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PSA: This Weekend is the Last Chance to Get the First Wing of 'Hearthstone: Curse of Naxxramas' Free Posted: 28 Aug 2014 12:30 PM PDT If you're a casual Hearthstone [Free (HD)] player that's been side-eyeing the "Curse of Naxxramas" expansion, you should act quickly to snag the first section: the Arachnid Quarter has been free since release, but that promotion only lasts until the end of the month. Come September 1, the price will jump to 700 in-game gold or $6.99, the same as the other four areas. Brand new players will need to make sure they've played through the tutorial and unlocked each of the game's nine classes before they can unlock the Arachnid Quarter, which offers three boss fights and two class challenges and will reward you with six new cards. Two of those cards — Haunted Creeper and Nerubian Egg — have been very popular in ranked and casual play since they became available at the end of July. Even if you decide you don't care for 'Curse of Naxxramas,' getting two versatile, powerful cards for free isn't so bad. Should you decide to join us the Floating Necropolis, we've got a review, a collection of handy guides for each of the five wings, and a forum thread that's 150+ pages long to get you started. Whether you pay for 'Naxxramas' with gold, real-world money, or both, it's a meaty, robust expansion that anyone playing Hearthstone should consider. I've been playing pretty regularly since March, and I still haven't quite puzzled out the best strategies for the toughest boss fights. Get it while the getting's good.

Check Out 'Sunburn,' a Game About Throwing Astronauts into the Sun Posted: 28 Aug 2014 12:06 PM PDT Dying alone in the dark enormity of the cosmos is one of science fiction's great set pieces: one of the best scenes in all of Star Trek features Tom Paris and B'Elanna Torres running out of oxygen somewhere in the Delta Quadrant. All of that existential revulsion is the unfortunate legacy of real-world space travel, too, dotted with heartbreaking figures like Laika and Vladimir Komarov. Sunburn, a new game by a trio of designers out of New York University's Game Center program, drowns that morbidity in gleeful whimsy. As the captain of a crew of astronauts, it's your job to gather your comrades and fling them into a nearby star after your shuttle disintegrates: it's better to fry quickly among friends than suffocate slowly on your own. Developers Diego Garcia, Toni Pizza, and Aaron Freedman hope that what could be a cruel, dark premise for a game becomes funny and cute. The game's site shows off the pixelated Specialist Otis Hooks playing on his phone as he bobs uselessly in space, or Dr. Kaho Shimura sitting on top of a glass bubble with her cat, Porkbun. Just from perusing a few .gifs, it seems like various celestial bodies will have different properties to help or hinder your quest to burn all of your friends to a crisp. Glass planets can be shattered, for example, while purple asteroids are springy and bouncy. Sunburn is really a set of gravity puzzles, tasking players with touching, swiping, and pinching their way though through planets, asteroids, and shuttle debris to unite the crew and finalize their death pact. After each mission, floating ghosts thank you for sparing them a slow descent into oblivion. What's worse is that, thanks to some multi-dimensional wormhole shenanigans in the game's fiction, the crew get to do it all over again in each of Sunburn's 50-odd levels. Harsh! In fact, the team is worried that Apple might reject the game for the App Store for being too ghoulish or macabre. "The juxtaposition just became funnier and funnier to us, so we kept going down that route," Garcia explained in a recent profile in Animal. "We like the existentialism of the story and wanted to sort of keep it dark. That's when everyone smiles: the first time the astronauts jump into the sun and thank you for it. It felt silly to move away from that." Assuming all goes well, Garcia, Pizza, and Freedman hope to officially create their studio and release Sunburn this fall. We'll keep you posted.

'Motorsport Manager' Review - Formula Racing for the Masses Posted: 28 Aug 2014 11:30 AM PDT When I sat down to try Motorsport Manager [$4.99], I thought it would be the perfect thing to poke at while listening to a podcast. After all, I wouldn't be expected to drive the cars; I'd be running the biz and laying out the race strategy. A half-hour in, I realized I hadn't absorbed a word, because I was so fully engaged in growing my fledgeling racing empire and watching my drivers tear up the track. It's never overwhelming, nor is it too light to maintain interest. Motorsport Manager finds a nice spot in the complexity spectrum wherein it requires frequent decision-making, without ever inducing paralysis by presenting too many options simultaneously. Motorsport Manager makes an immediately striking impression with a stylish color palette, and a nifty tilt–shift camera effect replete with chromatic aberration. Presentationally, we're a far cry from the stodginess of the average sports management simulation. The only disappointment in this area is on the audio side; the front-end is backed by a very short music loop that grates quickly, and the sound effects during races seem to have no particular relation to the on-screen action, though they effectively establish a racetrack ambiance. Activities in the game may broadly be considered in three categories. Foremost is the task of establishing and running the team, which entails hiring and firing drivers and engineers, allocating research, courting sponsors and fans, etc. So-called dilemmas crop up periodically, forcing on-the-spot binary choices requiring some sort of sacrifice. The second phase is setting qualifying times for races to determine racer positions. A simple matrix of gearing, aerodynamic and tire options creates a variety of configurations, and a little intuition and experimentation is required to achieve the best standing. If that sounds a little boring or fiddly, there is always a recommended setup that will yield reasonable results. Finally, the heart of the game is in the races. Again, managing the action comes down to a few simple choices with immediately comprehensible effects. At any given time, drivers can push the performance of their cars, drive conservatively or something in between. This impacts tire wear, and thus the player's decision of when to have the drivers pit and what kind of tires to use (be they soft, hard or designed for wet conditions). It doesn't seem like a lot to deal with, but with two drivers and at times a thin margin for error (and the ability to run the simulation at high speed), it's enough to require a surprising amount of alertness. Throw in a variety of unpredictable catastrophes, and it's never boring. Successful racing leads to a progression through successively more difficult tournaments, requiring more and more expensive employees and facilities, which raises the stakes significantly. Losing a few races and not receiving the prize money you were counting on when you commissioned that new test track can be devastating. The tournament structure lends itself to comebacks and dramatic fights for survival. This narrative is commented on through a fake twitter feed that sees fans, drivers and sponsors weighing in on events, though it's a bit repetitive and bland; it doesn't hold a candle to the absurdist Byrdr posts of Ridiculous Fishing. There is real "social integration" in a few spots. Motorsport Manager offers bribes in the form of in-game currency in exchange for sharing things. Considering the depth and breadth of creepiness on the app store, it's a relatively unobtrusive and victimless promotional technique, but there we are. The most significant charge I would level against the game is related to interface design: in splitting the difference between designing for phones and tablets, elements seem excessively spread out on tablets, but cramped on phones. It's not a major impediment to usability, but it's noticeable. These minor gripes are easily ignored when it's the middle of a tournament series, the team is hemorrhaging money and a clutch podium is needed to get back in the black. That series of approachable choices and their many axes and intersections is itself an engine tuned to create drama. As someone with no particular affinity for motorsport or management, I can nevertheless offer a very strong recommendation for Motorsport Manager.

'Wayward Souls' to Get Endless Mode, MFi Controller Support, and More in Update Posted: 28 Aug 2014 10:30 AM PDT Notorious indie auteur Kepa Auwae posted some details on our forums regarding the next update to Rocketcat's latest Real Game™, Wayward Souls [$5.99]. Backing up a bit, if you haven't played Wayward Souls (here's our review) yet, you really should. It's a great permadeath action RPG with just enough roguelike trimmings to make people who get really mad when you refer to something as a roguelike only slightly miffed. There's multiple classes to play as, tons of content to go through, and a really cool power curve that gives purpose to multiple attempts as you slowly unlock character abilities. The biggest addition to the game is the often requested endless mode. Once the new update hits, you can just go forever, or, as long as you can survive, I guess. The endless mode is also the highest difficulty level, so, you might not go very long. MFi controller support is finally getting added, as is Game Center. There are more hats (of course) and bosses are finally getting health bars so you know just how close you were to killing 'em before you were slain. A bunch of other minor gameplay tweaks have been made, most of which involve the handling of statue buffs in the game. Now they'll even last between levels, which is cool as it always sucked to find a statue right next to a staircase. Oh, and among other things, there's a "more or less impossible to achieve secret hat added." Wayward Souls is a ton of fun, and if you don't have it yet, now's the time to get it. Rocketcat never puts their games on sale, and instead, actually makes them $1 more expensive with each update. This has two benefits: You're actually saving money buying it before the update lands, and it brings all sorts of expert indie game pricing strategists out of the woodwork to leave comments about how this pricing method will leave Kepa and his crew out on the streets.

Apple Announces September 9th Media Event to Announce New iPhone and Possibly iWatch Posted: 28 Aug 2014 09:35 AM PDT If you even vaguely follow any sort of tech websites then you no doubt know that new iPhone time is just about upon us. Apple always announce their new iPhone towards the fall of each year, and parts have been leaking like crazy out of the supply chain strongly pointing towards two different size iPhone 6 models being unveiled: one with a 4.7-inch screen and one with a 5.5-inch screen. It's also widely believed that Apple will unveil some sort of wearable technology, a mythical device which is being referred to as the iWatch. Well, as of today we at least know a firm date when all the speculation can come to an end and we can finally find out what Apple is actually up to. According to our sister site MacRumors, via The Loop, Apple has sent out media invites for September 9th, the date many have believed would be the date new iPhones are announced. As usual, Apple has left a cheeky note on the invite that says "Wish we could say more" that likely hints to some major feature regarding the new iPhone announcement. I'm sure internet sleuths will be trying to decrypt what Apple means by that all the way leading up to September 9th. The media event will be taking place at Flint Center for the Performing Arts in Apple's base city of Cupertino, which is a change of their usual venue of the Yerba Buena Center in San Francisco. What does it all mean!? We'll have to wait until September 9th to find out. [MacRumors via The Loop]

'8bit Doves' Review - When Doves Cry Posted: 28 Aug 2014 09:30 AM PDT Nitrome's 8bit Doves [$2.99] is a game that will try the patience of players. It has challenging physics to contend with, but is also structured in a way that really impedes the replay value of this challenging action game. The goal is to control a flying hero through dreamscape levels, turning clockwise and counterclockwise to control him through the skies, contending with trying not to crash into the walls or other occasional moving hazards. As well, doves fill the levels: collecting these is an objective tracked by the game, but not inherently necessary to completion. Flying in the general vicinity of the doves is all that's necessary to collect them, a fine concession from a game that is difficult to control. And yes, there is a learning curve to controlling the hero, as his turning radius is very wide. This isn't a complaint at all, as it's a clear part of the game – it's just not a very easy game to play. It's not impossible; any challenge can definitely be conquered with perseverance, and the game restarts very quickly upon death. It just does get a bit frustrating because it often feels like it's necessary to turn very early. The turning is also a bit odd in that there's gravity when not turning only, making flying upward a real challenge. It all just requires practice and patience. 8bit Doves is visually inspired by the original Game Boy, using a 4-color scheme throughout, which has nice and chunky pixels. This sort of visual style has been popping up recently, with games like Two Brothers on PC, Super Scrapped Robot [Free] on iOS, and the occasional GBJam centered around grayscale games making the rounds recently. I dig it, in part because I love pixel art games, the style does remind me of my Game Boy Pocket days, and I think it forces artists to try and make something that's visually appealing within the restrictions. And really, 8bit Doves is a good-looking game: the backgrounds are detailed, the animations are fluid, there's a clever shadow effect on the hero, it's all candy for those who dig this sort of style. The problem with 8bit Doves though, is that the game is explicitly designed not to be replayable. There are the three sets of ten levels each, but they must all be played in sequence, not in any individual order. Why this is not a choice is befuddling, because the game does track the number of doves collected in each set of levels. Going after the doves, which requires a great amount of precision and timing in many cases, is extremely challenging – being able to play single levels would help make this quest easier. But trying to get them all in order? It's an extremely unappealing endeavor to start off with. And knowing that one screwup requires starting all over from the beginning? I don't understand this choice at all. It's a killer for any replay value the game could potentially have. And the 30 levels can be beaten in about an hour and a half or so of play. More levels would be great – enabling easy replayability of the existing levels would be even better. I appreciate a lot about 8bit Doves: I just know it needs a lot more to be the best game it can be.

'Sonic Jump Fever' Guide - Tips For Winning Without Spending Real Money Posted: 28 Aug 2014 08:30 AM PDT Okay, so I'm a typical SEGA fan. I complained about Sonic Jump Fever [Free] in my review, but I still ended up playing it a lot anyway. This, however, works out to your benefit, because since I've somehow unlocked pretty much everything, I'm in a great position to give you some advice about how to get the most out of this game with a minimum of pain and suffering. The core gameplay isn't very deep, and if you've played a jumping game before, you've probably developed some skills that will help you out in this game. The game does have a bunch of unlockables and power-ups, though, and there's definitely an optimal way of making use of those. Here are ten tips to help you score big in Sonic Jump Fever without losing your personal gold ring stockpile. Unlock Amy as soon as possible. This is the best tip, so I'm giving it to you first. She's not as expensive to unlock as Blaze or Knuckles, and she's by far the best character in the game. Her jumping hammer attack not only takes out nearby enemies, it also collects any goodies it comes in contact with. Her wide reach makes it easier to score points, rack up combos, enter Fever mode, and collect things. No other character has anything that even remotely compensates. Don't even waste your red rings on the others. Make sure you get your free daily spin. The regular version of the spin doesn't have much to offer, but as you move up through the 'good' and 'great' boards, the rewards start to get really good. You can win tons of red rings, free Chao searches, premium boost power-ups, or even a bunch of character tokens. Note that it's not connected to the date on the calendar, but rather it's that after taking a spin, you have to wait 24 hours before you get another one. It's good to set this to a consistent time, like just before bed or when you're on your usual coffee break. Focus on either rings, points, or collectibles. You can't have it every way during a run. Coins are over here, enemies are over there, grabbing that red ring will cause you to lose time, and all of these are at odds with each other. If you're in it for rings, equip a ring-collecting Hero or Neutral Chao, and focus in-game on collecting the rings and triggering Fever mode. If it's points you're after, equip a Dark Chao, aim for all the bad guys, and focus on extending your combos so that you can trigger Fever mode as many times as possible. Don't forget to free animal buddies on the way as they can boost your score significantly. If it's collectibles you're chasing, use the Chao that rescues you from falling, keep your eyes peeled, and avoid long combos because you can miss items if you enter Fever mode without collecting them. Spend rings on upgrading your chosen character first. Upgrading your character increases the duration of the power-ups you collect in-game. It's best to upgrade each of them on your chosen character until they're at the point that the next upgrade costs 9,100 rings. Once you reach that point, just leave them be for now. You have bigger fish to fry with those gold rings. Be careful about upgrading every character, too, since every upgrade goes towards increasing the Fever meter for everyone. Don't level up your Fever too quickly. Every time you increase your Fever level, you'll move up the ladder of Fever patterns. Each pattern has a different distribution of rings and point bubbles. The higher your level becomes, the more those patterns tend to favor point bubbles over rings, severely cutting down on how many rings you can collect per run. If you trigger Fever more than once in a run, you can see what the next pattern looks like, and the one after that, and so on. When the rings start drying up, it's not a bad idea to hold off on upgrades until you've amassed a bunch of gold rings. Don't pull a Chao without full energy. You can pull a Chao for 3,000 rings or by using a Chao search item won from the daily spin. Don't use these unless you have full energy. The minute you pull a Chao, a timer starts counting down. You can only use the Chao until it expires, and playing with it goes towards permanently unlocking it. The level three Chaos give you a mere hour, so if you pull one with an empty energy meter, you've basically wasted half of your chances to use it. On a similar note, if you're just getting in a quick game while waiting in a line-up or at the bus stop, it's probably not a good time to use a Chao search. You want to be able to at least spend an entire energy gauge playing with it to get the most bang for your pull. Learn the pattern of your Fever level. As I mentioned in an earlier tip, when you enable Fever mode, the patterns are always consistent with your Fever level. They'll always have the same shapes and distributions of goodies, so you can just memorize them in order to make the most out of them. Fever mode is a great source of points and rings, so squeezing everything you can out of it is very important to achieving high scores. Hoard your boost power-ups for the right opportunity. Well, you don't have to hoard all of them, but you'll want to hang on to your best ones for when you have the best chance of making a high score. That means you probably don't want to use them early on when you're unlocking characters and powering them up. They'll serve you far better when you've progressed your Fever level into the patterns with more point bubbles. You'll also want to save your boosts for the right stage. The Jungle Zone is kind of a waste if you're trying to earn a high score or go really far. The vines block your progress and between fly traps, vines that shoot out and pull you down, and collapsing floors, it's easy to slip up here. The Mechanical Zone is far more open with plenty of things to keep your combo streak going. The Green Hill Zone is a pretty good place to make a high score run, too, but watch out for spikes. Use effective combinations of boosts and Chaos. A particularly potent combo for gathering up a pile of rings is the level three Neutral Chao who collects rings and the Ring Streak premium boost that awards you extra rings for collecting every ring in a group. You probably won't unlock that Chao for a while, so it's good to have some Ring Streak boosts on hand for those times that you have temporary access to it. Quick Fever and Super Time Extend combined with an enemy-destroying Dark Chao will help you reach new scoring heights. Generally, Dark Chaos go hand-in-hand with boosts that help you earn more points, while Hero and Neutral Chaos are better mixed with boosts that help you collect more rings. Aim carefully when flicking the animals at the end of a run. You might be tempted to just fling the animals willy-nilly to try to get as many in the basket as possible, but it's a far better idea to take a bit of care in your aim. If you land consecutive animals in the basket, each subsequent one will earn you 100 points more. If you miss, they reset back to being worth a mere 100 points. Even if taking the time to aim means you only flick half a handful of animals instead of the whole lot, you'll still end up earning a lot more points. If you manage to get into a fairly fast-paced rhythm of landing them in the basket, your character will wait longer before leaving the screen, giving you ample opportunity to earn a huge chunk of points. Don't underestimate how much you can boost your score here. If you follow these ten tips, you'll waste less time and get to racking up the big scores sooner. After that, you can swing back around and pick up the other stuff, like the additional characters and extra character power-up levels. If you clear all of that out, might I suggest the original Sonic Jump [$2.99] while you wait for updates? Either way, good luck and happy golden onion ring hunting!

'Dragon Quest VIII' Drops Five Bucks to $14.99 Posted: 28 Aug 2014 07:30 AM PDT We've mentioned it many times before, but if you're the kind of person who always finds yourself getting worked up over games for "casuals" and badly want a "real game," look no further than Dragon Quest VIII [$14.99]. Our resident RPG fanatic Shaun Musgrave reviewed it when it was released, and gets in to some serious depth about how this is a game you could play for hundreds of hours if it sucks you in. While other RPG series had reduced their scope and backed away from world-spanning adventures across open environments due to the rise in costs of realizing such an ambition, Dragon Quest 8 represented the full, glorious 3D realization of the JRPG in its purest form. It has big towns and cities filled with NPCs who give you vague advice and don't care if you steal stuff out of their dresser and a huge, treasure-packed overworld map that's in scale with your character's dimensions. It has cool forms of transportation, dungeons with branching paths that lead to treasures for some reason. There are animated 3D battles with a menagerie of interesting creatures, epic boss fights, and a twisty story with lots of memorable vignettes. You can gamble in casinos, create a monster team to battle in a coliseum, hunt unique monsters, and craft a veritable arsenal of weapons and armor. You'll travel the seas, fly through the air, fight evil wizards and dragons, and save the world through the power of friendship and love. It's a wonderful, charming game that any fan of JRPGs will find something to love about. As you'll likely notice from the screenshots above, the one thing that's sort of weird about DQ8 is that the game is entirely played in portrait mode. It's designed to be played on your phone with one hand, and with that goal in mind, it works awesome. Things get a little weird when you play it on your iPad, as the portrait mode setup just feels strange. Even at its original price of $19.99, DQ8's cost per hour of gameplay was better than most other things on the App Store. Knock five bucks off that, and it gets even better. If you've had your eye on this game, better grab it while it's discounted.

Out Now: 'Bioshock', 'The Nightmare Cooperative', 'Back to Bed', 'Almightree: The Last Dreamer' and Much More Posted: 27 Aug 2014 08:11 PM PDT It's new iOS game night and one of the most hotly-anticipated titles is finally upon us: Bioshock. Despite all the hemming and hawing over a graphical downgrade and touch controls, it's hard not to feel like Bioshock on iOS is a bit of magic when it's actually running in the palm of your hand. Besides that heavyweight, the rest of tonight's lineup is extremely strong as well. Also it was sort of a weird week in that a bunch of games got a head start by launching yesterday, but they've been included in this list just to have all of this week's greatness bundled in one handy location. ACC Football Challenge 2014 iTunes Description The sequel to the world's first college gaming app has arrived! Choose your favorite school and compete online in a thrilling multiplayer football challenge. Every saturday, lead your team to victory in a revolutionary second-screen experience! Compete against rival schools in the app while the teams play for real on the gridiron. Then check back in or watch the ACC Network television broadcasts to see which schools emerge victorious. Win prizes in online tournaments, play through real seasons as your favorite team, and brag about your conquests on Facebook and Twitter. Forum Thread: ACC Football Challenge 2014 (by Naquatic LLC) AcceleroX: After the Higgs Boson iTunes Description Collect Energy and avoid dangerous obstacles in this thrilling and fast-paced game! With the recent groundbreaking discovery of the Higgs boson at the Large Hadron Collider, the question now is where it will lead next. Does there exist a whole class of undiscovered particles? That's the goal in AcceleroX. Compete with yourself and friends to smash more and more particles in this endless level game to discover the missing majority of the universe! Unlock multi-particles for additional lives. Play your way through endless levels as you attempt to reach smash velocity and split the target particles. Experience the heart pounding speeds! Forum Thread: AcceleroX: After the Higgs Boson (by Steve Snyder) Almightree: The Last Dreamer iTunes Description The world is shattering and you are the only hope to restore the balance. A thrilling and challenging 3D puzzle platformer game. Find your way to awaken the Almightree while racing with calamity. It was just a radiant day when the ground started to fall, houses and towers crumbled, and the world gone out of its order. You lose everything you have, everyone you love. Your only hope is the Almightree and its seedlings, mythical trees that believed have the power to keep the order of the world. But be watchful on your adventure, as you may find clues that maybe there are still others. Journey through an intense and puzzling world to awaken seedlings and finally majestic Almightree. To restore the balance of the world or even maybe bring back everything you hold dear. Forum Thread: Almightree: The Last Dreamer (by Crescent Moon Games) Alone… iTunes Description ALONE is a handcrafted, intense survival journey through space. Navigate caves, rip through rocky debris, dodge rocks and comets and test your endurance as you pursue ever higher scores in this ultra fast, procedural runner. Forum Thread: ALONE... (by Laser Dog) Armies of Dragons iTunes Description Defend your kingdom from rampaging hordes in this new kind of strategy and fortress defense game! Summon the power of the four elements, and elementally charge your armies before sending them to defend three lanes! Train, upgrade, and manage the growth of your warriors to forge a formidable army! Unlock powerful champions to fight for you—and eventually, call forth mighty creatures like treants, golems, and even good dragons to help you win! Forum Thread: Armies of Dragons (by Animoca) Back to Bed iTunes Description Back to Bed is a 3D puzzle game set in a unique and artistic dream world, wherein you guide the sleepwalker Bob to the safety of his bed. To achieve this, you must take control of Bob's subconscious guardian named Subob. The pair travels through a surreal and painting-like dream world, filled with objects used to guide Bob towards the Bed, but also dangers that must be avoided! Forum Thread: Back to Bed (by Bedtime Digital Games) BioShock iTunes Description One of the greatest first person shooters of all time, BioShock comes to iOS! BioShock is the "genetically enhanced" first person shooter where you can turn everything into a weapon: the environment, your body, fire and water, and even your worst enemies. You are a cast-away in Rapture, an underwater Utopia torn apart by civil war. Caught between powerful forces, and hunted down by genetically modified "splicers" and deadly security systems, you have to come to grips with a deadly, mysterious world filled with powerful technology and fascinating characters. No encounter ever plays out the same, and no two gamers will play the game the same way. Forum Thread: Bioshock - (by 2K) Booommm iTunes Description Get all the robots before time runs out! Comes in pure black and white explosiveness! Set in a black and white world, Booommm is the home to mischievous looking robots that will create chaos if not destroyed. Tap on them to make them explode before time runs out! Forum Thread: Booommm (by WhiteSponge) Bubble Blast Adventure iTunes Description Come discover the fabulous world your favorite Bubble Blast live in! Bubble Blast Adventure is an exciting Platformer where you must race through the levels collecting special items and defeating the evil Bubble Square Tribe. The Bubble Square Tribe has invaded the beautiful kingdom the Bubble Blast have peaceful lived in for centuries. While invading the kingdom, the tribe has stolen Bubble Blast artifacts, which represent the greatest source of power in the entire kingdom. As you venture through the various levels and take back the Bubble Blast Kingdom, you will be in charge of recovering them all. The kingdom's future is at stake. Forum Thread: Bubble Blast Adventure (by Magma Mobile) Chunky Cat iTunes Description There's a reason this cat is so chunky! There are so many delicious critters roaming around the city roofs, not even a fat lazy cat like Chunky can ignore them! Help him catch as many snacks as you can, but beware! There are many dangers lurking around. Dangerous falls, mice traps, guard dogs and other perils will try to end Chunky's quest for mighty food. Don't let them! Fight for Chunky's flab, be the roundest feline hero that has ever been! Forum Thread: Chunky Cat (by Mandarina Games) Colorway - Mix & Play iTunes Description FIRST GAME IN THE WORLD ABOUT COLOR MIXING. Mix and play! Tune up your brain in colorful way: navigate, choose and discover the addictive world of color mixing. SPIN A COLOR WHEEL: It may come in handy while venturing through the colorway. Learn how colors interact. COLLECT COLOR FACTS: Complete level chapters to unlock colorful achievements. Gather all interesting facts! CREATE EVERY COLOR: Use your imagination to solve the puzzle and colorize the whole spectrum of colors - our mixing algorithm will do the rest! Forum Thread: Colorway - Mix and Play (by Krzysztof Bielenin) Dino Skater iTunes Description Dino Skater — Skate to save the world! A meteor has hit the prehistoric earth! Help Dino kickflip, ollie, and grind his way to saving the dinosaurs from extinction! To stop the lava flood you must collect magical fire eggs strewn across Dino's radical jurassic world...OR ELSE. Use your sick skateboard skills to grind along the backs of fellow dinosaurs while collecting fire eggs to help stop the flow of lava. Snag coins along the way to load up on powerful gear, souped up boards, and upgradeable powerups. Forum Thread: Dino Skater (by Apptly) Fighting Fantasy: Appointment with F.E.A.R. iTunes Description Travel back to the 1980s as a superpowered defender of justice in this all-new edition of Steve Jackson's Appointment With F.E.A.R.! This dynamic edition is stylized as an interactive graphic novel. Your choices guide you towards new villains, super dilemmas, and ultimately, the Titanium Cyborg himself! As Titan City's courageous and incorruptible champion of law and order, use your super powers to protect its innocent citizens from the danger and deviousness of a host of super-villains bent on taking over the world! Your mission is to discover the location of the top-secret F.E.A.R. meeting, capture the Titanium Cyborg and his cohorts and bring them to justice. Forum Thread: Appointment With F.E.A.R. (by Tin Man Games) Glidefire iTunes Description Control awesome gliders by touchscreen and taps. Each of them have unique abilities! You will encounter wide range of dangers on your way placed by the Corporation - avoid collisions with the enemy devices, use boosters to penetrate obstacles and weapons to defeat enemies! Forum Thread: Glidefire (by Wonder Wood Games) God Strike 2 iTunes Description The sequel to the iOS game 'God Strike' that has been sold one million copies! Be a god in this city, Check your thunderbolt then swipe down! Now, it's time to punish the villians. Forum Thread: God Strike 2 (by Magic Cube) Kitten Taxi iTunes Description KittenTaxi is a new generation of racing shooter game with a unique animated hand drawn graphics you've never seen before!Epic escaping story of bank robbing cats, a reverse view makes gameplay more exciting. CARS, CATS and GUNS! What more needs to be described? Forum Thread: KittenTaxi - CARS, CATS and GUNS! What more needs to be described? Madden NFL Mobile iTunes Description BOOM! Dominate your friends in intense head-to-head shootouts. This is MADDEN NFL like you've never seen it on mobile. Collect current and legendary NFL stars, then put them in action on your favorite NFL team. Play all season long – we've got live events and fresh challenges to connect you to the action anytime, anywhere. Forum Thread: Madden NFL Mobile (by Electronic Arts) My Puppy iTunes Description Ever wished you could raise a Puppy of your very own? Now you can with My Puppy! Your job is simply to care for the world's most cutie Puppy dog! It's your task to ensure that they're happy and healthy. Accomplish this feat by feeding, petting, playing with their favorite toys or even dressing them up in numerous costumes! Earn bones by playing with your Puppy around the park then use these to dress up your Puppy and even adopt the new Puppy! Forum Thread: My Puppy - (by Pine Entertainment) The Nightmare Cooperative iTunes Description The Nightmare Cooperative is a puzzley roguelike. You control a group of characters, each with different special abilities. The trick? They all move together, as a group. Something of a cooperative, if you catch the drift. Every playthrough will be different, and you'll always have to start at the beginning, no matter how well (or badly) you did before. Your score is the amount of gold that you pickup during your journey. Opening crates gives you extra gold, but releases more monsters. Forum Thread: The Nightmare Cooperative (by Lucky Frame) Ninja Smasher! iTunes Description ### 8Bit Style Platform Ninja Action Game! ### The princess was kidnapped by monsters! Ninja explore field and dungeons, collect items, and get back the princess! Forum Thread: Ninja Smasher! (by Rogue Ninja) Oh No! It's An Alien Invasion: Turret Alert iTunes Description Briiian and the Brainlings have taken over S.W.E.E.T.'s secret hideout, and it's up to YOU to take it back! Stay on high alert in this action packed game that's easy to learn but hard to master! Aim your weapon and tap to shoot as you make your way through S.W.E.E.T's secret hideout! Swipe to build combos and knock out multiple aliens. Watch out for crafty Brainlings, powerful Brainmandos, and their evil boss, Briiian! Forum Thread: Oh No! It's An Alien Invasion: Turret Alert (by Nelvana Digital) Optika iTunes Description Optika is a puzzle game where you control light with 14 differents optic devices to complete levels. Be ingenious and lead the right color to the Receivers with the help of Professor Opticus and Sofia. Don't hesitate to decompose and move the light with lenses, mirrors and prisms. Take your time and guide the photons to their goals! Forum Thread: Optika (by Bulkypix) Papa's Wingeria HD iTunes Description You've won a trip to Starlight City and find yourself in charge of Papa's latest restaurant, where you'll need to run the fryers and toss chicken wings in an assortment of flavorful sauces. Your customers expect a great presentation, so arrange the fried foods with sides and veggies so they're pleasing to the eye -- and their stomachs! Though the restaurant is known for its famous wings, you'll also unlock a variety of other meats to fry for your customers, as well as a wide array of delicious sauces and plenty of sides and dips to go with their meal. The familiar hands-on gameplay of the series is back, but this time you'll especially have to focus on presentation and how to best lay out the plate with all of the food ordered. Learn a variety of patterns for arranging the food to earn the best scores from your customers, and earn big tips to spend in the Shop! Forum Thread: Papa's Wingeria HD (by Filipine Studios) Shoot The Moon iTunes Description THE MOON WILL NOT STOP SINGING! Launch rockets at him to make him stop. Hmm... That only annoyed him. Good. KEEP DOING IT! Forum Thread: Shoot the Moon (by Shaun Coleman) Star Nomad iTunes Description Star Nomad is a top down RPG/RTS tribute to classic spacesims of old such as Wing Commander: Privateer, Escape Velocity and Freelancer. In Star Nomad, you roam free in the Wildlands Sector, in a sci-fi noir setting rich in depth and humor. Be a neural data transporter, mercenary for hire, merchant trader, contraband smuggler evading the law or even a pirate making your fame (infamy) & fortune. If you love games such as Star Traders, Space Rangers, Eve Online, Transcendence, FTL or the upcoming Star Citizen, you will probably love Star Nomad! Forum Thread: Star Nomad, a sandbox tribute to classic spacesims! Tank Invaders iTunes Description Prepare yourself, soldier! The maniac villain Terror has readied his devious machines for war and is launching a massive offensive against our allies' bases around the world! Being a prodigious bombing specialist, you've been summoned by General Rogers to put an end to this threat! Forum Thread: Tank Invaders - War Against Terror (by Mother Gaia Studio) Tiny Tower Vegas iTunes Description Tiny Tower is back, and this time we're going to Vegas, baby! - Build and manage your own hotel & casino filled with shopping, dining & entertainment floors! - Amass a fortune of bux by betting chips in a multitude of casino games! - Earn chips when your friends visit and play the games in your tower! - Customize your tower with impressively themed roofs, elevators and lobbies! - Keep tabs on the thoughts of employees and guests by reading the "BitBook" virtual social network! Forum Thread: Tiny Tower Vegas (by NimbleBit) Tower Boxing iTunes Description OMG - This is out of control! 10 dudes with insanely hard punches decided to knock down a skyscraper. WAIT! You're not going to help them, are you? :O - Choose your favorite character - Tap left or right to tear down the tower walls - Dodge obstacles like balconies and company signs Forum Thread: Tower Boxing (by FDG Entertainment) The Walking Dead Pinball iTunes Description Zen Studios, Telltale Games, and Skybound Entertainment partner to create all-new table based on the 'Game of the Year' winning series. The pinball masters at Zen Studios have partnered with Telltale Games and Robert Kirkman, the Eisner Award-winning creator and writer of The Walking Dead for his Skybound imprint at Image Comics, to create an all-new digital pinball table based on the award-winning The Walking Dead game series. Forum Thread: The Walking Dead Pinball (by Zen Studios) 8bit Doves iTunes Description Trapped in a VR world powered by an ancient handheld device, you are forced to endlessly dream in a pixel world of just 4 colours! Doves have taken roost in your prison and though you don't know it they are the key to your survival. The Doves subconsciously inspire dreams of flight, so take to the skies through the mazes of your imagination and find the exit. Intuitive two button gameplay is all you need to steer your way through the sky. Fly through each stage and reach the exit. Get doves to follow you for extra bonus bragging rights on Game Center and Social Networking stuff. If walls aren't enough challenge you may enjoy the variety of traps that get rapidly added including, moving walls, speed boost zones, growing walls and more! Forum Thread: 8bit Doves (by Nitrome)

'Heroes of Order and Chaos' Becomes Second iOS Game with Twitch Streaming Posted: 27 Aug 2014 05:14 PM PDT Twitch's mobile support has so far just been limited to Asphalt 8 [Free] from Gameloft, but finally a second game supports live streaming to Twitch: Heroes of Order & Chaos [Free], also from Gameloft. This is perhaps the most appropriate game to get Twitch streaming yet, as MOBAs are the bread and butter of Twitch popularity, with League of Legends and Dota 2 being two of the most popular games being streamed at any given time. And as a 5-on-5 MOBA with lengthy matches, there's plenty of reason to stream this game on Twitch to interested audiences – and now it's possible straight from the game, with camera and microphone support. Whether this is a sign of more Twitch-supported games to come seems unknown: Gameloft is still the only developer to have released a mobile Twitch-streaming game (though the Nvidia Shield Android tablet supports streaming any game), and with Amazon buying Twitch, who knows what the future for Twitch on mobile will be. And how many people will stream a two-year old game that had no streaming support until now? Twitch streaming isn't the only thing added to Heroes of Order & Chaos, for those checking it out: there's three new heroes, a solo league, rebalancing, and improved matchmaking and reconnection settings to try and improve the play experience. The update is out now.

'Tiny Tower Vegas' Review - A Freemium Jackpot Posted: 27 Aug 2014 02:21 PM PDT NimbleBit has shown success across a variety of free-to-play titles, but Tiny Tower [Free] seems to take the cake as far as popularity is concerned. When Tiny Death Star [Free] came out last year, NimbleBit's formula saw some nice improvements but overall we were left with mostly a sprite refresh with some heavy handed IAP incorporated on top of the base gameplay. With the launch of Tiny Tower Vegas [Free], NimbeBit has retaken the reigns back from Disney Mobile and has made what I consider to be the true sequel to its tower building title. Suffice to say, the mini-game improvements combined with a return to the more friendlier NimbleBit IAP approach makes for another awesome F2P from the developer. If you've played the original Tiny Tower then the basics in Vegas won't be hard to master. The open-ended goal of the game is to build a giant skyscraper by earning coins and using that currency to build floors. Coins are earned by keeping your floors stocked with items for bitizens to purchase. Earn enough coins, and you can add a new floor, increasing your earning potential that will help keep up with the ever-increasing cost of adding a new floor. In addition to the core timer-based gameplay, players can also ferry visiting bitizens to floors of their choice for tip money (typically in the form of coins and timer reductions). While the above is pretty familiar, there are a few changes to the core formula that are worth mentioning. For starters, residence floors from the previous game are now hotel rooms. Delivering a bitizen to such a floor starts a countdown until check out. Once the countdown is over you can tap on that floor to get a lump sum of coins (vice the slow trickle of coins from stocking regular floors). Since there are no longer 'residents' in your tower, bitizens go to your lobby to hope for a job. Your lobby can keep up to five bitizens at any one time and can include regular bitizens and a variety of VIPs (that can lower construction times, fully stock stores, etc.). Thus, there's a bit of strategy in making sure unwanted lobby bitizens are continually kicked out to make room for new ones. The biggest changes to debut in Vegas are the addition of casino game floors and the introduction of a new premium currency (the 'Chip'). Casino game floors allow players to play mini-games based on popular casino games (Slots, Blackjack, and Poker). Playing casino games requires chips to participate and the payoffs are potentially large amounts of bux, which are still used to speed up floors, fill up hotel rooms, upgrade elevators and purchase cosmetic upgrades. The inclusion of chips shifts the dynamics of freemium currency in Tiny Tower Vegas. While bux are still the 'end-game' currency (besides coins, obviously) that you want to accumulate, chips become a potential resource for accumulating large amounts of them in relatively short order. As you can imagine with a game being set in Vegas, there's always a chance that playing a mini-game won't reward any bux. However, the payoffs are potentially enormous with the right amount of luck. Of course, chips are also now the rarest currency, and are accumulated far slower than coins and bux. Thankfully, in true NimbleBit fashion there are plenty of mini-quests that are randomly available to earn chips, as well as the occasional random chance of getting one awarded for ferrying a bitizen to a floor. While the addition of the casino mini-games seems small, I think it's an excellent addition to Tiny Tower and adds a much higher level of active participation beyond the typical passive timer-based gameplay. The gambling mini-games are engaging and do a good job of encouraging players to keep the game open to accomplish quests and earn chips to play them even further. Social functionality reminiscent of the Pocket Planes/Trains games offer additional benefits to playing the casino games beyond simply earning bux. The only downside to what I think is a great addition to the gameplay is the fact that players not familiar with casino mini-games (or have an aversion to gambling games, virtual or otherwise) won't really be able to appreciate a significant addition to the overall game. Another facet that I appreciated was the further attention to detail in Vegas's presentation. BitBook entries are far more entertaining, the randomized missions are quirky and the pixel art is far better than the original. Floors are a lot more animated and the sense of an overall 'Vegas' theme makes the idea of an all-encompassing tower a bit more plausible. Despite its passive gameplay, Tiny Tower was a hit with the casual crowd. The inclusion of casino mini-games in Vegas should alleviate the complaints that some folks had about its 'gameplay' while still retaining the simple timer-based gameplay in regards to building and expanding your tower. Fans of Tiny Tower will love this Vegas sequel and for others I'd advocate checking it out.

Ubisoft Clarifies Episodic Format for 'Valiant Hearts,' "No Comment" on Potential 'Child of Light' for Mobile Posted: 27 Aug 2014 01:37 PM PDT Earlier this month, Ubisoft announced the imminent release of a touch-friendly version of Valiant Hearts: The Great War for iOS. The announcement came with news that the game would would be "based on the episodic format allowing players to play the game they way they want, just like for comic books of TV series." That's not exactly the clearest description of an episodic game, so I asked Ubisoft to clarify. Over e-mail, a Ubisoft representative explained that players will be able to buy Valiant Hearts either in full or in "episodes." "Valiant Hearts on console was broken up into multiple 'episodes,' so players will be able to purchase those individually, or the full game." The game will be out on September 4th, but pricing details haven't been announced yet. During that same conversation, I asked who was actually developing the iOS version of the game. Mobile ports of Ubisoft games have been handled in a few different ways in the past: sometimes they're given to one of the smaller two-dozen odd studios in Ubisoft's stable, and sometimes they're outsourced to third-party companies. Valiant Hearts, in contrast, is being ported over by a team at Ubisoft Montpelier, the same group that developed the console and PC versions of the game. Lastly, this month's Valiant Hearts announcement also ushered in speculation (especially on our forums), that Child of Light would be the next candidate for an iOS port. Child of Light is a beautiful turn-based role-playing game by Ubisoft's Montreal studio, released earlier this year on consoles and PC. Here's the announcement trailer for Child of Light. An iOS version of Child of Light doesn't seem too far-fetched. Here's the logic: Ubisoft Montpelier has an in-house set of development tools called the UbiArt Framework that have been used on four console games so far — Rayman Origins, Rayman Legends, Valiant Hearts, and Child of Light. Origins and Legends found their touchscreen counterparts in Rayman Jungle Run [$2.99] and Fiesta Run [$0.99], Valiant Hearts has already been announced, and Child of Light would complete the set. That may seem straightforward, but unfortunately Ubisoft "do not have any info to share right now regarding what other games will be available on mobile." If you missed our previous coverage, Valiant Hearts is a puzzle-adventure game that takes place during World War I about a German soldier named Karl who is in love with a French woman named Marie, based on the real-world French soldiers who fought and died in the trenches along the Western Front. I'm personally looking forward to it, and it'll be available on the App Store on September 4th.