Sailboat Championship is a clever game in which you must properly steer your boat in order to fully capture the wind in an effective way to propel yourself forward. While I'm no sailor, I've been told by those who having sailing experience, this is a great representation.
The full version of the game links to the free version as a training mode, so it's worth downloading both if you've never tried it before. The full version comes in at $0.99 contains 9 Pro stages, 2 Rescue missions, and 6 different boat types.
The final game that Gameloft showed us at GDC was Fishing Kings, a fishing simulator that they're hoping to target the hardcore fisherman iPhone owning market segment with. Freeverse's Flick Fishing has been insanely successful, and Fishing Kings utilizes a similar control method in addition to some new cool features in attempt to add another layer of depth to fishing on the iPhone.
The most substantial addition is an underwater camera that allows you to see all the fish near your lure, as well as what your lure is doing. What lure you choose also apparently has an effect on how effective your fishing is with more fun things to fill your tackle available to unlock later in the game.
15 different fishing spots are included spread across 5 unique locations, each with the proper fish for the water you're fishing in to make up 30 fish in all to catch. Al of these things are secondary to the voice acting included in the game. While you're reeling in a fish, the in-game announcer is constantly cheering you on. It's beyond ridiculous, and only made worse due to the typical Gameloft voice acting quality.
Fishing Kings is expected to be available late March.
In the midst of the GDC news blitz, we just got word from ngmoco that GodFinger is live in Canada. If you're unfamiliar with this song and dance, it's almost impossible to do large scale beta testing with iPhone games. Ngmoco's solution to this problem is a limited release in Canada to test their server infrastructure with real players.
In GodFinger, you are an all powerful deity who control the people and environment of a small planet. The planet environment is a side view cross section that you can navigate by swiping on the screen and pinch zooming in and out. When the game begins, you are given a very small planet with one inhabitant. As you demonstrate your powers to the inhabitants, they become followers and earn you gold and mana for their efforts.
We'll take a closer look at the game when it hits the US App Store, but in the meantime if you've got a Canadian account you can get an early edge on the competition. Otherwise, check out the thread on our forums that has oodles of different gameplay videos.
Late last year Volkswagen teamed up with Firemint to bring us Real Racing GTI [Free], a cleverly disguised free demo of Real Racing [$4.99] loaded with VW cars and branding that is still totally worth downloading if you haven't tried out Real Racing yet.
VW's most recent collaboration was just released today, this time working with Fish Labs to bring us what appears to be some kind of crazy economical driving edutainment game that appears to share a similar game engine to their previously released Rally Master Pro 3D [$4.99]. In Volkswagen Think Blue. Challenge [Free], instead of racing as quickly as you can, players are forced to drive economically.
As silly as this sounds for a video game, doing well is actually quite challenging. You start the game with a small amount of gas, and with each checkpoint you come to, you're asked an often obvious question about fuel efficiency to get more fuel. You then try to drive as far as you can with the amount of gas the game gives you. This means intelligent throttle management, coasting down hills, taking turns properly to not lose speed, and other economical driving techniques the game explains for you.
When you finally run out of gas, your distance is submitted to a global online leaderboard showing how far the world's most economical drivers have gotten in the game. Initially I just wrote Volkswagen Think Blue. Challenge off as a marketing gimmick, but after playing a few games it's really kind of neat how the game encourages highly technical driving. So often in driving games you're able to just go all out, bounce through corners and off other cars with little if any penalty at all and this is a nice, albeit fairly odd, change of pace.
Volkswagen Think Blue. Challenge is free, and who knows, you might even learn something about economical driving that could end up saving you money on gas in your own car. If you like the graphics in the game and how it calls out turns for you, be sure to check out Fish Labs' game this seems to be based on, Rally Master Pro which we posted a review on when it was first released.
Tag Games' much anticipated Astro Ranch has just come out. We previewed the game just last week.
The basic premise of the game involves the character you choose at the beginning crash landing in to a neighborhood filled with aliens who surprisingly enough are more than willing to get you started with a house to live in, a barn to keep all your stuff in, and a plot of land for you to raise your various crops and livestock. The interface is all touch driven, and works surprisingly well with how many different things in the game are controlled with very similar gestures.
During our early time with it, Astro Ranch seems to be a surprisingly deep game. Here's a hands on video of the gameplay:
Much like Eliminate and TouchPets Dogs, ngmoco's We Rule launched first in Canada this afternoon. Since We Rule heavily relies on the Plus+ network, this limited Canadian release is allowing ngmoco to make sure they've got all their servers working properly before the game is unleashed to the rest of the world. They haven't said when they're going to throw the switch to allow everyone else to download We Rule, but looking back at the limited Canadian releases of previous ngmoco games, it wouldn't surprise me to see We Rule in the US App Store sometime next week.
We Rule is a kingdom building game, somewhat similar to the massively popular Facebook game Farmville. Here's what we had to say about the game from our hands-on preview at Macworld San Francisco:
The game map shows you your kingdom as well as the kingdom of your Plus+ contacts. Scrolling across the map shows you the relative size of everyone's kingdoms. The goal of the game is to build up your community as much as possible, but with the added twist that your own kingdom can be customized with a number of special cosmetic tweaks. These tweaks will make your kingdom truly unique and personalized.
The game consists of alternating between your daily activities of harvesting or otherwise managing your resources while building up new houses, farms, and businesses. Your kingdom will be bustling with activity from townspeople as it grows, though unlike God Finger, you don't actually have individual control of the inhabitants. …Read More.
We'll have a review of sorts when the game hits the US App Store, but in the meantime, if you're lucky enough to have a Canadian iTunes account and are looking to add kingdoms to your network, my Plus+ username is simply "Eli". (Although because of how the Plus+ search works, you're probably better off searching for "Hodapp" or "Eli Hodapp".)
Admittedly, my kingdom is fairly pitiful right now.
Tag Games is on a roll lately between the recently released B-Boy Beats [App Store] and the upcoming Astro Ranch which was submitted last week and is expected to be approved and appear on the App Store any time now. Since our last look at the game, I've been able to spend a considerable amount of time with the pre-release version and as a fan of both Harvest Moon and Animal Crossing games, I'm digging Astro Ranch.
The basic premise of the game involves the character you choose at the beginning crash landing in to a neighborhood filled with aliens who surprisingly enough are more than willing to get you started with a house to live in, a barn to keep all your stuff in, and a plot of land for you to raise your various crops and livestock. The interface is all touch driven, and works surprisingly well with how many different things in the game are controlled with very similar gestures.
Walking around in game is just a matter of touching where you want to go, and entering a house just involves tapping on the door. When you get down to business and need to interact with the various tools required to farm, managing your inventory is just a matter of tapping a button on the lower right corner of the screen, then from your inventory you can equip anything you can use. Using the equipped item is a matter of touching and dragging a button on the top right corner of the screen and drawing a line with your finger ending on whatever you want to interact with in the game world.
These basic controls can be seen in the following gameplay video, which is just me completing the first parts of the tutorial:
From the time I've been able to put in to it so far, Astro Ranch seems to be a surprisingly deep game. I have yet to master the in-game economy which seems to be completely dynamic, and my farming output is fairly pitiful right now, but appears to be progressing nicely. Mini-games and silly quests your alien neighbors send you on serve as excellent distractions for when you tire of farming, and it always feels like there's something to do.
As mentioned previously, Astro Ranch is expected to appear on the App Store any day now. Tag Games is only waiting on Apple approval, and shortly thereafter the game will be available for download for $2.99.
Well, readers, that special day is upon us. It's Valentine's Day. And what better way to share our love with our readers — who are certainly glued to the website, the App Store, and their iPhones, rather than out weaving a web of romance with someone special — than to underscore a few Valentine-savvy iPhone games?
Makeout Mania! is a "chain-reaction puzzler" that puts you in the role of that love-spreading cherub, Cupid, on a mission to pierce the heart of a school full of unsuspecting students with your arrows of love, sending them on a frenzied bid to kiss, kiss, kiss, kiss.
The title offers 24 levels of gameplay in Puzzle Mode, where the mission is to pierce a heart and make the perfect match (consult the yearbook to see who's nuts about who) while avoiding the teachers at all cost. There's also Mania Mode where it's a race against the clock to trigger the most kisses possible in an ever-scrolling schoolhouse, with the option to compete against your Facebook and Plus+ friends.
Free, new levels are on the way and an update has been submitted that tweaks a few areas of gameplay.
A big part of Valentine's Day, for those of us that don't spend all our time playing iPhone games, is flowers. And, thanks to Noel Llopis of SnappyTouch, you can have your own lovely flower garden right inside your iPhone.
As we said in our initial review of the app, Flower Garden is not really a game. It does, however, fall into the same sim / virtual pet type experience that has boosted apps such as Koi Pond,Pocket God and Touch Pets Dogs to the heights of popularity in the App Store.
There's no real goal to Flower Garden. It's something of a zen-like experience, really. Grow flowers. Unlock new seeds. Clip flowers to make bouquets. And it's the last that really puts this game under the Valentine's Day crosshairs; you can make a lovely bouquet and email it to someone special. Basically, it turns your iPhone into a digital Cupid, with email for arrows. And, to make things even sweeter, the game is currently under a 60%-off weekend-only Valentine's Day sale at $0.99.
Everybody's played a whack-a-mole game, in one form or another. It's a pretty simple formula: the mole pops up out of its hole and you whack it. And, who doesn't like to bludgeon moles? Especially when the damned things are trying to ruin Valentine's Day!
Whac-a-Mole: Whacky Valentines is basically a Valentine-themed version of the iPhone original [App Store] which is, as such games go, a pretty solid take on the whack-a-mole formula. Amusingly, the digital backboard of the game provides the occasional (though highly simplistic) mini-game — a nice touch.
I'd go into further description of the title but…it's free, so just download it and start whacking.
Virtual pet buffs need not be left out in the cold on this day of love and merriment. Ngmoco is currently offering a Valentine's Goodies Pack as paid in-game DLC ($2.99) in Touch Pets Dogs for those that want to lavish their v-pooch with as much love as can be.
Aside from B-Boy Beatsthat we previewed this week, Tag Games has another title in the works that they're describing as a mixture of Farmville, Animal Crossing, Harvest Moon, and Futurama. I never got sucked in to Farmville myself, but have sunk an embarrassing amount of time in to both the Animal Crossing and Harvest Moon series of games, and however they can work in Futurama is just icing on the cake in my book.
Astro Ranch is set in a 3D game world where players will either play as Sindy or Max Starlight to manage various farming resources, complete short quests, and participate in mini-games such as fishing or panning for gold. The recently released intro movie for the game does a great job of setting the scene:
Also released is a brief gameplay trailer that shows some of the farming, the various in-game shops, dealing with livestock, talking to the alien locals and a few other things:
Tag Games is targeting the week of the 21st to launch Astro Ranch, and are planning to price the game at $2.99. Also, the first 50,000 people to download the game at this time will be rewarded with an exclusive golden statue of the town mayor available from the shopkeeper. As mentioned previously, as a fan of the games Astro Ranch draws its inspiration from, I can't wait for the game to be released.
Looking to go head to head with Taito's Cooking Mama [$6.99 / Free], Gameloft's recently released Pocket Chef [$4.99] is a remarkably similar game, with 3D graphics taking the place of Taito's sprites. Gameplay involves selecting a food to cook, completing several mini-games in order, and being graded for how fast and accurate you were.
Recipes are simplified to basic steps, and you must perform each of them within a time limit. For instance, when making french toast in game, the first step involves cracking eggs. To crack the eggs, you drag them back then forward to hit the rim of the bowl and finally separate the shell to drop the egg in the bowl. From there you need to stir the eggs by tapping the nearby whisk, and then moving your finger in a circular motion over the mixture.
Following that, you move to the cutting board where you slice up a few loaves of bread by tapping the knife to pick it up, then dragging down across the loaf. The next step involves taking the bread you just sliced, dipping it in to the egg mixture and placing it on another plate, all accomplished by sliding your finger around the screen. Nearing completion, you then tilt the phone to move a pad of butter around the frying pan, then finally cook the french toast, flicking the phone down and up to flip it.
And after all that, you have a glorious virtual piece of french toast for you to… not eat. Pocket Chef features five different kitchens, each with different cuisine ranging from classic American foods to desserts. 25 recipes in total are included, with multiple steps that involve playing through 19 different individual cooking step mini games. There's also an in-game cookbook that has the actual recipes if you want to try your hand at making some of the in-game food in real life.
Cooking Mama has flirted with various positions near the top end of both the paid games listing as well as the overall paid app listing, so the appeal of these cooking games is undeniable. I just wish I could see what other people saw in the genre, as cooking virtual food seems so unbelievably dull to me. Regardless, if you've played through Cooking Mama and are looking for more to cook, Pocket Chef seems to be a competent cooking simulator that I'm sure some will enjoy.
Infinite Dreams has finally released the Pro version of their Sailboating Championship game that was released as a free trial version back in January.
Late last year 
Tag Games' much anticipated Astro Ranch has just come out. We 
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