Each month, the iOS GAF community hosts a thread for new game releases, rumors and discussion that define the fast-moving world of iOS gaming.
The OP will contain games that released both towards the end of the previous month and games that have released during the current month -- all games which have been highlighted by the GAF community in one way or another. This way you can keep tabs on the best games and at the same time curate an excellent resource to look back on to find games you may have missed.
Also keep an eye out for the ‘GAF iOS Challenges’; events where GAF battle it out on the Game Center leaderboards of a chosen game for both fame and fortune (prizes donated by members of our community).
• local multiplayer up to 4 players and online multiplayer up to 2 players
• a creative mode to unleash your creativity and build everything you can imagine
• a fully featured equip system with more than 390 different wearable items to enhance your adventures or just to make your friends envy!
• an adventure mode that will let you travel between multiple planets with different and intriguing environments
• 750+ crafts to be built
• 1600+ treasures
• 350+ placeable items
• 150+ different creatures and monsters
• and much more
[edited for OP]Junk Jack X is heavily inspired by Terraria, it's borrowed a ton of features from it, the RPG elements, NPCs, persistent character development, collecting animals, water physics etc. they are all in there.
The two games are the two sides of the same coin, both have pros and cons against each other. If you play on iPad I'd recommend Terraria, if you play on iPhone I recommend JJX. JJX also has local/online multiplayer via Game Center and the ability to share worlds with others, which Terraria doesn't. Terraria has smaller blocks (more fiddly), JJX has bigger (more user friendly). JJX also has a more "minecraftian" crafting system (and a new optional super casual mode).
I like both for their own reasons, if you like sandbox games you'll find tons of depth and things to do and explore in either.
So far so good, and I am surprised I actually got into the Minecraft style game - the controls are really well thought out though I ended up fighting a lot with menus, ironically - they are quite clumsy. I played Terraria a bit on PC but even there it just felt too fiddly with these small blocks, let alone on iPhone, so for me JJX seems the right choice for the platform, really, even though so far the world doesn't seem as lush and rich as Terraria's generated words do. It has very few, unattractive caves, and on the surface there's little variety, even though the art style is so charming. It's also bit harsh with resources and the day seems super short so exploration is bit tough, and the game progresses at a glacial pace - but I also blame the fact it's my first time with games of this kind and all of it feels really alien to me haha. In a way it reminds me Harvest Moon a lot, which is a game I missed a lot.
It's really charming, and I am going to spend quite a lot of time with it, so as soon as I feel bit more confident I am up to multiplayer sessions : ) Add me on game center: igor_mango
• 200+ CRAFTING RECIPES - weapons, armor, potions, and more!
• 25+ BLOCK TYPES to build anything you can imagine!
• 75+ MONSTERS!
• 5 BOSSES!
• Over a DOZEN environments to explore!
• Dynamic water & lava, day/night cycles!
• 10+ NPCs to meet and recruit to your home!
Just lost two straight hours to Terraria. Built myself a competent little house, did a little mining, made myself some copper tools, weapons & armour. I'm finding the controls better than I expected. I feel like I can do anything I could on the PC, only it takes a little longer. I'm using a combination of zoomed out with stick control for big mining and combat, and then zoomed in with touch control for precision work.
Man I wish this had local multi. The missus is sat next to me playing it too.
Much prefer Terraria on the iPad. The iPhone screen is just too small for this game.
I 'preferred' it until the early hours. Now I've slept through my alarm and I'm heading to work feeling like the undead. All for the love of a golden pickaxe.
[edited for OP]The problem with Terraria on iPhone:
That said I've spent several hours playing it on iPad where it works
really well, there's a tremendous amount of depth to this game.
• 47 high-performance cars
• 9 settings like Venice, French Guiana, Iceland, the Nevada Desert & other exciting locations!
• Discover plenty of hidden shortcuts
• 8 seasons & 180 events in the Career mode
• Stunning visuals thanks to next-gen shaders, real-time geometry reflection & other amazing effects
• Simultaneous multiplayer action for up to 8 opponents!
• Dare friends to asynchronous races
Asphalt 8 OT here
If you're a fan of arcade racers, this is a 100% must buy. 110% if you have a newer device. I'm playing on iPhone 4, runs very well and graphics are decent IMO. But the gameplay is what matters and it is awesome. The tracks have tons of alternate routes and are even multi-tiered, more traffic to dodge, crazy jumps, and is just really really fun. For 0.99, this is an absolute steal.
IAP is car packs and credits, but it's really only for the impatient.
Loving asphalt 8. Plays way better than the last need for speed game. It's so addicting I cleaned up space on my iPhone 5 and installed it so I can race on the go.
Game is great, it's a much bigger leap then say 4 to 5 to 6 to 7, this game has a lot of small changes which all add up to a much better feel, the car's have a much better sense of physics going on (like said in their developer video) and the speed is dialled down enough to still feel fast but not driving jet cars everywhere.
One of the best changes to me is the track design, they all have multiple routes and are huge, much better.
Awesome game, kills my iPhone 5 battery though.
• Meet B**k Choy, Bloomerang and Lightning Reed: Just a few of the powerful new plants that will defend your lawn through time.
• New Plant Food and power-ups will take your game to new dimensions.
• Battle the fun-dead on land, on sea and… on the rails? Unlock ultra-challenging (and ultra-fun) endless levels.
• Gather keys to unlock brain teasers and new plants. Collect coins to purchase potent power-ups. Earn stars to take you to new worlds.
Possible to finish all the content without spending any $$$ on IAPs and without even losing a single plant on any of the levels.
PvZ2 OT here
I'm really enjoying PvZ 2 so far. Feels a lot like the first, but better actually. I recently replayed PvZ in the past year, so it's fairly fresh in my memory, and this one is just much more fun. Still at the beginning, but I enjoy seeing the corny jokes (the whole plot being about going back in time so crazy Dave can re-eat a delicious taco), the "camel flage" zombies carrying boards, and the boomerang plant is great. Putting the plant food on wall nuts and seeing them put on a permanent suit of armor is great, and I like the plant food mechanic in general as well, seeing a hundred boomerangs or a lettuce plant bomb a lane full of lettuce. I also like the map structure a lot, and the mini-games seem to be in there and fun. Just did the memory game one, which was unexpected and nice.
So yeah, I feel like I robbed them getting it for free. It's also slightly harder than PvZ 1, but no where near Kingdom Rush hard... though maybe PvZ 2 gets harder later on - even so, I very much doubt I'd ever exhaust the 10,000s of coins I'll have accumulated for free at that point.
• Super challenging, fast paced platforming action through 20 levels.
• Elegant controls: tap on the left to jump, tap on the right to throw a rock, and hold down on the right to sprint.
• Silky smooth 60 frames per second.
You actually don't control the left/right movement, the kid auto walks in a sidescrolling adventure similar to the Rayman Jungle Run's kind of the auto runners. It's not the usual runner tho (thank god), think Bit Trip Runner. It reminds me of Wonder Boy 1 (SEGA's arcade version), you control the jumps, sprint and can throw rocks at enemies and you have a limited number of lives and coins to collect like the old classic platformers. Level design is pretty brilliant, which you'll realize in full when going for collect 'em all runs: timed jumps will put the spotlight on the enemies/platforms/etc movement and how they're perfectly laid out for high risk = high reward jump mechanics. Kid Tripp runs at 60fps, looks super cute, leaderboards based... And I had difficulty in passing World 1-5... be prepared cause the game is FREAKISHLY HARD! I enjoy challenging games but this is something else, holy fuck! I have to say that I also love how the game makes it really easy to go back to previously beaten levels to try to collect all the coins and achieve the 100% clear medals: it really flows as far as a stop&go mode and makes it much more enjoyable to just try to survive the levels in the main "survival" mode and only after that I'd advise you try to collect everything in the specific LEVELS section.
No IAPS whatsoever, 99c, Universal and a whole 7 MEGABYTES of space needed on your iDevice!
It's the charming and brilliant bastard child of The Impossible Game and Mario Bros.
• Made by a GAFer!
• 50 challenging levels
• One-touch control system
• Intricate puzzles
I'm the developer of Gleamer actually. I like to think of it as a twitch/puzzle platformer. It has one-touch controls, as I wanted to try to make a good, challenging platforming game for touch screens without using virtual controls.
In full disclosure, there is one IAP, but it is completely optional. All it does is unlock all the levels in advance, whereas they unlock normally as you play through the game.
I'd recommend Gleamer, especially if you like challenging games.
In Gleamer, your cube is always moving, your only control is to jump. To change direction, you have to bounce off walls, and the more you bounce off walls, the faster you go. Think of it less as a straight platformer, more as a puzzle game, You're not collecting power ups or activating switches. It's all about timing when and where to jump, planning which is the best order to grab the pick ups and best path to take to control your speed and beat the level as fast as possible while avoiding the dangerous red platforms. I say puzzle like, because going too fast or waiting too long to build up speed will throw your entire attempt, so it becomes like a puzzle to plan out the fastest way to complete the level
And it's just strangely satisfying to see your cube flickering across the screen at insane speeds
• Permadeath
• Procedurally generated map - every game is unique
• Destructible environments - Break down walls, blow up cars, set the world on fire
• Scavenge loot from real life players who've died around the world
• Glitch the dog will help defend you, fetch things for you and keep you company
Bought the Scavenger pack, great art style, love the atmosphere (wind blowing leaves around), so far not dead so not sure what you "lose" on death, i hope its not currency / unlocks...
• 27 single-player missions, a 'horde' mode, and asynchronous online friendly or ranked matches!
• All your old favourite weapons plus six new ones on iOS, including a couple of returning classics such as the Old Lady and the Homing Pigeon!
• Choose your worms from a new ‘Class’ system - Heavy, Scientist, Scout and classic Soldier in addition to a huge amount of customizable elements.
• Turn on the card mode and alter the start and end of each turn by the playing of strategic cards. Build your deck from 41 fiendishly designed cards!
Fantastic, first worms game for iOS that feels mde for the platform, new zones, tons of options, cards are a nice touch. Not bloated in file size like the others, even the icon has lost the tacky T17 logo. The Dpad makes it though, so much easier. It could use more maps and voice banks but other than that, recommended.
• Enjoy the tension of fighting with intuitive slingshot fighting controls!
• 11 playable characters: Taekwondo, Boxing, Zui Quan (Drunken Fist), Shaolin Kung Fu, Jeet Kune Do, Mantis boxing, etc.
• Online multiplayer via game center
• Manage your own gym, Train your team in the "CAMPAIGN" menu
• Thrilling psychological warfare
This is pretty fun, glad I bought it. But with only four moves per character and the simplistic nature of the game, I can see it getting repetitive. I haven't tried the campaign mode yet, still gotta unlock it. Maybe it adds enough to keep things fresh.
TA impressions:
FANTASTIC! Superb game. Truly made for touchscreens. While games like Kinetic Damage bring you incredible, deep fighting mechanics that make your jaw drop when you realize..."Hey! This is on a touchscreen!", Kung Fu Jumpu truly was made by people you can imagine understand the platform. The gameplay's not just "Oh, hey...I'll fling this dude and wow!"...it's pretty strategic. You have to calculate distances, predict what your opponent may do next, etc. It's like Rock Paper Scissors mixed with Angry Birds, mixed with Street Fighter. Stupid easy recommendation.
rymdkapsel is Swedish for space capsule
I'm enjoying Rymdkapsel (or whatever it is). It took a little while to wrap my head around what is going on, but then it all sort of clicked.
Refreshingly, you are not then bombarded with a whole heap of complicated mechanics. You just go about your business with what you have learnt at the start. Because of that it is a joy to play and a rather relaxing experience, even if it is still tricky.
It might not last me forever because of this, but that is ok. Well worth a look.
I love the music and the atmosphere of this game. It has a nice tutorial that explains all the rules. It's a simple game, but it can get really tough.
However I have a few issues with the game. First, if you have two rooms of a certain resource (say reactor) you can't choose/prioritize which room to deplete first, AND your minions don't necessarily go to the one that is closest to them. Consequently, at one point I had minions travel all the way across the map to reach a resource, and then al the way back to construct, even though there was another room right next to the construction site. This pretty much lost me the game. There was no way for me (that I know of) to point them to the nearby node.
Another issue, though this is less critical, is the lack of AI/coordination beteeen minions. When you're building something, sometimes two minions can carry over two blocks of a certain resource even though you only need one, and as one of them delivers the resource, the other one stops since its resource is no longer needed, drops whatever it's carrying (thereby costing me an extra block), and goes to collect the next required resource.
I get what they're trying to do here with the less is more approach. No micromanagement, no need to worry about details. But when your AI is inadequate, it can get really frustrating.
Rymdkapsel though is great and while I hoped for something that is more campaign based, it's kind of everything I wished star command would be, really. It's addictive (I played the game and lost by the 16th wave at one go) and it looks great - though it does feel like it's lacking something more substantial - there is tetris-like room mechanic, tower defense element, a bit of management sim which all gels beautifully together, but I wish it was fleshed out more - you just grow your base, defend it and that's it. No smaller goals, no little things to shake things up a bit. Asking price is a bit too steep by comparison all things considered.
• Use your fingers to manipulate a beam crossing the extent of a circle. Dodge scratches while you collect notes to progress to the next track!
• Ten original, full length electronic tracks stream seamlessly to create an endless DJ set!
• "Standard Mode" challenges you to a level-based experience, introducing new game mechanics as the music progresses!
• "Full Mix Mode" provides an endless experience with a steadily increasing difficultly!
I decided to get Drop Chord after all, and damn, this is a really really nice game. One problem might be the fact you need to keep fingers on the screen at all times which is bit tiring, especially if your screen protector is rubbery like my Zagg one (reduces a lot of traction) but other than that, this is the game in veins of Super Hexagon which I really really dig.
It has nice electronic music and graphics that reminds me of these old tech demos on various platforms. It may seem like its screwing with your eyes, there's so much going on, but the gameplay area is visible, I didn't have any problems anyway.
The gameplay is challenging but it has a really nice flow to it just like in Super Hexagon. There's lot of distractions and variety to gameplay and I havent played that much really. There are simple dots, there are charged ones, there are ones to avoid and there are special swipe areas that you need to cover (though I havent "got" that feature fully yet). Every now and then there's bonus stage and a special Ouendan style stage which requires you to tap targets with one finger or two (though 2 fingers cause difficulties and need to be tweaked).
That's all in first 5 minutes of the game or so - it's very hectic and challenging and really fun. If you needed a challenge for your reflexes this is the game.
