Tag: Ad supported »

Fist Face Fight has a marvelously alliterative title, and plenty of faces to fight with one's fist. From the creator of the Cubed Rally series, this is a game about punching ninjas who want to break the player's heart - literally. Never mind that its heart is unprotected outside of its body. That's just a bad idea. Thankfully, the player controls a giant fist who can punch these heartbreakers in their big ugly faces by tapping on the screen to move the fist where the ninja faces are.

The game starts off rather slow, as it has just 20 second play sessions that don't really go anywhere, but when the later belts are unlocked with not just longer play sessions but also more interesting enemies, then the game gets a lot more fun. The scoring system, which encourages only moving when absolutely necessary, adds to the difficulty as some of the challenges require certain scores that demand the multiplier be kept at its 9X maximum for the whole time. The enemies react in different ways, and learning how to combat each threat, instead of just frantically tapping on enemies, is the secret to success.

As a purely progression-based challenge, the game might work structurally, but instead there's a coin system, where coins earned in-game are used to unlock later levels. Even after mastering a certain level, it may still take a lot of coins to unlock the next one. Since levels have a points ceiling, this makes later play sessions particularly repetitive. It feels like a coins system could have been integrated in a better way than "pay $9.99 to unlock the last level instantaneously." The game is ad-supported and it's possible to pay to remove the ads, though they aren't very intrusive.

While Fist Face Fight is slow to get started and runs out of gas quickly, it's an amusing-enough free game to be worth a download to punch some ninjas as a giant fist.

m-spacemedia, makers of the unexpectedly fun Asteroid 2012 3D, have unleashed another game onto an unsuspecting App Store. This time it’s a pattern-based reactionary puzzle game. Think Simon, but with cubes. It’s a lot like that. Players will have to match the sequence of flashing cubes in order to keep going, but the patterns get faster and more complex the longer they last. Anyone familiar with the concept knows just how crazy it can get.

Floozled is available on the App Store right now for free. But more importantly, 50% of the ad revenue earned from this game as well as Asteroid 2012 Free-D and Honeyrun HD Free will be donated to the James Whale Fund. The proceeds will be donated at the end of July, with the money being used to fund kidney cancer treatment and research, so there’s still plenty of time to download and contribute by tapping on an ad or two. After that, a new charity will be chosen for August through October.

"This is an ongoing push to help raise money and awareness to smaller charities helping those when they need it most." – Mark Muller

m-spacemedia has already raised close to $50 with close to three months left. Those interested can follow the fundraiser's progress or donate directly here, and details about the charity can be found here. Anyone want to see if we see if we can add a digit or two (or more) to that number?

Disc Drivin' is a game whose immediate goal might not be apparent; the easiest way to explain the game is that it is like Mario Kart crossed with Words With Friends. You and your opponents take turns sliding your disc across the tracks, replete with tricky turns, turbo boosts, and powerup icons. The Words with Friends-esque element comes from the turn-based gameplay; when you take your turn, your opponent then takes theirs, and so on until someone completes 3 laps and wins the race. The game supports up to 8 players in either hotseat or local wifi multiplayer, and up to 4 people online, with push notifications notifying you when it is your turn.

There's a reason why I describe this as being similar to Words With Friends in particular, and it is because Disc Drivin' is just as addictive and viral as that game was around its popularity peak. If you start up one game, you'll quickly find yourself wanting to start up more and more, and anxiously waiting for your opponents to make their moves so you can play some more. The physics engine with the discs adds to the fun, as wacky things can happen when you hit ramps, bombs or other discs; there is plenty that can happen when discs go flying to cause you to shout for joy or shriek in error. You never know what you'll see next. That, and just the whole addictive and surprisingly fast-paced nature of the asynchronous multiplayer, is what makes this one a gem.

While Disc Drivin' provides a lot of courses, many of them don't do a lot to distinguish themselves from one another, particularly the courses with a lot of twists and turns that tend to blend together. As well, the games in these courses can take a while to play as the pace of the game starts to slow around curves. The game comes in free and paid versions, and the free version suffers from some bugs with the ads that are displayed between turns; in particular, errors tend to happen if you get a push notification while an app are displayed. Also, the game can be very unfriendly to new players; some form of tutorial to explain the game's functions would help out a lot. As well, player discovery is limited to searching email contacts or manual username search; Game Center matchmaking would be a huge help for player discovery. The game supports the Retina Display, but iPad support would be much appreciated as well.

Beyond these flaws, though, Disc Drivin' is easily one of the most addictive games I have ever played on iOS. it has me constantly checking my iPod touch for new moves, and wishing I could have more than the maximum 20 games at once. This is an absolute must-download. Check out the free version first, then pick up the $2.99 ad-free version.

UPDATE: Since the original review, both the free and paid version have been updated to 1.2, helping to iron out glitches mentioned in the original review, as well as adding functionality for one-click rematches, a recent player list, and random player matchmaking. AS well, the developers have mentioned exploring other features, such as video sharing, Game Center, and new courses, that may come at some point in the future.

At GDC this year we got a chance to take a look at a new game from Backflip Studios, Strike Knight. The game is a recreation of shuffleboard-type bowling you used to find in bars in decades past. The device in the app has a blue knight that never fails to make fun of missed shots.

The game offers both single player and multiplayer (pass and play) bowling. Take a look at the video for an idea of what the game looks like and how it plays.

Strike Knight will be submitted to the App Store next week, we should see it shortly after that.The game will be released free (ad-supported) much like Backflip Studios very popular Paper Toss.

Take a look at some screen shots after the jump.