Castlestorm
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/castlestorm-free-to-siege/id726232588?mt=8
Free, universal, 350mb download, gamecenter enabled.
Castlestorm feels like royal revolt or army of darkness blended with angry birds and any worms title. Yea, it's the definition of hybrid. The most overall description of most stages is that you have a castle on the left, the enemy is positioned on the right. You both send soldiers across to attack one another and each others castles, this is the army of darkness royal revolt reference. You use spells and can even drop your hero and go in to full sword swinging shield blocking antics, this is also a armoy of darkness royal revolt reference. But this is not where it ends. You see those two castles are completely built of individual pieces much like angry birds pig castles and also like angry birds you need to completely destroy your opponents castle to win. The castles crumble in real time, where you hit them and what you hit them with affects the damage you do.
Now, that's what goes on most of the time but there are also stages where your fending off waves of Npcs, sometimes your killing thieves who are trying to flee from you with your gold, I even had a strike happen in my castle where I had to destroy the entire enemy with my hero heh. All stages have three goals, each worth a star. Certain star counts award you ever increasing new abilities and perks. On top of that your always gaining experience from leveling up every aspect of your kingdom and leveling up also unlocks lots of rewards and whatnot.
There is iap present, but so far all of it has been of the impatient-player-wants-stuff-before-they've-earned-it variety. Play the game through and so far there hasn't been a forced iap wall. The only wall I can imagine could be once you finish the main chapter's 50 stages and want to chase the other four chapters. Those are currently 150gems a piece which equals almost 9 dollars each, but I suspect they may unlock in order for free if you play through the game proper like. Time will tell on this. Oh and I do like that in the iap there is a VIP package that removes adds, doubles exp gain, gives a lump sum of coin and gem plus puts you on a permanent weekly allowance for the two currencies.
Two thumbs up so far, will follow up. Now, next on the list?
The Spatials
Free, iPad only, 78mb download, gamecenter enabled but not used.
Spatials is my type of game and it scratches an itch thats needed scratching since 2003. Back in 2003 a game came out of nowhere right on the heels of the sims 2 i believe, called Space Colony. Space Colony put you in charge of a completely customizable colony on another planet. You placed everything from rooms to halls to beds to plants and back again. You received instructions from 'the corporation' who's mission work steadly guilded you through your entire reason for being on the planet. Harvesting ores, farming space chickens, shooting aliens, competing with rival colonies, it was all there and it was all fun.
Spatials follows Space Colony's spirit. This game lets you build your colony as you see fit, rooms, corridors, furniture, all on a randomly generated asteroid. One of my favorite twists is that unlike Space Colony where you moved from planet to planet building from scratch, in this game this colony is home base and planets, solar systems and entire other galaxies are where you will adventure. Whether victorious on your missions or a failure, you will always return to this colony. Here is where you produce food stuff, upgrade equipment, swap equipment on your colonists, etc, etc. Out there, you will be taking specimens, shooting wildlife, shooting space pirates, rescuing lost colonists, encountering people for hire and even buying useful colonist equipment for your people.
There are two types of missions in the game, optional and story progression. Optional means, pick a planet without a ! or a merchant icon, send the away team and run around looting, shooting and doing what ever random requirement the planet assigned you when you arrived. ! means storyline and these scale in difficulty but each one awards you a new colonist and usually new furniture or rooms for the colony back home.
This game has one currency, and for iap there are two coin packs both affordable and a coin doubler. The developers have been social over on toucharcade and have plans for more things to do and more things to build back at the colony. I am enjoying this game emensly and can't wait to see where they go with it.
Two suggestions for the developers. 1, make gamecenter actually useful with achievements. 2, aim for space colony, then go beyond :)
Next!
1849
4.99usd, iPad only, 48mb download, gamecenter enabled
Wild West city builder, release date on itunes suggest it came out a week or so back but I only just noticed it yesterday on pocketgamer so, its new to me. The game is stage based, each stage has goals and is in different locations around california. Build homes, businesses, do trade with neighboring cities for resources you need, meet the needs of the townsfolk, watch them upgrade their homes, its relaxing to say the least. The self upgrading homes thing reminds me of the anno series of pc games (there is an anno coming to the ipad soon!).
Very simple game, relaxing too. Thumbs up. Zero iap
Next!
Lost Inua
3.99usd, Universal, 161mb download, gamecenter enabled.
You can tell the quality of a game usually by how long touchgameplay bothers to record when making their youtube videos each week. Lost Inua is almost twice as long as their normal recording length and its for good reason. This here is an action platformer involving a father and son who are on a quest to meet the three good spirits before the fourth bad spirit kills the little boy who's destiny is to bring peace... if you get him where he needs to be.
Visually fantastic, this is one of the first games that has actually managed to slow down my ipad air. Sounds are great, controls spot on, this game does an excellent job absorbing you in to the story.
Gunship X
.99usd, universal, 27mb download.
Straight forward, you are the gunner of a well fitted aircraft and your job is to shoot the aliens while protecting fleeing civilians. This game plays exactly like its predecessor 'gunship' just with aliens instead of zombies. Everything on your weapon boat is upgradable including the aircraft itself. iap coin packages are present but not mandatory for the grind friendly amongst us. Gamecenter, like the last game is enabled but completely un used. I wish apple would put some sort of stop to this, reall annoying when a developer check marks yes for gamecenter just to lure in more sales. Ahh well, at least gunship uses it for leaderboards. Spatials and Warhammer don't even do that. :/
Anyways, good controls, good but potentially repetitative game play, optional iap, leaderboards.
Next!
Warhammer 40k : Carnage
6.99usd, universal, 124mb download, gamecenter yes but unused.
Alot of warhammer games lately have hit the app store, and really their mostly all shallow. This one.. is somewhere in the middle. Run from left to right, kill everything. Meet goals, win, team up with players, do those goals, buy equipment, upgrade equipment, move along. Not a whole lot here, definitely not worth 7 dollars as it currently stands and the gamecenter enabled but completely unused has me tempted to itunes refund request. I feel cheated here. Spatials did the same thing, but at least Spatials held my attention for more than 5 minutes.
Next!
Kiwanuka
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/kiwanuka/id849796318
1.99usd, universal, 44mb download, gamecenter enabled.
Trippy little lemmings like game. You control the lightning, draw it where you want the little people to go and they'll do just that. Draw straight up and they'll form pillars you can knock over to make bridges, the goal is always the same to get to the stage exit.
Lot of colors flying at me in this one... trippy...
And thats the list, one game annoyed me above, the rest I enjoy. o/
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