Slydris [Radiangames] - $1.99

iOS ports of games from other platforms are really hitting their stride. But Radiangames has very quickly become one of the top name developers in the dual stick shmup genre within the iOS scene. Porting over Fireball, Ballistic, Super Crossfire and Inferno from the XBOX Live Arcade, they’ve gained an even larger fan-base, and shown that an addiction to spheres can actually be quite healthy. But their most recent title, Slydris, is something totally different. And it’s great being able to see another side of the Radiangames team.

Slydris, originally released for the PC and MAC earlier this year, is a unique block-based puzzler that will have you just as hooked as their awesome DS Arcade shooters. Like Radiangames other titles, Slydris has multiple play modes; Infinite, Zen, and Survival, each offering up varied gameplay. However, the goal is always the same; Keep clearing lines by lining up and moving pieces. 

Now, in Infinite Mode, you’re only able to move one piece at a time, which really puts the emphases on what piece you do decide to move. With blocks falling down from the top of the screen after every turn, as well as pieces moving up from the bottom every time you clear 5 lines after you clear 30, this emphases on which piece you move becomes even greater, because once a block is unable to fall from the top, it’s game over. The same rules apply to Zen Mode, you can move one piece at a time, except you don’t need to worry about making room for blocks. There’s no game over in this mode, and it’s more of either a ‘get comfortable with the gameplay’ or an ‘I just want to play with no added pressure’ mode. 

In Survival Mode, it get a little trickier. You’re given a certain number of random lines while you’re unable to move any blocks. Once the lines are set, you’ll have about 5 seconds to move as many pieces as you can while trying to get rid of those lines. It quickly becomes pretty frantic , and is easily my favorite mode of play. 

In each mode, there is a gauge on the right side of the screen which, when filled, gives you a bomb which you’re able to use to clear any 3 lines with. This really comes in handy, especially in the later levels when you’re looking at a game ending situation. Like in Tetris, every 10 lines you clear is counted as a level, and once you reach that level. Once you reach a level, you’re able to start every game from then on at that level, which, like Radiangames previous titles, eliminates a lot of the starting game boredom after you’ve gotten really comfortable with the game. Also similar to Tetris is the combo scoring system. As you complete lines, more blocks will be able to fall down into the nooks and crannies of your wall which has the potential to wind up knocking out more lines. The more lines you clear, the bigger your multiplier will wind up being, and the bigger the score. 

Learning how to line up blocks so that they fall down, clearing more blocks is essential if you want to compete on the GameCenter leaderboards. And with boards for both Infinite and Survival Modes, as well as 16 achievements, there’s plenty of added replay value if you do decide to go score-chasing. Seeing this other side of Radiangames has given me a newfound appreciation for their titles. With as addictive, hectic and fun as their shooters are, Radiangames has captures that type of frantic feeling and injected it perfectly into this unique, and incredibly entertaining block-sliding puzzler. For $1.99, it’s a must have for puzzle fans, as well as anyone else who’s interested in seeing that Radiangames developers aren’t all orbs and spheres. I really hope to see them branch out like this more often with future releases. 

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Ravenmark OST now available for FREE!

I know we aren't a music site or anything, but I know there's plenty of you out there that are hooked on video game music, and I've been wanting to start posting about iOS soundtracks for some time now. Anyway, Josh Whelchel's music for Ravenmark - Scourge of Estellion is fantastic. I've been completely blown away by the music ever since I got the game. And now the OST is available for free via bandcamp! Though, if you feel like donating, I'm sure they won't throw your money back at you. =o)

Make sure to check it out! There's some AMAZING tracks included, as well as a reprise of the main theme that isn't included in the game. You can go ahead and listen to it before you download it if you're so inclined. 46 tracks of RPG-Adventure-TBS style greatness!

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Car Toons! [FDG] - $0.99/$1.99

Sometimes it seems like physics puzzlers have taken over the AppStore. Ever since the success of Angry Birds, everyone realized the potential for hooking casual gamers. But FDG, a publication/development company that we here at TAS highly respect, and that has been on a roll lately, releasing quite a few titles over the last couple months, has jumped on the physics puzzler bandwagon, and is taking it in an entirely different direction. With Blosics, Expand It!, Cover Orange, Beyond Ynth and more under their belt, they’re continuously releasing new and unique physics puzzlers on the iOS. 

Their newest release, Car Toons!, is another great example of this. With simple gameplay that can also provide a nice little challenge, it’s another physics puzzler that doesn’t follow in the footsteps of any previous iOS releases. The goal of the game is to get your good cars (ie; cop cars, ambulances, fire trucks, ect) into the parking zones while knocking any bad cars (the black cars) off of the screen. Sounds simple enough, maybe even too simple. But when you take into account the level designs, as well as the hazards and other various puzzle elements, it actually offers up a decent challenge while still remaining casual and simple enough to just jump on into when you’ve got a couple of minutes to spare. 

With 100 levels, and possible 3 star rankings on each stage, with more levels coming soon, there’s quite a bit of content. The 100 levels is split up across 9 different worlds, each with different hazards and objects as well as mechanics to help keep the game fresh. When you start out, you’re only able to touch each good car to make them start, and then touch them again to stop them. Doing this, you’ll need to knock all of the bad cars off of the platforms, and stop the cars in the correct parking spots (each parking spot’s color matches the good cars lights). As you progress through the game, disappearing platforms, the ability to jump, nitro boosters, doors that open when you drive into buttons, exploding barrels and loads more are just some of the things that you’ll end up using in order to complete levels.

The graphics and animations are very well done, with each car having a set of eyes, making the graphics pretty cutesy. But the animations really bring it all together, with wheels turning, smoke flying up from breaks, the expressions of the cars’ eyes, explosions, and more showcasing the polish of the graphics, and making the gameplay fun and entertaining. The music sounds like your typical classic 80’s pop tunes, reminiscent of an underrated nerd winning over a jock jerk in a John Hughes flick. 

Rounding it all out is GameCenter support with a leaderboard for your overall time and 23 great achievements. However, the board for time could use some tweaking, as the longer you play, the further down the board you’ll go. This could be fixed by not submitting a time until the game is completed, or by doing that as well as having leaderboards for each world, but right now, it’s pretty pointless. However, priced at $0.99 for the SD build, and $1.99 for the HD version, it’s a pretty unique casual puzzler, and one that fans of puzzle games should definitely check out. With the support that FDG has given their previous releases, I have complete confidence that the leaderboard issue will be sorted out and know that more levels will definitely be included in the future. Another great release to throw on the list that FDG is quickly building up. 

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MANOS - The Hands of Fate [FreakZone] - $1.99

Retro platformers have been making a real comeback. It seems like with every new generation of video games, players keep longing for the games that got them hooked in the first place. But it’s always great seeing a new and original title hit the scene, and newcomer FreakZone, has shown that he knows what it takes to create a true NES like experience with his last game, Awesome Land. Now, with that title under his belt, FreakZone has released another retro platformer, MANOS - The Hands of Fate, and this time around, he’s taken everything he’s learned since releasing Awesome Land and thrown it together in a great gaming package. 

Mike and his family have gotten lost while on vacation, and they couldn’t have picked a worse spot to get lost in. Now Mike, armed with a gun, needs to get his wife, daughter, and dog, safely home before the monsters wind up getting the best of them. Like many platformers, the game doesn’t really rely on the story to drive the game, but it does help explain why you’re fighting massive rats and avoiding floating skulls. It also opens up a fairly wide variety of environments and situations which you’ll be able to run, jump, and shoot your way out of. 

Like we’ve said numerous times before, a huge part of having solid platform gameplay relies heavily on the controls, physics, and inertia. With Manos, they’re all NES perfect. With the controls, you’re given left/right arrows, and jump/shoot buttons. They’re placed just right, and you don’t need to pick your finger up to change movement directions, which really helps the fluidity of the gameplay. The physics and inertia are what you would expect from a top-notch old-school title. Not too floaty, not too heavy, not stiff or loose, and landing on one block platforms is a piece of cake, and never winds up being something that you’ll need to struggle with throughout the game. With the game being Universal, the controls on the iPad are also very important. You’ll be happy to hear that the buttons are positioned closer to the edges, and in the corners so that you don’t need to reach inward towards the center of the screen in order to move. Though being able to position the buttons wherever you’d like to would be ideal, and is something I really hope is included in a future update, the current controls work well enough to enjoy the game. 

The level design is top notch, though there are some aspects of the design that I didn’t completely agree with in the beginning. For instance; There’s a lot of screen changing done with stairs. These stairs often go down. However, if you jump just a pixel beyond the stairs, you won’t land on the stairs on the screen beneath, you wind up dying. This is kind of frustrating, and hard to understand at first, but as you progress through the game, and see all of the areas that you can reach by not going down stairs, and by trying to jump, and maneuver around enemies and hazards in order to get there, you see why it was done that way. If you could just fall into a screen under where you were, there wouldn’t really be any consequences for missing a jump, or running into a rotating spike. Though since the game is also centered around speed-runs, falling down screen after screen could have been an even better deterrent from screwing up at those parts, it would also make it easy to fly through a couple screens. And now I completely understand why it is the way it is, and feel I should praise FreakZone for giving thought to every angle, and coming up with the best solution for things like this throughout the entire game. 

Now, as you manage to find your way through each level, you’ll come across many stone hands. When shot, they usually reveal either a health pick-up, extra life, or a gem. There are also special hands which increase the amount of hit points you have, however, most of these will require some searching. And here’s where the two GameCenter leaderboards and replay value come in. In GameCenter, there’s two boards, one for score, and one for how long it takes for you to complete the game. With the stone hands, you can either take your time, look around and explore, finding all of the hands you can, and racking up all the points you can find, collecting extra lives and increasing your available hit points, or you can avoid everything, and try and find the quickest route from point A to point B. Personally, I love when games offer up two or more possible ways of playing, and here, FreakZone nailed it. 

With no save spots, and having to start from Stage 1 every time you start up the game, it truly feels like an old-school plat former. Though being kind of short, with only 7 levels, they‘re fairly large, and will take a while to complete your first couple of times through. The graphics, sounds, as well as gameplay, level design and mechanics are all great as well, making it stand out as one of the better retro platformers available. Manos - The Hands of Fate provides a challenge, and is a game that, even after you complete it, has what it takes to keep you coming back time and time again, trying to better your score, or shave seconds off your time. If it was released back in the 80’s it would have easily been a huge hit. With the game being Universal, and priced at $1.99, it’s a must buy for fans of the genre. Since the release of Awesome Land, FreakZone has nailed everything it takes to produce a top-notch retro platformer, and I hope to see many more titles flow out of their studio.

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Witching Hour Studios TBS Title, Ravenmark gets a new campaign!

Witching Hour Studios fantastic Turn-Based Strategy game, Ravenmark: Scourge of Estellion, has just gotten a new update, and what an update it is! Check out what's new in Version 1.08;

>The Deepwood Dragoons campaign is now available as an In-App Purchase! Players can purchase this campaign from the Campaign Menu for $1.99

>An option that increases the speed at which the Battle Phase plays out is now available via the Options Menu. A 3X Speed Option is available as an In-App Purchase.

>The first missions of the Ravenhood and Suneaters campaigns will now be accessible by default. Players no longer need to complete preceding campaigns to 'unlock' these campaigns. 

>A button to Restore past transactions has been added to the Options menu. This allows users who reinstall the game to verify and unlock previously purchased items from the AppStore.

WHS Account (Witching Hour Studios Account)

>Players may now create a WHS Account which synchronizes mission progress across multiple devices. This will not interfere with iCloud sync.

>Players who complete Ravenmakr missions while logged in on their WHS account will be eligible for future benefits. This will be elaborated at a future time.

>Facebook Connect is now available and supported, but it optional.

>While connected to the WHS Account, the game may prompt the player to post his success to his Facebook wall.

Gameplay Changes

>The difficulty of Ravenhood Mission 9 (the 'Sunsoul Mission') has been reduced.

>Reduced the amount of time it takes for the World Map to fade in and out at the start of missions and dialogues. 

>After completing the last mission of each campaign, the ending dialogue will now lead the player to the Campaign Menu.

>Dwight has grown stronger. His Pit Fighter ability now also gives him (his parent Element) 4 additional health (on top of the original 20 bonus armor). He also gains a new Active Ability called Low Blow. This change is retroactive and is applied to all Ravenhood missions he appears in.

Yup, HUGE update! But aside from the gameplay changes and the addition of the WHS Account, the new campaign is a big deal! For those of you who have had Ravenmark from the beginning, you know how great the developers are with content updates, though none of them have previously included a new campaign through IAP. However, the previous 2 campaigns that were added could very well have been introduced to the game through IAP, especially with how large they are, and how much content they added to the game. So seeing Witching Hour Studios finally charge for additional content is a great thing. Hopefully this will result in them getting some more money so that they can keep developing games for the iOS. 

With as great as Ravenmark is, I can only imagine what the developers over at WHS have learned since it was released. Ravenmark completely blew me away when it came out, and is still easily one of my favorite Turn-Based Strategy games on any platform. If you're interested in reading more about it, feel free to check out our review, or visit the Official WHS/Ravenmark site. You can also watch the trailer below, it shows some great gameplay, and gives you an idea of what this amazing game delivers. I'd love to see more releases come out of WHS in the future, and this update is definitely a step in that direction. Let's just hope it works out for the best. If you don't yet have Ravenmark, be sure and head on over to the AppStore and pick it up! Priced at $4.99, and being Universal, containing some HUGE campaigns that offer up some incredible challenge, you won't regret it.

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Fur Fighters: Viggo on Glass [Muffin Games] - $1.99

Previously released games, ported to the iOS. A perfect way to buy back childhood/teenage memories for pennies on the dollar, as we proclaimed in our review of Metal Slug 3. This time, we’ve got our hands on Fur Fighters: Viggo on Glass, a Dreamcast title back from one of the best years of Dreamcast gaming; 2000. If you ever played the original, then you already know that Fur Fighters is one of the best and most underrated Dreamcast titles around. Those of you who haven’t heard of Fur Fighters until now. Get ready to get hooked. 

Back in 2000, IGN gave Fur Fighters a rating of 8.3, saying “a wonderful, whimsical personality radiates from the lavishly detailed characters and surroundings” and that “Fur Fighters is like nothing else in the gaming scene.” And they couldn’t be more right. At the time, the graphics, characters, story, gameplay, all of it was incredibly well done, looked beautiful, and was, in fact, like nothing else gamers had seen before. In Fur Fighters: Viggo on Glass, you’ll control 6 different characters, each with their own special and unique abilities, taking them on a mission to stop General Viggo, who’d kidnapped the hero’s families and babies, from taking over the world with his army of bears.

As you go from area to area, blowing the bears to fluff, collecting gems that keep the warp gates for each of the characters open, you’ll need to change between each of the characters so that you can use their abilities to reach certain areas, collect all of the weapons, solve puzzles, collect each of the babies who only come to their parents, and progress through the game. The training area at the beginning gives you a very good idea of what goes on throughout the game. In the training area, you’ll need to collect each of the 6 babies, and use each of the characters and their abilities to get through it. For instance, the cat can climb walls which have cat scratches on them, the raccoon can crawl through very small areas, a kangaroo who can jump higher than anyone else, ect. 

Graphically, the game looks just like it did back in 2000. But if you haven’t had the pleasure of playing the original, the world of Fur Fighters is very reminiscent of Super Mario 64. Big blocky objects, basic, but polished animations, and a general cartoony feel to everything. Killing the enemies causes them to blow up in an explosion of fluff, and the characters language is pretty interesting, adding another level of cuteness to the game. Actually, Fur Fighters, from the outside, looks a lot like a game made specifically for kids. But once you get into the game, and start blasting away, and getting into some of the harder puzzles, that perception is put to rest fairly quickly, with the game offering up a pretty decent challenge. 

The only thing that the game really suffers from is the controls. It’s fairly clear that the developers were trying to copy the movement of the Dreamcast joysticks perfectly. But on the touch screen, this results in some pretty funky movement. You’re given two invisible joysticks, one for movement, and one for looking around. But once you touch the screen, and start dragging slightly in one direction, the camera, usually tends to move pretty fast. To really control the game, it requires small swipes to turn and look around, kind of like flicking a joystick. The shoot and fire buttons are halfway up the right side of the screen, which is kind of a pain as well. A lot of times, I’ll wind up shooting when I want to jump, and jumping when I want to shoot. Hopefully the developers will tinker with the controls a bit, and make the buttons configurable to anywhere on the screen. As it is now, the game is playable, but it takes some getting use to, and in the end, could definitely use some tweaking.

Fur Fighters: Viggo on Glass is available for the iPad, and priced incredibly low at $1.99. Two bucks for this great game is a steal, and those of you who are lucky enough to have played it in the past already know that. But for those of you on the fence, you really should dive right in. Even with the control issues, which the developers have said that they’re working on, and that some options will be made available in a future update, but until it hits, we won’t really know how it’ll effect the game. The gameplay is fantastic, and offers up a great challenge, and memorable experience. It’s definitely a game you should check out if you’re a fan of mid-school third person shooter/adventure gameplay. 

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Jewels With Buddies [Stofle Designs] - FREE

A couple of months ago, I wouldn’t have really called myself an online multiplayer fan. But with all of the great MP games being released lately, I’ve definitely been turned into one. Now, being a pretty big fan of Match-3 games, and with this new-found enjoyment of online gameplay, Stofle Designs Jewels with Buddies has wound up in my current rotation of games that I play every day. Battling it out against another player, trying to get the best combined score for 3 rounds of match-3 mayhem is a lot more fun than I thought it would be.

Once you register, or connect to your Facebook profile, you’re able to start games with friends from yoru contacts list, find a random buddy, have a rematch with someone you’ve already played, search for a username, or have a pass-n-play session with a friend on the same device. 

As you play, you’ll earn coins. These are used to pick power-up animals who are able to help you out throughout your game, and also to take spins on the slots. Each animal has a different ability, and is charged up by making certain types of matches while you play. For instance, the Panda Bear eats a whole row of gems and is charged up when you make white matches, while the Elephant destroys half of the board, and is recharged by matching purple gems, and so on. 

The scoring system is definitely a plus. With each match you make, you earn points, and if there’s a coin inside one of the gems, you’ll gain coins as well. But if you keep making matches quickly, the amount of points you’ll earn will keep rising. There are also multipliers randomly found on the gems which increase as time counts down. If you tap the gems with a multiplier before making a match with them, the multiplier will be applied to that match. 

You’re given 3 rounds, each being 60 seconds long, to earn as many points as you can. After each round, your score is sent to the other player, and then you wait for them to play a round and send it back. I haven’t ever had this much fun with a match-3 MP game. Witch Wars and Matching With Friends both seemed way too unbalanced, and pushed towards IAP, and Syntax Match, while decent, is a little too difficult when it comes to quickly finding matches because of the tiles used. Don’t get me wrong, there are IAPs included in Jewels with Friends, and if you want the best animal power-ups every time you play, you’ll probably need to purchase some coins, but with the coins earned at a decent rate, and being able to choose some of the better animals every 3 or so games, even without purchasing IAPs, it’s very well balanced, and doesn’t feel like you’re constantly being pushed towards the IAPs, which is becoming more and more rare with free games. 

So, if you’re looking for an online asynchronous match 3 title, you should definitely check out Jewels with Friends. Even though there’s no extra modes, and no single player gameplay, what is there is done very well, and priced at FREE, there’s really no reason not to give it a try. It’s definitely a title that’ll wind up staying on my device for quite some time. 

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True Axis' Jet Car Stunts goes UNIVERSAL!

One of the very first games I ever bought for my 2nd Generation iPod Touch was True Axis' Jet Car Stunts. Released in November of 2009, it's gone through quite a few updates, but none of them have been as highly anticipated as the Version 1.5.0 update which hit the AppStore late last night. 

Jet Car Stunts now runs at a solid 60 Frames-Per-Second and includes Full Screen Anti-Aliasing for smooth edges on the iPhone 4S, iPad 2 and iPad 3. This is all to help make the main reason for the update even better. Jet Car Stunts is now UNIVERSAL. That's right, you can now play JCS in native resolution on the iPad!

If you've yet to check out Jet Car Stunts, you should know that it won Apple's Best Game of 2009, was TouchGen's biggest surprise of 2009, was Touch Arcade's best iPhone and iPod Touch game in 2009, as well as receiving numerous other awards and rankings. The game has 36 incredibly well designed tracks, and 3 separate gameplay modes; Platforming, Time Trial and Ghost Racing. It's been one of my favorite games since I first got into iOS gaming, and now, with this recent update, I'm looking forward to playing through it all again on my iPad. Be sure you check this one out, it's a fantastic mix of racing, platforming, and flying, and offers up an insane amount of replayability. 

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