When we took a look at the original Ragdoll Blaster, we were quite impressed by the crafty blend of ragdoll physics, puzzler and hand-drawn, cannon-fed craziness. Backflip Studio has strapped on its helmet again in their second iteration of the series with Ragdoll Blaster 2 [App Store].
The sequel reveals a more polished title than the original, discarding the hand-drawn art and instead drawing heavily from the steampunk genre to create a rich game world of oiled cogs and shiny bronze contraptions. It is thanks to these machinations that the gameplay in Ragdoll Blaster 2 does vary a little to the original, if still sharing that same overall feel of blasting (and resetting) over and over again until you reach your target in as few shots as possible.
The new objects you'll come across include teleporters, additional cannons, objects that adversely affect gravity, ice blocks and mechanical arms to name a few, along with the expected array buttons, cogs and switches. All in all, levels feel more purposeful thanks to the new mechanics, and we're confident that the 150 levels that make up Ragdoll Blaster 2 will continue to be interesting (and undoubtedly difficult) and show the same attention to detail throughout as the ones we've played up to now.
Backflip Studios have also made the decision to incorporate the Plus+ platform in Ragdoll Blaster 2 to provide high scores for each of the nine 'rooms' which theme the levels. Both a Par score and Best score is displayed at the end of each room as a target to beat for those competitively inclined.
We're enjoying our time with Ragdoll Blaster 2, though it does still feel very familiar. Certainly, if you're a fan of the first title, we see no reason why you shouldn't thoroughly enjoy the new features on offer. (And if you haven't had a chance to try the first, we highly recommended it) Impressions from our readers are collecting in our discussion thread and to date seem largely positive.
Disney has pulled a proverbial rabbit out of its hat (or hole?) by surprising us with a timely Alice in Wonderland [App Store] puzzle-platformer to tie-in with the upcoming film release.
Our early impressions from playing through the first few levels are definitely positive, with a range of puzzles providing some fresh if challenging gameplay elements. Alice in Wonderland – An Adventure Beyond The Mirror, the game's full title, pits you in the shoes of Alice who finds herself back in Wonderland on another inane adventure. By tapping on Alice you are able to change between four other characters including the White Rabbit, the Cheshire Cat, the Mad Hatter and the March Hare; each with their own abilities to help Alice navigate through the various puzzles you'll encounter each level. The game's write-up and feature list as provided by Disney is as follows:
Play as Alice and solve a series of puzzles with help from the Mad Hatter, White Rabbit and other memorable characters from the movie. Explore a world filled with whimsical settings, optical illusions, challenging puzzles, and formidable adversaries.
Master unique abilities with the help of Alice's friends:
Freeze time with the White Rabbit
Make objects appear or disappear with the Cheshire Cat
Use the power of Telekinesis with the March Hare
Transform objects from one world to another with the help of the Mad Hatter
Unlock Hidden Objects in Alice's Journal with your GPS, Camera, Photo Library, and by playing the game!
100's of puzzles and challenges to complete
The graphics in Alice in Wonderland are a rich, cell-shaded affair that bring out the child-like madness of Wonderland beautifully. In a way they remind us of the hit multi-platform indie game Braid (most definitely a welcome thing), which is fitting as some of the gameplay elements are very Braid-esque too, with stopping and starting time and objects featuring heavily from the get go.
Our review is still cooking but we'll have it hot out of the oven for you shortly. In the meantime, be sure to check out the Lite version which offers up a brief tutorial level to give you a taste of the gameplay.
The original Ragdoll Blaster [$1.99 / Free] was released last year and eventually peaked at the #3 in the best selling apps listing, as well as #2 overall in games. Its longevity on the charts since then isn't much of a surprise when you consider the game's uncanny ability to suck in everyone who plays it to the point that we still randomly get comments on our original review from people looking for tips to clear some levels in the game.
Naturally, Ragdoll Blaster is a tough act to follow, but Ragdoll Blaster 2 seems to be even more of the same with an updated graphics and some new puzzle elements that should spice up gameplay quite a bit. Here are the first few minutes of the game, including the tutorial and some of the earlier levels:
Backflip Studios has also released two other videos worth checking out, a teaser trailer and a gameplay video that shows several brief clips of some of the more advanced levels in Ragdoll Blaster 2. We'll have a full review of the game when it's ready to roll on March 1st.
Free games are almost as awesome as free samples at the grocery store, or maybe more awesome depending on how you look at it. Three cool games are free today, and like most price changes, they will only be free for a short period of time so it's best not to wait before downloading these games.
Alchemize looks to be a simple match 3, but the gameplay is actually quite complex with all kinds of things to unlock, different game modes, and other surprises. We liked the game in our review, and it's really worth checking out to see how they managed to mix up the match 3 formula.
While I wasn't really crazy about this naval tower defense game when it was first released, it has since been updated a ton with all kinds new content, gameplay tweaks, achievements, and OpenFeint integration with online leaderboards.
Where most word finding games have you frantically searching for words to beat a timer, Textropolis has much more laid back gameplay that allows players to search for words made from the letters found in the names of 30 different included cities at their own pace. If you like Textropolis, check out the sequel, Fishtropolis [$1.99] as well.
Indie developer Knife Media recently let us in on a project they've had in the works for quite some time now. Originally developed for the PC, Choma was a finalist in to the 2009 Unity Awards amongst tons of other entries. Choma is a platforming game with a diverse art style that varies greatly between levels, in the game you play as Choma who according to Knife Media "a small bouncing fruit with a big part to play".
Check out the following early gameplay trailer:
Knife Media boasts Choma will be the one of the first "true AAA titles" exclusive to the iPad, and they're shooting for a release window of mid to late 2010. Judging by the gameplay trailer alone, Choma seems quite similar to Rolando. Ngmoco has not said anything publicly on the fate of the Rolando series, or whether or not there is a Rolando 3 in the works, so if Knife Media plays their cards right it's entirely possible that Choma could be the Rolando of the iPad.
In 1989, influenced by Tetris and tic-tac-toe, Dave Akers and Mark Stephen Pierce created Klax, originally programmed in just a few weeks in Amiga Basic. Nearly 20 years later, Mark Stephen Pierce flying solo with the help of Super Happy Fun Fun released Star*Burst [App Store], a matching game with tons of particle effects and all the gameplay from classic Klax turned upside down as the rights to the original Klax seems to be trapped somewhere in Midway's bankruptcy-powered licensing purgatory.
If Klax was before your time, or you just never got around to pumping quarters in to a Klax machine, here's the basic gist of the Star*Burst– Randomly spawning bricks come down a conveyor belt towards a paddle which can catch and hold up to five bricks at once. Moving your finger around controls the paddle, and swiping down throws a brick back up on to the conveyor belt, while tapping the paddle throws the brick up to the five by five grid at the top of the screen.
Blocks on the top of the screen are cleared by matching them horizontally, vertically, diagonally, and other more complicated layouts such as forming arrows, an X, or stars. The more blocks you clear the more points you earn, and as blocks are removed the existing blocks compress to fill any spaces that may have been created as blocks disappear– Allowing you to chain massive combos (and earn point multipliers) if you can set them up.
When you get farther in to the game, wild blocks that will match any color and bomb blocks appear that can destroy nearby blocks on the grid. Just like Klax, achieving high scores involves thinking ahead and intelligently managing which blocks you keep on your paddle, which blocks you flip back up on to the conveyor belt, and how you arrange the blocks on the grid. The game is over when you either fail to catch five blocks from the conveyor belt, or you run out of spaces on the grid to place new blocks.
If you were a fan of the original Klax, you need to have Star*Burst on your iPhone. The touch controls work well, and really my only gameplay criticism is that the on-screen button to make the conveyor spit out blocks (the small square with two arrows near the top in screenshots) seems to be awkwardly positioned. You really only need to speed up the block conveyor in the earlier levels when blocks come slower, so this is a very minor issue.
Star*Burst has online scoring and tons of achievements, but unfortunately uses Facebook instead of Plus+ or OpenFeint so the online scoring/achievement functionality is fairly primative and seems to be limited to your Facebook friends and spamming your Facebook wall. With a better online scoring system, Star*Burst would be amazing.
Reiner Knizia holds a PhD in mathematics, and is credit with publishing over 500 different puzzle games, many earning various awards worldwide. Developing his first game at the age of 6, Knizia left a job as a boardmember of an international bank in 1997 to pursue game designing full time. Since then, he has been admitted to the Gaming Hall of Fame and redeveloped several of his old games along with creating new games for the PC, home consoles, and iPhone.
His latest iPhone game, Topas [$1.99], tasks players with placing colored domino-like tiles on a game board in three included game modes. To place tiles, you drag them around with your finger, and tiles can be rotated by tapping on screen with another finger. Tiles are placed on the board following a few simple rules: They must be placed with the whole tile fitting on the game board, every tile must be placed next to another, and the aligned gems on the tiles cannot total more than 8. Points are awarded for the number of gems lined up with each tile placed, and Topas has Agon online leaderboards for each of the game modes.
In arcade mode, you have 36 tiles to place on the game board. Tiles are cleared by lining matching colored rows of gems up and down or across that add up to 7. If you place all 36 tiles, the board is cleared and you can keep going in attempt to get the highest score possible. In weakest link mode, you play 4 quick games placing 8 tiles, the second lowest score of the four games is your end score. Finally, in color play mode, instead of the board clearing when you place all 36 tiles, you only need to score 10 points in a single color, indicated by gauges at the top of the screen.
Like most of Reiner Knizia's games, scoring well in Topas requires quite a bit of strategy, and wile the basics of the game are quite simple, it took me a while to wrap my head around ideal tile placement for maximum point gain. Knizia has quite a few iPhone games available on the App Store now, and they are all quite good in their own ways.
Ingenious, $1.99 – Take turns tiles on a game board, scoring points by creating lines of tiles with similar colors. Play against AI opponents of three difficulty levels and place tiles to block opponents in and make as many matches as possible to increase your score. There's also a solitaire mode if you'd rather just place tiles to see how much you can score.
Money, $1.99 – Starting with six random bills from different countries, players try to exchange their money in to 2-3 currencies before the end of the game. There's a YouTube video explaining the entire game and also an interesting article on boardgamenews.com about adapting the card game to the iPhone.
Monumental, $1.99 – A Mayan themed matching game where players slide around tiles to form groups of 3 colors, symbols, or both colors and symbols for maximum points. Broken stones and dynamite mix things up, and as you progress in the game more colors and symbols are introduced to increase the difficulty curve.
Roto, $1.99 – Players must analyze a group of wheels with colored segments and match those segments by rotating those wheels as few times as possible for maximum points. Roto comes with arcade, puzzle, and action modes which all provide a different spin on gameplay.
Robot Master, 99¢ – Players take turns placing numbered cards down on the game board, scores are totaled by adding the numbers of all the cards, with huge bonuses awarded by lining up pairs and three of a kind on a row.
Knights of Charlemagne, $1.99 – Deploy knights and conquer estates by overwhelming the enemy forces. The strategy and gameplay can get a little complicated, but thankfully the game comes with a great tutorial.
Poison, $2.99 – A card game of brewing potions, players take turns placing numbered potion cards in to three different cauldrons. If a player over-fills a cauldron, they have to take all the cards (and any poison cards) that were inside the cauldron.
The above games are developed by several different developers, so the visual style quality of each of the games varies widely. All of them are faithful reproductions of Reiner Knizia games, require a great deal of strategy, and can offer an awful lot of replay value if you appreciate brain-bending puzzle games.
We just got word from Chillingo's Clickgamer that an Angry Birds [App Store] update is in the works that adds 40 new levels, two new environments, and complete Crystal integration for online leaderboards, achievements, and all the other fun stuff Crystal provides. They're planning on submitting the update "very soon", and even released a new trailer for the game that is easily one of the better iPhone game trailers I've seen recently:
Angry Birds is a catapult game where you assist several angry birds as they seek revenge on a gang of egg-stealing green pigs. From our review:
Players are haphazardly tossed into a level in which several angry-looking red birds are gathered around a primitive slingshot, with a small wooden tower harboring a little green pig to the right. Touching and dragging backwards on the bird that is currently mounted in the slingshot will prime your disturbed little critter for launch. From here, your goal is to aim your shot effectively and take out a weak point on the pig's tower, causing him to fall to his little piggy doom.
We also discussed Angry Birds in our recent podcast, and I really recommend giving the game a look, as I've sunk an unbelievably amount of time recently in to total pig destruction. This new update (especially with online leaderboards) is just going to make this great game even better.
For the many that surely missed it, on Wednesday Apple quietly announced a new member of the iPhone OS family, the iPad. And, while it runs existing iPhone applications just fine in a pixel-for-pixel or 2x-scaled mode, the device with its 9.7-inch screen has much more to offer in the way of screen real estate (over 5x the pixel count of the iPhone) and both CPU and GPU power. The iPad proposition gives iPhone developers much to ponder in the way of just how best to support it.
James Brown, author of the lovely, zen-like frog manipulation game Anicent Frog [App Store] has, himself, begun to ponder the situation and has shared his thoughts on what he feels makes the most sense in bringing Ancient Frog to the iPad, in a recent blog post.
I can make the current iPhone application recognise the iPad and behave more like a native application on that platform. What I've done here is run it at 768×1024, but allowing it to letterbox slightly to retain the original aspect ratio (luckily the ragged border gives me a neat way to bring the edges in a bit, as well as a bit of room to lose some pixels top and bottom). This already looks way better than the previous shot – lots of elements are still blurry, but things that appear at varying scales in the game are already at a higher resolution. This means the text, the daisy and the particle effects are all crisp, which makes the whole thing seem higher resolution
He goes on to point out that fully supporting the iPad's enhanced resolution in his existing iPhone game would not only require a reworking of the graphics that make up every level, but would also push the game above the 10MB barrier for Edge / 3G download, which would greatly reduce the game's "impulse buy" potential for iPhone users.
Brown's plan is to bring the incremental upgrade that he describes, enhancing the game experience on the iPad in the near term and, down the road, release a separate, larger iPad-only version that takes full advantage of the device, but does not penalize iPhone and iPod touch gamers with a larger install.
For new games, moving forward, building in specific support for the iPad is one thing. But reaching into the back catalog to refresh existing titles for Apple's new device is quite another. Just what degree of iPad support is worth adding? What make the most sense? Once gamers start getting iPads in their hands, the early reaction to the experience of gaming on the device, as well as overall sales levels, should help answer that question. But developers and gamers alike should keep in mind the fact that, when the App Store launched, the iPhone had been on the market for a full year with millions of units sold. When a gamer downloads the first iPad game from the App Store, its market will be starting at zero. As such, it will be some time before developers determine where the "sweet spot" of iPad development effort lies.
Little White Bear Studio's match-three puzzler Compression [App Store], normally $0.99, is free for today only. We took a look at Compression earlier this month and very much liked what we saw.
While the match-three space in the App Store couldn't be called anything but downright crowded, Compression manages to keep things interesting. You control blocks that drop from the top of the screen and attempt to match these blocks to the hollow pieces in order to get three of the same color in a column or row, which removes the pieces from the game board.
The twist in Compression's gameplay is in the walls, which move in closer and closer in a set pattern after every third piece is dropped into the board. A set of white dots appear on the section of the wall (either bottom, left, or right) that will compress inward next, so players can tailor their placement of blocks to best deal with the walls, which can remove blocks from the field if there is no more room for them after the board gets compressed.
In short, Compression just gets it right. The core gameplay is different enough to set it apart from the umpteen-million other match-three games on the App Store and simultaneously familiar enough that anyone can pick up the game and be relatively adept within minutes. Don't miss today's chance to grab the game for free.
When we took a look at the original Ragdoll Blaster, we were quite impressed by the crafty blend of ragdoll physics, puzzler and hand-drawn, cannon-fed craziness. Backflip Studio has strapped on its helmet again in their second iteration of the series with Ragdoll Blaster 2 [App Store].
The original Ragdoll Blaster [
Free games are almost as awesome as free samples at the grocery store, or maybe more awesome depending on how you look at it. Three cool games are free today, and like most price changes, they will only be free for a short period of time so it's best not to wait before downloading these games.
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