Tag: iOS

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Bullet Hell Monday

I’ve been playing this new bullet hell shooter for iOS called Bullet Hell Monday, and having an absolute blast with it. It was created by Masayuki Ito, who has already created two other iOS shmups — .Decluster: Into the Bullet Hell and .Decluster Zero: Bullet Nocturne — but this is the first of his games that he releases as free-to-play. The great news is that it’s a very forgiving F2P, and as you can tell from the visuals pictured here, it’s a visual treat. I really love the abstract aesthetics in use, and the gameplay — although pretty typical of iOS shooters — feels right. I’ll definitely be picking up the two .Decluster games as well.

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Games

Bullet Hell Monday

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I’ve been playing this new bullet hell shooter for iOS called Bullet Hell Monday, and having an absolute blast with it. It was created by Masayuki Ito, who has already created two other iOS shmups — .Decluster: Into the Bullet Hell and .Decluster Zero: Bullet Nocturne — but this is the first of his games that he releases as free-to-play. The great news is that it’s a very forgiving F2P, and as you can tell from the visuals pictured here, it’s a visual treat. I really love the abstract aesthetics in use, and the gameplay — although pretty typical of iOS shooters — feels right. I’ll definitely be picking up the two .Decluster games as well.

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Games

Oink Games

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I’ve been on a card/board game kick of late — my wife suggested she’d like to play some with me, and so I went out and picked up a few things that I thought might be good for us to play (Hanabi, Sushi Go, The Hobbit Card Game, Mr. Jack Pocket, Art of War — I used to have a rather large collection back in Tokyo, but I sold it all to friends when I left, only keeping my two editions of Love Letter).

One thing I never paid much attention to while I was in Japan were card games made by Japanese designers (well, not counting games that have been published in the west, like the aforementioned Love Letter). Last week I posted about indie publisher Manifest Destiny, and as my wife was looking for info on games online, she pointed out all the lovely card games of Oink Games (they’ve also produced a few iOS games). Most if not all of their games seem to be pretty import friendly, as the card themselves don’t have any text on them, and so it’s just a matter of finding the rules in English.

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Games

Miyamoto Talks Super Mario Run

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Following last week’s announcement that Nintendo is producing a new Mario game for iOS, Super Mario Run, The Verge was quick to share this interview with Shigeru Miyamoto himself, on what the thinking is behind the game (set to come out in December). I thought it was a pretty big deal to see Miyamoto join Tim Cook on stage during the Apple keynote, and to me it felt as momentous as when Bill Gates showed up in the keynote back in 1997 to talk about the “Microsoft Deal.” Also, I’m pretty jealous that my friend Sam got to be part of the interview.

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Games

Hidden My Game By Mom

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Right now I’m enjoying the hell out of a strange little iOS game called Hidden My Game By Mom – Escape Room, developed by Hap Inc. It’s a pretty simple concept — your mom hides your portable game machine, and you try to find it — but it’s done in such an adorable way, and I especially love the illustration style used. It’s a free game, so just try it out for yourself, and if you like it, you might want to try some more Hap games.

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Legend of the Skyfish

The last of the iOS games currently seeing heavy play on my devices is the one that I really knew nothing before launch, but saw it mentioned in articles that were talking about Deus Ex GO and Mr. Robot:1.51exfiltrati0n.ipa, and my interest was piqued. I was first attracted when I saw it getting described as having Zelda-like gameplay, and then for its art direction, that looked beautiful to me. But my fear with games like this on iOS is that I really dislike playing action games on touch devices that use a virtual gamepad, which is what I assumed might happen here. But then I saw that it was also available for play on Apple TV (it’s cross-platform on all devices), and so that sold me (as I have a SteelSeries controller I use with Apple TV). This is a fantastic game that looks gorgeous on a TV, and plays incredibly well with a controller. I sat down and found myself playing non-stop through the first set of levels, only eventually stopping because it was getting late. It’s not a hugely challenging game, but I find it incredibly enjoyable, and as I said before, I really love the way it looks. It’s been months since I’ve played a game on Apple TV, and so I’m glad that this has come out to remind me of the potential that device has as a gaming platform.

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Deus Ex GO

The GO series of games from Square Enix Montreal has been fantastic so far, and I’ve been anxiously waiting for the release of this latest one, based on the Deus Ex franchise (another series I quite like). It’s pretty much what you’d expect it to be like, an extension/evolution of what we saw with Lara Croft GO, but with a bunch of Deus Ex-like hack items peppered in throughout the levels as puzzle elements. I’m not really that far in yet (blame the fact that I’m playing so many games right now), but I’m definitely happy to be playing this (on iPad), even if some levels are already starting to break my head (but that’s because I tend to suck at puzzle games).

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Mr. Robot:1.51exfiltrati0n.ipa

I wrote the other day how I was getting excited about playing a few iOS games, and this is another one of them. I really loved the first season of Mr. Robot – and am currently waiting for season 2 to finish before watching it – and when I saw that there was a new game from Telltale based on the series, well, that meant an immediate purchase. The developers of the game are Night School, the studio behind the game Oxenfree, which I haven’t played yet but have definitely heard great things about. So far, I’m digging this. It plays like Lifeline (a game I also enjoyed), in that it’s a text adventure/choose-your-own-adventure type game, but under the guises of you communicating with someone (or in the Mr. Robot game, someones). The game is presented as an E Corp messenging app, and so you wait for messages to come in, which advance the story. I started playing this on iPad, as that’s where I usually do all of my iOS gaming, but it felt more fitting to play it on iPhone (to continue the illusion of using a messenger app), and I’m really enjoying playing it that way. Every time I go in to make the story advance, I then play a few rounds of Reigns.

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Reigns

I haven’t been playing games on iOS of late, but finally got around to trying out Reigns last night (a game I’d been hearing raves about), and loved it. It’s such a simple idea – a binary text adventure game (think choose-your-own-adventure) – but presented in such a beautiful way, and with the added mechanics that we’re used to seeing in mobile games these days (constantly changing set of goals/achievements, unlocking stuff the more you play, etc.) It’s neat how they’ve managed to make it not feel overly repetitious, even though you are constantly going through the same kind of flow. A great little game, and now I’m also excited to play the new Mr. Robot game today, as well as Deus Ex GO.

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iA Iconic

Space Invaders with a typographic twist. This is a free game that was released by design studio iA (the company behind the iA Writer app) and visually it’s a beautiful thing to take in, with “Invaders” taking the form of icons, and a great soundtrack as well. Where it loses me a bit is in the controls – I already don’t like playing games on touch screen devices with virtual joysticks, but here I also found issues with the momentum of your ship when you move. I still managed to get handle on it, getting to the 11th stage on my first try, but it’s not something I’ll end up playing a lot.