard are relatively nice and minimal. You're given an invisible floating joystick, and a push button. It is kind of hard to navigate through some of the puzzles, because they're set-up diagonally, so you might find yourself fighting to get into the right spot at times, which can seem like a pretty big down-fall when you're weaving your way through the block maze filled with monsters. But once you get the hang of it, it seems like less of a chore, and more of a pretty decent game design. Having the board set diagonally gives the game an extra bit of challenge, especially when lining up your monster killing shots.

The graphics are really good, though the game is not retina supported at the moment, so their true beauty doesn't stick out like it should. There isn’t a lot of diversity throughout the world of SqueezeBastard, only moving from the forest to the castle, but while moving from stage to stage, you'll be confronted with different game mechanics that will open up new moves and ways to play. The first additions you'll see are tiles that move blocks in certain directions for you. Once you push a block onto them, they shoot the block in the direction of the arrows moving on it. This comes in handy for hitting monsters that are around corners that you're sometimes not able to squish any other way. You should be careful with these though, because sometimes they can shoot a block right back at you. Boxes of explosives are also mixed in with the blocks, and can blow up a nice section of blocks and monsters around it just by pushing them into an edge.

There's also portals that not only let you through, but also the blocks. Looking to see if a monster is in the right spot next to a portal, you can kill them from the other side of the level. Things like this really add to the game a lot, and make you plan out your attacks more tactfully. Enemies that can break through blocks are also thrown into the mix, and staying out of their way until you can line up a good shot really does add to the challenge.

The scoring could use some more work, as you're not given any combo bonuses at all. It would be nice to see the developers add some sort of combo for hitting two or more monsters with one block, or killing a certain number of enemies back to back in a short period of time. You do, however, get a bigger score for collecting the jewels that pop up around the stages once you defeat all the monsters in that level. Racing to get them all before the level ends can be pretty challenging. There's also a treasure chest in each level, figuring out how to open it also adds to the challenge, and quest for a great score. Though all of this kind of seems pointless withoutGameCenter or OpenFeint leaderboards. Achievements would also have been a great addition to this game, and would drive the need to play, and re-playability quite a bit as you are also able to replay previously beaten levels by selecting them at the map screen.

The music and FX fit the cute graphics and gameplay, and the game does play very smoothly. For a puzzle game, it doesn't really bring any new mechanics to the genre, but what it does have is done very well. You can tell that a lot of time, effort and thought has gone into the making of SqueezeBastard. For $0.99 it’s not a bad or regrettable purchase at all. However, with retina display, and online ranking not put into the game, I’m going to give it 4 out of 5 stars. There’s not a lot of room for improvement within the game, but it’s missing that drive to play it, and re-playability. If they are added in the future, this could very well be a 4.5 or 5 star game. Still worth getting if you’re looking for a good new puzzle game with quite a bit of action to waste away the end of summer with.

Link: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/squeezebastard/id454921319?mt=8

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Candy Boy - 0.99 (Colorbox)

It's not too often we see a game come around and show us something new, but with Colorbox's latest release, Candy Boy, they've shown that they have got some very creative minds in the studio. It seems that with each release, this small developing company gets more and more popular. After the releases of Arena Arcade, Dalton-The Awesome, Rooftop Escape, Rip Off, the ever so popular Wave-Against Every Beat, and Twins Candy, I wasn't surewhat to expect. But this time they're giving us a mixture of platformer and match-3 gameplay. Candy Boy hits that oh so sweet spot of genre mixing that makes us gamers wonder why something like it has not been made before.
You'll play as Casper, a boy obsessed with candy who has woken up one day to find out there's a group of candy hungry worms eating all your precious, mouth watering sweets, and it's your job to stop them. You start off every screen sized stage with a certain number of candies, and end up using these candies to make groups of 3 or more, create candy towers to climb up on, and take out each of the worms hiding amongst the candies. You'll also be dodging enemies and trying to get off of some platforms before they break.

There's quite a bit of old-school platforming to do in Candy Boy, which means there's virtual controls and the games physics to try and get use to as well. Colorbox has done a pretty decent job giving us responsive and tight controls, though not as tight as League of Evil, or Mos Speedrun, but more like the controls in Elemental Rage or Castle of Magic. The physics are really nice as well, and don't make the game feel weighed down or floaty at all. Moving platforms are decently sized, and collision detection is great, so you won't be standing on air or falling through platforms. You might have slight problems using the candies as a climbing tool, and some of the thinner platforms in the mid and later levels, but it's nothing you won't get use to after doing it a couple of times. There's also 3 coins in each stage you can try and grab if you'reup for more of a challenge, and grabbing every one in each stage will unlock worlds faster, as they're opened up when you collect a certain number of them. All of this makes for some pretty neat level design, and challenging moments in the game.

The graphics are very polished, very cute, and the animations are great. The music and fx also fit this cute world very well, and can be turned off in the main menu if you don't care for game music. With over 100 levels spread across 4 different worlds, Candy Boy should offer plenty of gameplay to keep even hardcore gamers busy for a while, especially with the GameCenter leaderboards, one for each world, and the 13 achievements they've given us to try and unlock. And as with every other release from Colorbox that I own, I know Candy Boy will end up staying on my iPod for a very long time. It's getting 5 out of 5 stars from me, and you can nab it in the AppStore for the very low price of $0.99.

Link: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/candy-boy/id440650391?mt=8

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Art Penguin - 0.99 (Luck-u)

With technology where it is, touch screens, infra-red controllers, it's not surprising that gesture based games are starting to make their mark on the gaming world. Art Penguin is the second game from Indie Developer, Luck-u. You play as a wizard penguin who was on a flight home with a bunch of other penguins and some cows that was intercepted by aliens. But it seems that the aliens only wanted the cows so that they could drink milk whenever they wanted to, and ended up dumping you on a remote island somewhere in the ocean. You now have to make it through some pretty dangerous areas using your trusty wand to get home safely.

There's 16 different gestures that you'll need to memorize in order to make it through Art Penguin's 2 worlds, each having 12 levels. At first, it may feel like you need to memorize thelevels in order to make it through them all the way, but once you get the hang of the gestures, it becomes a game that you play instead of a game that you need to memorize. Each level is built very well, having the difficulty increase at a great speed, so you won't feel overwhelmed at first. By stage 3 you might have some trouble remembering which gestures do what. But thankfully, there's a spell book in the top right corner that holds all the gestures you'll need to know in order to make it through. The graphics are nice and cute, and the music fits the game very well.

The challenge in Art Penguin comes from being able to remember and draw the shapes quickly enough. There’s some spots where you need to wait to see how big a hole is so that you’ll know if you need a spring, or a ramp, and some spots where you’ll need to draw different shapes one right after the other pretty quickly. You are given unlimited lives, but dying takes you back to the beginning of the stage. There is a pretty good sense of accomplishment once you do make it through each level. This structure kind of reminds me of older NES and SNES games of the late 80’s and 90’s, with the same great feeling after getting to the next stage.

Art Penguin is available in the AppStore for $0.99, and really is the best gesture game I’ve played on any platform. Everything about it is very polished, and feels like it could have been released through a big company, like Chillingo, Halfbrick or Gamevil. The gameplay is actually exciting, which is a word I never thought would be able to be tied to a gesture based game, but with Art Penguin, it’s very fitting. Once you get the gestures down, it becomes a blast to play. It’s also OpenFeint enabled, and has 22 achievements for you to try and nab. I give it 4.5 stars out of 5, and if the occasional wrong item for the gesture drawn is fixed in an update, it would get 5 out of 5 stars.

Link: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/art-penguin/id449097181?mt=8

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Vermes On Mars- 0.99 (Aztlan Games)

Before I begin the review I must say that there's no way you could miss this game on the App Store if you were roaming based on the icon. Just look at that icon! It's EPIC! Okay enough with my love of the icon, time to get into what Vermes On Mars [$0.99 (Universal)] by Aztlan Games is all about. Vermes On Mars is a sci-fi based shooter game with the setting being the "Red Planet" or Mars for short. In this game you guide 4 vehicles around in search of the assorted worms hiding in the soil. The worms pop up out of the soil whenever you get close to them. The mission is to try to defeat all the worms in a level. The controls in this game are very simple. You can tap on the left or right side of the screen to switch from moving and

shooting. Moving your vehicles is extremely simple. All you have to do is swipe on the area of the screen that you want your vehicles to move to. Then they will line up along the area that you swiped on. When it's time to shoot, just tap on either the left side or the right side of the screen (your choice) to switch over to the shooting mode. Just swipe on the part of the screen where the worms are at just like you would do if you were trying to move. Your vehicles will turn their attention to shooting in that spot that you directed them to. In the shooting mode you can't move your vehicles so just tap on either side of the screen again to switch into a different mode. Each level has a given time limit that requires you to find all of the worms before you run out of time making it GAME OVER! As I mentioned before, there's an assortment of worms that have their own special attributes. Every worm has their own way of destroying your vehicles. Some happen to be deadlier than others. Sometimes a level gets hectic so you can use some of the power-ups that you've earned located at the bottom of the screen. There's a power-up to heal your bots, to destroy all the worms in sight coming after you, and even more. At the end of each level you gain money that you can use in the workshop to upgrade your current bots weapons, health, and magnetic field. You can also purchase

new bots that are much stronger than your previous ones. There's currently over 30 levels to play through so you'll have enough to upgrade your bots. The only bad thing is that you can't replay levels that you've already beaten. Other than that this game is a lot of fun to me. Overall Vermes On Mars is an entertaining sci-fi shooter with nicely done visuals and a great user interface. My final rating is 4.5 out of 5 stars. It would be 5 out of 5 stars if you could replay previously beaten levels. You can check out Vermes On Mars by Aztlan Games for only $0.99 here. It's also universal so that's a plus!

Gameplay:

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HexRoto HD- 0.99 (Hill Stone Animation Studios)

What is HexRoto you may ask? Well, HexRoto HD ($0.99- iPAD ONLY) by Hill Stone Animation Studios is a puzzle game that'll have you thinking every single move you make. In the game there's colored balls in each level. Your objective is to get the certain colored ball in the appropriate highlighted position. Trying to move the balls correctly takes strategy. To move the ball you want all you have to do is tap on a certain ball to rotate all the other balls clockwise. A little confusing, eh? Trust me it'll make a lot more sense when you start playing the game! As you move on

through the 45 levels, the difficulty gradually increases over time. More balls are required to be rotated which takes a lot more thinking then rotating 2 or 3 balls. To achieve 3 stars on a level you must rotate everything in the least amount of moves as possible. The more moves you make, the less amount of stars you'll gain. This in turn makes you want to come back to the game to test your brains capability and acquire more stars. With that all said, HexRoto HD is a great little puzzle game to exercise the ol' brain, but it's missing a few things to me. Some mind stimulating music in the background while playing would be great. When I hear silence in a puzzle game it makes me over think. That's just me. Also, GameCenter support would be a nice little update. The biggest thing I feel  it's missing is a time challenge mode. I would love to race against the clock to get all the balls where they need

to be. Overall the game is a nice little puzzler, but to me I feel it needs a little more to be just perfect. My final rating is 3.5 out 5. If you like puzzle games then you can go check out HexRoto HD (iPad only app) for a mere $0.99. Don't have an iPad? Then don't worry! You can download HexRoto for iPhone and iPod Touch for $0.99 also! Not sure if you want to play the game yet? Then go check out some gameplay footage that I found below.

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