Being at 148Apps these past 2 years has been an awesome experience that has taught me a great deal, and working with such a great team has been a privilege. Thank you to Rob Rich, and to both Rob LeFebvre and Jeff Scott before him, for helping me to grow as a writer and for giving me the opportunity to write about what I love: playing innovative mobile games and utilising the most revolutionary apps on the most quickly evolving gaming platform that is iOS.

Yes, there are a sea of copycats and awful Tap Tap clones that no one should ever bother with, but every so often iOS games and apps do the unbelievable - and that's what keeps me wading through that sea in search of a genuine pearl. Since it’s so often the independent developers that establish themselves as the David against the free-to-play Goliaths of the world, I'm proud to have worked for a site that puts indie games right up there with the big releases.

I'll be working over at App Trigger from this point on, so feel free to stop by anytime or follow me on Twitter (@El_Hamlet_). Whether you do either of those things or neither, it's been my pleasure to write stuff down for you to read with your eyes and for your brain to compute very soon after. I hope you stick with 148Apps until iPhones cease to exist and we have SIM cards in our heads and every game is Augmented Reality-based. Although, I hope that doesn’t happen for a while yet.

Oh, and I admit I might have been wrong about A Dark Room. I hold my hands up there. My bad.

Hugs and kisses,

Lee

Original Image Source: galleryhip

Battle of Toys is a fighting game involving dozens of collectible toys of various stature, power and style. One thing they all share, however, is the ability to kick the fluff out of each other. To get the best out of your growing collection and the team of up to 6 that you send into battle, we've compiled something of a beginner's guide to get you started.

Rock 'em 'n' Sock 'em

• Upping the difficulty can swing you more rewards when you win, but obviously it makes opponents much tougher as well, particularly their defensive and offensive capabilities, making defeating them within the time limit tough.

• Bear in mind however, that you only have to finish the 30 seconds with MORE health than your opponents overall. Actually finishing them off doesn't matter most of the time, so with some boosts equipped, the higher difficulties need not be so daunting. At the very least, the second difficulty tier is always worth an attempt.

• The trickiest special attack mini-game is the crosshair targeting system, simply because the accuracy isn't always exactly spot on. As a rule, wait for each axis to go red before tapping to stop.

• Once you have more than one toy, swapping them out regularly during a fight is a good tactic. At best, you'll dodge an enemy attack, at worst you'll even out the health lost during the fight, and that's important, because what they don't tell you is that the toy that you win the match with will have its health replenished free of charge. Therefore tagging in a damaged toy to finish off an opponent is a good tactical move.

• Upgrading your toys and applying at least one special attack or boost to each of your team members is a wise move to make before heading into a fight. It saves wasting energy and having to fix up battered toys.

• Alternatively, rather than upgrading the existing toys in your collection, getting by with characters with lower stats and preserving money for another toy will be advantageous in the long run. A second toy is automatically unlocked after the fourth round anyway, so just continue building your collection naturally.

Fistful of Dollars

• Use the lucky dip machine regularly, but hold off on using crystals to skip the cooling off period, because although coins, powerups and the odd crystal come fairly often, toys are extremely rare. Resist the urge to keep on spinning and wait the rather short cooling off period of 12 minutes instead.

• Coins, diamonds and energy will be dropped by opponents during fights, but will have to be picked up manually, so act fast or they'll be gone for good once they exit the game screen as the toys continue to dash about.

• If you have Facebook, linking your account will grant you 10 diamonds and a costume with a handy stat increase to one of your toys. The 10 diamonds are then best spent on coins (8 for 15,000), with the remaining 2 saved for replenishing energy or later in exchange for more coins. Furthermore, when you level up, you will presented with a choice between 1 diamond or 5,000 coins for sharing on Facebook. Combine this with the diamonds that can be attained via other social networking incentives and the game is quite generous with its rewards.

• Coins are best saved for the purchase of the more realistically-priced toys or on upgrades, particularly on new costumes which yield larger upgrade potential than upgrading single parts at a time. Once you have a few toys in your team, you can then use the costumes strategically for a more balanced squad.

We hope these few tips and hints will help you keep your toys away from the yard sale and at the top of the toy box.